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> I don't have to work a field for 12 hours a day just to get enough food to survive like my ancestors did Not disagreeing with your overall point but this isn

> I don't have to work a field for 12 hours a day just to get enough food to survive like my ancestors did Not disagreeing with your overall point but this isn't correct. Medieval peasants worked about 150 days a year, and while they were obviously very busy during planting and harvesting times, they had lighter workloads at other points in the year.

derektank 2y ago
These studies generally don't include the large amounts of domestic labor that had to be done in addition to farming. Lots of food preservation, home repairs, tending to fires, etc that we simply don't have to worry about today in nearly the same way. There was a lot less work in winter, but there was also substantially less food and with less energy for recreational activity, a lot of people's leisure time was occupied with sleeping.
- mid-kid 2y ago
  God I actually wish I could just focus on sleeping during winter instead of drudging on in the constant dark.
nthingtohide 2y ago
I think there was a article here which stated that 1 person had to work for 1 month to get 1 pound of sugar or something. Today it is equivalent to 1 hours of work, something like that. You are narrowing your focus too much. The abundance is really the key here.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  I bet eggs were cheaper…
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Not even close. Eggs were 6p/dozen in the 14th century. https://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html https://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html Laborer wages were 2p/day in the 14th century. https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-and-wages/ https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-a...
    - smegsicle 2y ago
      yeah but that's like walmart greeter tier labor and super nice farm fresh eggs
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      I don't understand where you get "6p/dozen". In that first link it says 2 dozen eggs is 1 pence (1d, denarius meaning pence). That works out to half a pence per dozen, not 6. If it actually cost 3 days wages for a dozen eggs it seems pretty clear everyone would have starved to death.
      - bryanlarsen 2y ago
        The legend at the top says that "d" is shilling, or 12 pence. Eggs, like all meat, was a luxury. They didn't starve, they lived on gruel.
        hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        No, that's wrong. s is shilling, d is pence. The relevant part of the legend at the top says: 1 pound (L) = 20 shillings (s) ... 1 shilling = 12 pence (d) Then in the description it states "The French Livre, sou, and denier are equivalent to the pound, shilling and penny (Latin liber, solidus, and denarius)" Meaning: pound = livre = liber = L shilling = sou = solidus = s pence = denier = denarius = d A dozen eggs were half a pence.
        bryanlarsen 2y ago
        So redoing the calculations, a dozen eggs were a quarter day of laborer wages, and more than a full day of wages for a maidservant or swineherd. Still considerably more expensive than the price of eggs today.
afthonos 2y ago
Medieval peasants were required to work 150 days a year on their lord’s estate. That was how they paid for the land they had to farm the rest of the time to survive. They also had to spin, weave, and make clothes. Reference: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-work-only-150-days-a-year https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-...
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I've read a lot on this subject, and unfortunately I think that all sources I've read are introducing a particular bias, which is usually either "capitalism makes people work more!" or "y'all are crazy, people worked way more before the Industrial Revolution". For example, here is a counter reference to your reference: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_.... My own personal take is that, first off, I'm not at all trying to make peasant life as some sort of panacea - far from it. If anything, life before the Industrial Revolution was certainly much more precarious: obviously tons of childhood deaths (not to mention deaths from things like smallpox and the plague), and all it took was a bad harvest to cause major famine. War was much more commonplace. But the lack of a lot of tools that the Industrial Revolution provided meant that, in many ways, there was simply less possible time to do productive work. When the lights went out, it's hard to do a lot by candlelight/torches. The work really did ebb and flow with the seasons. Yes, there was ton to do during the offseason, but I think the analogy with the modern world is that is like the time after a tough deadline and big release - lots of "OK, let clean up some of this code now that we have time". Plus, a lot of the tasks that your reference mentioned would have been clearly divided by the sexes. There is a paragraph from your link that states: > We might also point to the amount of household labour that had to be performed. Yarn had to be spun, cloth to be weaved. Cooking was over open fires: and that firewood had to be collected. Bread baked and so on and on. There was a recent report (rather exagerrated but still) which claimed that in the 1930s it took 65 hours of human labour a week to run a household. Today it takes 3. Things were worse back in medieval days. And nearly all of that work would have been done by women while men worked the fields. There was certainly much more total work to be done to run a household, but the division of labor was more clear cut. So again, I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Life was certainly "harder" back then, but from everything I've read there was undeniably more "downtime", even if there wasn't a ton to do during that downtime. The "having to work 12 hours a day just to keep food on the table" that I was responding to clearly seems to be false from just about every source I've read.
psunavy03 2y ago
This is an urban legend.
emptyfile 2y ago
[dead]
datavirtue 2y ago
And they were just farming. It had straight forward payoffs, rewards and risks (stress profile). Flash forward to where I have to constantly reassess my risk exposure in a corporate setting on repeat, daily. It almost makes communal farming based on biblical dogma and superstition appealing.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Society would be healthier if we retuned to seasonal labor (even in intellectual fields) and had agreed-upon travel seasons. Why must we all chain ourselves to the same geography year-round?

derektank 2y ago

These studies generally don't include the large amounts of domestic labor that had to be done in addition to farming. Lots of food preservation, home repairs, tending to fires, etc that we simply don't have to worry about today in nearly the same way. There was a lot less work in winter, but there was also substantially less food and with less energy for recreational activity, a lot of people's leisure time was occupied with sleeping.

mid-kid 2y ago
God I actually wish I could just focus on sleeping during winter instead of drudging on in the constant dark.

nthingtohide 2y ago

I think there was a article here which stated that 1 person had to work for 1 month to get 1 pound of sugar or something. Today it is equivalent to 1 hours of work, something like that. You are narrowing your focus too much. The abundance is really the key here.

BoredPositron 2y ago
I bet eggs were cheaper…
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Not even close. Eggs were 6p/dozen in the 14th century. https://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html https://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html Laborer wages were 2p/day in the 14th century. https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-and-wages/ https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-a...
  - smegsicle 2y ago
    yeah but that's like walmart greeter tier labor and super nice farm fresh eggs
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    I don't understand where you get "6p/dozen". In that first link it says 2 dozen eggs is 1 pence (1d, denarius meaning pence). That works out to half a pence per dozen, not 6. If it actually cost 3 days wages for a dozen eggs it seems pretty clear everyone would have starved to death.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      The legend at the top says that "d" is shilling, or 12 pence. Eggs, like all meat, was a luxury. They didn't starve, they lived on gruel.
      - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        No, that's wrong. s is shilling, d is pence. The relevant part of the legend at the top says: 1 pound (L) = 20 shillings (s) ... 1 shilling = 12 pence (d) Then in the description it states "The French Livre, sou, and denier are equivalent to the pound, shilling and penny (Latin liber, solidus, and denarius)" Meaning: pound = livre = liber = L shilling = sou = solidus = s pence = denier = denarius = d A dozen eggs were half a pence.
        bryanlarsen 2y ago
        So redoing the calculations, a dozen eggs were a quarter day of laborer wages, and more than a full day of wages for a maidservant or swineherd. Still considerably more expensive than the price of eggs today.

afthonos 2y ago

Medieval peasants were required to work 150 days a year on their lord’s estate. That was how they paid for the land they had to farm the rest of the time to survive. They also had to spin, weave, and make clothes. Reference: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-work-only-150-days-a-year https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-...

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I've read a lot on this subject, and unfortunately I think that all sources I've read are introducing a particular bias, which is usually either "capitalism makes people work more!" or "y'all are crazy, people worked way more before the Industrial Revolution". For example, here is a counter reference to your reference: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_.... My own personal take is that, first off, I'm not at all trying to make peasant life as some sort of panacea - far from it. If anything, life before the Industrial Revolution was certainly much more precarious: obviously tons of childhood deaths (not to mention deaths from things like smallpox and the plague), and all it took was a bad harvest to cause major famine. War was much more commonplace. But the lack of a lot of tools that the Industrial Revolution provided meant that, in many ways, there was simply less possible time to do productive work. When the lights went out, it's hard to do a lot by candlelight/torches. The work really did ebb and flow with the seasons. Yes, there was ton to do during the offseason, but I think the analogy with the modern world is that is like the time after a tough deadline and big release - lots of "OK, let clean up some of this code now that we have time". Plus, a lot of the tasks that your reference mentioned would have been clearly divided by the sexes. There is a paragraph from your link that states: > We might also point to the amount of household labour that had to be performed. Yarn had to be spun, cloth to be weaved. Cooking was over open fires: and that firewood had to be collected. Bread baked and so on and on. There was a recent report (rather exagerrated but still) which claimed that in the 1930s it took 65 hours of human labour a week to run a household. Today it takes 3. Things were worse back in medieval days. And nearly all of that work would have been done by women while men worked the fields. There was certainly much more total work to be done to run a household, but the division of labor was more clear cut. So again, I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Life was certainly "harder" back then, but from everything I've read there was undeniably more "downtime", even if there wasn't a ton to do during that downtime. The "having to work 12 hours a day just to keep food on the table" that I was responding to clearly seems to be false from just about every source I've read.

psunavy03 2y ago

This is an urban legend.

emptyfile 2y ago

[dead]

datavirtue 2y ago

And they were just farming. It had straight forward payoffs, rewards and risks (stress profile). Flash forward to where I have to constantly reassess my risk exposure in a corporate setting on repeat, daily. It almost makes communal farming based on biblical dogma and superstition appealing.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

Society would be healthier if we retuned to seasonal labor (even in intellectual fields) and had agreed-upon travel seasons. Why must we all chain ourselves to the same geography year-round?