Before you all get your panties in a twist, I know it's technically not true.
That link is an unsourced opinion piece on a site belonging to something called the Adam Smith Institute. I'm gonna need something a bit more credible before I believe it tbh.
The Adam smith institute is a right wing free market think tank with likely very questionable donors. wiki It likely doesn't really do research but takes sources that support their preexisting believes and retells them.
Certainly it was at least very hard to make the capitalist exploitation of the worker so all encompassing before the invention of the mechanical watch (Although there was likely a ton of housework and the general situation was garbage what with feudal lords and all that) . It then likely exploded with the industrial revolution and at least in places where the working class managed to emancipate themselves got somewhat cut back. Now especially for countries outside of the west and increasingly also the US and parts of EU it's likely getting worse, especially with multi employment and precarious employment(gig work, semi self employment, 0h contracts, mechanical turk ...).
Generally i feel work where you or your peers get to keep the total output of your work isn't really a problem, it's a problem when your work gets appropriated into this terrible machine and as a result you are alienated from the work.
Adam Smith Institute
I always find it kinda funny when the right turns to Adam Smith. Smith thought that the free market would free us from the monopolistic tendencies of the mercantile system. (Although he wouldn't have written it as such, as the term 'monopoly' wasn't nearly as taxonomically precise as it is now.) If he was alive today, he'd probably be rather dismayed at the failures of capitalism.
But then again, I guess that's the right's shtick: coopt any idea that they can and pervert it to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Anyways, here's Smith:
The object, besides, of the greater part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can: which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new adventurers from entering into the trade. (The Wealth of Nations V.i.e.10)
There's also the materialist take on capitalism that it's a stage between feudalism and a more socialist or communist organization of society.
It would be funny if it weren't so sad. As much as reading and understanding smith and other philosophy is important for the individual, think tanks unfortunately seem necessary in a modern context aiming to transform, often quite unreadable, as your excerpt demonstrates, philosophical learning, into applicable law/policy.
As with everything this process is utterly captured by right wing and market fundamentalist interests. Just sort this list by Bias/Affiliation and skim some of the descriptions it's a bit horrific, but it also might save you from reading an old school stochastic parrot with an inhumane agenda. Or if you actually find one you can agree with it might give you a reasonable first source.
If that's ok too, I have read a book by an anthropologist who claims the opposite (that in fact people in the past had more leisure than today). I can look up a good quote tomorrow. For the claim in the post, I'm afraid, there ain't no good sources, as for most alternative facts.
I mean it seems like the sort of thing people are just ready to believe because "we have technology now so we must have better lives" despite loads of that technology being turned towards controlling us.
As for the book, it wouldn't be Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, would it?
It was the first book I read by Graeber but not the last one. He mentioned it in other books too but yes, I was about to quote from Bullshit Jobs
Anyone wanting to read it can do so for free: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs
The official version I think is better formatted, but this one is functional if you can't access the official one for some reason.
It's historical consensus. Your quality of life is still better because you have civil rights and access to medical care that actually works.
Medieval peasant's idea of luxury was also "some butter". Let's not glorify the past.
They loved showing off what spices they had, like "yo this is a nutmeg pie, that's right I got nutmeg bitches." Some of the recipes are actually hilarious cause they seem to be based around showing off your spices, the original lasagna for example.
What's also funny is the foods peasants could afford and eat, were at least to our modern diet a lot healthier than what the lord would eat. They'd be eating root vegetables, cabbage, squash, porridges. Cheese as well because it was a method of preservation and the separated whey had it's own uses, lot of peasants made their own cheese. Meanwhile the lord would be eating marrow and fatty salted meats, hunting his own game, or more like wanting people to believe he did so trying to curate that image of himself. Maybe commission a "morning hunt" portrait of himself in case you weren't sure.
More time off to take care of the fourteen children you need to have to keep your farm going.
And almost succumb to some form of the common cold
You'd be having sex in the same room as all your kids and animals lived too
If one dies, I'll just pop another out, right in the field. Cut the cord, and he can get to work.
There was a much higher likelihood of dying during childbirth too.
Families with more than 4 or 5 children were almost certainly blended families.
Redditors thinking that having time off as some dirt fucking poor peasant in the Medieval Era is all fun and games.
At least ye'd probably get to eat yer daily porridge next to a fuckin' goose. May not be your goose, or the village goose, but a fine goose and an important part of peasantry nonetheless. Better than serfs get.. Eatin' their porridge next to a mule and a rake.
Dies at 46 after a minor cut gets infected
*26
You don't want to go back to the past. At least not before germ theory and anesthesia.
Nothing wrong with some whiskey and biting down on a stick when you need your leg amputated.
there were no cameras in the Middle Ages. Checkmate shitposters.
Also that woman clearly isn't middle aged.
It's still bullshit.
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.
Doubt.jpeg
Actually medieval people got wayyy more time off across the board. It's because they all died by 45.
OP I thought debunking the Adam Smith Institute claim would be easy, but you've just introduced me to Tim Worstall and he might be based: We Can afford UBI, and its better than the cruel welfare state - Tim Worstall
That's a great read, thanks for sharing.
Can't wait for people in debate class to look at this post and discuss which logical fallacy is most fitting
Or how is just blatantly wrong.
It's holiday season, we got pies and ale, a new preacher is coming to town and we're getting shitfaced. Nobody has plague yet and life is good.
I already work less than a medieval peasant.
Just don't tell my boss.
I do too. My boss is an asshole though, spends all her time on lemmy shitposting and then tells me to work harder. But then again, I am my own boss, so PEBCAK.
No way in fucking hell it takes 3 hours a week to run a household. I do that daily.
Clothing, kids homework, meals to cook, cleaning, shopping for food, kids extracurriculars, bills.
6:00 pick up kids from aftercare
6:15 Get home with kids, take care of pets, reheat dinner
6:30-7:00 kids eat dinner and I do laundry
7:00-8:00 kids homework and cleaning
8:00-8:30: violin practice
8:30 - 9:00 whatever subject they are lagging in or if nothing shared reading.
9:00 - 10:00 kids bath and ready for next day. Around 9:20 or so I eat dinner
You also do it alone.
People generally used to live with their extended families.
The tasks you're describing were generally spread out between 4-8 grown-ass adults.
A medieval peasant looked nothing like this.
I sincerely apologize for the historical inaccuracies contained in this shitpost.
I don't know about others, but I know many Spanish colonies only worked 4-hours a day up to the 1890s. It could be tradition, and also unlike other Western powers at the time, Spain had not industrialised as much and would still have to rely much on physical labour. So I think the combination of Spain and its colonies being too hot to work for long periods, and lack of industrialisation, made 4 hour day work the way of life for them.
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