Is it true that people today work more on average than ever before in history?

You really have to wonder about the IQ of any person that would think that

No.

Thats a pop history cope popularized by NEETs who don’t grasp how much actual work goes into daily life on a preindustrial farm.

Yes and you can take the Protestants for that shit

Basically, back when Catholics where in charge, work was divided between duty for God (leisure, family, festivities) and necessary duty,
The Church teaches that one must work as much as they could towards God and necessary duty should not go past what is needed.

Then came Luther who proclaimed that a maid cleaning the floor is every bit as important to God as someone who prays to him.
Which goes against what Luke 10:30-42 teaches

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

>41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[f] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Prots always ruin what the martyrs built

>>17815270
I spent my childhood summers on my granny's farm, which was self-sustained, featured crops, greenhouses, chickens, several cows and several horses. Entire thing was managed by my grandparents, so two elderly people and their caucasian shepherd dpg. Dad would drive over from time to time to help out with stuff. I was a typical city shithead and barely did anything aside from watering the plants and stealing eggs from the chickens. It can't be THAT hard.

>>17815297
>I was a kid visiting a small farm in the industrial era
>Life in a medieval Norwegian village was easy peasy

>>17815263 (OP)
No because those retards are too stupid to understand that work in the past didn't cease when you "clocked out". People were constantly doing maintenance in their "free time" which is really just whatever hours they spent not working for someone else.

>>17815263 (OP)
On your off days you still had to feed your animals, clean their shit, mend their injuries, water your crops, pick weeds, and that was when you’d expand/fix your house. Plus you’d have a lot of kids and there were no off days from attending to family matters.

>>17815335
>>17815327
You have a weird definition of work

>>17815335
They have a lot of kids precisely so the kids could take care of those easy but frequent chores

>>17815263 (OP)
Does a subsistence farmer "live on less than $1 a day?"

>>17815375
You've never worked in your life.

>>17815324
Farmers don’t have that much work to do year round, especially back then when you were fully at the mercy of the elements. Some days are long, hot, and hard. Others day, you’re feeding and caring for the livestock and chilling out. You might notice that a lot of important holidays are in the fall, winter when times get colder and there’s not as much farmwork to be done.
>It’s pouring rain outside
Well, now the list of tasks that you can accomplish that day is limited by the elements.

More to the point, a farmer *can* run out of work. If he’s somehow finished all his tasks early, it’s time to chill out. If you’re a wagie, finishing your work early means you get more work. Remember, you’re on the clock, wagie.

>>17815327
>People were constantly doing maintenance in their "free time" which is really just whatever hours they spent not working for someone else.
People do that now, retard, especially homeowners.
>Wow, a day off. Time to start working on the yard again.
Do you have a maid or some shit? For regular people, work doesn’t end at the workplace. You have daily chores, and then routine maintenance to maintain your home, land, cars, and everything else.

>>17815806
>You have daily chores, and then routine maintenance to maintain your home, land, cars, and everything else
Any comparison of daily chores in a world with vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, washing machines etc to the daily chores of a subsistence farmer in preindustrial Europe is facile.

>>17815753
Yes, but only because you can stretch a dollar very far when converted to local currency. Retards make it sound like the exchange rate is the same. This benefits those farmers, who can reliably supplement their subsistence farming with a week's worth of wages working in a city center full of foreigners. 99 cents is nothing to an American but it's enough for a week's worth of veggies in some parts. Now imagine much these people make when an American tourist pays them $5 for a basic service, which is a great deal given how ass raping expensive things are in the west these days.

>>17815811
>Any comparison of daily chores in a world with vacuum cleaners,
House isn’t as big, and likely a wood/stone floor. Just like 5 minutes of using a broom.
>lawnmowers,
We’re talking about feudal peasants, retard. Then weren’t obsessed with the almighty flat, green square like modern homeowners.
>washing machines
Literally just wash it and hang it. Peasants didn’t have 100 different outfits like we do either.
>etc to the daily chores of a subsistence farmer in preindustrial Europe is facile.
Do you even think before you type? Feudal peasants weren’t turboretard consumerists like we are. They didn’t have 12,000 ft^2 McMansions full of rooms they don’t use. You’re obsessed with this idea that feudal peasants worked themselves to the bone. They actually got a fuckton of holidays off (prior to Protestantism). Was it hard work? Sure, but they weren’t shackled to the field 20 hours a day, and it was not that hard to maintain their 300 ft^2 peasant shack.

I’m sure plenty of them wanted more, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the average peasant was happier than the average fat retard today.

>>17815820
>prior to Protestantism
Oh boy, latinx groyper e-cath time

>>17815335
You've never lived on a farm
Feeding and taking care of animals shit takes 15 minutes and it's unironically easy and pleasant work.

Farming, especially sustenance farming, isn't really that bad. Outside of sowing and harvest you have a ton of downtime that either goes to hobbies, helping others, improving your community directly or just relaxing. It is genuinely kind of hard to nail down the ebb and flow of that kind of life but it is generally significantly less work than what modernity has to offer IMO.
>>17815335
Anon, the animal work can be done in less than an hour, and you don't pick weeds, you hoe them. If you have kids (which you would) you can delegate smaller tasks to them and leave the bigger things to yourself. The biggest job that takes the longest is redoing the floors.

>recorded history has been an endless stream of subsistence farmers moving to urbanised areas to take up non-agricultural jobs
>this pattern only gets reversed during societal collapse
>"Bro just be a subsistence farmer bro, it's leisuremaxxxing with nice scenery to boot"
Yeah that's gonna be a no from me dawg

>>17815820
What a foolish image. Yale law school doesn't have GPAs, and Notre Dame law school is part of the top 14 schools, so a top student there would have no problem getting a top tier job.

No, they don't. They also don't have to do back breaking slave labor until they die at 25 due to stress. (Well, unless you're a nigger in Africa or some other destitute shithole, then whoops.)

>>17815871
>Outside of sowing and harvest you have a ton of downtime that either goes to hobbies, helping others, improving your community directly or just relaxing.

You have no idea what you are talking about

>>17815297
I think you're onto something. There's a local farmer here who manages hectares of farmland all by himself, he just chills in his air conditioned tractor, then he returns to his home that has running water (both hot and cold), electricity, heating and high speed internet. I honestly don't understand how people in pre-industrial eras has to offset an entire day for washing, like you just put the clothes in the washing machine then the dryer???

Nope. As ever, the eternal economist strikes again and wrote an article about medieval life without having the first clue about how the feudal system works.

>>17815802
>you not accomplishing those tasks that day means you starve to death 3 months later

Every single one of these threads is the right wing equivalent of the "After the revolution, I'll hold beat poetry workshops after hours in my organic cafe".

I think people underestimates how much modern technology has made modern farmwork easier. Everything from modern electric tools, access to clean water, lighting, medicine for the animals. supplies you get delivered by car or truck....
The cow that would have died and cost you your living for many months, can now be saved by a call to the veterinary or just buying the medicine.

Then again modern technology also made extending work time easier.
Electric lighting and telecommunications means you really can't hide from tasks and assignments anywhere, not even on another continent. Seasons or weather don't matter anymore, not even the day/night cycle, you are expected to do way more things thanks to heating and electricity all the time.
Being able to drive somewhere makes things easier but also means way more tasks. And generally technology makes doing individual things easier, but also means a person is expected to do way more of these things for a much longer time.

So maybe it evens out? I don't know. I think it's actually not as clear as people seem to think it is.

>>17815270
ok, during the boom of the industry, they employed kids and basically treated people like slaves
They sometimes died working. They were literally there for a single meal and maybe money to buy a warm jacket once per year

But how long did that last? 50? 80 years?
After fascists and socialists started to implement labor laws and greatly improve the life of workers, jewnited states funded revolutions and promoted individualism, drugs, etc., to destroy those countries

My grandmother under fascism had fresh bred, quality butter, milk and many other products that only petite bourgeoisie could afford. After fascism, she almost had to sell her soul to afford feeding the family.

Her father suffered in the early days of industry, often working for vegetables and fruits, but things improved in the 20s and 30s a lot.

>>17816048
I compared minimum wage in all countries which have minimum wage

Conclusion: minimum wage is to limit person power to purchase food or items. If he or she wants to climb in life and buy things that modern industry offer, like private clinics, good computers, central heating, etc., he or she will have to devote their lives to work like a slave, which will introduce mental problems at 25 or 26 and antidepressants will become part of their daily routine until they die
At 35 or 40 they will start having other health issues that cant be fixed with medication, in desperation these people will turn into holistic healers, yoga and all that crap. IT cost a lot of money
1/3 of the income, at least, will be spend to keep the person in a state of mind where he can continue. If he or she stops, it's over: at that point in life, 35 or 40, he cant stop working or get any kind of 30 day medical treatment, 30 day extra vacation or any type of care.

He will have to deal with the fact the only time he can go to doctors or find alternative solutions to health issues is after 5:30PM. Instead of resting he will spend until 7 or 8 PM in a gym or whatever, meditation, talk group or something that prevents a person to go complete breakdown.

When age 50 arrive antidepressive stop working, medical herbs and supplements already consume more than one third of his income. But if he stops, he will collapse. No health insurance will help him, at best they will give him extra 5% discount on the next purchase.

No protection, he realizes he spent the past 30 years as a slave. Netflix, yoga, meditation, holistic therapy and talk therapy consumed his income so he could keep making money to someone in exchange of losing his health

In short: a chinese factory slave may live longer and healthier than this person.

>>17815297
You are dumb and have no idea how electricity, cars or cheap mass-produced cloth and tools changed life in the countryside.
Before all cloth, food, fuel and most tools were made locally.

>>17816002
Heh. You almost got me anon.

>>17816143
Technology creates more work than it solves. You don't see animals commuting to their wagie places for 2 hours and then working tirelessly for 9 hours before clocking out to goon and sleep, their lives must be hellish without uhh electricity. Sure, a modern slave, with aid of technology, can can carry the workload of 10 medieval peasants or 50 prehistoric hunters, and so he does 50 times more than them while being proud of being so "free". Give him a hi-tech job and a cool plaque and he will become as effective as 1000 men, he will direct goods shopped across the globe and manage entire industrial sectors and he WILL be happy.

>>17816176
Says the guy who is litterally blind without his glasses and can't sleep without his weighted blanket

>>17816191
Good point, mr. strawman destroyer. Another "benefit" of technology is that it allows weak and infirm to work and be exploited instead of dying from natural causes or being taken care of by their stronger siblings. I don't care that you need 20 different medications and expensive machinery just to function, wagie, you WILL show up tomorrow and you WILL generate monies.

>>17815820
>lawnmowers,
>We’re talking about feudal peasants, retard. Then weren’t obsessed with the almighty flat, green square like modern homeowners.
My grantparents maintained the almighty flat green square by letting sheep eat the grass.

>>17815263 (OP)
no, but suckers with bullshit jobs need cope because working in an office/being a keyboard toucher is absolute shit

>>17815821
i lol'd

>>17816176
You talk about two different things. Qua

>>17815871
>Farming, especially sustenance farming, isn't really that bad. Outside of sowing and harvest you have a ton of downtime

Exactly, farming has a ton of downtime where you're mostly sitting around, that's why soldiers historically would also be farmers, they would sow and then go on campaign and go back home to harvest.

>>17815820
>literally just wash it and hang it
pretty time consuming washing all those clothes
also spinning all the thread to make clothes would take a while. Each thread needs to be spun from fibre that you harvest and process, and then you need to weave it together (tho this second step is faster)
Not sure, but I think you'd also be making your own soap, candles and pottery. (though i guess those are once a month/year chores)

>>17815820
>>17817110
Doing the laundry in pre electricity rural Texas
https://x.com/fruitoftears/status/1429558321913151489

>>17817613
>womens had to ...le do some manual labor once a week? Oh the humanity!

>>17817613
eh alright I was thinking you'd need to do it daily
though it occupying one day is still quite a bit

>>17815263 (OP)
From what I heard, slaves would work between 8-14 hours a day, depending on the sun. They would get 1 day weekends instead of 2.

So you work marginally less than a slave. If you work at one of those grind companies, you work more than a slave.

>>17815335
>and that was when you’d expand/fix your house. Plus you’d have a lot of kids and there were no off days from attending to family matters.
Thats true today.

>>17815883
In Industrial England. the farmers moved to cities because the landlords took their farms. They didnt want to go.
In ancient Rome, cities were filled with slaves. People wanted to be farmers.

Im sure theres more examples

>>17816176
Technology saves so much time and effort you've become completely blind to it because you have no idea what it's like to live without it. That doesn't change because you are too stupid to get a job that doesn't require a 2 hour commute.

>>17818416
Even before enclosure peasants were moving to towns and cities for work, and we can observe the same pattern across most of the world where there was nothing comparable to enclosure to justify the movement to towns/cities.

>>17816222
Great, go work as a subsistence farmer right now.
You said it yourself, adversity builds character

>>17815270
This is slave cope btw. Just some nerd working his ass off daily and in desperate need of a story that makes it not as bad to be a glorified slave. or you're just an american (=cognitively impaired)

>but technology make things easier
Which means people are expected to do more.

Take a scholar from 1700 or 1800 and bring him to a into a modern equivalent of his job. Sure, initially he will be amazed by all the miraculous things he has at his disposal, libraries of knowledge accessible in an instant, being able to edit, print and send documents however he wants, things that would take weeks or months now take mere minutes, all telecommunications and electronics and off course all the comfort and amenities at his disposal from refrigerated food to modern medicine and so on.

But once the novelty wears of, he will realize that now he is expected to write 10x, 20x, 50x times more than he used to, faster, with tighter deadlines. More articles, more reports, more presentations, more project applications. There is no excuse that you can only physically read a certain amount of documents, no, you have to go trough a lot more. And now he has to write in the evenings, at night and in weekends to finish these. Going somewhere else is no excuse, you have the tablet and the laptop now. It doesn't matter if you are on another continent. Tasks will literally follow you to the ends of the Earth. He will beg to go back to his time.

>>17818603
>Which means people are expected to do more.
People have never done less at home, thanks to appliances like washing machines that dramatically cut down on the time and effort it takes to do certain chores. On the topic of work why are you pretending that the majority of jobs done are tech bro startups where you're expected to work for 80 hours a week and take your job home with you?

>>17818609
>People have never done less at home,
Which means they are expected to do more things for both your job and others.
Sure you're not feeding the chickens and washing the laundry at the river, but you still going to do things for either your job or your relatives in that freed time.

>why are you pretending that the majority of jobs done are tech bro startups where you're expected to work for 80 hours a week and take your job home with you
I'm not? That was s very general example, it works for many jobs, academics, researches, writers, most office jobs, managers, even doctors . And the general principle is the same for many blue or white collar jobs.
individual task fulfilled easier and faster thanks to technology = more tasks expected to be fulfilled.

>>17818654
>Which means they are expected to do more things for both your job and others.
>Sure you're not feeding the chickens and washing the laundry at the river, but you still going to do things for either your job
No, you really aren't. When you clock out, you clock out. Every now and then you might be contacted by a coworker for a quick question but to pretend getting a text message from the other shift asking where you left the remote for the overhead crane is somehow exhaustive labor is stupid.
>or your relatives in that freed time.
Like what, helping them move once in a blue moon? How much do you think you would have to help them back in the day?
>I'm not? That was s very general example, it works for many jobs, academics, researches, writers, most office jobs, managers, even doctors
The average white collar worker doesn't work 80 hours a week (or anywhere close to it) nor are they expected to bring their work home with them.
>And the general principle is the same for many blue or white collar jobs.
individual task fulfilled easier and faster thanks to technology = more tasks expected to be fulfilled.
How is this unreasonable? You're paid to be productive for a certain amount of hours per day and jobs provide training and equipment that dramatically increases your productivity. If you don't like that system then go be a traveling salesman and go home for the day once you hit your quota of sales, regardless of how long it takes.

>>17815263 (OP)
Louis XIV worked between four and six hours a day, split between morning and afternoon and that was enough to become a legend and the leading figure of his age.

>>17815263 (OP)
Take a shovel and prepare a tract of land to saw crops, come back wen you are done

>>17815263 (OP)
Take a shovel and prepare a tract of land to sow crops, come back wen you are done

>>17815263 (OP)
Sounds like bullshit. Manual labor used to be much harder and dangerous and after that, during the industrial revolution, factory work must have been terrible.

>>17815753
Is this a trick question? By definition a subsistence farmer lives of 0$ per day. They subsist. They are independent of the economy.

>>17815820
Doing laundry is actually pretty laborious and time consuming. That's why it was assigned to women who lacked time-consuming jobs and was oftentimes a weekly deal.

>>17815943
This is literally true though. Farmers both ancient and modern typically have very little to do between the extremely active rushes between harvest and planting.

>>17818779
People did other jobs

>>17818411
Slaves existed bascially everywhere on earth until the 19th century. In some areas and situations it wasn't too bad, in some places they were literally worked to death. Sometimes both of these types of slavery existed alongside eachother.

>>17818732
He was also a king. So while he did have an important and complex job with unique burdens most people wouldn't have, he also had access to more resources and luxury than anyone else in the nation.

>>17818742
For a subsistence level that will literally take 2 hours if there are no trees in the way. Land clearing is a bitch without draft animals but if the land is clear you can furrow enough to feed a family in a matter of hours.

>>17815269
I worked 60 hours a week and couldn't afford living. Moved back in with my parents.

>>17818781
Source? Hobbies aren't work. Neither is female cottage industry like in 18th century America. Peasants, first and foremost, produce enough to subsist and grain for their obligations, their work is planting and harvesting.

>>17818787
Sure,sure; go do it.

>>17818789
>gatherimg wood
>keeping infrastructure working
>building things
>ottage indilustry (it's work evend if you don't like it)

You have never done agricultural work and it shows

>>17818794
Gathering firewood and doing maintenance around your house are not jobs.

>>17818795
They are, and quite taxing ones

>>17818801
>noun: job; plural noun: jobs
>a paid position of regular employment.
Who is paying you to gather firewood?

>>17818790
I've done it before you basement dweller. It isn't hard. Go till some ground, it's good exercise.

>>17818804
>job
>a specific duty, role, or function
Substinence farming isn't a job either by your restrictive definition.
Stop embarassing yourself; peasants didn't have only free time after sowing/harvesting; I gave you a number of examples of activities they had to do.

>>17818794
>gathering wood
Not a job.
>keeping infrastructure working
Literally not a peasants job.
>building things
This is a peasants job, but unless you're a thatcher or a hauser this most likely isn't your job.
>cottage industry
Lace isnt a job

You are lazy.

>>17818808
Planting a couple of tomaoes isn't agricultural work

>>17818813
Subsistence agriculture =/= Peasant life =/= Commerical Agriculture.
You need very, very little ground to support a family on subsistence agriculture.

>>17818811
They directly refute the idea it was all downtime aside from harvesting/sowing; playing semadntics game doesn't change that

>>17818815
Do it then

>>17818819
And they refute it by citing hobbies and petty chores, which anyone with a job irl considers downtime.

>>17818810
>peasants didn't have only free time after sowing/harvesting; I gave you a number of examples of activities they had to do.
It's not free time if they HAVE to do it. No one is denying that farmers did other labor around their homes, what is being disputed is that farming was some cushy lifestyle with few hours of work followed by mostly leisure and spare time to fuck around.

>>17818820
I have. It takes less than an acre total ground space. If you have winters in your area maybe double that.

>>17818824
>trust me bro

>>17818826
>NOBODY in real life plants plants outside! It's never happened! Nobody except medieval peasants have ever grown a plant in real life!

>>17818822
>what is being disputed is that farming was some cushy lifestyle with few hours of work followed by mostly leisure and spare time to fuck around.
It wasn't and you haven't refuted it

>>17818829
Planting things!= substinace pre industrial farming; again, planting a couple of tomatoes doesn't count

>>17818830
>Farming, especially sustenance farming, isn't really that bad. Outside of sowing and harvest you have a ton of downtime that either goes to hobbies, helping others, improving your community directly or just relaxing. It is genuinely kind of hard to nail down the ebb and flow of that kind of life but it is generally significantly less work than what modernity has to offer IMO.
That does paint a cushy picture with lots of leisure time, no?

>>17818824
You are not feeding a family of 5 on less than an acre, even with modern crops and fertilizer.

>>17818839
Subsistence farming was essentially "a few of" their available crops. Tomatoes are Columbian exchange so I don't know what subsistence farming those was like, but in the old world subsistence farming is growing enough to subsist on very small tracts of ground.

Then peasants got obligations, then commercial farming created a need to grow huge tracts for capital gain. But growing enough to eat is very easy and takes very little effort, done it before.

>>17818845
I never claimed that. That was a silly thing to say.

>>17818851
Uh huh

>>17818845
>>17818847
>>17818851
This strange graphic claims .44 acres per person per day, but doesn't say how long the growing season is. On the other hand, it included major inefficiencies (like growing wheat as a subsistence farmer. Lmao)

With my local growing season (all year) and wise crop selection I think I could meet your challenge on 1.5 acre by using potatoes. In, like, the 1400s or something you'd be using onions or carrots and may need more space, and would probably require animals to meet dietary needs.

>>17818856
Family doesn't equal 5. Cope.

I don't think the main argument is that hard work didn't exist in the past, just that overall time allocated for work might have been less than today. Like most posters seem to think the claim is that everything was easier and hard work didn't exist at all.

>>17818868
Also I think that the long shifts that industrialization gave us are unnatural and inherently unpleasant.

If you gave people tasks to accomplish on some premodern farm community and they just have to do it during daylight when it's possible I think they'd be happier, even if the work was technically harder. It being spaced out helps.

>>17818863
So now you've gone from saying that you've already done it on LESS than an acre to saying that you MIGHT be able to do it with 1.5 acres with ideal crops, with a growing season that lasts all year (!) no less.
>>17818866
It's still not doable for a family of four. I don't know why people try to argue that medieval subsistence farming was great because some infographic says that in the 21st century you can squeeze out a lot of calories per acre ASSUMING you have access to a wide variety of genetically modified high-yield crops, modern fertilizer, a constant source of running water for easy irrigation, refrigeration for easy storage and whatnot. Newsflash, your GMO potatoes are not equivalent to the DOGSHIT wheat they had access to in the 1100s, fertilized by shit of grazing sheep after that let half their field overgrow to prevent complete soil depletion.

>>17818786
He ran an empire. With ink and paper and a lot of runners.

By working four hours a day.

Give the nigga a computer with an internet connection and he'd control the globe.

>>17818863
>it included major inefficiencies (like growing wheat as a subsistence farmer. Lmao)
>Lmao all those farmers were so stupid to farm wheat for thousands of years
embarassing

>>17818422
Because of population increase combined with finite farming positions meant some blokes had to try their luck somewhere else.