this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Shit take, the average person only used to have to do 20 hours a week of labour to feed their family

Money didn't make labour "more efficient"

[–] Daemnyz@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This only works when you divide the time spent working over the year. As a medival peasant you worked your ass off in spring or whenever you sow your fields, kept it up while it grew, which was somewhat normal working times by todays standard, and toiled for double digit hours in harvesting season again. After that was time to do literally nothing. When you look at seasonal holidays in many european countries, they are mostly at the end of harvesting seasons, when you could easily be blackout drunk for a week because there was nothing else to be done. I personally don't mind regular working hours when the alternative is half a year of 15 hour shifts and half a year of more or less no work.

[–] Kage520@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Was it 7 days on of 15 hours? Because if it was only 6 and I had that one day break once a week and eventually got 6 months off later I would definitely want to do that.

[–] rchive@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can easily have medieval levels of quality of life working like 1 hour a week today. No one, not even kings a few hundred years ago had modern quality of life even with vast amounts of wealth extracted from whole continents of peasants. Modern money and economic systems allow for global trade and innovation that makes things Napolean couldn't dream of into boring every day stuff for you and me.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago

Keep defending the need for multiple people to work multiple jobs to sustain a small family

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And lived to the ripe old age of nineteen🤣

"People had it better before modern society" is one of the dumbest beliefs.

[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The reason average life expectancy used to be so low, is because infant mortality was ridiculously high.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You’re also missing the distribution of those life expectancies. While everyone is crapping on the wealthy, who do you think was able to live to a ripe old age? Who do you think was more likely to die at birth or as a kid, or young adult?

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I know, but the overall point still stands. Life was not better back then. That's not a gotcha, it's a technicality.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Are we going to let this perverse society take every improvement we make and make us pay for it? We all work for the common good and we have the right to reap the benefits, not be forced to adapt to a system that exploits us just because someone sometime ago invented penicillin and so that good must be offset by an equal sacrifice?

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's... How life works. In literally every society on the planet right now that's how things work. If you want something someone else did you have to give in kind. Medicine, clothing, food. No matter what the system undo t get the fruits of others labor for nothing.

People with your take are always thinking they can exist in a society where everyone else provides and u get to do nothing and relax ...cuz reasons apparently.

[–] xxcarpaii@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't get the same takeaway from their message. I don't think it's that we should do nothing and get everything, rather we should do things and get a reasonable return for having done them.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You don't ever get guaranteed all the resources you need to exist. Saying otherwise is literally in the op post. Pretty clear to me.