Hacker News Reader

Comment by o_class_star | Hacker News Reader

It used to be six and a half. It became five because a bunch of people were smart enough to figure out their bosses weren't their friends, and fought for a shorter workweek (also reducing unemployment and increasing the value of each worker). We've gotten lazy, collectively speaking, and the bosses have crept it back up to five-plus-some-extras.

Five is still ridiculous, though. There's so much waste in the system these days; the world would run fine on a three-day week.

It's time for working people to get fighting again.

View on HN

It used to be six and a half until higher farm yields and productivity gains from automation produced enough surplus to even allow for less. From the dawn of urban civilization until well into the industrial revolution there was barely enough food to keep the population alive. Even if the bosses had been nicer about it that wouldn't have kept people from starving.

Yes I am aware that early hunter gatherers worked fewer hours per week and generally had better diets. But that lifestyle wasn't sustainable after the human population expanded.

At least in Judaism, all forms of labour, including domestic labour, has been strictly banned on Saturday, for centuries at least. They managed to survive alright.

More to the point, a recent series of history blog posts discussed this question, and it seems like for most of the population, the food supply was not really limited by labour but rather by food storage ability and land area productivity (which is different). For much of the year aside from during the harvest, there was a lot of leisure time (even if people were starving, that wasn't something that harder work would necessarily solve).

https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

Livestock require care 7 days a week, even by the frum.

It was 'on the farm' on 'your own terms' before the industrialized revolutions, may have included some Sunday work.

But the number of hours worked rose quite a lot during the Industrial revolution in the mines and factories, this was 'peak work'.

Some data points [1].

[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

This, but I want to emphasize: “fought” is literal here, at least in terms of employers’ response. The reality is that the notion that we even get to decide whether to rest on weekends or labor is entirely owed to the fact that people who came before us got literally killed to pave the way.

I would be fine working six and a half days per week. Given a full work day was considered to be 2 hours.

I couldn't believe that a "work day" was ever 2 hours, so I looked it up.

https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/84600/how-many-hours-d...

That says 3-5, and it was a long time ago.

My comment was meant to convey conditionality. As in I would happily work those days if I had those hours.

Thanks for the interesting link. If I only worked 2 hours a day on a computer, I would likely spend my free time on hunter-gatherer-gardener-cook tasks. Perhaps art and science as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com