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Comment by wolfcola | Hacker News Reader

right, and we all got to work 20 hour weeks bc of the industrial revolution.

I’m not saying technology makes our lives easier. I’m saying technology makes it more possible than ever to build a world where everyone thrives. But it takes human social systems to make that happen. Understanding just how much good we could do with modern technology underscores the value in fighting for the right human social systems.

Huh? 40 hr work weeks are a recent thing, many people in history worked 12 hr days 6 days a week. Technology and social progress definitely leads to fewer work hours.

I’m not so sure. Unions (social progress) brought us the 40 hour work week more so than technology. Factory workers could potentially work more hours than farmers who had very busy periods mixed with slower times. I suppose they exist, maybe you have seen them, but I’ve not seen a real study of the hours worked by subsistence farmers in history. Though technology brings many other benefits, it’s not clear to me how it plays in to work hours.

It was factories that brought people together enough working as a single unit that allowed unions to flourish.

Before the machines there were guilds of cloth-makers and weavers that would work less than five days a week and at less strict hours, but they lost their jobs to automation.

I can really recommend the book Blood in the machine if anyone is interested in how automation early on affected workers.

>Technology and social progress definitely leads to fewer work hours.

Do they? Seems more like developed countries just outsourced the sweatshop factory work to other countries. "Out of sight, out of mind" as they say, I guess.

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