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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

People work 5 days a week because of protracted violent strikes by unions and socialist revolutionaries forcing governments to recognize labor rights. Prior to that the norm was working 7 days a week, sunup to sundown, with only Christmas off, from adolescence until you died.

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SEs would rather play many player versions of the prisoner's dilemma than unionize.

You're right. We need to bring back protracted violent strikes by unions and socialists!

You know the ones bringing most of the violence were the state and private goons hired by capitalists, right?

When rights are equal, force wins. This is true for either the worker or the employer. Hence why employers frequently employed private firms to commit said violence on unions.

Not really true but it’s a nice story

It's a nice story and it's true.

Weekends, sick days, vacation days, being paid in legal tender and not company scrip, maternity leave, safety regulations, disabled affordance, banning child labor, civil rights and womens' rights (while they lasted) and the minimum wage. All due to socialist activism and a non-zero amount of violence.

Hold your socialist jihad propaganda a bit off, sundays were definitely off days for festivities, visiting church etc. Definitely all over Europe, its still frowned upon in many places to do any amount of ie house work during sundays.

Banning child labor is literally the "I'm helping" meme but for government.

Child went away mostly on its own (as did labor by the disabled) because industrialization made all that non-competitive compared to a normal adult operating some machine. Then, once child labor was relegated to a few niches of limited overall economic importance the government showed up and banned it to win a few brownie points from some jerks.

Child labor isn't a success of some socialists 100yr ago. It's a success of some propagandists 100yr ago.

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