Hard to believe but the 40hr week is an improvement
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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We can do better though.
I hope we do. I started working for myself and I've only got my tools on maybe 30hrs a week now, it's pretty great. Most days I can put in a solid 5 or 6 hours and be good. I want that for everyone.
We went relatively quickly from 12h day to 10h and then 8h. And we stopped there for no reason.
Worse, they normalised 2 adults per household working 8 hours per day.
I believe you mean 2 adults, working 8 hours with an unpaid lunch meaning 9 hours out plus commute.
It is pretty sad that we haven't had any progress in 100 years despite all the technological marvels.
Maybe we had some progress but a class that is not the working class keeps all the money?
We will never know.
Likely only compared to the industrialisation era:
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html
Yeah it's pretty but have you ever seen a Walmart parking lot 🤩🤩🤩
Nah. Some humans saw that and thought "if we can con enough people into working 40 hours weeks, I can buy a holiday home here"
While scenery like this is nice for hiking, try making a living there.
There's probably fish, game, and foraging available. But, yeah, that's probably more surviving than living.
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." - K.M.
We started with an unlimited workweek (often 12+ hours a day all day) and reduced it to 40 hours with a weekend and a paid lunch. (Remember the movie 9 to 5 that was typical. Then it became 9-6 with unpaid lunch.)
Around the Reagan era, Osha got defunded so it didn't have time to deal with all the labor violations, which was part of the enshittification.
Who knew it would lead to a nazi uprising?
Turns out everyone did. The industrialist intellegentsia actually warned this would happen based on historical precedent, but the boomer generation was all fuck the future including their own kids. To be fair, prior generations hating later generatiobs was the norm by the time it was their turn.
I mean, the business plot aimed to overthrow America and make it a fascist state.
It took a few more decades, sure, but right now I'd say they actually got everything they wanted originally and then some.
In 1937, it was 40 hours a week per household. Now it's 80 hours a week per household. The amount of work done by the average person has doubled for the same or less pay.
Humans didn't invent this.
The rich did.
They are no longer humans, they cast away their humanity when they ascended to power.
To be fair, if we look close, we see ecosystems within ecosystems, including a buttload of predation and two buttloads of parasitism. Parasites capitalizing on other lifeforms to utilize their energy and resources for their own growth and reproduction, as far as the eye can see.
And that's what human society is. It's much less prone to top-down parasitism in tiny societies (less than 500 members) but when we have communities of millions and states of tens of millions, it's pretty easy for religious ministries and ideological politicians to take over the system to make giant militaries that hammer other, less-captured societies.
Every once in a while some of us get the idea, what if we make a system that doesn't involve parasitism. I bet we can make everyone pretty happy. And this is true, except that the parasites really like having ridiculous amounts of wealth and power, and would rather render the entire species extinct than be confined to being a (well-to-do, comfortable) commoner.
This is why, even though there have been successful anarcho-communist organizations, they are often attacked by state law enforcement acting not in enforcing law, but in preserving political power.
No war but class war.
Death to monarchists.
We literally saw the outside world and thought "not for me" and invented houses.
The outside world is fine to visit if you have shelter nearby. It’s also fine for longer outings once you’ve driven every other predator to near extinction. It’s only pretty rather than terrifying now because the entire planet is our back yard now.
I hate that often Microsoft Teams is the only piece of software I can get to work for sharing a screen with the layman. Many cross-platform user-friendly options don’t work reliably on Linux, but by some weird twist of fate, I get it to work more often than anything else.
Yes, for an IT person’s own solution, you’d just use a VPN or something, but I’m rarely working with people that are technical enough for this.
Have you tried Jitsi? https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
Yep used it for a while. Pretty solid, free and uncomplicated. Just send a link with a random word appended and you are meeting.
No, and I don't think I'd ever ask anyone to try 'Jitsi'.
Why not?
It sounds like 'jizzy'
But that's sexy.
You won't need to ask anyone to "try it" or install anything. You simply send a link to the meeting and then it works for anyone on any device.
That's the good thing about it. You don't have to coordinate whether the other part has Teams, Google Meet or Zoom or whatever.
It runs in the browser, it's free, encrypted and no account or installation required.
Humans: What a bunch of absolute bastards
Many humans saw it and said “ooh, look at that natural beauty!”
Some humans saw it and said “ooh, look at those resources I can profit from!”
Only once religious bosses invented the mechanical clock. Before that we were taking winter off, and being fed meat at work (which was mostly done outside, in groups):
It's always bittersweet when explaining to someone what was stolen from us, when they are convinced that we now have it so much better than back then. Brainwashing is a hell of a drug.
Humans saw this and made a limestone mine.