Tofu Golem
#USA
I grew up in other countries, and so am painfully aware of how indoctrinated we Americans are, and how unaware most Americans are of this.
Example: male peasants in 13th century England worked around 150 days a year. The propaganda says we are the freest in history, but how free are we if medieval peasants had more leisure time than we do?
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/70816/did-medieval-peasants-work-150-days-a-year
"The one economist this number can be traced to now says its a huge underestimate.
In 1986 economist Gregory Clark wrote a working paper that (according to citers) contained this estimate. It doesn't appear he published it, but it got cited. He actually did for real publish a new paper in 2018 raising that number up to an estimate of 250-300 days. That's quite a revision!
However, in the meantime a popular book was published by a sociologist that used that earlier lower number of 150. "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure". Since then this number went wild on the internet (likely because its a shocking number, or perhaps because people like that number and want it to be true)."
"The Clark citation is by comparison more fair and accurate. That is not to say it is without issues, however. First, the citation is to a working paper that does not appear to have ever been published fully – Clark himself does not list it anywhere on his publications, and other attempts to find it only make reference to it having been cited in Schor’s work. Nonetheless, it would be reasonable to ask if work from 1986 is still an authoritative source on the subject or should be used as evidence. The answer is very hilariously no: Gregory Clark doesn’t believe that Clark 1986 is correct. The Atlantic published an article on the debate over the working hours subject on May 6th, 2022, in which Clark is quoted as rejecting the prior conclusion and noting his current work on the subject instead estimates nearly 300 days of labor per year – quite in line with the 308 days estimate by Keynon."
Tofu Golem
@anarchopunk_girl
Even the corrected number shows that medieval peasants had more leisure than we.
I get that the number is in dispute, but even the corrected number still proves the same point.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
"According to BLS time-use surveys, full-time employed females [sic] in the U.S. work an average of 8.28 hours per day, while full-time employed males [sic] work an average of 9.05 hours per day. According to OECD stats, U.S. workers work an average of 1,791 hours per year"
That comes out to 216 or 197 days per year.
Also, consider the actual quality of living, and the quality of leisure time, we have when compared to a medieval peasant, and the qualitative differences between the types of work that a medieval peasant was doing and that the average modern-day person does. And the fact that even if we had less leisure time than they did, that might be because we're working more in order to increase the quality of our lives both when we are working and when we are having leisure.
Obviously I agree that capitalism has us working far longer and harder and for much lower pay then we would otherwise need to, but I don't think this comparison is particularly apt, and it's very important not to romanticize and imagined past and pastoralism or whatever.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
"Medieval peasants had homes. We have a growing number of homeless people with full-time jobs watching YouTube videos to learn how to live out of their cars."
This honestly seems like a red herring, but how do you know there wasn't a working homelessness or poverty problem in medieval times? I tried to do some research and wasn't able to find anything solid on homelessness, but we know stuff like work houses and paupers existed. And again, you're just ignoring qualitative differences, the whole background context of advanced technology and medicine and so on that we have today that makes things better even for homeless people. Compare the food or water or whatever available to a medieval pauper versus a modern homeless person. Being homeless today is not by any stretch a walk in the park, nor does this justify letting this happen to people, but in both cases you have to rely on the haphazard charity of random people around you but at least a modern homeless person could conceivably get food and water that isn't contaminated. There's public libraries and things like that, and more. Hell, even your example demonstrated ways in which a modern homeless person might(!!) be better off then a medieval pauper.
"Hundreds of thousands of families go bankrupt each year from medical costs, and a majority of those have medical insurance."
Awfully brave of you bringing up medicine as a way to dismiss how vastly qualitatively better life is today than in medieval times. Yes, healthcare is an absolute shitshow here, but at least we actually have health care that isn't fucking insane and more likely to kill people than to help, and a general background context of hygiene and plumbing and access to over-the-counter medicines and the ability to research medical stuff online and so on. There's a reason that our life expectancies are so much longer than that of people in medieval times even though it's been shrinking due to poor healthcare in the US.
"Most of us are stressed out because we are one mishap away from joining the ranks of either of the above."
And you think the average medieval serf wasn't constantly afraid of starving in the winter, or being reduced to pauperdom, or having their hands chopped off by their lord for arbitrary reasons, or whatever? At least those of us who are barely hanging on have the advantage of being able to do so in a world with running water and electricity and over the counter medicine and the internet and so on. Once again you are missing the forest for the trees only looking at specific details and missing the gigantic larger context around everything that is vastly different today.
In any case I'm not even sure how your examples are even relevant to what we were talking about, since I was talking about how comparing the leisure and work in our time versus medieval times isn't really a good idea because of massive contextual differences, and you just jumped to something completely different that doesn't undermine my point at all anyway, since there were analogs to these problems at that time too.
"We traded lords for CEOs."
I do largely agree with this and it will only become more true over time as capitalism mutates into technofutalism but this is just an analysis of the power dynamics, it doesn't mean that all of these other contextual qualitative factors don't exist.
"Other than smartphones, are we really that much better?"
"Smartphones" is a really interesting way to dismiss the entirety of modern advancements across the board as frivolous and meaningless. Makes me think you're not worth arguing with anymore honestly if this is the level of your capacity for analysis.
Tofu Golem
@anarchopunk_girl
Medieval peasants had homes. We have a growing number of homeless people with full-time jobs watching YouTube videos to learn how to live out of their cars.
Hundreds of thousands of families go bankrupt each year from medical costs, and a majority of those have medical insurance.
Most of us are stressed out because we are one mishap away from joining the ranks of either of the above. We traded lords for CEOs. Other than smartphones, are we really that much better?
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@tofugolem also, I just noticed that you completely ignored me proving that we don't actually work more days per year than medieval peasants do — those red herrings almost worked! 😂
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@darabos @tofugolem lol. The reddit post itself is well worth reading, it's a fun example of what XKCD calls citogenesis.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/uoxn4j/woozling_history_a_case_study/
Daniel Darabos
@anarchopunk_girl @tofugolem Good stuff in the comments too:
"If you’re looking for a vision of history where people were generally peaceful and contented [...] medieval peasants are a weird one to go to, because, you know, they were rebelling constantly,” Janega noted. “Why are they storming London and burning down the Savoy Palace, if this is a group of happy-go-lucky, simple folk who really love the way things are?”
Tofu Golem
@anarchopunk_girl
Hold on.
I apologize. I originally glossed over your calculations and did not look at them very carefully.
There are 52 weeks per year. At 5 working days per week, that is 260 working days per year. Your calculations are saying that people are on average working 216 days/year, which means your calculations show that the average American is getting 260-216=44 days off per year.
That is simply batshit insane.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@tofugolem hmm, that is problematic. Maybe the source I was using includes part time workers and unemployed in their average or some shit, bc that is very wonky. Let me double check
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@tofugolem I checked the OECD database page that the article I cited gets their stats from, and it doesn't have a whole lot of info tbh. It says it's derived from the current employment statistics for production and non-supervisory workers in private sector jobs and from the current population survey for other workers so it does sound like it may include stuff like CEOs or whatever. https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
Tofu Golem
@anarchopunk_girl
Are you including something in your data that is throwing that average off? Because that is wildly out of touch with reality.
Does your data include executives? Part-time workers?
What is included in your data to suggest that people are getting over 40 days off per year? None of that sounds right.
If you're including foreigners who get more paid time off, my original post was about Americans, so you're using the wrong data if that is the case.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@tofugolem the problem is I can't seem to find any other good sources that I can access, either just searching with DDG or on Google Scholar. None of the papers I found with a quick search on Scholar allowed me to use my university to access them
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@tofugolem no problem! I do think the remainder of my points still stand but yes there's something very off about this data 😝
Tofu Golem
@anarchopunk_girl
Sorry, I really just glossed over your original post and didn't read it, but I hope we both agree, that if your data says the average American gets more than 40 days off per year, this data probably includes something not relevant to the discussion.
I should know better, but sometimes I do let confirmation bias get the better of me, and I appreciate attempts to correct me, even if sometimes I'm too obstinate to admit it.
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