this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023

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submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

90 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Before you all get your panties in a twist, I know it's technically not true.

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[+] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The Adam smith institute is a right wing free market think tank with likely very questionable donors. wiki It likely doesn't really do research but takes sources that support their preexisting believes and retells them.

Certainly it was at least very hard to make the capitalist exploitation of the worker so all encompassing before the invention of the mechanical watch (Although there was likely a ton of housework and the general situation was garbage what with feudal lords and all that) . It then likely exploded with the industrial revolution and at least in places where the working class managed to emancipate themselves got somewhat cut back. Now especially for countries outside of the west and increasingly also the US and parts of EU it's likely getting worse, especially with multi employment and precarious employment(gig work, semi self employment, 0h contracts, mechanical turk ...).

Generally i feel work where you or your peers get to keep the total output of your work isn't really a problem, it's a problem when your work gets appropriated into this terrible machine and as a result you are alienated from the work.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Adam Smith Institute

I always find it kinda funny when the right turns to Adam Smith. Smith thought that the free market would free us from the monopolistic tendencies of the mercantile system. (Although he wouldn't have written it as such, as the term 'monopoly' wasn't nearly as taxonomically precise as it is now.) If he was alive today, he'd probably be rather dismayed at the failures of capitalism.

But then again, I guess that's the right's shtick: coopt any idea that they can and pervert it to benefit the ultra-wealthy.

Anyways, here's Smith:

The object, besides, of the greater part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can: which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new adventurers from entering into the trade. (The Wealth of Nations V.i.e.10)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. As much as reading and understanding smith and other philosophy is important for the individual, think tanks unfortunately seem necessary in a modern context aiming to transform, often quite unreadable, as your excerpt demonstrates, philosophical learning, into applicable law/policy.

As with everything this process is utterly captured by right wing and market fundamentalist interests. Just sort this list by Bias/Affiliation and skim some of the descriptions it's a bit horrific, but it also might save you from reading an old school stochastic parrot with an inhumane agenda. Or if you actually find one you can agree with it might give you a reasonable first source.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lol yeah, it's definitely the "funny-because-that's-how-I-cope-with-the-absurdity" funny, not the "I'm-actually-having-fun" funny.

Here's my Luke warm take: It's kinda a self fulfilling prophecy that think tanks are so "necessary". They prop up modern thought because our education is so filled with practicality and specialization that there's not enough time for proper philosophical education, which every person should be offered. And further, that is by design to maintain the status quo.

You certainly don't get much hat tipping to the early greats, many of whom said in some form or other that the study of philosophy was one of the most important pursuits a person can have in order to live a good life and build a healthy society.

Warm take, because the corpus of human philosophy really is insanely massive, and realistically we do in fact need food and doctors and house builders and whatnot, and there's too little time and too much to be done for everyone to get a B.A. equivalent in philosophy. Probably. Maybe a think tank has studied the idea.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There's also the materialist take on capitalism that it's a stage between feudalism and a more socialist or communist organization of society.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If that's ok too, I have read a book by an anthropologist who claims the opposite (that in fact people in the past had more leisure than today). I can look up a good quote tomorrow. For the claim in the post, I'm afraid, there ain't no good sources, as for most alternative facts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It's historical consensus. Your quality of life is still better because you have civil rights and access to medical care that actually works.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Medieval peasant's idea of luxury was also "some butter". Let's not glorify the past.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They loved showing off what spices they had, like "yo this is a nutmeg pie, that's right I got nutmeg bitches." Some of the recipes are actually hilarious cause they seem to be based around showing off your spices, the original lasagna for example.

What's also funny is the foods peasants could afford and eat, were at least to our modern diet a lot healthier than what the lord would eat. They'd be eating root vegetables, cabbage, squash, porridges. Cheese as well because it was a method of preservation and the separated whey had it's own uses, lot of peasants made their own cheese. Meanwhile the lord would be eating marrow and fatty salted meats, hunting his own game, or more like wanting people to believe he did so trying to curate that image of himself. Maybe commission a "morning hunt" portrait of himself in case you weren't sure.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

More time off to take care of the fourteen children you need to have to keep your farm going.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

And almost succumb to some form of the common cold

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You'd be having sex in the same room as all your kids and animals lived too

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If one dies, I'll just pop another out, right in the field. Cut the cord, and he can get to work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There was a much higher likelihood of dying during childbirth too.

Families with more than 4 or 5 children were almost certainly blended families.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Redditors thinking that having time off as some dirt fucking poor peasant in the Medieval Era is all fun and games.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At least ye'd probably get to eat yer daily porridge next to a fuckin' goose. May not be your goose, or the village goose, but a fine goose and an important part of peasantry nonetheless. Better than serfs get.. Eatin' their porridge next to a mule and a rake.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dies at 46 after a minor cut gets infected

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

*26

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You don't want to go back to the past. At least not before germ theory and anesthesia.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Nothing wrong with some whiskey and biting down on a stick when you need your leg amputated.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there were no cameras in the Middle Ages. Checkmate shitposters.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Also that woman clearly isn't middle aged.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

It's still bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There was a recent report (rather exagerrated but still) which claimed that in the 1930s it took 65 hours of human labour a week to run a household. Today it takes 3. Things were worse back in medieval days.

Doubt.jpeg

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Actually medieval people got wayyy more time off across the board. It's because they all died by 45.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

OP I thought debunking the Adam Smith Institute claim would be easy, but you've just introduced me to Tim Worstall and he might be based: We Can afford UBI, and its better than the cruel welfare state - Tim Worstall

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's a great read, thanks for sharing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can't wait for people in debate class to look at this post and discuss which logical fallacy is most fitting

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Or how is just blatantly wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It's holiday season, we got pies and ale, a new preacher is coming to town and we're getting shitfaced. Nobody has plague yet and life is good.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

No way in fucking hell it takes 3 hours a week to run a household. I do that daily.

Clothing, kids homework, meals to cook, cleaning, shopping for food, kids extracurriculars, bills.

6:00 pick up kids from aftercare

6:15 Get home with kids, take care of pets, reheat dinner

6:30-7:00 kids eat dinner and I do laundry

7:00-8:00 kids homework and cleaning

8:00-8:30: violin practice

8:30 - 9:00 whatever subject they are lagging in or if nothing shared reading.

9:00 - 10:00 kids bath and ready for next day. Around 9:20 or so I eat dinner

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Good addendum!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A medieval peasant looked nothing like this.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I sincerely apologize for the historical inaccuracies contained in this shitpost.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know about others, but I know many Spanish colonies only worked 4-hours a day up to the 1890s. It could be tradition, and also unlike other Western powers at the time, Spain had not industrialised as much and would still have to rely much on physical labour. So I think the combination of Spain and its colonies being too hot to work for long periods, and lack of industrialisation, made 4 hour day work the way of life for them.

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