[ekianjo]

> This is a case of basic human rights.

There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

[harryh]

You're getting downvoted to hell, but FWIW I basically agree with you. This isn't really about rights but about economics. China used to be quite poor. So, on average, the Chinese people had to work pretty hard to raise their standard of living.

But as China has gotten richer it's only natural that Chinese citizens will want to convert some of their hard earned wealth into more leisure time instead of more physical goods so average hours worked per week will tend to decline.

The same sort of thing happened in America and elsewhere.

[pdimitar]

Call me stupid but I cannot see how you are agreeing with your parent comment. It basically states "don't complain and get back to work", and you basically said it's normal for people to want their hard work to pay off and are thus pushing back against insane working schedules.

I don't see the connection, help me here.

[harryh]

I was agreeing with this part:

"There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week."

A 40 hour work week isn't (in my view) a "human right" in the way that life, liberty and property are rights. It's an exchange of time/work for money. People can choose to work a lot or work a little depending on how they value their time vs their leisure.

[pdimitar]

I believe the assertion about basic human rights is rooted more in research about maximum "productive" hours a day/week. Scientists have proven that hunter-gatherer tribes work anywhere between 10 to 20h a week and are doing just fine.

The 40h a week is pretty artificial default that has been imposed on most of the people by business interests. That's how I view it historically at least.

So we might not agree on slippery terms like "basic human rights" but modern phenomena as burnout and work depression are pretty widespread already and can thus serve as an example as to how the current workload standards might be broken.

[icebraining]

As far as I know, the 40h/week was pushed by unions, not business interests (those wanted more).

[pdimitar]

History is written by the victors, so we'll never truly know. Maybe the unions were bought out?

What's more likely however is that 40h a week seemed more reasonable than the baseline at the time.

Still doesn't make it good for the humans in general though. Time and again studies show humans have no flat productivity rate, and some studies are trying to prove that 40h a week is too much and the people don't have enough productive hours left outside of that to actually tend to family, house cleaning, cooking, leisure hobbies etc.

[watwut]

Yeah, people in the past were tortured for being witches, therefore there are no human rights today and everyone should shut up about criminal reform. It is not that bad, since someone else had it worst, so stop talking and trying to change things.

Past excesses are how we got to current "human rights standards". Also, rationally, good feeling from being tough on those entitled lazies should not be reason to stop discussion about whether such schedule is reasonable.

[danharaj]

There were periods in medieval history when a typical peasant only worked ~150 days out of the year.

While you are right that life was difficult, your sense of the past is warped to the point of caricature.

[endtime]

I'm sure it's possible to work 150 days a year now if you are okay with that standard of living.

[tzahola]

True.

However, the rest of the time was spent with military duty (feudal levy), preparing/preserving food, collecting firewood, takig care of livestock and general homesteading like repairing your mudbrick house.

[ekianjo]

yeah and they had nothing to eat at all some years if the harvest was bad, and no medical care and most people died in their 30s. So, which scenario do you prefer?

[danharaj]

Ok, so now you're making an observation about medicine instead of hours of work. What exactly is your point here? Things are better now than they were in the past, so there's no reason why they should be better?

[ekianjo]

I mentioned harvests which have nothing to do with medicine. I know we don't suffer from famines nowadays but this was a real thing before.

[cdelsolar]

most people didn't die in their 30s, if you could make it through childhood you'd usually live to your 60s/70s.

[xvf22]

Care to provide a citation or clarify the period you're referring to?

[cdelsolar]

Citation: common knowledge of much higher infant mortality rates throughout history + the intricacies of the mathematical mean

[GW150914]

You’re not wrong, but for most of human history I could declare that you offended me and challenge you to fight to the death. “Most of human history” is a bad standard and is essentially hypocritical to raise selectively. People don’t compare their lives to those of ancient barbarians, they look around themselves today and they look to the future. Few people will be convinced by the argument that they have it better than a serf who died at 30, or s hunter-gatherer.

[stronglikedan]

> I could declare that you offended me and challenge you to fight to the death.

You still can, but not death in the sense of your target ceasing to breathe, rather the death of everything they've worked for in life being violently ripped out from under them, such as their careers, by the court of public opinion. Still sad when it happens though.

[ekianjo]

> “Most of human history” is a bad standard and is essentially hypocritical to raise selectively.

I made that point because someone referred to "human rights" when it comes to working hours. There is just no such thing and there has never been.

[watwut]

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

[lovich]

There's no such thing as "human rights" in general by that standard. You can't point to a physical object or some quantum of energy and say, that's a human right that you can measure. Human rights are something we decide on as a society, and if society decides that there is a human right to a set amount of working hours, then it becomes a human right.

The argument that there never has been such a thing is basically arguing that we should stop all progress. That nothing that doesn't already exist should ever be created

[bjourne]

That's a myth. For most of human history, "working" 10-12 hours/week used to be the norm. There are still isolated tribes living as hunter gatherers and they are far from miserable!

[nerfhammer]

It's been pointed out that hunter gathers worked a lot less than modern humans do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Only after developing agriculture do societies start having 12 hours a day of work

[mywittyname]

Not only that, but "work" was often fun back then. These people were basically doing for work what people today do for fun: hunting, crafting, cooking, exercising, etc.

[s73v3r_]

Yes it is. What good are all those comforts of modern city life if you never have time to enjoy them?

[emodendroket]

In ancient cultures it was considered normal to leave a baby to die if you didn't want to raise it. Should we bring that back too?

[AndrewUnmuted]

That’s a bit of a false equivalency, isn’t it?

Besides, modern times have allowed us to avoid raising children if we don’t want to. We just don’t have to wait until the baby is a fully formed human and born from its mother’s womb to make that decision. In practice it may feel better to do it that way, but the basic effects are the same.

[edflsafoiewq]

Abortion serves, in modern society, essentially the same function as abandonment.

[emodendroket]

Our law does not consider those things equivalent and I bet if you went around and asked many people would not consider that equivalent either.

[edflsafoiewq]

Naturally a society which practices abortion but not abandonment would think so. But in both cases the function is essentially to provide a mechanism for infanticide to a society in which infanticide is prohibited (or rather, abhorred). There is a rationalization (for us, that the fetus isn't a child; for them, that the child is not actually killed, its life being turned over to the gods or to fate) but the rationalization is secondary to the fact that the act leaves the parent within, or on the border of, the normal workings of society instead of outside them altogether.

[emodendroket]

I don't agree, but I think my argument would work equally well if we took the example of being born into slavery.

[freehunter]

Or adoption. Or I mean... it's not like people don't still abandon their babies if they really want to.

[philwelch]

You can even avoid legal consequences by abandoning them at a fire station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law

[emodendroket]

Yes, but in the Roman world they left them at trash dumps and if they didn't simply die of exposure they were free for anyone to take as slaves. So I think we're still doing a bit better.

[emodendroket]

So... you're saying that society provides a more humane option so that we no longer leave children to die of exposure. Unlike in the past.