why do I have to work 40 hours a week?

[Hypnagogia]

well you typically have to work at least 30 hours a week or you lose your benefits...

quitcherbitchin

[VueeeuVueeeeuV]

I really don't think Travis made this thread to complain about his life (or did you?).

Answer to get this thread back on track!: We work 40 hours a week because the spatial and demographic practices of farming forced hunter/gatherers onto the most worthless pieces of land, even when they were very efficient, and a similar but more abstract process has happened with the modern, bureaucratic, urban division of labor.

NAH UH.
It comes after the gentry forced the famers off their land for sheep rearing and they where thrown destitute into the cities looking for any employment. The forty hours is the result of brutal struggle to give some semblance of humanity to wageslaves. It happened after decades of working from dawn to dusk every day but sunday. Hunter gatherers have not been really in the picture for the last few thousand years.

[Hypnagogia]

I really don't think Travis made this thread to complain about his life (or did you?).

Answer to get this thread back on track!: We work 40 hours a week because the spatial and demographic practices of farming forced hunter/gatherers onto the most worthless pieces of land, even when they were very efficient, and a similar but more abstract process has happened with the modern, bureaucratic, urban division of labor.

NAH UH.
It comes after the gentry forced the famers off their land for sheep rearing and they where thrown destitute into the cities looking for any employment. The forty hours is the result of brutal struggle to give some semblance of humanity to wageslaves. It happened after decades of working from dawn to dusk every day but sunday. Hunter gatherers have not been really in the picture for the last few thousand years.

[doubleblumpkin]

There is a science to working 40 hours a week. It's been tested in a lab and has flow charts. I can give you guys a YouTube seminar if you like.

[riley-o]

i don't know man, it just doesn't seem right

of course i just got finished a BJJ class and am now sitting on my couch drinking a smoothie, on the clock

so my perspective on this is at least partially moot

[SKI DOO]

Yeah but how many of those 40 hours are you doing actual work?

[John Jr.]

I'll admit that while I certainly don't think society or anyone owes me a living,

i'm pretty sure that AIG, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sach, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, and Enron pretty much owe every US citizen a couple years of living at this point.........

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

I really don't think Travis made this thread to complain about his life (or did you?).

Answer to get this thread back on track!: We work 40 hours a week because the spatial and demographic practices of farming forced hunter/gatherers onto the most worthless pieces of land, even when they were very efficient, and a similar but more abstract process has happened with the modern, bureaucratic, urban division of labor.

NAH UH.
It comes after the gentry forced the famers off their land for sheep rearing and they where thrown destitute into the cities looking for any employment. The forty hours is the result of brutal struggle to give some semblance of humanity to wageslaves. It happened after decades of working from dawn to dusk every day but sunday. Hunter gatherers have not been really in the picture for the last few thousand years.

I'm familiar with English labor history, and you're right that unions and labor struggle have to do with the magical number of forty. I was just trying to be more fun and explain why we work so much more than we have to (re: Travis' original post).

[John Jr.]

because if you weren't, you'd spend the best 8 hours of your day doing things and thinking about things. assuming there wasn't a television handy.

[riley-o]

[father of lies]

because if you weren't, you'd spend the best 8 hours of your day doing things and thinking about things. assuming there wasn't a television handy.

Leisure time is for xasthur fans, communists, and Europeans. OH SORRY TO BE REDUNDANT

[Gookstorm]

Because globalization means that I have a new set of problems in the morning, more as I go along, and a whole new set once my day nears its end and I have to pass off the info on the work I did for the past 6 hours... and sometimes at 4 am or 9 pm. There's only so much productivity you can squeeze out of a system composed mainly of people unless you make machines do some of the work. Funny, I put in 50 hours / week so we can save thousands, but I don't feel like any time's being saved for anyone.

There is a science to working 40 hours a week. It's been tested in a lab and has flow charts. I can give you guys a YouTube seminar if you like.

I've got my own set of data and flow charts for why a 30 hour work week as implemented in many European countries is far, far more productive than a 40 hour work week. Aggregate output decreases but the threshold of overwork decreases and a society is healthier, reducing health problems and thereby offsetting the productivity "lost" versus a 40 hour work week. The US has other problems contributing to the huge health problems of the country, but there's little research arguing against a healthier (both mentally and physically) population being a more productive population.

There exists a curve of diminishing returns for input to output when it comes to learning as well. You can't expect to learn 20% more by reading 20% more per day any more than you can expect to gain 20% more muscle by working out 20% longer per day.

[father of lies]

So wait, if we spend less time making shit, and (as seems to be the rule) then don't want to BUY as much shit, and then don't have as many health problems, both physical and mental... I don't really see anybody getting rich from this Devon. Sorry.

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

I don't really see anybody getting rich from this Devon. Sorry.

Foiled again!

[Necrometer]

I see where the tr00 revolutionaries like A|M are coming from, I really do! But if the machine is evil, and you're a cog in it, why keep spinning your life away as an evil machine cog while chanting "we should really destroy this machine" when you could wheel your spoked ass over to a less evil machine any time you please?

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

I see where the tr00 revolutionaries like A|M are coming from, I really do! But if the machine is evil, and you're a cog in it, why keep spinning your life away as an evil machine cog while chanting "we should really destroy this machine" when you could wheel your spoked ass over to a less evil machine any time you please?

I'm actually not totally sure what you're getting at. Complaining about modernity as a whole seems like a pretty fruitless activity, but you're saying that people that complain about working hard in modern society should exit modern society? And go where? Seems like an equally fruitless/abstract suggestion.

[Bored, Esq.]

I think the average office worker actually works about 5 hours a week. The rest of the time is spent drinking coffee, surfing the net, eating, walking around aimlessly, in the bathroom, gossiping, attending stupid meetings, staring into space, commuting, decompressing, and fucking their coworkers. Really, the only reason anyone ever works more than this is because someone else is fucking up somewhere. I'm amazed anything ever gets done (does it?) or anyone makes money.

[Necrometer]

I see where the tr00 revolutionaries like A|M are coming from, I really do! But if the machine is evil, and you're a cog in it, why keep spinning your life away as an evil machine cog while chanting "we should really destroy this machine" when you could wheel your spoked ass over to a less evil machine any time you please?

I'm actually not totally sure what you're getting at. Complaining about modernity as a whole seems like a pretty fruitless activity, but you're saying that people that complain about working hard in modern society should exit modern society? And go where? Seems like an equally fruitless/abstract suggestion.

You can go to a non-industrialized country, or "Europe" - which some people seem to think is better somehow. I don't understand how you seem to be saying there's no better option AND that this option is not good enough... when you indirectly are defining it as the best one?

[HeyWard]

Haha, one to talk, Cryptoplasty.

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

I see where the tr00 revolutionaries like A|M are coming from, I really do! But if the machine is evil, and you're a cog in it, why keep spinning your life away as an evil machine cog while chanting "we should really destroy this machine" when you could wheel your spoked ass over to a less evil machine any time you please?

I'm actually not totally sure what you're getting at. Complaining about modernity as a whole seems like a pretty fruitless activity, but you're saying that people that complain about working hard in modern society should exit modern society? And go where? Seems like an equally fruitless/abstract suggestion.

You can go to a non-industrialized country, or "Europe" - which some people seem to think is better somehow. I don't understand how you seem to be saying there's no better option AND that this option is not good enough... when you indirectly are defining it as the best one?

I guess I think people in non-industrialized countries are especially exploited to support our lifestyles, or else they're just generally shit on by the rest of the world. I don't think there are any parts of Earth that aren't part of the modern world.

I guess I think it's silly to imagine that we could possibly will ourselves into some prelapsarian Eden, nor do I think that the pre-modern world was necessarily better than what we have now. I personally wasn't suggesting in this thread that that the world that we know is not good enough - just noting the historical roots of having to work more hours. I do, however, think that there are morally reprehensible aspects to the world as it works today, and I feel very strongly about those, but that's neither here nor there in my opinion. Complaining about modernity is like complaining about having to breathe air.

Still, I think asking the question about why we live the lives we do when people clearly lived in a really different way is a fascinating question. It's sort of, like, what I do.

[Brian P.]

because you chose to. you're a vegan man, fuck the job and live in a grass field upon which you can graze.

[John Jr.]

I see where the tr00 revolutionaries like A|M are coming from, I really do! But if the machine is evil, and you're a cog in it, why keep spinning your life away as an evil machine cog while chanting "we should really destroy this machine" when you could wheel your spoked ass over to a less evil machine any time you please?

like any other machine is any less evil.

[Necrometer]

I guess I think people in non-industrialized countries are especially exploited to support our lifestyles, or else they're just generally shit on by the rest of the world. I don't think there are any parts of Earth that aren't part of the modern world.

I guess I think it's silly to imagine that we could possibly will ourselves into some prelapsarian Eden, nor do I think that the pre-modern world was necessarily better than what we have now. I personally wasn't suggesting in this thread that that the world that we know is not good enough - just noting the historical roots of having to work more hours. I do, however, think that there are morally reprehensible aspects to the world as it works today, and I feel very strongly about those, but that's neither here nor there in my opinion. Complaining about modernity is like complaining about having to breathe air.

Still, I think asking the question about why we live the lives we do when people clearly lived in a really different way is a fascinating question. It's sort of, like, what I do.

Good stuff, man. Thanks. I know that this is what you do, and I appreciate that you take your thing and help in intellectual outreach to others. I am not convinced that there's no place on Earth where you can escape modernity... I just think it would be so suicidal to go to that place that you'd either be totally alone (non-option) or simply rule it out. Which is exactly why I don't jump on the bandwagon when people are so dissatisfied with the world they're in. I guess I'm circling back around to what I said before. Basically I do think things are getting better and better for PEOPLE*, and the fact that they're not getting better enough, fast enough, or in a pure enough way does deserve attention. So keep on keepin' on.

* the hidden costs of this apparent "better" do remain to be seen... I would not be shocked if the tinfoilers' national/global econocrisis comes to fruition

[Hypnagogia]

I guess I think people in non-industrialized countries are especially exploited to support our lifestyles, or else they're just generally shit on by the rest of the world. I don't think there are any parts of Earth that aren't part of the modern world.

I guess I think it's silly to imagine that we could possibly will ourselves into some prelapsarian Eden, nor do I think that the pre-modern world was necessarily better than what we have now. I personally wasn't suggesting in this thread that that the world that we know is not good enough - just noting the historical roots of having to work more hours. I do, however, think that there are morally reprehensible aspects to the world as it works today, and I feel very strongly about those, but that's neither here nor there in my opinion. Complaining about modernity is like complaining about having to breathe air.

Still, I think asking the question about why we live the lives we do when people clearly lived in a really different way is a fascinating question. It's sort of, like, what I do.

Good stuff, man. Thanks. I know that this is what you do, and I appreciate that you take your thing and help in intellectual outreach to others. I am not convinced that there's no place on Earth where you can escape modernity... I just think it would be so suicidal to go to that place that you'd either be totally alone (non-option) or simply rule it out. Which is exactly why I don't jump on the bandwagon when people are so dissatisfied with the world they're in. I guess I'm circling back around to what I said before. Basically I do think things are getting better and better for PEOPLE*, and the fact that they're not getting better enough, fast enough, or in a pure enough way does deserve attention. So keep on keepin' on.

* the hidden costs of this apparent "better" do remain to be seen... I would not be shocked if the tinfoilers' national/global econocrisis comes to fruition

Dude...


Or even...


But in all seriousness, I do pretty much agree w/ your assessment...things are improving, but one of the side effects is the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is also growing exponentially.

[Necrometer]

The reason I don't fucking FLIP about the rich/poor disparity is because even the poorest people are doing a zillion times better than they would be if they were shat out in the middle of some desert in non-civilization. If you actually believe that your life is less good because some fat cat on a yacht is doing blow off a pair of tanned silicone tits right now, then you need to do some soul-searching.