Oh yeah? Industrial farming gives less food per hour of work than collecting wild nuts? Are you sure about that?

Also, people tend not to die from infections anymore, or starvation (usually). One bad famine doesn’t wipe out everyone you know. The vast majority of babies survive to old age and only extremely rarely does a mother die in childbirth.

And the entire population of earth doesn’t live around areas where you can forage anymore.

Little things like that

Okay, so how about medieval peasants also working 7-8 hour days, ~150 days per year?

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html

This is probably a misleading average. Outside of sowing and reaping, farms need pretty much no work

But when they need it, they need A LOT of it

Anthropologists at Harvard did an extensive multi-year study of the !Kung San people in southern Africa who still lived by hunting and gathering in the '60s and '70s. Despite living in near-desert conditions, they spent an average of about 17 hours a week in food-related activities. Granted, this yielded a diet of around 1200 calories a day, but they were relatively very small people and this amount was adequate. Mongongo nuts FTW. Whether this lifestyle (and that of other studied modern hunter/gatherers) is generally representative of pre-historic and pre-agricultural humans is an open question, but it’s hard to imagine that hunting and gathering in less marginal environments would have required more time and effort - especially when there were a bunch of big hairy elephants you could run off cliffs walking around.

Early agrarians, however, probably had to bust much more ass to make a living, as the farmer’s toolkits of domesticated species were not as well-developed as today.

Even medieval peasants under Feudalism worked less than we do, too.

Yeah, but if people only worked essential jobs, and not in stupid competitive ways that only make the owners of some of those companies rich, you could get by with much less work. Think about how wasteful industrial production is, and how many office building skyscrapers and malls are being built just for investors’ sakes that are not needed, and often lay empty.

If people only built what is actually needed for good lives, and not for greed, so much manpower would be freed up. Especially if they did it in sustainable ways that wouldn’t require everything being torn down or renewed again really soon.

Also, imagine crypto shitcoin peddlers being forced to do useful work like plumbing. There are so many people just getting paid for downright evil or at least useless shit.

Nup! Spoiler alert - it was agriculture.

Ancient humans likely worked significantly less than modern humans to meet their basic needs. Studies of hunter-gatherer societies suggest that our ancestors spent around 15-20 hours per week (or about 3 hours per day) on work related to survival[1][3].

The Jo/'hoansi people of the Kalahari Desert, for example, spent only about 15 hours a week acquiring food and resources[3]. This left them with ample time for leisure activities like socializing, storytelling, and artistic pursuits.

This pattern of limited work hours appears to have been common for most of human history. For about 95% of our species’ existence, humans likely worked these shorter hours[2][4]. The shift to longer work weeks came much later with the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

Anthropologist James Suzman argues that hunter-gatherer societies were generally well-fed and content, with longer life expectancies than many early agricultural societies[4]. The abundance of free time allowed for rich cultural and social lives.

It’s important to note that while daily work hours were limited, life wasn’t always easy. Infant mortality was high, and people faced other challenges. However, in terms of work-life balance, our ancestors may have had an advantage over many modern humans[3][4].

This historical perspective raises questions about our current work culture and whether we could benefit from reconsidering our relationship with work and leisure in the modern world.

Citations: [1] Humans once worked just 3 hours a day. Now we’re … - Big Think https://bigthink.com/big-think-books/vicki-robin-joe-dominguez-your-money-or-your-life/ [2] For 95 Percent of Human History, People Worked 15 hours a Week … https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qbgihm/for_95_percent_of_human_history_people_worked_15/ [3] Our ancestors worked less and had better lives. What are we doing … https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/our-ancestors-worked-less-and-had-better-lives-what-are-we-doing-wrong/ [4] For 95 Percent of Human History, People Worked 15 Hours a Week … https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human-history-people-worked-15-hours-a-week-could-we-do-it-again.html [5] Customary naps, more holidays, less work pressure: Did our … https://www.tbsnews.net/thoughts/customary-naps-more-holidays-less-work-pressure-did-our-ancestors-have-better-work-weeks

Some unsung hero in this thread actually provided the source where I got it from, but yeah, I agree

(Laziness won me over though)

The comments leave something to be desired imo

That’s not what we would have to give up, what we would have to give up is a small portion of the population globe-trotting 24/7 on private jets and buying yachts for their yachts.

You’re fellating robber-barons and buying into the bullshit propaganda that without our hugely unequal economic system you wouldn’t be allowed to have a computer.

A lot of those are out of reach for many as well still due to cost, or non existent (healthcare). I’m in a pretty stable point in my life and even I get scared by the electric bills related to heating and cooling. Growing up I recall the only option was to go to the mall since we could not afford AC.

Me also figure out if set forest on fire, cave fire can go out and you can get more next day.