People didn't end up with 40 hour work week, people fought to get it that low
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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And in all honesty should have fought for a 4 day workweek right after.
And now we're on a speed run to prove that no victories are permanent.
Yes. It's not a constant progress forward as some think but constant uphill battle with backsliding if you get too comfortable.
And, if you/OP want it to be less, you need to join / start / contribute to the labor movement and let everyone you meet in it know your new goal.
You could have ended up on the one with the 84-hour workweek (12 hours a day, no day off) and with child labor... you know... the "good ole days" republicans want to take you back to by hook and by crook, and which the people of all ages have enabled, the old by batshit mental illness, the young by electoral defensive indifference. Soon enough you won't have time to navel gaze about how bad 40 is.
How do you know those other planets don't all have 80-100 hour weeks? Maybe aliens are all more like ants or bees and just work non-stop. The reason they never stop here or answer our calls is because they're always at work. 🤷♂️
it could also just be that their planet takes 3 years to orbit their sun and a day lasts 2 weeks, so the workweek could be like 560 hours over there
Yea, but those 336 hour weekends though...
I wonder if ants and bees get flooded with endorphins when they’re endlessly working so 80-100 hour weeks would be just fine for them. We’re apes, we’re supposed to eat berries and weird mushrooms and procreate in the forest, we’re not designed to work any harder than we have to to do those two things.
United States of America are not a planet.
There are countries with both more and less work hours.
I'm confused, what about this post makes it about USA? Surely (inb4 don't call me Shirley) there must be several countries with 40 hours work week.
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(12 replies)
Native to this planet and have to pay yo live here.
This is some bullshit.
These living conditions were won with blood, sweat, and tears. They have been stripped away from us through deception, isolation, and manipulation. We can still make our lives better, it is going to require a lot of work and discomfort.
At least we don't have 3 suns in our solar system 🤷♂️
I wish we did though
For one, I wouldn't exist to suffer.
But on the other hand, we wouldn't have video games and cats 😿
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(5 replies)
No, you have ended up in a country with 40 hours working week.
In most countries it's a lot more. Throughout human history it has typically been a lot more.
Getting the work day down to 8 hours required violent riots that resulted in bombs being thrown at the police and people being hanged after quick show trials. And even once the work day was reduced to 8 hours, it was a while before the work week was reduced to only 5 days. Interestingly, the US initially led the world in reducing the length of the work week. But, these days it has been completely captured by oligarchs and unions are the weakest of any country in the developed world, so it has fallen far behind on any kind of worker rights compared to the rest of the world.
40 hours may feel like a lot, but throughout most of human history only working 40 hours was a privilege available only to the nobility. It's possible to get the 40 hours reduced even further in the US, but it will probably once again require massive demonstrations, and it seems unlikely that it will happen without violence and death.
Crazy that we ended up at all, really
Let me introduce you to France and its 35h workweeks
And remember, we only need to produce 30% of what we are producing for everyone to live comfortably.
But think of the shareholders, what happens if line doesn't go up
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Well, better than getting eaten up by Tyranids. Though this is so very arguable
It's not a function of space, but of time. Work load used to be significantly less in the medieval ages.
Modern work load is caused by progress and the high demand for human workforce that it brings with it.
Work load used to be significantly less in the medieval ages.
And even less in hunting/gathering times (probably). All the ethnographies we have of (formerly) extant hunter/gatherers show them basically not even working a part-time job. The !Kung-san of southern Africa were recorded as putting in an average of 17 hours a week of food-related work - and this was in a much sparser environment than what our ancient ancestors existed in.
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