Before you all get your panties in a twist, I know it’s technically not true.
That link is an unsourced opinion piece on a site belonging to something called the Adam Smith Institute. I’m gonna need something a bit more credible before I believe it tbh.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Yeah this whole thing a bit maximized might be neatly wrapped up in this Hegelian insight rephrased in 2014 found on the wiki
“It is Hegel’s insight that reason itself has a history, that what counts as reason is the result of a development. This is something that Kant never imagines and that Herder only glimpses.”
In this way if not even the greats can do it how could a modern person or a think tank but at the same time does this not imply we currently need all three of them.
Also is the modern YouTube video essay channel sort of a think tank for terminally online people ? Maybe food for thought, maybe a joke who knows really.
Is there any think tank on earth that if all the members suddenly got heart attacks the world would be a worse place?
I think about all the people who I deal with daily and if any single one of them died things would be so much worse for me. They have value and you can see the value they add. How does the Adam Smith institute or CATO do jack shit for anyone? And if we can’t answer that, than why are the people on these committees being paid so well for what isn’t eben a full time job? And why the fuck are they tax exemption!?
Well I might look at this Rosa Luxemburg Foundation or perhaps this Heinrich Böll Foundation if I were in need to peddle some specific policy to someone that both cares and is powerful. It’s in many ways the same prisoners dilemma as with all of advertisement.
So yes if they were all gone it’d be better for everyone but as we unfortunately live in the system we live in I’d rather have the few that might actually represent me exist beside all of the garbage. Same with the political parties they are associated with as well.
There’s also the materialist take on capitalism that it’s a stage between feudalism and a more socialist or communist organization of society.
The time was very different. Most people lived and worked in the country, not in cities, so de facto they couldn’t control them however they liked. Christian Church was also imposing morality over everything, which means they couldn’t enslave people as easily as today.
We are living in neo-feudalism. Your boss is a lord, and your only freedom is to choose a lord, provided this lord accept you.
Christendom was basically like the church was the structure of society, when you were baptized as an infant and written in the books that was like social security today. The anabaptists weren’t just so radical because they opposed theology, but because they protested the fundamental structure of how society was organized.
Also religion back then was like entertainment as well, people actually loved going to see preachers and they’d talk about them in the same way we talk about shows or movies now. It had that function in the society as sort of a language for discussing fundamental truths and life experience that people loved engaging in. They didn’t have a notion of a political or national identity, but they had a soul and all the stuff to do with that.
It’s historical consensus. Your quality of life is still better because you have civil rights and access to medical care that actually works.
If it’s consensus then there must be sources somewhere.
Do you also ask for sources when people contend that Julius Caesar was a real person, or that the world is round? Go to JSTOR and start building your case if you’re so keen to display your ignorance about common knowledge, or do you need a SOURCE to tell you that JSTOR actually exists and isn’t a modern fiction?
You could turn down your douchebag levels quite a lot and still make a point.
It’ll make you look much less like an asshole when you’re wrong, which you are.
Don’t be belligerent and you won’t get the door slammed on you, being upset about tone of a message to the point of it overriding your ability to accept its content is overly emotional and extremely childish.
wrong, which you are
UHHH SOURCE!!! SOURCE???
I’m not the person asking for a source, but good job proving that you’re an asshole.
We have coins with his face on it.
It’s not historical consensus. It’s a claim made by some historians that went viral online.
It seems very emotionally important to you that you believe that. Best of luck.
Is it? Okay.
no it isn’t.
Medieval peasant’s idea of luxury was also “some butter”. Let’s not glorify the past.
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.
All I need is some cheese to be happy. And a tip from my tenants. (Just kidding, I’m not a landlord, please don’t kill me)
Why can’t we have both? Why must we trade one for the other?
Because medieval peasantry ain’t exactly all that great. There’s a reason why we grew out of it.
We’ve had the 40h work week for about 100 years and more or less exponential growth for that time, too. Why did that never turn into more leisure time?
No one is asking for feudal society. Just more leisure
More time off to take care of the fourteen children you need to have to keep your farm going.
And almost succumb to some form of the common cold
You’d be having sex in the same room as all your kids and animals lived too
If one dies, I’ll just pop another out, right in the field. Cut the cord, and he can get to work.
There was a much higher likelihood of dying during childbirth too.
Families with more than 4 or 5 children were almost certainly blended families.
.
Childbirth was the primary cause of death for women in the middle ages
Your great grandmother had the benefit of centuries of modernization that the women we’re talking about did not. And even then, she was probably an outlier.
Redditors thinking that having time off as some dirt fucking poor peasant in the Medieval Era is all fun and games.
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.
You don’t want to go back to the past. At least not before germ theory and anesthesia.
Nothing wrong with some whiskey and biting down on a stick when you need your leg amputated.
I do. Common sense would take care of me better than this healthcare system. All the knowledge we have serves capital, not me, day to day, in my silly little life.
It’s still bullshit.
there were no cameras in the Middle Ages. Checkmate shitposters.
Also that woman clearly isn’t middle aged.
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
Only way that is acceptable is if they missed a 0. Even then 30 is pushing it
Actually medieval people got wayyy more time off across the board. It’s because they all died by 45.
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
That’s a great read, thanks for sharing.
Can’t wait for people in debate class to look at this post and discuss which logical fallacy is most fitting
Or how is just blatantly wrong.
Name one.
I’m genuine: just because you think it’s wrong, doesn’t automatically make it a fallacy.
So name one logical fallacy that applies, i.e. “Slippery slope”, “Appeal to authority”, etc.
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.
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
You also do it alone.
People generally used to live with their extended families.
The tasks you’re describing were generally spread out between 4-8 grown-ass adults.
Good addendum!
Nah. The Adam Smith “Institute” is nothing, but (mostly debunked) liberal propaganda.
Comparing yourself to a medieval serf is a magnificent intersection of privilege and ignorance.
What does that have to do with my comment?
Also: From a material dialectics point of view, the working class of today and the serfs from medieval europe have quite a lot in common. Even moreso, if you take the gig economy into account (see: Yanis Varoufakis’ concept of “techno-feudalism”).
Read the comment chain?
I pointed out that noting the meme wasn’t true was a good addendum.
You said nah.
I pointed out that comparing our privileged selves to feudal serfs is nonsense. The gig economy comparison is also pretty silly. Can all your stuff just be taken by the gig employer leaving you and your family to starve? It’s just privileged whiny silliness from folks who presumably aren’t spending 14 or 16 hours in a sweatshop or losing their arms mining the cobalt for our phones.
The comment just didn’t have an obvious connection to the comment above.
The “addendum” doesn’t cite any sources and claims that a modern household takes 3 hours a week to maintain. The “institute” is full of bogus claims praising liberalism.
You can just admit that you have no idea what class analysis or feudalism is, you know?
And your last sentence shouts for the “yet you take part in society”-meme.
The comment just didn’t have an obvious connection to the comment above.
Unless, y’know, you looked at the comment and the context.
You can just admit that you have no idea what class analysis or feudalism is, you know?
Lol
And your last sentence shouts for the “yet you take part in society”-meme.
You either misunderstand the meme or that comparing yourself to feudal serf is mind bogglingly privileged, ignorant and silly.
Cheers.
I already work less than a medieval peasant.
Just don’t tell my boss.
I do too. My boss is an asshole though, spends all her time on lemmy shitposting and then tells me to work harder. But then again, I am my own boss, so PEBCAK.
