this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Other species don't need clean water, clothes, complex tools and growing food. This makes their life simpler yet limits their number and habitat.
Try to live in a village growing own food. It's a hard work, especially if you have cattles or other domestic animals. Villagers work from early morning to evening because there's a lot things to do. Living in a city is much easier.
Is it not true though that this is seasonal and overall people that live this way work less than the average person living a modern life?
It is not like you get home from work and have no chores etc. Realistically a lot of the work these people do is something that a person with a house would call chores / upkeep.
Are you trolling?
If you’re not trolling, I would point out that modern (knowledge) workers work a lot, sure. But harder or more than farmers and laborers? No way.
He’s not trolling, but my guess is he read Sapiens and that’s his current gospel.
I don’t deny that the labour is physically harder, I’ve worked in my life retail, office and landscaping, I know that physical labour is tough. Though hard overall is subjective, I undoubtedly hated and found most every other job harder than my stint of about a year in landscaping, which was physically very taxing. The landscaping gig might have been the favorite job I’ve ever had.
But, no, I am not talking about people who work as farmers / labourers commercially, but instead the question is mostly about self sustained homestead / village living.
Growing uo I had small scale farmers in my family and had a countryside house where I knew a lot of the beighbours who lived there full time. Generally they seemed to have a couple of bursts of work during a day but most of the day was slowly and steadily attending to one or another chore / upkeep task
I would vager people living this way actually work far less hours in a given year than a person living a modern capitalist life, especially if you factor upkeep you have to do for your house after work etc, even if we assume a 40 hour work week, which lets face it, the average person probably exceeds (64 hours for me, personally).