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.
A medieval peasant looked nothing like this.
I sincerely apologize for the historical inaccuracies contained in this shitpost.
You’re literally worse than Hitler!
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
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.
They also had an average life expectancy of about 30 years, so I’ll stick with the current Era thanks.
That’s because of advancements in medicine, not because we work longer hours.
Common missconception: people didn’t just die in their thirties, the average is brought down somewhat hard by lots of infant death, childbirth complications and the like.
@Prunebutt says it right, it’s the advancements in medicine, but thats more reactively treating diseases than proactively lengthening the lifespan.
I hate those type of stats that sound good but don’t actually express what they seem to express.
Instead of looking at the average age at death, I’d be much more interested in the average age if the population alive at a give point in time.
Medieval peasant’s idea of luxury was also “some butter”. Let’s not glorify the past.
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
