历史与人物groups.csail.mit.edu
前工业时代工人的工作时间比今天更少（2009）
Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
2019 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章汇总了经济史研究，指出前工业时代的工人（如中世纪农民）每年实际工作时长可能只有约1440小时，低于现代40小时工作制下的约2000小时，且假期更多。页面是Juliet Schor《过度工作的美国人》等研究的摘编，引发关于工作时长、闲暇质量与现代职场文化的长期争论。
为什么经久不衰：它挑战了“现代人比古人更闲”的直觉，每次重登首页都能激起关于工作制度、闲暇本质和职场文化的激烈讨论，至今仍是反思工作与生活平衡的经典素材。
HN 评论精选
现代工作文化是中世纪人身依附关系的延续，加班文化荒谬且往往毫无必要
每周40小时工作制和现代雇佣合同直接脱胎于中世纪的奴役关系，几乎没有改动。这解释了围绕它的一整套价值观：比如员工离职似乎有些可耻，而雇主随时解雇员工却天经地义——仆人本就不该离开主人。又如合同只写40小时，人们却默认要随时待命，甚至主动为这种状态辩护。我还看到职场中人们拼命证明自己岗位存在的必要，比拼谁半夜发邮件、谁愿意出卖更多个人生活。我曾加班赶deadline、邮件会议不断，有一天受够了辞职走人——结果我从未被替换。
vfc1查看英文原文
The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave its master, that was not OK. Or that you are expected to be available at all times, even though the contract only mentions 40h, and that is perfectly OK and even interiorized as acceptable by most people, which will even go to the extent of defending that state of affairs. What I see in the workforce is a desperate need for people to continuously prove the need for their own role, as automation and informatization eat away more an more jobs. It's a game of face time, who sends most emails past midnight, and who is willing to sell more of their personal life and squeeze other people out of theirs, often to do "important" tasks that are often completely unnecessary. I had a couple of jobs where I was working overtime, running for deadlines all the time, sending emails left an right, meetings, you name it. One day I had enough and I left, and to my surprise, I was never replaced :-)
工时数字掩盖了前工业劳动的强度，古人工作远比今人辛苦
拿中世纪农民和现代办公室工作比较是风马牛不相及。即使在今天，农村地区的人也要日夜操劳维持生计。坐办公室10小时看似辛苦，直到你真正干一阵农活才知道——而现代农业远不如当年：没有自来水、电力、机械和超市，连衣服都要自己做，纺织极其耗时。生活节奏确实更慢，平均工时可能更短（尤其冬季日照短），但他们干得远比今天大多数人辛苦。
ivanhoe查看英文原文
It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you had to do everything manually, no running water, no electricity, no farming machinery, no supermarkets. They even had to make their own cloths as textile was extremely expensive, and I've read that weaving was one of the activities that was taking any free moment to medieval women, it was extremely time consuming. The pace of life was slower, that for sure, and perhaps the average working hours were indeed shorter (in winter especially because of shorter daylight), but they worked way harder than most people have to today.
所谓古人的闲暇其实是贫穷的产物，文章是对贫困的浪漫化
这个分析只关注“工作”层面，几乎不考虑家务劳动，把所有非雇佣时间称为“闲暇”并不公平——干完活还有东西要清洗、修理、准备、宰杀。不过，在照明和供暖普及之前，农民的冬天确实懒散得超乎想象（读过的记载说那是难以忍受的无聊）。最有力的反证是：如果前工业时代真有大量闲暇，为什么平民几乎没有发展出什么休闲活动？没有体育、游戏、文学。休闲活动的繁荣恰恰出现在40小时工作制和家电普及之后。这篇文章很大程度上是对贫穷的浪漫化。
legitster查看英文原文
This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were for the average peasant, whether idyllic or not (accounts I have read make it sound incredibly, incessantly dull). And I think the best evidence we have that we are overrating the quality of pre-industrial leisure time is that people developed almost no leisure activities! Common people had almost no sports, no games (beyond precursors to Bocce or backgammon), no literature! They supposedly had half a year of doing nothing, and perhaps singing and drinking was sufficient to fill the time, but you'd think they would show lots of other innovations. Or even steal the activities of the rich (organized sports)! Instead you don't see leisure activities develop until the rise of the 40 hour workweek and the availability of consumer appliances. Edit: I hope people understand that the argument the article presents is largely a romanticization of poverty.
文章结论颠覆常识，且作者刻意回避与现代工时的直接对比
“他们只工作到挣够习惯性收入为止——每年约120天，总计约1440小时”——这和我学到的一切都相反：平民阶层从封建时代到工业革命一直在无休止地劳作。另外奇怪的是，作者没有指出美国现代40小时工作制一年正好约2040小时。
SavantIdiot查看英文原文
> And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). This goes against everything I've been taught, that the plebian class basically toiled endlessly, from Feudal Times to Industrial Revolution before labor laws to today's "multiple low-wage-jobs to survive". EDIT: Also odd that the author doesn't point out that ~2040 hours is the yearly hours in a modern 40-hour workweek in the US, give or take a few holidays.
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