Coulda been born on a planet of ants that just work until they die.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Ants are working together for the same goal though. Fuck this “can’t complain cause others have it worse” attitude.
What?
Where did I lose you?
The part where you made a serious comment about a completely ridiculous fictional premise that was never intended to be serious.
People make “can’t complain cause others have it worse” comments all the time, by forgetting the “/s” alls you’re doing is feeding into that.
Ok man.
How many hours do you think the work week should have?
It's not that you can't complain because others have it worse. It's that any number (even 40) is just made up. If we worked 10, people would still complain.
- Retire at 50. Housing, clothes, food, water, power, should all be basic rights.
People will always complain.
Go read about the whites first contact with Polynesians, they literally stumbled on utopia and HATED it. They were FURIOUS these naked people surfed and sang and danced all day and farmed for about 15 seconds and had more food then they ever needed. They literally never heard about work, they had dance crew battles and picked their leaders by if they could do any cool tricks on the waves.
You sparked my interest, so I did go read about it. I didn't find anything like what you explained though. Do you have any sources?
Weren't polynesians a bunch of warrior tribes that pretty much hunted some pacific birds down to extinction and when they got their hands on gunpowder weapons one tribe pretty much obliterated every other tribe?
Why is this sub committed to undoing all of the good work that was done on reddit? This should not be a screenshot.
Just some important history, the 40 hour work week was developed as a labor concession in the automotive industry.
Most workers rarely work only 40 hours, especially when you include the on-call time when employees are expected to respond to call messages and emails.
Maybe we need to learn something from our grandparents and have another movement for 40-hour work weeks.
Plenty of countries where 35-40h/week, or even less, is the norm (and I mean it as no "not counted" extra hours)
Men were able to work 40 hours back then because women were relegated to unpaid domestic labor and childcare.
When women entered the workforce, these expectations were slow to change. So now, everyone gets to work 40+ hours and a few dozen more at home. And that's the best case scenario where both partners shared the mental load. Bonus points if they have a kid which is a 24/7 job.
In a sane world, with double the people working you would expect their hours to be halved. But that will never happen so long as corporations continue to disguise the exploitation of workers as 'feminism'.
feminism: now women can get exploited too
And it took a bunch of labor strikes with brutal crack downs on them to even get it down to 40 hours.
Henry Ford implemented the 40 hour week cause it made people more productive. Not cause he was a nice guy.
TALLER
Baller.
Lol. I had these guys beat in terms of hours, and their job was nowhere near as physical as mine was.
Now I get to be a desk jockey, and it's fucking sweet. Gonna milk it, because I put my hours in.
Milking the fuck out of mine. It's not quite a usual "desk job" but i spend a lot of time sitting at a desk.
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100% actually.
Hey, it could be worse, we could have landed on Carboby-16, which has an 80h workweek.
When the 40 hour workweek was invented, most workers had a wife at home to do chores. Now that women are working, we should all be working 20 hours a week.
That's absolute bullshit. When the 40 hour workweek was "invented", men were working 12 hour days in factories and their wives also worked. The wives sometimes worked in factories, often worked as domestic servants for richer people, or did home-based work. Home based work was often laundry or cooking for other people, not just their family. They'd sometimes also finish goods that were produced in a factory. Both partners were working 12+ days. And, while women did most of the home cooking and cleaning, it wasn't as though that's all they did.
This system ended because the workers used their power and went on strike. The result was the Haymarket Affair and is the reason that most countries, other than the US, celebrate a worker's day on May 1st. The striking workers were attacked and beaten by the cops, and then because a bomb was thrown at a cop, the leaders of an anarchist group were rounded up and hanged after show trials.
Eventually the striking workers got what they were working for: an 8 hour day. But, it took decades after the Haymarket Affair for it to happen, and it wasn't something that happened because everyone agreed it made sense. It was a long and bloody fight where that was the compromise that reduced the bloodshed.
If you want a 20 hour work week, join a union, prepare to go on strike and prepare to be beaten by the cops.
The capitalist economy did fine in the 1950s when the women were so bored they had to put random things in gelatin. Nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour workweek.
The 1950s economy was the result of:
- The New Deal
- A world war which destroyed the infrastructure of every developed economy except for the US.
The New Deal was only possible because of the Great Depression. Only that level of chaos was enough so that left-wing politicians could push through radical reforms that moved power from the elite to the workers. The reforms of the New Deal remained in place after the war, at least for a while.
The second world war saw the destruction of the industrial capacity of the UK, Germany, France and the USSR. Meanwhile the only attack on the US was an attack on military targets at a Navy base in a distant territory.
So, if you want an economy similar to the 1950s, arrange for a world war which somehow leaves the US unscathed but destroys every other similarly developed economy, then arrange for a great depression which destroys the economy to such an extent that radical reforms can be enacted to hand power to the average worker.
Yes, of course nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour work week. But, the people with the power aren't going to just allow that to happen. The 40 hour work week only happened with a massive series of strikes that were brutally put down by the cops. The change to a 20 hour week isn't just going to happen because some workers think it would be cool.
But making the workers think it would be cool is the first step to getting them to die for it.
Nope. 40 each minimum to pay the mortgage.
Fucking kill me.
I hate the random black pixel in the down left corner. Go away, leave me alone!!!11!
Now it has a friend.
Be glad you weren't born 100 years earlier with a 100 hour work week.
be glad you weren't born on a desolate island surrounded only by sharks and inhabited only by poisonous food
point is, don't compare yourself to the worst alternative. labor hours spiked around 1800-1900, but were significantly lower before and after that.
I'm aware of that. I read referring to this particular period. Earlier times may have had fewer working hours but had their own drawbacks, not just cave bears.
Or be sad you weren't born 10.000 years earlier with a 15 hour work week.
Could've lived in the galaxy where this meme was white text on a black background
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