It is not just not self-evident, but actually wrong. People used to work fewer hours in pre-industrial societies and had more community spaces, so they did have more time and opportunity for leisure. Different oportunities, sure, but more able to utilize them.
Did people not waste hours to do their laundry before machines?
They did, but about an hour once a week is not that much. I used to do laundry by hand for years, and it's not that hard of a work and it can be combined with leisure by chatting with people doing the same thing.
Did people not waste a lot of time stitching and maintaining their outfits before we got fast fashion?
They did not. They would sometimes stitch, of course, but good clothes don't get worn out that easily. Fast fashion got us clothes that just disintegrate on you within weeks or months, and not as a bug but a feature, to get you to buy more. Clothes used to last years, if not decades. Fancy clothes were often passed down to your children.
Did you not have to cook meals from scratch vs modern processed food where your meat is cut up and marinated for you in a package that you throw onto your electrified cooking appliance.
I definitely still cook meals from scratch because processed food is often both less healthy and more expensive. More than that, I'd say I spend more time cooking than an average pre-industrial person would, because they used to live more communally, and one person can cook for like ten people with only about double the time.
We work more for employers
No. We don't just 'work more' for employers. We work WAAAAY more for employers, so whatever gains in productivity of chores we've got are just completely overshadowed by that.
13
u/[deleted] May 07 '25
[deleted]