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A substantial fraction of humans in WEIRD societies don’t do their tasks when they don’t feel like it, and they spend most of two decades being trained to do it. Most humans are not historically that reliable. It’s incredibly difficult, verging on impossible, to turn hunter gatherers into agriculturalists. Turning agriculturalists into industrial workers is comparatively easy but still the work of decades. People really, really hate being told what to do, being micromanaged, being punctual, being ranked, doing work that feels meaningless, practically the entire suite of behaviors necessary for industrial society.

> And that was a theme that cropped up again in Professor Blumin’s class, that there were two great working class traditions that echoed through the ages, and they were

> 1) avoiding work and 2) drinking

...

> Those great satanic mills, where women and children worked in shifts at great water- or steam-driven sewing and spinning machines, stories of little kids getting their hands mangled by the machinery? One of the major reasons women and children were preferred was because they would actually show up on time every day, and stay sober around all those hand-manglers.

https://kontextmaschine.tumblr.com/post/96390732283/happy-la...




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