Work.

Sources:
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Music:
"Past," by Nctrnm
"Heliograph," by Chris Zabriskie
"Hallon," by Christian Bjoerklund

[Tag]

Getting off of work and watching this hits different

[beretperson]

Boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime,
That's why I watch Historia Civilis
On company time

[MattBalamaci]

You see, we’re not ALWAYS thinking about Rome…

[viktorkolaric]

The most tragic part is that most of that work is unnecessary. Planned obsolescence and consumerism mean that vast majority of stuff produced is thrown away. We are killing ourselves for nothing but some billionaire's obsession with ticking up his high score.

[MEyck]

When my father lead a contruction departmen in Germany he always provided free food and beer to all the employees and workers. Nevertheless his department was always the most productive and always in the green. He still received complaints from leading manager because of ''high hospitality costs"...

[chelloho]

I implored my boss to reduce my daily labour time to 6 hours. He was apprehensive at first, but conceded after taking my pocket watch. I was overjoyed!

[Helfinator]

When I was an intern working in the maintenance department of a chemical factory, I was always told by the old foremen that you can only expect to reasonably get 4-6 hours out of someone during a day’s work. Seems like those old hands knew what they were talking about

[amygodward]

I work in agriculture in southern France. Unless we are avoiding the heat at the height of summer, we arrive at 7:30, have a café and patisserie with everyone, complimented from the boss, start at 8, short coffee break at 10, then for 12 midday, we go home and have lunch with our families and have a sieste (nap), before restarting at 2pm and finishing up the day's jobs for 5pm. If you finish early, you leave early. It sounds too good to be true because it sadly is. While a rich harvest means lots of work, a ruined harvest from bad weather can mean that your peachy 3 month contract can be swindled down to only 10 hours a week, making the poverty line look pretty. So any time you earn a decent amount of money, it all goes to saving, quite literally, for a rainy day!

[cassielee]

The best job I ever had was making sandwiches as fast as possible from 8 am to 12 noon. I’d go shopping, do some errands, go home for lunch and the rest of the day was mine. I made the huge mistake of working my way up to management.

[bendonatier]

I feel like a history on peasant revolts might make an interesting follow up.

[shingshongshamalama]

Labour went from "this is how much work I need doing, please get it done" to "this is how much time I'm getting out of you, do as much work as possible." Which just intrinsically incentivizes employers to squeeze as much work as possible out of employees at an unsustainable rate.

[didokell]

Ive never hated a blue square so much in my life

[emperorvader]

The Factory I work in used to have 6 people per large line, and 4 per small line. That was 15 years ago, now there is 2 people per small line, and 3 people per large line. Yet we are expected to do double the work. Working used to be painless, relaxed and enjoyable. Now it is incredibly painful; if you do the job right you’ll experience pains in your chest, hands, and feet. If you don’t do it the right way it’s your spine instead of your chest.

[CloudLadder-ce]

To throw a personal story out there:
I once worked in a factory that used a 24 hour operation 4 shift system where a crew would work 12 hours then hand off to the next crew who would work the next 12. You would work 4 days in a row, then get the next 4 off.
By some modern labor miracle the factory owners for the most part allowed the workers to self organize, and the result of that was pretty strikingly similar to what you describe here, we would generally work for about 2 hours, then break for 1 with the exception of the few hours right before and after handoff just to get everything in order. On average we only spent about 8 of those 12 hours working. Despite it being a pretty physically demanding job in a less than pleasant environment (production floor was ~100 degrees all day) it rarely ever felt like much stress built up since a reasonably significant break was generally not far away.
and as a side note, this didn't at all make people lazy, when things got tough we ourselves canceled breaks and would go pedal to the metal for the full 12 hours without any interaction with management.
I've also done work for small construction contractors where the owner of the business was actually working along side us, and there we also tended towards this same general pace.
Turns out when work is organized by the people actually doing it effort is scaled to necessity

[Kronos]

Me in college: 4-6 hours class days, 4.5 months of total vacation, mostly free weekends, big lunch break. That was paired by 3 hours of train rides every weekday that gave me time to read or listen to music. That was the life.

[hermanndercheruskerfurst]

This is why kids are made to sit and do busy work in school to break them mentally and prepare them for factory work

[inferno_slayer]

Yesterday I just looked at your channel and thought, "I miss Historia Civilis, I hope he returns soon"

[TotallyRossome]

Can't help but notice that while a lot of video essays can get bloated, one of the things that got me to sit down and watch this intently was that it was in a nice, easily digestible 30 minute chunk.

[mri]

Wtf, i’ve always felt 4-6 hours felt wayy better and my mind much more active and clear, but the dread of that 7th to 8 hour and the long drive home, you’re right, 4-6 is perfect work day.

[Kronos]

Fun fact: until like 50 years ago, rural and construction workers were also treated just like the middle ages in rural Portugal. My grandparents aldo did nap time after lunch. Our national dish was a stew made for workers to provide them with strength.