We started with an unlimited workweek (often 12+ hours a day all day) and reduced it to 40 hours with a weekend and a paid lunch. (Remember the movie 9 to 5 that was typical. Then it became 9-6 with unpaid lunch.)
Around the Reagan era, Osha got defunded so it didn't have time to deal with all the labor violations, which was part of the enshittification.
Who knew it would lead to a nazi uprising?
Turns out everyone did. The industrialist intellegentsia actually warned this would happen based on historical precedent, but the boomer generation was all fuck the future including their own kids. To be fair, prior generations hating later generatiobs was the norm by the time it was their turn.
Only once religious bosses invented the mechanical clock. Before that we were taking winter off, and being fed meat at work (which was mostly done outside, in groups):
It's always bittersweet when explaining to someone what was stolen from us, when they are convinced that we now have it so much better than back then. Brainwashing is a hell of a drug.
I hope we do. I started working for myself and I've only got my tools on maybe 30hrs a week now, it's pretty great. Most days I can put in a solid 5 or 6 hours and be good. I want that for everyone.
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." - K.M.
I hate that often Microsoft Teams is the only piece of software I can get to work for sharing a screen with the layman. Many cross-platform user-friendly options don’t work reliably on Linux, but by some weird twist of fate, I get it to work more often than anything else.
Yes, for an IT person’s own solution, you’d just use a VPN or something, but I’m rarely working with people that are technical enough for this.