That's such a great point. It's a signal that something is wrong if automating tedious work away creates more misery instead of less.
I also think "go do farmwork if your job sucks" is dismissive and below the standards of HN discussions. There's always something worse, that doesn't mean we shouldn't ever complain.
It has always been a misery, even back to biblical times. In fact, having to work for his living was the original punishment for Adam.
Ancient Greeks and Romans, as another example, considered work beneath the dignity of free citizens. Not even Christianism was pro-work for the better part of 2 millennia. Older societies valued the fruits of work, but not work itself as much. Work only became a virtue in modern times because of the protestant-derived work ethic and the Horatio Alger types.
>* Maybe we should all go back to working in the fields from sunrise to sunset and avoid all this 'tedious work' for regular pay, benefits, vacation time, lunch breaks and closing bells.*
You'd be surprised. People work more in tedious cubicles than they did in medieval times (where scholars calculate something like 150+ days of the year devoted to festivities and holidays). Much less stressed, too, especially for those farmers free from feudal lords asking for most of their produce. The life of a farmer in France (and I know of several) is so much better (in vacation time, lunch breaks and closing bells -- and sometimes in pay too) than the average office drone that it's not even funny.
But that's a strawman, anyway, as nobody suggested we get back to the farms.
[1]https://www.ft.com/content/44096ed2-eeb0-11e4-a5cd-00144feab...
“Rapidly rising migrant wages in cities and shortages of low-skilled labor suggest that fewer people than before — and fewer than warranted on economic grounds — choose to leave the countryside to move to the city.”
And, from the same article:
"Becoming a migrant was a matter of necessity for her and her husband as they attempted to save their family from a crushing debt. She is now materially wealthier than she could ever be from working her family’s tiny plot of land. But the things she has lost, including her marriage and the chance to watch her two daughters (now aged 14 and 21) grow into young women, make it hard to convince herself she made the right choice. For her and her family, the things they held most precious have been destroyed in the process of trying to save them".
It's easy to be lured by BS promises of wealth and consumerism and life in the "big city" and many did. But even the article you've posted argues that the trend is reversing...
The idea that 40-50 is some magic number is the more ridicouls claim imo. If anything, progress, technology, and automation should naturally drive down hours needed per week. No one at my job does nearly the same amount of work we did 10-15 years ago. Our Fridays are all 'work from home' which is code for 'maybe check your email or finish up something.'
Our work world is only changing. Rolling with the changes makes sense to me and 35 hour or 4 day work-weeks seem like the a rational change. We should be benefiting from automation, not punished by it by pretending to be busy or working at much slower paces in fear of layoffs.
Also French experiemnt only lasted until 2004, when reforms were put in to raise the maximum amount of work allowable per month. I think its disingenuous to say that it 'failed.' It had a short 4 year run almost two decades ago. The world of 2017 is very different from the world of 2000-2004.