Some people can make it work, but imo it's an orange flag for a path to burn-out, especially if it's an excessive number of hours and not a standard 9-5 (with all the rest of their clients put together). A lot of times contractors work for multiple clients at one time, so it's easy to forget "your hours" are not their only ones.

But it was not the company asking for more hours from the contractor, but the other way round. If they need to work more because they need the money, maybe it would be better to let them?

From the text I would assume Pete was working full time for this company. This is also not unusual for my company.

In Germany there are laws against this type of 'contracting' as you seem/are fully depending on one client.

This German law sucks, Germany simply doesn't like independent people. It is also not "contracting", but contracting.

Ultimately, once again, the government is telling me how I have to work or run my business. I didn't ask them to do that, and I don't want them to do that.