>They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress.
The technological process mentioned here as Industrial Revolution, was the necessary step. It was not primarily social conflicts.
The above poster is making exactly the same point.
You are right that there was an aberration in the middle where people worked way more hours but this was when things were consolidating.
But your post implies that the preference of people was to work less hours as opposed to work more hours and earn more money, which is not the case.
And this was without surveillance tech and automated police drones or w/e else Palantir is working on right now. If we're going by historical precedent this transition won't be pretty, even if you're hoping for a nice optimistic end result.
I'm not so sure having a beefy 401k and maybe a couple of rental properties will be enough to insulate some of the more comfortable HN posters from all the potential chaos.
They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress.
During the early phase of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760–1850):
Agricultural workers who once labored seasonally were pushed into factory schedules of 12–16 hours per day, 6 days per week.
Annual labor hours often exceeded 3,000 hours per year per worker.
This was not because work became harder physically, but because capital-intensive machinery became expensive and had to run continuously to be profitable.
Time discipline replaced task-based work. Before industrialization, a farmer might stop when tasks were done; factory workers had fixed shifts.
This trend persisted into the late 19th century.