And, for most of human history, just surviving was a real challenge. Half of all children died even up to the 1780s. And, if you lived, you were probably a serf, living in a dirt hut, wearing a tunic which was a long piece of cloth folded in half with a hole for the head.
Then, they had to spend nearly half the year working on their lord’s land for free. They weren’t paid wages, so the half year they spent doing jobs for their lord was time they weren’t able to spend doing their own household tasks. That was just the “taxes” that they had to pay with labour. In their “free time” they had to do all the basic tasks like get firewood for their homes, mill their flour and bake their bread, spin cloth for their clothes, take care of their farm animals, tend their crops, etc. OTOH, they did get frequent religious holy days (holidays). But, a religious holiday didn’t mean a completely free day. It was just one where you weren’t expected to work on your lord’s plantation. But, all your basic household tasks still needed doing.
The real difference is that peasants back then probably believed the priests who told them that the aristocracy were selected by a god. Many of them probably couldn’t even conceive of a world where they could live like that. Meanwhile, in the modern world, we’re told that Elon Musk and Bill Gates got where they were through smarts and hard work. We should know better. We should be taxing the ultra-rich into non-existence so that maybe we still spend 1/3 of our lives working, but at least there’s a safety net when we get sick or injured.
And, for most of human history, just surviving was a real challenge. Half of all children died even up to the 1780s. And, if you lived, you were probably a serf, living in a dirt hut, wearing a tunic which was a long piece of cloth folded in half with a hole for the head.
Then, they had to spend nearly half the year working on their lord’s land for free. They weren’t paid wages, so the half year they spent doing jobs for their lord was time they weren’t able to spend doing their own household tasks. That was just the “taxes” that they had to pay with labour. In their “free time” they had to do all the basic tasks like get firewood for their homes, mill their flour and bake their bread, spin cloth for their clothes, take care of their farm animals, tend their crops, etc. OTOH, they did get frequent religious holy days (holidays). But, a religious holiday didn’t mean a completely free day. It was just one where you weren’t expected to work on your lord’s plantation. But, all your basic household tasks still needed doing.
The real difference is that peasants back then probably believed the priests who told them that the aristocracy were selected by a god. Many of them probably couldn’t even conceive of a world where they could live like that. Meanwhile, in the modern world, we’re told that Elon Musk and Bill Gates got where they were through smarts and hard work. We should know better. We should be taxing the ultra-rich into non-existence so that maybe we still spend 1/3 of our lives working, but at least there’s a safety net when we get sick or injured.