re: The average work week in the 1890s was 100 hours

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I know a lot of successful people that put in 100 hours a week.

You lazy, broke dick pieces of shits wouldn't understand hard work.

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You may be trolling but I know that at the peak of our startup enterprise when we employed over 400 people from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico on fluid jobsites performing utility right-of-way and U.S. Forest Service timber stand maintenance contracts that I easily worked 100+ hours a week for months at a time.

I had no other choice at the time. We had millions of dollar's worth of high-stake, big money, time-sensitive contracts that had extremely high daily operating costs with delayed invoice payments until our work had been audited (which they always took their sweet arse time on doing), tons of collaborators on each contract, and being that one human being is complicated enough as it is, let alone dealing with 400 of them with only a handful of operation managers to oversee multiple jobsites and multiple foremen meant that I, the general manager, had to work myself to the bone.

I did irreparable damage to my body during those years (one example is blowing my knee out on a jobsite due to pure exhaustion and having to get surgery as a result), and I did damn-near irreparable damage to my marriage and other relationships and a whole lot more bad shite.

There comes a point when too much becomes not enough and the return on time invested begins to dip deeply into the red. I'd say that point for me is 70 hours a week for sustained weeks at a time. I pull 70 a week intermittently on a regular basis, especially this time of year, but anything more and it's just not worth it. At that point it's either time for me to throw money at the problem or adjust my game plan.

The folks you know who work 100 hours weeks consecutively won't do it for a sustained, decades-long amount of time because they'll either be dead from the stress or too busy with divorce proceedings, the ills of a now-grown child without any resemblance of who his parent is, etcetera. The ramifications of working that much are too numerous to even count.

Anything over 70 hours a week for consecutive months at a time is for the mfing birds. It's a foolish thing to do, at best.

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The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

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Well, it ended slavery, and it appears that it is ending warfare and poverty. As you pointed out, it increased lifespan, and as this thread points out, it radically reduced the work week. Quite a disaster.

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This all changed around the 20s with progressive movements

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Technology has been the biggest driver. Everything from farming to industry became far less labor intensive.

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There was so much more freedom.

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So many more toothaches and other ailments, too. Also, a life expectancy in the 50's.

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People are miserable now because we’re not wired to have so much leisure time

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Lots of lazy AF people out there...

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The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

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A lot of scary words here and countless accusations, but not a single example of HOW the Industrial Revolution directly led to anything on this list of grievances and atrocities.

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The populace is basically as smart as it’s ever been

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Debatable

Those people worked harder, not smarter.

Thanks but I’m not sure there’d be any records. The first 10 years of their childhood they lived in tents on the outskirts of town, if you can even fathom that. I still wonder if they were f-ing with me when they told me that.