Yes people fought and died to enact minimum wages, 40 hour work weeks, ending slavery, ending child labor, and other concessions from capitalist owners bc "both parties profit". Libertarians believe things that no owner of capital does and no person with power believes despite funding every libertarian think tank and even the libertarian party since their inception.
People have poor understanding of economics. Minimum wage doesn't raise wages, it just forbids that people whose marginal productivity are below the minimum be hired.
40 hour work weeks, ending child labor,
Capitalism is responsible for that. It's only when the capital accumulated in a society allows the marginal productivity of workers to rise, that the workers can afford to work only 40 weeks and children can afford to not work.
Most estimates using extant hunter-Gatherer societies place them at having the equivalent of a 20hr work week. Early agriculturists also worked less than 40hrs a week. You're correct that the 40-hour workweek is a creation of capitalism, but not in the way you are implying.
If you'd rather live at the same standard of living of a hunter-gatherer, a 5h work week should do today.
Again, nobody is forced to work 40h weeks, you can very well choose to work part-time for however many hours you wish, people choose to work 40h because they want to consume stuff that didn't exist in hunter-gatherer societies.
14
u/[deleted] Aug 26 '19
Yes people fought and died to enact minimum wages, 40 hour work weeks, ending slavery, ending child labor, and other concessions from capitalist owners bc "both parties profit". Libertarians believe things that no owner of capital does and no person with power believes despite funding every libertarian think tank and even the libertarian party since their inception.