That link is an unsourced opinion piece on a site belonging to something called the Adam Smith Institute. I'm gonna need something a bit more credible before I believe it tbh.
The Adam smith institute is a right wing free market think tank with likely very questionable donors. wiki It likely doesn't really do research but takes sources that support their preexisting believes and retells them.
Certainly it was at least very hard to make the capitalist exploitation of the worker so all encompassing before the invention of the mechanical watch (Although there was likely a ton of housework and the general situation was garbage what with feudal lords and all that) . It then likely exploded with the industrial revolution and at least in places where the working class managed to emancipate themselves got somewhat cut back. Now especially for countries outside of the west and increasingly also the US and parts of EU it's likely getting worse, especially with multi employment and precarious employment(gig work, semi self employment, 0h contracts, mechanical turk ...).
Generally i feel work where you or your peers get to keep the total output of your work isn't really a problem, it's a problem when your work gets appropriated into this terrible machine and as a result you are alienated from the work.
I always find it kinda funny when the right turns to Adam Smith. Smith thought that the free market would free us from the monopolistic tendencies of the mercantile system. (Although he wouldn't have written it as such, as the term 'monopoly' wasn't nearly as taxonomically precise as it is now.) If he was alive today, he'd probably be rather dismayed at the failures of capitalism.
But then again, I guess that's the right's shtick: coopt any idea that they can and pervert it to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Anyways, here's Smith:
The object, besides, of the greater part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can: which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new adventurers from entering into the trade. (The Wealth of Nations V.i.e.10)
The time was very different. Most people lived and worked in the country, not in cities, so de facto they couldn't control them however they liked. Christian Church was also imposing morality over everything, which means they couldn't enslave people as easily as today.
We are living in neo-feudalism. Your boss is a lord, and your only freedom is to choose a lord, provided this lord accept you.
If that's ok too, I have read a book by an anthropologist who claims the opposite (that in fact people in the past had more leisure than today). I can look up a good quote tomorrow. For the claim in the post, I'm afraid, there ain't no good sources, as for most alternative facts.
I mean it seems like the sort of thing people are just ready to believe because "we have technology now so we must have better lives" despite loads of that technology being turned towards controlling us.
As for the book, it wouldn't be Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, would it?
They loved showing off what spices they had, like "yo this is a nutmeg pie, that's right I got nutmeg bitches." Some of the recipes are actually hilarious cause they seem to be based around showing off your spices, the original lasagna for example.
What's also funny is the foods peasants could afford and eat, were at least to our modern diet a lot healthier than what the lord would eat. They'd be eating root vegetables, cabbage, squash, porridges. Cheese as well because it was a method of preservation and the separated whey had it's own uses, lot of peasants made their own cheese. Meanwhile the lord would be eating marrow and fatty salted meats, hunting his own game, or more like wanting people to believe he did so trying to curate that image of himself. Maybe commission a "morning hunt" portrait of himself in case you weren't sure.
At least ye'd probably get to eat yer daily porridge next to a fuckin' goose. May not be your goose, or the village goose, but a fine goose and an important part of peasantry nonetheless. Better than serfs get.. Eatin' their porridge next to a mule and a rake.
I do. Common sense would take care of me better than this healthcare system. All the knowledge we have serves capital, not me, day to day, in my silly little life.
There was a recent report (rather exagerrated but still) which claimed that in the 1930s it took 65 hours of human labour a week to run a household. Today it takes 3. Things were worse back in medieval days.
I do too. My boss is an asshole though, spends all her time on lemmy shitposting and then tells me to work harder. But then again, I am my own boss, so PEBCAK.
Common missconception: people didn't just die in their thirties, the average is brought down somewhat hard by lots of infant death, childbirth complications and the like.
@Prunebutt says it right, it's the advancements in medicine, but thats more reactively treating diseases than proactively lengthening the lifespan.