I couldn’t even begin to calculate it. I have no idea how long it took to produce a lot of the stuff I use on a daily basis, and I don’t even know where to start.

Like, for instance, I drink a cup of tea every morning. I like black tea with sugar. In order for me to have tea in the morning in the first place, someone had to make the stove in my apartment, someone had to install it. A gasman had to hook it up to the gas system, and employees at the gas plant have to work to make sure the system has enough gas for not only my morning tea, but also everyone else’s cooking needs around the time that I made tea. Someone had to make the kettle I use, someone had to transport it to a store, then someone had to sell it to me. A plumber had to install the water system in my apartment, and hook the sink up to it. workers at the water plant have to filter the water and make sure that I have water during the same period when thousands of people in my area are taking showers, washing dishes, etc. A farmer had to grow the tea, over a course of months - do I count the months, or just the active working time? - and farmhands had to harvest it. Lipton then had to process, bag, package, and ship the tea to stores, where then a worker had to stock the shelves with the tea, and another had to sell said tea. I use primarily cane sugar, which means a farmer in South America planted the cane, tended to it, then harvested it. That cane was then transported to a processing centre where workers turned the raw cane into raw sugar, then separated the sugar to make it pure. Then that sugar needed to be transported - likely by boat - to the United States and shipped via trucks to the packaging plant, where the sugar is then put into a branded bag and shipped to stores, where again a worker had to stock the shelves, and an other had to sell the sugar to me. We’re already at potentially hundreds of hours of work, and we’re not even done yet. Next, I can’t just make hot tea in my hands, so I need a mug. which means workers had to dig the materials needed to make ceramics out of the ground, ship it to a processor to refine it, then ship the refined material to a mug maker. Who then shipped the mugs to get artwork put on them. Then shipped to a store, and again sold to me. Lastly, the spoon. Iron ore had to be mined from the ground, refined, shipped to a manufacturer, turned into a spoon, then shipped to the store where I bought it.

This is just one thing that takes me maybe 15 minutes a morning, constructed of only 4 core components (there are more in the process of making the parts, but this is already a book long comment) and it’s already impossible to really know how many total hours were required to make it possible for me to do. We could go into the hundreds of hours my breakfast would take to make possible, the hundreds of hours it would take to make my computer possible, etc. In a day, I probably consume thousands upon thousands of hours worth of labour.

As a Westerner, most likely WAY more than I’m personally comfortable with. Even simply existing in a Western country means that a lot of people, often from less wealthy places, are making my life possible.

I’m going to invoke blissful ignorance on this one… cause it’s likely an amount I would be seriously uncomfortable with. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that people specialize though. I consume products that a lot of people put time into rather frivolously. But I also put a lot of time into my work, that end-users consumer rather frivolously as well. It’s a cycle and we all play our part in some aspect. Of course, ignoring all the issues with labor inequality.

Not too much I think. I don’t consume many products besides the bare essentials of what I need to survive. Automation means no individual product takes too much labor to produce. Maybe a couple hours I’d think.