The Abolition of Work (1985)

Besides moon colonies and flying cars, this is another of the predictions of how the future would like that has turned out quite different than what was expected.

It was supposed that we would work less, either involuntarily because the bad robots and computers took our jobs and made us obsolete or voluntarily, because automation would free us of doing the grinding work. Ironically both scenarios somewhat came true but it didn't result in less work.

Doing work because you want to and not because you have to should be the goal. But currently I don't see this happen for the majority of the people.

If we had an unconditional basic income, we would be much closer to this ideal but I am not sure how feasible it is at all and also how disrupting to our society as a whole the introduction would be.

In such a world, one stands to gain so much by being willing to work.

And thus, the 'modern' world is born.

Keynes also drew some similar conclusions.

Link to a PDF of his essay from 1930 on the matter is here:

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/up...

Call me crazy if you like, but it seems like this article disappeared from the HN homepage a little too quickly. I know this can happen with stories linked to some sites, is primitivism.com one of them?

One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.

"What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?"

"I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone."

The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust. "Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

There's a time for work and a time for play.