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>Why do we work five days a week until we're old and getting ready to die?

Capitalism requires us trade our labor for the compensation necessary to buy food, clothing and shelter until we're old and our labor is no longer worth anything to the market.

Also, because of the Jewish Sabbath, and later because of unions and labor laws, since the norm used to be a seven day workweek[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History

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The secret is to turn what you like doing in your free time into something profitable. Many of us on here love to code and do it in our spare time. We also do it for a living. You can even guide the work you do at your job by speaking up.

Any living thing must somehow get food and shelter, and that requires work. I don't think it's limited to an economic system in particular.

I think it's obvious given the context of this thread that by "work" I meant labor traded for financial compensation as the means of procuring food and shelter through the marketplace, not work in the sense of literal physical activity.

And in that sense, capitalism is the only system in which that is required.

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