> What nonsense is this? The purpose of work is to generate material wealth, so that the population and civilization can survive at a high standard of living, without the system collapsing.
The purpose ought to be that, but surely a cursory glance at the world around us showed we have strayed, trapping ourselves in a rat race rather than relaxing with the abundance we've already achieved.
A great example of this is https://johnjayeconomics.org/prison-labor-in-u-s-state-priso... . Prison labor has delayed per-capita, and is often a reward (feeling of purpose vs terrible boredom). That might sound absurd, but I'd say it is just a microcosm of the world outside bars.
> > Since we haven't yet found a stable social solution for people not working and having purpose
I hope this is a bit tongue in cheak. First let's stop artificially starving and humiliating people who don't have work. Then I bet they will do well finding themselves purpose.
> The historical solution advocated by earlier U.S. politicians and economists was to maximize long-run wages by investing in agricultural productivity that had the potential to raise the net-product at the margin of cultivation, then to eliminate land speculation to bring the margin of cultivation to cities, then to give the unemployed free land.
Not quite sure what you are referring too, but yes, we should ratchet down labor hours with increasing productivity rather than increasing (rarely fulfilling, environmentally degrading) consumption.