[cookiecaper]

In fantasy world, we'd all be renaissance men, making beautiful art, building useful products, etc.

In the real world, 99% of us would be bored out of our minds with rapidly-declining health, rapidly-declining self-esteem brought on by our unexpectedly poor handling of time, and a continuing unfulfilled search for stimulation that will mostly get filled by more mindless "entertainment" and consumerism/shopping.

Our social lives would decay as there'd be no in-built workplace community, and this is exacerbated by today's convention of small or totally childless families. We'd lose respect for one another. Productivity would plummet as few people would have any incentive to work cooperatively anymore (and if you can't imperil someone's paycheck, they will usually not contribute; for all of the open-source developers, how many are only in it because their paycheck and/or job prospects are somehow tied to it, and even including that number, how many more closed-source developers are there?). Volunteers don't take firm direction well, and that kind of direction is necessary to keep a successful, efficient enterprise running.

There are plenty of windows into this imaginary world without obligatory labor today, and they do not make it look like a pleasant place.