[chiaro]

>Obviously, the less hours of required work needed, the better for the average worker.

This isn't obvious at all. Because of increased capital (skills, knowledge, labor-saving and output-multiplying machinery and technologies) an hour of my work is worth, in real terms, more in a contemporary society than were I to be raised in a h/g society. The net marginal benefit of an additional hour of work is a factor of both this, and the value of leisure time.

With the capital, human and otherwise, at most of our disposal, anyone here could subsist on a native polynesian standard of living with considerably less work than a native polynesian.