[trowawee]

I don't actually think your second point is correct on either a historical or practical level. Historically, humans had a lot of what would now be considered downtime, especially in certain societies. And practically, nothing actually "requires" that except for the fact that we've set up society in such a way to allow some people get to grow wildly wealthy on the backs on the labor of most of the people putting in that actual work. That's the result of a series of choices, and could absolutely be changed. Nothing "required" about it.

[mercer]

Even in recent history my experience in countries that haven't caught up with the 'productive' Western-Europe approach contain a lot of downtime. The experience was often annoying for us Northern-Europeans, but in hindsight seemed moderately healthier to me.

It involved a bunch of guys standing around on construction sites sort of getting stuff done, but mostly when the owner was present, and enjoying their time outside part of the time when the owner was not.

Or women spending easily 50% of their time in their shops not selling things but chatting with various other women, or watching their kids.

I wasn't a fan of the clear gender-separation, but it was interesting to see that both men and women spent much of their day interacting in personally meaningful ways with their neighbors/customers, rather than bleeping products as fast as they could to hit some kind of target.

[rayiner]

Fun fact: if you took all the income in the U.S. (labor + capital) and distributed it evenly, every adult person would make about $65,000. Quite comfortable, and maybe a big improvement on the status quo, but still "working stiff" territory. We still live in an era where America's protestant work ethic is relevant. Maybe that'll change decades from now, but we're still quite a ways away from being in a post-scarcity society.

[bluquark]

Do you remember your source? I'd be interested to see the breakdown.

[rayiner]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobmcteer/2012/11/30/the-income...

[dabbledash]

That would more than double the current average income. Right now the average family of four makes about 60k.

[rayiner]

The OP suggested that people could work a lot less if our system wasn’t designed for making some people rich. But folks makin $65k still work eight hours a day, often more. People who can make $65k almost invariably choose to increase consumption rather than decrease hours and income. Our economy doesn’t have so much excess in it going to rich people that we could have both the consumption we want and also work a lot less.

[xapata]

Depends what you mean by post-scarcity. For example, if supermarkets weren't as interested in profit, they might choose a lower price point which would allow them to sell "ugly" produce. I've seen many different estimates of how much produce is discarded for ugliness, but all indicate a large portion.

The knock-on effects of profit-seeking are large. And not all bad, of course.

[rayiner]

Supermarkets make almost no profit. It’s people who want better looking fruit.

[xapata]

So how is it that there's such a large variation in the price of produce at different supermarkets?

[thwy12321]

Its really astonishing to me how wealthy some people are getting from others work. I completely support people getting wildly rich from their own efforts, but from the way that our society is structured, most wealth is just capturing the value of another persons labor.

[always_good]

Though this analysis often leaves out risk.

Classic example being to take on $100k of debt to start a business and then paying workers $20/hour. Only one person is on the hook for $100k and they are rewarded accordingly if it pays off.

It's easy for the workers to then conspire about how unfair it is that the debtor isn't out there in the sun like them, but that's not a very complete picture of reality. Zero risk is part of the workers' compensation.

[sarchertech]

There have been centuries of philosophical debate on this subject. I don't think anyone who seriously looks at the topic is leaving out risk.

The argument (outside of Marxist circles) is more to do with whether business owners are being overcompensated because owners are able to exploit the market failures of the labor market--information asymmetry, power imbalances, quasi monopsony positions, government assistance for low paid employees etc...

There are also arguments about whether owners are being overprotected from risks by relatively recent concepts like limited liability (and more direct forms of corporate welfare), and arguments that workers aren't really in a zero risk position.

[gascan]

From what I recall, the Hadza (hunter gatherers of Tanzania) work ~6 hours a day. Sure, 8 hours a day is more, but same ballpark.

[akiselev]

That six hours of work includes their commute and all of the household chores, so to speak, that we have to do in our off time.