| > planting and harvesting rice, fishing, spending about a month of making clay bricks and letting them dry in the sun to build a house These are all things that I can't do. On top of that, even if I could build a house from clay bricks that I made myself, I would be sleeping outside until the bricks and house were complete. This doesn't sound like a very good counterpoint to me. I never said that working in a big city is the _only_ way to live. My point is only that the modern economy allows us to provide goods and services to other people and businesses, which in turn allows a small subset of workers to provide the necessary food and goods for survival of the entire society. So, from that angle, working is not useless, it is just a proxy for what you would be doing if you had to provide food and shelter for yourself. Some people find this idea of living off the land and growing your own food to be romantic. I don't, I enjoy modern society, and I feel like 40 hours a week is a ridiculously small investment to put in for what I get in return. In the example you gave, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that 90% of current people would actually starve and die if they tried it. This TED talk speaker _grew up in rural Thailand_ and apparently had all of the tools to live this way. Most of us do not have that experience. Very uninteresting counterpoint. |