In our short lives, work will probably be the most fulfilling endeavor we undertake, and we should be grateful that there are so many great companies willing to offer jobs to workers like us.
I sure hope this was intended to be sarcastic. I have always found my job interesting and rewarding, but I think most people (myself included) would attribute personal relationships to be a lot more fulfilling.
If your compensation agreement is based on x-hours of work and you deliberately put in less to “choose life” then you are slacking. You agreed to exchange a fixed amount of time for a fixed amount of money and are not delivering on your promise because you are slacking. I wouldn’t call it theft, but it’s definitely slacking.
contract standards at some point in history don't dictate ethics just as laws don't either. it's not as obvious and rule-based as you suggest.
it's also peculiar in my opinion to point out worker laziness without apparent recognition of the worker-employer power dynamic where wage theft vastly outweighs so called time theft dollar to dollar
You can rationalize all you'd like, but you made an agreement under sound mind and choosing to not fulfill it is slacking. It's dishonest. Wage theft or anything else is immaterial to your agreement. You are free to leave at any time and market yourself to another employer if you no longer wish to partner with your current employer. Or, if you feel your agreement is no longer fair or meets your goals, you can speak with your employer about changing the terms of the agreement.
you're atomizing the solution space by saying that workers must negotiate their conditions individually with their employers directly. that's not how this stuff has changed in the past and how we got to where the current status quo is with contracts. you're even repeating union busting talking points that are hardly settled ethics