| May I suggest you read "The Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber (may he rest in peace).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-the-ut... He argues that we've built a giant bureaucracy, most jobs are bullshit jobs (he created that term), and most work is a scam. We could have UBI and most people working just a few hours per week, but that much freedom is dangerous. Politicians might loose power. More seriously, watch The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04,
which describes the creation and rise of marketing as a social force in the 1900s; how the consumer-based society was created. A large driver of this was the need to "control the masses", because if they weren't controlled bad things happened. Like world wars or crystal nights. Bullshit jobs and an all-encompassing bureaucracy, keeping people working all the time and unable to think, is our current social technique for controlling the masses. |
This strikes like reaching, when a simpler explanation will suffice: automation improves productivity, but the owners of capital have decided that it is better to pocket the profits than to reduce the working hours or provide UBI.