[krab]

There are many ways our lives are better. See for example infant mortality. To be born mere sixty or eighty years earlier would mean for me personally to die at three months of age. All my time is extra time if you look at it from this perspective.

[claudiawerner]

I don't think anyone disputes that such metrics are better than before; the issue is staying complacent with what we have in a world where we are seeing yet another wave of potential productivity gains being captured by people who can afford to use it to gain more time. Saying "Things are better than they've ever been, why complain?" feels like the wrong approach.

"Hey, at least I'm not dead." as the answer to "Why haven't we seen meaningful increases in free time for first world workers over the past three decades?" is a real head-scratcher.

[krab]

I mean that we, as a society, had chosen more goods and higher standard of living instead of free time.

It's not an exclusive choice either. At least in Europe, the amount of free time grows with each generation. 37.5 hours per week, 5 weeks vacation and many bank holidays is a significant change from how much people worked in the fifties.

Yes, we can do better. But both our wealth and our free time are visibly improving.

[satvikpendem]

Who is staying complacent? We don't have increases in free time because work is not zero sum; technology enabled more productive work to be done (human computers versus, well, electronic computers) but we still have a lot more work to do. We haven't even reached type 1 on the Kardashev scale, meaning that we have yet more to do.

AI will similarly increase out productivity but the work will still continue, because humans are an inexhaustible species, we always want to do more and more.