[0thgen]

it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought

are we worse off than we were before industrial automation? I thought the economics said the opposite (even if we exclude the eastern nations that benefits from western job loss from our utilitarian analysis here -- which we shouldn't)

that meme was really good btw

[taway_6PplYu5]

> it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought

May I suggest your read Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules"?

We've created a society which requires us to spend oodles of hours doing bullshit work and administer hundreds of bullshit services.

We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks. We (as a society) just chose not to.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks

Assuming zero innovation or growth, yes. If a society is comfortable opting into declining relative living standards, they should have the right to do so. But framing this is a costless trade-off is facile.

Better argument: we can afford to feed, house, clothe and care for every American, possibly, almost every human. (The long tail is exhaustingly costly.) But it would come at the expense of some peoples’ lifestyles, majorly, and everyone’s, in small ways. It almost certainly doesn’t occur with a reduced work week and current adolescence/education and retirement expectations.

[0thgen]

Society's aren't individuals. They are collections of many individuals. I don't think society "chooses" to do or not do things in the same way we assume humans "choose" to do or not do things.

I don't think the complexity of human society can be boiled down to "we just choose not be perfect"