[skidoo]

No offense, but I disagree with pretty much all of this. We work more than our ancestors do, not to make an easier life, but for the sake of incorporating the ephemeral and inconsequential into our lives. And an agrarian lifestyle can be loads of fun, actually. I got more of a sense of accomplishment helping on my grandparents' farm than from any blue collar job I've ever held.

[xienze]

Yes the work can be rewarding but I'm really addressing the author's misguided point that all our modern work is to solve non-existent problems. In reality, it's to make our lives easier and more comfortable.

The flipside of a completely agrarian society is very little safety net. Crop disease? Drought? Animal sickness? Broke your leg? Life just got a lot tougher. Like, life or death tougher.

[mvanvoorden]

Again, because you don't seem to read what I'm typing:

Not all modern work, just all the work that has directly or indirectly to do with money and jobs that come forth out of that (like the cleaning crew or receptionist of an insurance company or bank).

We do a lot of redundant, unnecessary work, just for the sake of working, without ever consciously asking ourselves what the use of this work is and who is actually helped with this. Unconsciously this question comes by a lot, and that makes people burn out in the long run.

Drop your assumptions and prejudice and read my posts again. We are actually able to make our lives easier and more comfortable, but instead we let ourselves be fooled and forced into doing robotic labor, never-ending jobs, and repetetive tasks. Just because we are told it's necessary and makes our lives more comfortable.

[xienze]

> Not all modern work, just all the work that has directly or indirectly to do with money

And then the point of doing this work would be...? There's a reason "money" is a universal concept: it's compensation for time spent working on things that aren't necessary for the survival of an individual person. Remove that and you've removed motivation for people to do things that they don't want or need to do. Your line of thinking does not scale to society at large.

> We do a lot of redundant, unnecessary work, just for the sake of working, without ever consciously asking ourselves what the use of this work is and who is actually helped with this.

I don't know about you, but I work so I can be paid and live a more comfortable life. I'm pretty sure that's most people's motivation. And perhaps working on nonsense is a Valley thing, but my coworkers and I certainly work on software that improves the lives of others. Perhaps you should try to find a company like that instead of declaring that everyone works on useless junk, money is pointless, and we can all be farmers on 4 hours per week of work.

[stuxnet79]

IMO the truth is somewhere in the middle. A lot of people tend to underestimate the extent and pervasiveness of 'make-work' in the economy. But then again there are lots of vital but rather onerous tasks that would never get done if there wasn't any financial incentive.

[skidoo]

Financial incentive wasn't attached to labor for the bulk of our species' history though. That's relatively new. Prior, there was working for survival (far less hours per week than today), and beyond that the obvious slavery that was more overt than modern industry. All said, now I think it would take a mother of a global psychogenesis to remind people of benefits to working other than the mere monetary (physical, spiritual, etc). But it is in our genes. We are just lazier than our forefathers, that much less willing to scrub our own toilets and the like unless we can see the carrot at stick's end.