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I believe that people who don't need to work for income will generally be happier if they keep using their bodies, keep interacting in person with other humans,
by philipkglass 10y ago
I believe that people who don't need to work for income will generally be happier if they keep using their bodies, keep interacting in person with other humans, keep some mix of routine and variety in their lives. (But the means to those ends don't need to resemble activities we used to have to pay people to do.) I think that it's a good idea to offer guidance to people who don't need to work but can't figure out what they really want to do with all their free time. I think that it's a bad idea to plan pseudowork employment for people who haven't yet requested any make-believe jobs to go to.
If all productive labor can be done better by machines, then making soap with your own human labor is just as much a game as playing paintball is. It doesn't really matter that one of those activities provided income for large numbers of people, historically, and the other did not. Not everyone needs a job-like activity assigned by others to avoid becoming a Wall-E blob of boredom. (Just as there are a lot of options for young adults with trust funds in between the extremes of "get hired for a job like other 22 year olds" and "suffer endless ennui.") Possessing material security without trading waged labor for it is "dystopian" the way that being a child in the summertime is dystopian. (And yes, some children are going to whine "I'm bored!" until someone gives them chores to do, but don't start planning needless chores for the children who aren't even bored...)