It didn't take long (less than a century post-Constantine?) for the christians to decide social surplus led to sin: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_a

It didn't take long (less than a century post-Constantine?) for the christians to decide social surplus led to sin: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_workshop#:~:text=Proverbs%2016:27%20may,its%20popularity https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_... > Proverbs 16:27 may have inspired St. Jerome to write in the late 4th century: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum, or “engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.” This was later repeated by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, which was probably the source of its popularity. that said, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 I'd like to think we could make the economy wither* away, but maybe a prereq is that we have to figure out how to educate (in the savoir-vivre sense) everyone first? * compare the last line of https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-pow-camp https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-... : > On 12th April, with the arrival of elements of the 30th U.S. Infantry Division, the ushering in of an age of plenty demonstrated the hypothesis that with infinite means economic organisation and activity would be redundant, as every want could be satisfied without effort. (I'm trying to keep this non-political, but one troubling aspect of "every want" seems to be that some primates are not happy unless they are certain other primates are unhappy; cf the roots of 1984 on the playing fields of St Cyprian's, as revealed in Such, Such Were the Joys) Edit: occupying people harmlessly is also a major theme of Brave New World, although to be frank this supposed dystopia fails to be dystopic to me, as tortured creative souls always have the option to go to the islands...