This might make economists cringe, but here's how I see it: In the past, increasing efficiency was beneficial, because the people no longer needed for one thin

This might make economists cringe, but here's how I see it: In the past, increasing efficiency was beneficial, because the people no longer needed for one thing could go and do something else, increasing the total amount of things being made and services provided. Most obviously, as agriculture was mechanised, people went to work in the factories (of course, early factories were nasty places to work, but that's another story). Today, we're still increasing efficiency, but - as I see it - we're running out of things we need people to do, so freeing people up increases un- or underemployment. At best, people are employed to do ever more 'luxury' things that can easily be dropped when money runs tight. I think we've reached a point where the sum of human happiness is increased not by churning out ever more stuff, and finding ever more services to provide, but by increasing our leisure time. When I was young, I imagined that robots would one day do most of the work, leaving humans to relax and pursue their hobbies. But economics locks us out of that, because having a lot of leisure time (i.e. unemployment) is something to be avoided. I wish I knew how to fix it. Looked at another way: we can produce the stuff we need without needing all the people to work. But the people who do work resent non-workers enjoying the fruits of their labour, so we almost have to keep people busy for the sake of fairness.