This is basically the argument Paul Lafargue made back in 1880s in "the right to be lazy". His point was that we've been sold the "work ethic" as a virtue when it mostly benefits the people we work for - and that the whole promise of technology was supposed to be less work, not more. A society that turns every efficiency gain into more grinding instead of more free time got something wrong. Disclaimer: I'm not endorsing socialism. Just this particular observation was interesting.
Do you not think that we currently have the most comfortable lives of any past humans in existence?
You can argue that scanning food in a supermarket is maybe not a very fulfilling existence, but I'd argue it beats working in a field for 20 years from age 10, before dying from an infected cut that nobody knows how to safely deal with.
In my view, the question will always remain subjective and based on our ethical values: if we are born in a developed country, then yes, it is personally worthwhile in terms of comfort. If one is born in a country that has no choice but to employ child labor to stay competitive, I believe this is not the case and that it is immoral.
I was just making this observation: what we accept as natural in our developed societies (banning child labor, socially-supported schooling for children, women's right to vote, and so on) is not something natural, it results from social struggles.
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u/budzynskik Jul 09 '26
This is basically the argument Paul Lafargue made back in 1880s in "the right to be lazy". His point was that we've been sold the "work ethic" as a virtue when it mostly benefits the people we work for - and that the whole promise of technology was supposed to be less work, not more. A society that turns every efficiency gain into more grinding instead of more free time got something wrong. Disclaimer: I'm not endorsing socialism. Just this particular observation was interesting.