I’m convinced that not only do we as a society work too hard, but we value work too much. Our insistence that work is inherently virtuous doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Having more of our human workers get replaced by machines is the best thing that could possibly happen to us.
They free up the greatest capital there is — human ingenuity and intelligence — to devise better and more effective ways to solve global problems.
It’s immoral to ask people to work when there’s no work that needs to be done. It’s immoral to create unnecessary labor so people have “something to do”.
“It’s only when we reject the idea that … labor is virtuous in itself that we can start to ask what is virtuous about labor,” [David Graeber] writes. “To which the answer is obvious. Labor is virtuous if it helps others.”