Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
The problem is fairly simple. The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth).<p>We need those people to work a full week operating the machines that actually make all the output we all consume.<p>But why should they do that if nobody else is working? They could just make enough for the small set of people that are actually required to make enough stuff and stop work on Tuesday - having the rest of the week off.<p>So we all give up full weeks of our finite lives in solidarity with those who we need to give up full weeks of their finite lives if we&#x27;re actually going to get the goods and services we need to live. And that&#x27;s because we&#x27;re a species that tallies our debts with each other - the reciprocity principle (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.en.uni-muenchen.de&#x2F;news&#x2F;newsarchiv&#x2F;2016&#x2F;paulus_socialcapital.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.en.uni-muenchen.de&#x2F;news&#x2F;newsarchiv&#x2F;2016&#x2F;paulus_s...</a>)<p>Or to put it in other words, sharing out the needed work is rather more difficult in practice than it is in theory where fungibility is largely assumed. And the more advanced our technology, the harder the sharing becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain the illusion of sufficient reciprocity.