&gt; Why would people want to work longer? As much as I enjoy technology, working is the least pleasant part of my life.<p>I think modern industrial civilization encourages a sort of compartmentalization of roles and terms that isn&#x27;t actually real. Certainly, for many people, their <i>job</i> is not a pleasant part of their life. From that angle, sure, no one wants to keep doing that until the day they die.<p>But that doesn&#x27;t mean the alternative—pure idle leisure—is that great either. Doing nothing sounds awesome when you&#x27;re burnt out, but after a week or two of it, most people will start chewing on the wallpaper.<p>This dichotomy that &quot;everything that you do for money is unpleasant and unsatisfying&quot; and &quot;everything that is recreational is easy and unchallenging&quot; is false. There is a whole spectrum of difficulty, reward, and monetary compensation and jobs, hobbies, recreations and pastimes occupy all sorts of points on it.<p>For most people, they want to spend a good portion of their time doing things that are <i>rewarding</i>, and not necessarily <i>easy</i>. Being retired just means you can optimize for personal satisfaction without having to also optimize for monetary gain.<p>If I could retire today, sure, I&#x27;d get a bit more sleep. But I&#x27;d also hack more open source code, write more books, and volunteer. Those are difficult things (especially that middle one). Does that make them &quot;work&quot;? In the sense of &quot;working on the book&quot;, &quot;my life&#x27;s work&quot;, etc. yes. But is it &quot;work&quot; in the sense of &quot;thing I&#x27;d only do for money&quot;? Certainly not.