I find it interesting that though the use of machines and the like we are rapidly approaching what occurred in ancient cultures through the use of slaves, which is many having a great deal of time to devote to leisure.
What do we do we currently do with leisure? Watch TV unwind... but assuming you didn't need to unwind from work (because there was none) what would you be doing? Personally I would be studying random topics (sculpture, latin and dance), working on my own projects (software and community) and generally improving myself and hopefully society.
I would imagine that the absence of work would be a net gain for society as people could devote their time to helping others or doing something for pure merit.
Interestingly enough that's what the ancients did. The ancient greek word for leisure "schole" means learning or self improvement.
Yup, slavery was quite useful in advancing the human race for a while there. We don't like it today for moral reasons, but Leibniz would not have discovered calculus if he spent every day in a field somewhere, and it was slavery that bought him the time to do it.
What ? Leibniz lived in Germany and France, and I think there was no slavery (as in ownership of human beings; sure there were servants and nobility and so on, but no actual slavery) in there at the time ...
Would you elaborate how "it was slavery that bought him the time to do it" ?
For the purposes of brevity I'm grouping slavery, peasants, servants, indentured servants, etc into the same group. They all serve to buy leisure time at the expense of the sweat of other people.
Hah, funny. You can say the same thing about capitalism. It boosted the productivity and the technical capabilities of the human race tremendously (although at a pretty high cost).
What do we do we currently do with leisure? Watch TV unwind... but assuming you didn't need to unwind from work (because there was none) what would you be doing? Personally I would be studying random topics (sculpture, latin and dance), working on my own projects (software and community) and generally improving myself and hopefully society.
I would imagine that the absence of work would be a net gain for society as people could devote their time to helping others or doing something for pure merit.
Interestingly enough that's what the ancients did. The ancient greek word for leisure "schole" means learning or self improvement.