[UtopiaPunk]

John Maynard Keynes wrote an interesting essay in 1930 called "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren." It is very optimistic that the gains of the present time (his own time, that is) would lead to a future where individuals could work much less. He looks around in his own time with a cynical but clear-eye, calling out the moral contradictions and outright evils of the industrial age he is living in. But it seems he believes that the current period of evil will be worth it for a better future, his grandchildren's future. In that essay, he supposes that if people share equitably in what labor remains, a 15-hour work week should suffice to adequately take care of society.

Like Keynes, I'm just as optimistic that such a future is possible, and that it could happen very soon if society willed it so. But just looking at the 95 years of history that have passed since Keynes wrote this essay, it is clear we are not natually, inevitably moving towards such a society. The technology is making such a future possible, but such as a society has to be demanded by the people, and it will not be gifted to us by benevolent rulers or captains of industry.

"We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. I look forward, therefore, in days not so very remote, to the greatest change which has ever occurred in the material environment of life for human beings in the aggregate."

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf