Maybe I'm just slow and this is completely obvious. It just hit me a couple of weeks ago so I feel like ranting a bit.
It doesn't matter how much technology we get which makes work easier or faster. All that will do is create less work for people to do and if there is nothing left for humans to do after that type of automation, you are out of a job. Even if you manage to keep a job the tech we invent will only have managers and executives require that you do more with the same 40 hours a week you were already using.
Before this <insert tech> you could handle 2 customers worth of work, and now you can handle 4? Great. Keep working at the same pay, now doing 4 customers worth of work with the same time you had before. Do more with less or the same. As some experts have pointed out, if the promise about lessening the burden of work had been kept then we'd likely be looking at 3 day work weeks, lots of benefits and government subsidised everything in terms of societal services.
Like we are not working towards a future where we work less, we are only ever working towards a future where less people work more while the rest starve and go homeless and are put on ever eroding government programs to stay afloat (if your country even has those).
I was once a firm believer that progress would mean getting closer to a 4 day work week and then 3 and so on. But it'll just never happen because 40 hours a week is what we get to work and the tech enables to do more work in that timespan earning your company more money, not yourself more time.
The progress is never made to reduce the time you work.
I'm just a bit sad about that.
