The dream of less work

[Human No More]

A dream is about the right way to describe that. It's a lot of work and isn't fungible, meaning it can't be exchanged for anything you require, you have to find someone willing to exchange for what there is, the entire reason currency was developed in the first place - that is, if you have resource foo and need bar, but the person who has bar only wants baz, you have to find a way to convert some of your foo to baz, which without currency could potentially involve dozens of intermediaries. Need communications, building materials, medical supplies? You can't exchange food you grew for it, you have to find an intermediary who can sell it, who will of course not do it for free, the very reason barter failed and currency was developed to solve its inherent problems.

I think the idea of calling it a 'dream' is because it was misundersood. There is never going to be 'no work' without proper AI and post-scarcity resources, but work today is better and easier - you won't get lung infections from working in a coal mine, or lose an arm in a factory or farm accident; and you get more for your time thanks both to higher pay rates (remember that back then, the middle class did not exist) and greater availability of items and methods that were previously rare or hard to produce/perform. The truth is that the reason people specialise is because it allows them to perform tasks they are skilled at in return for receiving others from people who are good at that, if everyone had to do everything for themselves, humanity would never be able to support its own population in numerous ways, from physical space and resources to service-wise to socially, to production of anything even moderately advanced that requires specialisation from more than one skillset.

People no longer have to take clothes to a river and rub rocks on them; they don't have to spend hours producing food unless that is their actual profession. Nobody has to know a little of every plausible skill to get by, because it is easier and more efficient to let people who are good at it to take care of it in return for (indirectly) providing services to them or to those they are a client of.

That won't change unless/until humans reach the singularity.

By all means, claiming self-sufficiency is a goal some people find ideal, but without post-scarcity resources and methods (such as 3D printers capable of self-replication), it's never going to be possible for everyone to survive. By everyone splitting themselves to provide everything, there is no opportunity to improve and innovate in the areas a person is skilled in. Even the vast majority of people who do more than most themselves still require external support, which tends to be acquired via currency; attempts as covering this via like-for-like exchange without it inevitably collapse.