The dream of less work

[redpaintednavi]

In the 50:s and 60:s it was often heard that in the 21:th century machines (robots and similar) would do all hard and boring work for us. This would free us humans and give us the oportunity to fulfill ourselves and spend our time with cultural, social, artistic and scientific activities. It was also thought that the revenues from the work of the machines should be distributed fairly equal and give us all a descent standard of living.

But those dreams have not materialized yet. Instead capitalists and politicians encourage, and even force us, to work more and more. They claim that we must work more hours and also a longer period of our lives (which will delay our pensions) just to keep our standard of living (and even more if we want to grow economically). The politicians even claim that also ill and sick people shall be forced to work in a higher degree and that wage labor is the only way to fulfilment, economically, personally and socially.

So what happened? Where did the old visions of a labor free (or at least less labor) society go? How did we end up in a society that despite a lot of technical progress forces us to work more and more and more, with increased stress and stress related diseases as a result?

Where did it all get wrong?