For hundreds of years, people have claimed that technological progress
would soon liberate humanity from the need to work. Today we have
capabilities our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, but those predictions
still haven’t come true. In the US we actually work longer hours than
we did a couple generations ago—the poor in order to survive, the rich
in order to compete. Others desperately seek employment, hardly enjoying
the comfortable leisure all this progress should provide. Despite the
talk of recession and the need for austerity measures, corporations are
reporting record earnings, the wealthiest are wealthier than ever, and
tremendous quantities of goods are produced just to be thrown away.
There’s plenty of wealth, but it’s not being used to liberate humanity.