I’d argue that unemployment fundamentally is a good thing.
In past times, children—even quite young children—had to work, as did the elderly. It is one of the achievements of modern technology that these people don’t have to work anymore and can instead grow up happily and go to school or retire and live the rest of their lives without having to work, respectively.
people don’t have to work anymore and can instead grow up happily
These aren’t mutually exclusive: one hedonic function that work performs is giving a person a sense of place, purpose, and contribution.
Granted, most currently available forms of work don’t offer much of this, but at least they provide something one can use as a prop in rationalizing that one is doing something meaningful in providing for one’s family or whatever.
(Also granted, “work” does not necessarily require “job”, and IIUC it’s only been in the 20th century that most people’s work is as an employee of someone else.)
I’d argue that unemployment fundamentally is a good thing.
In past times, children—even quite young children—had to work, as did the elderly. It is one of the achievements of modern technology that these people don’t have to work anymore and can instead grow up happily and go to school or retire and live the rest of their lives without having to work, respectively.
These aren’t mutually exclusive: one hedonic function that work performs is giving a person a sense of place, purpose, and contribution.
Granted, most currently available forms of work don’t offer much of this, but at least they provide something one can use as a prop in rationalizing that one is doing something meaningful in providing for one’s family or whatever.
(Also granted, “work” does not necessarily require “job”, and IIUC it’s only been in the 20th century that most people’s work is as an employee of someone else.)