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I was basically unemployable due to health problems for several years before covid made work from home normal. It's not really theoretical for me either.

It was, all things considered, great. I have never been more involved in the communities and connections that I find valuable and fulfilling. I learned several complex skills that continue to benefit me and the people around me, I taught and mentored young people some of whom are now adults entering professional careers based on that momentum.

I don't believe either of our individual experiences are really a good predictor of universal human experience in this area. Do you?

> I’m not convinced that we’re equipped to live satisfying lives without some form of striving for survival

If we're all struggling for survival, some of us will fail. I invite you to dream bigger about what we're "equipped for." One of the very few universal human traits across time and culture is refusal to be bound by our biological history.

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haswell 4 days ago | parent [-]

> I don't believe either of our individual experiences are really a good predictor of universal human experience in this area. Do you?

No, and I said as much in my comment. My point was not that my experience is universal, but that I have direct experience with the failure mode of such an arrangement. Am I 50% of the population? 75? 5? I don’t know. But as I went though it, I met more people who’d gone through something similar, and I learned a lot about myself that made me realize my previous imagination about a life without work were mostly fantasies. Again, this isn’t to say there aren’t productive ways to navigate it. Just that the ways I imagined this working were very different from reality.

The bottom line is that we don’t know what such an arrangement would bring about at mass scale, and if people are more likely to have an experience like yours or like mine. There’s probably a spectrum of experiences between them. I just think we should approach such a future thoughtfully and carefully.

Diving in head first with a “let’s see what happens” attitude seems dangerous and ill advised.

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giraffe_lady 4 days ago | parent [-]

> No, and I said as much in my comment.

You had that disclaimer but most of the rest of the comment was about your prediction that most people would be affected in the same way. Some friendly feedback for your future writing on the subject, I guess.

	▲	haswell 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		That’s fair, and I edited “most” to “many” shortly after I wrote it because the truth is that I don’t know what exact proportion of people will have the same issues. I had hoped the extensive context throughout the rest of my comments made that position clear. I do feel confident that the number is higher than some of us think. Certainly I did not expect this to unfold in my own life, and through the experience I became aware of the many others who’d gone through something similar and were similarly caught off guard. All of this will hinge on personal upbringing, background, support systems, life experiences, locale, etc. At some point I hope to write in more detail about the factors in my own life that I believe led me here after I’ve gotten fully to the “other side” of the experience.