Yes, dropping consumption would immediately allow us to work 2-3 days a week.

It's far more a cultural problem than political.

We starting hitting post-scarcity at the start of the 19th century, towards the end of the industrial revolution [1]

We were growing enough food, housing is actually not that expensive, we were 'starting to not need that much more'.

This is when we started marketing consumption to the population - it was the only way to grow the economy.

We have far, far more than we need for basic satiety.

It's not quite so simple though - many innovations that we 'truly want', like medicines and health tech - come out of the economy as a whole and would not be possible were that the only hugely important sector.

We work 5 days on 2 days off because that's the very strongly entrenched social contract, it's the 'labour equilibrium'.

No amount of tech or AI will change that - unless we collectively agree to change the rules.

The social contract is slightly different in different countries, and nobody seems to have figured out how to work on 2-3 days, I believe that we mostly prefer the way it is. Maybe 4 day weeks would be more amenable.

But the marginal income from the 4th day ... I think people would prefer to work it rather than not.

[1] https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-brief-history-of-consum...