CONFUSING THE ABSTRACT WITH THE REAL
Generating work so as to avoid unemployment is one of the main reasons given for the desirability of economic growth as well as for the almost pathological fear of any reduction in that growth. Whether the production that constitutes that growth is really needed or is even harmful is usually given secondary importance.
Our economic system doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate between work done for the purpose of producing the things we need and work done in order to earn a living. One is real while the other is abstract.
Working for a living has become our means to survival even if the things that that work produces contribute little to our well-being and survival, or are even destructive. We have the technological and organisational know-how for everyone to have a more than adequate lifestyle on much less work than we do now. I believe one of the main reasons this does not happen is that we have elevated an abstract concept (working to earn a living) to equal if not greater importance than the actuality of working to produce our actual needs for living. Once we have produced what is needed for our level of lifestyle then it is patently absurd to go on working and producing simply to get the means to access the things that had already been produced. Even more absurd if we destroy the planetary ecosystem in the process.
For a more detailed look at this see The More Work Fallacy
