Most of the time I hear advice that a regular 9 to 5 job or other schedule of being an employee is making us a slave or at least depreving us from our time by keep us busy enough to not be able to do anything else. But what are other options that allow both enough time to spend on a personal life and make a good living? Most of the time, owning a business eats more time than being an employee. This is maybe a discussion about work life balance, or even being with or against the anti work movement.
I also refuse the idea that tells me to be absolutely frugal. Yes, I live bellow my means, but I also spen d money on my hobbies and what brings joy and meaning to my life. I also save up some money for investment but investing is the hard part when our stock market is too small.
The question is serious. What are the other options or other insight in the situation and its alternatives.
Question is open ended and you can add in more point of views.
Not the OP, but I have a different perspective you may find useful.
Productivity has increased due to automation and mechanisation. The same number of labour hours produces more output. That means that if we wanted the same output we could put in fewer hours to get it.
Wages have not matched this growth since the 80s. Productivity went up, production went up, but wages stayed flat. So for the same number of hours of work we get the same amount of money, but the produced output is higher. Where does the difference in output go?
It goes to the owners, the rich, the class of people who by virtue of owning the factory, company, means of production, and they get all of those extra bits of value without expending any more effort or innovating in any meaningful way. They bring in automation and mechanisation and increase the productivity of the employee without compensating them more for it.
They then continue increasing their wealth by turning everything into a comodity, something that can be made into a financial instrument and traded. They wrap housing up in REITs and healthcare in health insurance companies. They make everything work for their personal wealth and give nothing back.
So in a sane society if you wanted your cup of coffee in the morning it would cost half or less of what it did in the 80s, so you could afford it with half as many hours of your labour. If it took you an hour of labour to afford a week of coffee in the 80s then now it should take 15-30 minutes instead. You should have more free time.
So yes, people would still work at this point. In the future some things would be completely automated and you would not have to pay any meaningful cost for them, they would be essentially free. Other things would be harder to automate and you would still have to exchange hours of your time to afford them. One day everything would be fully automated including the machines to maintain the machines and no human effort would be required to have a decent standard of living, so you could spend time engaging with people, exploring the universe, learning about how things work, making art, and enjoying culture. Essentially, Star Trek.
You are touching an interesting topic here: we produce more with less time and effort than before. This in theory should allow us more free time, but in reality we still work more regardless so that business owner earns more.
However, I see an issue here. The idea you defend does work when producing material goods, like food and goods where we need a means of production that is hard to acquire. But there are other methods where the means of production are cheap and available to everybody, like teaching, or programming or selling. I see here the biggest entry barrier is salesman skills like finding customers and clients, and ability to solve a multi million dollar issue. I chose that wording because raising a capitable in millions of dollars can be done in multiple ways most people do not comprehend. Personally, as a programmer, if I had the ability to convince people and find customers to build things for them, I would have my own company. Or if I had my salesman skills on point I would open my shop or commercial business. Those can also be considered means of production but since they are immaterial skills, I still haven’t finishes building a slot in my mind to receive them.
The issue is when we see those skills applied they seem trivial or too easy anybody could do them but they are also so hard very few people does them. We also often think of them “what did you even do? I am here doing all the work producing all the product” which is true, but lacking customers to sell to is the problem a majority of my aquiances are struggling with.
I do not say those are impossible to do but where the means of production is a skill, how does it change or affect your take?