But this is make-work. It's a polite fiction, designed to support an economic framework that is looking less relevant as technology and automation play an increasing role in our industry. Our current economic system may even become obsolete within our lifetimes, hence the recent interest in alternative models like universal basic incomes.

In terms of real productivity, a durable widget that has a 20% overhead to manufacture but lasts 10x as long is far more useful, and in terms of quality of life, people needing to spend fewer hours of their lives doing mundane work is a desirable goal in itself.

In the long term, it seems likely that either people will find new ways to make a living, just as they did on countless past occasions when technology rendered a particular vocation obsolete, or we will move towards a different economic arrangement where people don't have to work full-time to earn a decent living, or quite possibly we will see some sort of hybrid with aspects of both newer types of work and reduced working hours.