Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive
At what point do we say that we don’t need to waste more of earth’s resources and instead find time to enjoy our current enormous wealth?
There will never be a point that society at large will decline to exploit resources when there is competition for those resources. It's easy to see why on average this behavior is common from an evolutionary perspective.
While I agree that many people are status seekers, that can be different things. Where I live, a yacht is vulgar. Even a bigger car is looked down on if it isn't for some specific utility. Status is showing your care for the climate by leaving your kids in daycare with a cargo bike. Status is being able to leave work early to be able to spend time in the afternoon with your family, or do so some garden work. No one wants to be the one with an expensive car but not knowing your own kids.
If your job involves network connectivity and SSH, satellite Internet would allow you to do your job on your yacht where ever it happens to be, even in the middle of an ocean.
James Hamilton, Senior Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon, [1] was doing this 15+ years ago as he motored around the world in a Nordhavn 52 [2] with his wife:
* https://mvdirona.com/2009/06/remote-data-communication-costs...
* https://mvdirona.com/2015/08/communications-at-sea/
* https://mvdirona.com/2018/03/kvh-v7-hts-twice-the-speed-more...
Sounds like a poshy neighborhood colonized by expats. I mean, I do share the values but it's definitely a luxury and entitled position (with its own consequences on the rest of the locals sharing the same city)
African traditional cattle herders are still a thing and they're still living in thatched huts with weave walls.
Elsewhere in Africa, Thatching is still an up market thing: https://www.africathatch.co.za/
Perhaps spend some time learning about the wider world before making such obviously incorrect sweeping generalisations?
UN data on housing somewhat disagrees with you. The somewhat is only because people living in such housing aren't starving/destitute, but they are still incredibly poor.
OP said they would be content with 40% less income for less work. That's fine, but I think it misses the point. On a large enough time scale, progress is so great that most wouldn't choose the past, nor would they choose our present if the future is substantially better. That's what I mean by "everyone wants more" ... it's what contributes to endless consumption rather than us working less hours when technology improves
A lot depends on what "in between" actually means.
I think almost no one would be willing to return, say, to the early 1900s when it comes to medical science and available treatment options.
Things like anti-retroviral therapy and CAR-T are just too nice to have when something otherwise fatal hits you. But that requires top-notch chemistry and biology, which requires top-notch lab equipment and computers, which requires top-notch material science and industry etc.
I am not sure if you can sustain all of this if all the the relevant PhDs work 16 hour workweeks. I am also not sure which parts of the modern economy can be left out to regress to a previous stage of development if you still want to retain the capability to treat cancer with advanced biologicals. The supply chains are just too complex.
Maybe in the age of AI and robots the options are different, but not before.
And a lot of people in the US can't afford hospitals or antibiotics today.
No, it doesn’t make sense, only in your head. We’re not mind readers, please elaborate and at least try to use logic or reasoning. It’s frustrating to readers otherwise.
