This is an interesting question.
I think that, if 40 hours of our workweek wasn’t dedicated to goofing off as much as possible at work for a paycheck to live, things would still get done. People like being busy, but more than that, people like doing things they think are important. I like my job, I think it’s important, but 8 hours in the same place is fundamentally opposed to the way my brain is supposed to work. I resent my job, not because I don’t enjoy the actual work, but because I’m trapped there non-stop without rest for 8 hours per day for the majority of my week.
I don’t hate working, I just hate the culture of work. If I didn’t have to work to make a living, I would do this job for free. I would take it in smaller doses: 3 hours on the bench, maybe an hour organizing our archives, then off to work on something else. Maybe writing, maybe helping make peoples’ clothes, maybe helping with ecological research. I doubt I’d be doing any less with that freedom, I’d just divide my time according to my whims.
When it comes right down to it, I can’t think of a job I wouldn’t do for free. Need someone to watch the front counter of your shop? Done. Down a cashier at the grocery store? I’ll pitch in for a couple hours. Building a house for some newcomers to the community? Hand me a drill and a hard hat. I’ll help harvest on a farm, I’ll sort trash from recycling, I’ll help inspect the sewers or gut fish or whatever.
I’m more than happy to be a pair of hands where they’re needed, my issue is that the current culture actively discourages this kind of spreading of labor. We’re trapped in the same place for 8 hours a day, drained, then sent home without the energy to support the people around us. I’m not afraid of hard work, I like working, I just don’t like being tethered to something and exploited for my arbitrary dollar value until my energy is totally gone. It only ever benefits the investors, and there are potholes I could be filling in my neighborhood instead.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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