this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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[–] marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today 1 points 3 hours ago

That's nice, and genuinely good for you if that's your calling, but that is something you choose, not something that you need to do. Again the total number of people on the planet contributing practically 100% of the food grown for sale is 2%. Down from 98% less than two centuries ago.

The reason people are able to do things other than farm for 6-9 months out of the year, is because productivity in that field is so incredibly high we can feed the world off the labor of 2 people in a hundred. And this is already, currently, true for nearly all production fields. A single textile worker produces more textiles than a 1,000 could have a century ago. Similar increases in productivity are true for nearly every field save for incredibly niche (but still important) industries.

Automation is just going to keep increasing this over time. We will never completely eliminate human labor, at least not while we resemble anything close to human, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have already dropped the 40 hour work week down to 10 hours (we'd still have more production than at any point in human history) and that doesn't mean we can't strive to eliminate work to the furthest extent possible so we can actually enjoy life; even if that enjoyment for people like you is spending your time farming manually.