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There will be hundreds of people here that fit this perfectly, or am I wrong about the demographics of HN?
I am trying to figure out how to employ my hands in ways I enjoy and that may be of net benefit to society at this time, and this essay touches on a lot of the concepts I've been thinking over. I'm actually surprised I haven't run across it; I should probably start my search by reading a little deeper into some philosophy.
In a sense, this is the vision of UBI -- where basic needs were met, and people were free to self-actualize.
This is also the happy version of tenure in academia -- where you didn't have to worry about "publish or perish" but instead you get to work on really important ideas without showing results for years (multi year grants or being in a place like the IAS helps).
Google in some ways used to operate like this before the current pivot -- many googlers lived a life of "resting and vesting" while wandering about for years looking for a big idea with little pressure to deliver anything.
I definitely found this vision attractive, but as I grew older, I realized that it was not entirely tenable in it purest form. Yes, the best ideas certain came from having time to wander and work on different things (you get more creative working on multiple decorrelated ideas at the same time rather than one big idea), but in my experience, complete idleness without pressure to deliver anything does not work. I don't know if I believe the premise of In Praise of Idleness any more. We no longer live in a simple world. In a complex world, great ideas come from incrementalism, and keeping busy and making progress seems to be necessary in many domains in order get to the big idea because all the low hanging fruit have been plucked.
Why? Why are there men who demand 50-whatever billion payouts in a country where not everyone has a place to sleep?
It seems the same issue to me. We're not on the earth to "do great things" or "achieve progress" or any of that crap. That's for people who have some special enthusiasm which the rest of us need not share, or, as Bertrand Russell says, for the elite who want us to labor for them. If one builds one's morality or sense of virtue on doing stuff one is a self-whipping slave and probably ready to become a slave driver for other people too.