Financial Independence Or Not, Work Will Never Stop

I love reading predictions of the future from the past.  When I was a kid in the 70’s and 80’s I thought by 2020 we’d surely have flying cars and that everything would be powered by the sun.  Clearly I suck at predictions.

I also vividly remember reading George Orwell’s classic 1984 as a school assignment.  It was probably 1985 or 86 at the time, and I thought to myself “Well this guy is obviously a good writer but man did he get this one wrong.  If any of this happens it won’t be for a long time.” 

Whether you think we’re headed more towards an Orwellian 1984 scenario, or the one depicted in Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World (<– affiliate link), I’m going to guess that reality will surprise us as always.

Recently a video from a 1967 CBS show hosted by Walter Cronkite called The 21st Century: At Home, 2001 has been making the rounds online.  It was an ambitious attempt to predict what a 21st century home would be like. 

When they made the show the year 2001 was 33 years in the future.  That would be the same as us trying to imagine what things will be like in the year 2054! 

How did they do? 

I’m not expecting you to watch a 24 minute video just to read this post.  Click this link and the video will launch at about the ten minute mark.  Then just watch the next three minutes, I think you’ll find it fascinating.  

 

Well You Blew That One

So let’s address the elephant in the room.  In the video Cronkite says:

Technology is opening a new world of leisure time.  One government report projects that by the year 2000 the United States will have a 30 hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule.

Yeah, they really blew that one didn’t they?  Before COVID Americans already worked more hours than those in most industrialized nations.  And with so many people working from home since last March a July 2020 study found the average workday actually lengthened by 48.5 minutes since the pandemic started. 

As for those month long vacations – haha!  Americans get far less paid vacation days than those in most industrialized nations, and it’s not even mandatory by law.  We average 10 days of paid vacation after 1 year on the job, and 15 days after 5 years on the job.  Worst of all more than half of workers don’t even use all of the piddly amount they get. 

The predictions of a future of leisure in this CBS show weren’t new.  As this article says:

Back in 1930, renowned economist John Maynard Keynes predicted technological advancements would mean we would all eventually work just 15 hours a week. That same year, evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley predicted the two-day work week. Both men warned that someday, we would have so much leisure time, we would be bored out of our minds..

Bold emphasis mine.  I work a two day work week because financial independence gave me the freedom to do so.  Others aren’t so fortunate, many because of their own behavior with money.

So basically everyone got this horribly wrong.

 

What They Got Right

The CBS show does redeem itself pretty well in the following 3 minutes after the incorrect prediction of endless leisure.  Cronkite goes through some awesome retro looking consoles to eerily predict how we’ll watch football, get our news and weather, and then says:

With equipment like this in the home of the future, we may not have to go to work.  The work will come to us.  In the 21st century it may be that no home will be complete without a computerized communications console

Remember this is 1967, before the internet.  The first ever computer to computer message was transferred in 1969 on ARPAnet, the predecessor to the internet.

So basically they were predicting working from home, and largely got it right.  It’s a shame it took a pandemic that happened 20 years after the start of the 21st century to really fuel it in a serious way. 

Perhaps the CBS folks stole from the brilliant Arthur Clarke who basically predicted the internet three years earlier in 1964, and ten years after that dropped these totally accurate predictions.  As you can see, I love this stuff.

 

The Missing Piece

Why do all these futurists inaccurately think we’ll work less as technology advances and life gets easier?  It’s pretty simple – they’re totally disregarding some basic traits of what it means to be human. 

Unlike other mammals, humans are compelled to learn and understand.  We’re compelled to discover, and to create.  We’re curious.

Philosopher and psychologist William James defined curiosity as “the impulse towards better cognition,” and “the desire to understand that which you do not”.

It’s these traits that compel us to keep working, keep doing, keep pushing.  There’s always another hill to climb.  No amount of technology is going to stop us from working hard, because no matter how good that technology is we’re going to have an innate desire to make it better. 

And that means getting our asses out of bed and going to work tomorrow.

We work more to produce these things which we then keep trying to improve which leads to more work.  Can we ever stop and admire what we’ve created or are we doomed to constantly move forward and improve? 

 

You’re Different

If you’re reading a blog called Accidental FIRE you probably have some interest in changing your job, or stopping “work” all together.  That requires money of course.  I hate to break the news to you but don’t count on future technologies to free you from work or to let you retire early.  It ain’t gonna happen.   

Instead you’ll have to spend less than you earn, invest it, and watch it grow.  No matter what John Maynard Keyes, Walter Cronkite, or Arthur Clarke said, technology will not rescue you from work, only you can do that.

But you’ve also no doubt read and understand that you really don’t want to be rescued from work.  You are human after all, that would go against your basic curious nature. 

You want to be rescued from stressful or B.S. corporate work, aka “W2 work”.  Only then will you be free to do other work.  Work that’s fun, and meaningful.

As we humans relentlessly push everything into the future at warp speed, I see a future where we all still work.  Yes, I’m predicting never-ending work.

But we’ll work on things we love, whether they pay money or not.  That’s the future John Maynard Keynes incorrectly thought would already be here. 

You can make it yours by achieving financial independence, you don’t have to wait for flying cars and solar powered cities.  But heck I suck at predictions, so what do I know.