This is a rebuilt archive page. The subject and original URL are retained; the wording is new.
The essay examined the long shift from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance and asked what that shift means for the meaning and distribution of work. It traced the displacement of labor from agriculture to manufacturing to information processing.
The argument ended with a humanist question: if productivity no longer requires every person to work in the same way, what obligation does a community have to protect dignity, livelihood, and participation? The page preserves that question without reproducing the original essay.