It is, however, an article of faith for the economics profession. It was this conclusion I suddenly saw as false, for I recognized that the way people in the Western world had been manipulated to see consumption and jobs as central to their lives was critical to Western socioeconomic structures. One of the issues which has always interested economists is how people would react if they were able to earn more money in less time. There is plenty of evidence that this form of behavior had been dominant in the rich countries in the nineteenth century and that is still common in the poor countries. The fact that suddenly struck me was that modern Western societies did not exhibit this behavior.
Westerners typically go on working just as hard even when they get richer.
They remain committed to their jobs as the way to make sense of their lives and also see increased consumption as central to their self-worth. It thus became clear to me that the way economic systems are structured both is, and should be, subsidiary to cultural desires. A culture could organize itself to support hard work and consumption, as Western societies have done. It might also be set up to see the ending of toil as critically important. Depending on the goals and success criteria chosen, behavior would necessarily be very different.