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"The Pharaoh was not God."

First, you wrote an interesting mix of things in your reply, so thanks. On this point,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion#Divine_pharaoh
"Egyptologists have long debated the degree to which the pharaoh was considered a god. It seems most likely that the Egyptians viewed royal authority itself as a divine force. Therefore, although the Egyptians recognized that the pharaoh was human and subject to human weakness, they simultaneously viewed him as a god, because the divine power of kingship was incarnate in him. He therefore acted as intermediary between Egypt's people and the gods.[25]"

Today, "The Market" is often seen as "God" in the USA, as suggested by Harvey Cox, Harvard theologian:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/

My point on hunters/gatherers is that we might soon have technology that lets people with access to land use solar panels to collect power for 3D printers that can print more solar panels and 3D printers, along with mining robots and agricultural robots. So, what do you call that lifestyle? See also Marshall Brain's Manna story.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

We don't need "money" to buy food if we have the land and time and tools to grow it ourselves, or others give it to us (as we give them things), or if the government plans well to produce enough food and distribute it to those who need it, or if, sadly, people feel compelled to steal it (although theft is defined differently in different places, like if deer are "the kings" or not or if wild berries can be picked by anyone on undeveloped property). Those are all alternative ways people get food.

That is why I suggest there have always been five interwoven economies, of which exchange is only one (the others being subsistence, gift, planned, and theft):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Right now, in our society, exchange is dominant, though it is coupled with a growing rich/poor divide and flat real wages for 30+ years (despite productivity doubling or tripling during that time with the extra value just going to the top 1%). The system is failing in part because capitalism does not work if wealth is too concentrated. The wealthy tend to pull their money out of the real economy and put it in the "casino" economy of stuff like currency speculation, r into government bonds that finance wars, or even just by buying up all the land speculatively from other and keeping it idle etc..

I agree with you on the dysfunctional make-work aspects of our society, and explored that here, outlining many "transactions of decline" that can be used to create jobs, war being one of those transactions of decline, but others include endless bureaucracy, endless schooling, expanded prisons, increased sickness, and other things:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Or we can try to move beyond "work"; some ideas on that by others:
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjHTrwCstcM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ArkJmUOIqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neNwAZSBMb0

I don't think v

Forty years ago, most people would have laughed at the notion that people would be able to make 2D typeset documents at home other than by laboriously retyping them until they were perfect. Now, laser printers are given away for free with some new computers. That was something I talked about on a panel here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fastforwardradio/2009/08/12/the-end-of-scarcity-and-the-age-of-abundance-

I agree that we will not see utopia (to begin with, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so people will never agree 100%), but we can make things a lot better materially than they are now for most people. And we can create related social changes that will be positive and liberating connected to increased abundance (like moving beyond authoritarian workplaces).
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html

There is tremendous waste in the current system. As Bob Black suggests above, a huge amount of effort goes into guarding things, not production. Even occupations like sales clerk, lawyer, accounting, and teacher are mostly about guarding. About 1% of the US workforce produces all the food (and most of that goes into meat production we don't strictly need). About 12% of the US work force is involved with making things (a little more if you include construction) and that number has been falling even without off-shoring through improved productivity. The rest is services that are mostly optional or connect back to guarding. We have long been heading for a post-scarcity society, but our political ideology in the USA is wrapped up in scarcity and guarding and fighting over who gets something while others get next-to-nothing. So, we do ironic things as a society like create military robots to enforce US economic ideals on other countries that involve forcing people to work for capitalists, rather than just build factory robots to do the work using the same technology. Or we ironically build nuclear missiles to fight over oil and land, rather than using the same technology to produce power or produce new habitats in space.

How could this work technically and socially? One example from Marshall Brain:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
"""
"It works like this. Let's say that you own a large piece of land. Say something the size of your state of California. This land contains natural resources. There is the sand on the beaches, from which you can make glass and silicon chips. There are iron, gold and aluminum ores in the soil, which you can mine, refine and form into any shape. There are oil and coal deposits under the ground. There is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen in the air and in the water. If you were to own California, all of these resources are 'free.' That is, since you own them, you don't have to pay anyone for them and they are there for the taking."
"If you have a source of energy and if you also own smart robots, the robots can turn these resources into anything you want for free. Robots can grow free food for you in the soil. Robots can manufacture things like steel, glass, fiberglass insulation and so on to create free buildings. Robots can weave fabric from cotton or synthetics and make free clothing. In the case of this catalog you are holding, nanoscale robots chain together glucose molecules to form laminar carbohydrates. As long as you have smart robots, along with energy and free resources, everything is free."
Linda chimed in, "This was Eric's core idea -- everything can be free in a robotic world. Then he took it one step further. He said that everything should be free. Furthermore, h

Healthy humans only need so much stuff. Automation may be good for firms that do it, but if demand is limited, jobs disappear in the system. That's why capitalist systems must grow continually, to create new jobs to make up for productivity increases. The problem is, too much stuff actually can get in the way of a good life, since good human relations are generally the most important part of a happy life and too much stuff distracts from that. Also, right now, much stuff has negative external costs involved in its creation (though we may someday move beyond that).

Here is some sci-fi on ironies in a world of abundance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
""The Midas Plague" (originally published in Galaxy in 1954). In this new world of cheap energy, robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by mankind. So now the "poor" are forced to spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, so that the "rich" can live lives of simplicity. This story deals with the life of a man named Morey Fry, who marries a girl from a higher class. She is unused to a life of consumption and it wears at their marriage. ..."

But, that would still be a big shift from what we have now, which is based on the idea that people only have a right to consume based on the value of their labor. This was talked about back in the 1960s in a letter sent to President Johnson in 1964:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

To deal with increasing automation destroying the value of most labor given limited demand, what we need more is a global sharing of the wealth produced by an automated industrial commons, which means taxes for a basic income
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
or transitioning to another economic model like a gift economy or a subsistence economy or something else. The big issue is not so much automation (although there are aspects that are negative of loss of control or loss of joy in hands on work that you may love) but the issue of how the fruits of automation get distributed. Related on three different visions of work we need to bring together for the 21st century:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

Think of this example: someone sets up vending machines powered by solar panels in every community, and these machines print wood shaped to order for very low prices, and the machines take next-to-no labor to keep going. Basically, what you outlined, only even better (maybe the devices just suck carbon and water from the air to make the wood). Your company can't compete with the prices and quality and speedy delivery, so everyone you employ is laid off. The owner of this enterprise, who owns all the patents and who gets all the money, decides to pile it under his or her mattress, or alternatively, gamble it in high stakes poker games (called derivatives :-) that just move to higher and higher stakes. Where are the new jobs there? Sure, that company may make a few new jobs, but overall, lots of labor is saved, so there is a net negative as far as jobs, because healthy people only need so much wood. The only reason to even worry about jobs is this issue of the right to consume, as well as government enforcing monopolies on land or patents or copyrights, since otherwise there is so much abundance we could organize the economy differently, like GNU/Lin

Links with four different approaches:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
    http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
    http://www.thevenusproject.com/

http://www.whywork.org/

See especially:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play" I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act."

See also:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

On the other hand:
"Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled"
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118358476840657463.html
And, extending that theme:
"Blame the Bailouts on Mister Rogers?"
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/12/12/blame-the-crisis-on-mister-rogers/

Maybe there are deeper issues here on all sides? From:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/72330a22bcae8928?

Consider who could pay for food or water (or copyrighted content or patented
processes) in thirty years, if robotics continues to develop just at the
current rate over the last thirty years.

Check out clerks?
"Your supermarket cashier may not know a kiwano from a tamarillo, but
Veggie Vision does."
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/machin...

Cab drivers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Heart Surgeons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Surgical

Airline pilots?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

Nurses?
"Robot nurse escorts and schmoozes the elderly"

On the particular part you quoted, check out the writings by John Taylor Gatto (a New York State Teacher of the Year) on all the things schools and prisons share in common, and how much damage conventional age segregated schooling with a fixed curriculum and standardized testing does to developing minds. You can find a book he wrote online here: The Underground History of American Education.

By the way, I agree with you some on the sweeping generalization on feminism (which in some variants is more liberational) but I think his point still stands -- that reconstructing the nature of work is to my (perhaps incomplete) understanding not typically an aspect of mainstream feminism -- especially when that was written (1985?) -- just deciding who does the work or who supervises it or who benefits from it monetarily or otherwise. But as a piece of rhetoric, I still think that paragraph is compelling in showing how people refuse to think systematically about what work needs to be done in society and how best to do it from various points of view.

E.F. Schumacher made similar points in his essay on Buddhist Economics if you want to read an author who is more well known.

This is a proposal to specify alternate units of exchange as part of the Java language and to use the class java.util.Currency as the unit of exchange, as one might expect to do. A complementary currency could be any unit of exchange you can think of, not necessarily an hour. Another unit of exchange would be, for example, the terra: A currency based on a basket of commodities. Yet another currency could be e-Gold or any of the local currencies circulated in the USA today: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/cur_grps.html