We Should Be Planning for a World Without Jobs — Not Just Fearing It: From a Work-Based Society to a Purposeful One

Abstract

This article proposes a framework for a post-work "purposeful society" enabled by AI, robotics, and automation — where labor becomes optional rather than mandatory, funded through a non-transferable monthly credit system rather than traditional wages. It addresses the central objections to post-work proposals directly: who owns the means of automated production, how the transition would be funded and managed, and how humans would find meaning and structure without mandatory employment. Drawing on Keynes's 1930 predictions, modern post-scarcity economics (Frase, Bastani), and empirical evidence from basic income trials in Finland and Kenya, it argues that guaranteed security produces greater human initiative and well-being, not less — and proposes that automation's output is owed back to humanity broadly, since all technology stands on inherited, collectively-generated human knowledge.