we started producing more food than we can eat and enabled us to focus more on what we enjoy
I’m all for eliminating scarcity and automating the kind of work nobody thrives doing, but I also recall Keynes famously predicted that if productivity kept on growing the way it was, it would be possible for people to work a 15-hour work week and still maintain a modern standard of living.
Well, productivity did keep on growing, and the promise of future-leisure time because productivity gains made want a thing of the past… didn’t pan out.