I'm with you that things suck now and don't need to be this way, having carefully not said otherwise.
But I also think you might be underestimating how many people's ancestors were slaves, serfs, miners, and laborers during hose prior several millenia of settled, urbanizing civilization. We don't all come from aristocratic or even subsistence farming stock.
It can be less bad than it is, we might want to strive to make it less bad than it is, but it's been pretty darn bad for a long while. For pressing modern problems we also need to commit to more immediate tactics.
I'm not saying everyone had it better. Chattle slavery is definitely worse. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think we needed to have slaves to make progress. I want to push back against this idea that it's inevitable to have to work as much as we do. A worker today is significantly more productive. We could probably make life a lot easier for everyone by finding a more equitable way to distribute resources and by breaking up and regulating all the rent-seeking monopolists who makes things more expensive than they need to be.
> I want to push back against this idea that it's inevitable to have to work as much as we do
I'm with you. Has anyone here said that?
Yes, someone responded to me saying just that and it's also a position I've seen frequently on HN. I think plenty of people have that as a gut reaction to any proposed change in the status quo.