I actually agree with “the slog of our day to day lives is making us unproductive” but I think the cause is depression at a societal level. I can barely get myself to do anything outside of work, when I get home I am absolutely drained and it kills me inside. I want to accomplish things but I just can’t.
I hate we’re going through this, but it does help to know I’m not alone. I try, I really do. I am near done with grad school and work full time, but in my free time I’m too drained to do much more than just zone out for hours.
I’ve realized that there are lots of ways societies can become great, but they all involve discipline. The people as a whole need to be trusted to show up when they say they will, not steal things as soon as they can, and actually do the things they’re tasked with.
I have basically zero personal discipline, which is a pretty big problem for me personally, but I think it’s even worse for a society. If I stay in bed instead of doing homework or going to work, I might flunk or get fired. If I steal from my job or pretend to work while half assing it, I get fired and/or arrested. If everyone does it, we can’t individually punish everyone, we just either have a less reliable society, which leads to decreased social trust, or we have different social and legal requirements for different classes of people, which has not been working out great so far.
I guess what I’m saying is, if capitalism by default drains people of their initiative and discipline, maybe it’s just not a very effective system.