Early on I wrote a script for my user account to run df and save the output to a file, then a second script to read that file and if the drive was full send me an email.

First, it failed because it couldn’t send the email because the email service failed under full disk conditions.

Second, it failed because it couldn’t write the file to disk because the disk was full.

Third, it failed because outbound SMTP was blocked by my ISP.

I learned a lot about how well you can fail if you really put your mind to it. Now I have Home Assistant grabbing the disk stats for my machines and flagging anything over 90%.

I think your situation is exactly what a cooperative is built for. You have a bunch of people who work together and have a shared ownership of the business, tying their outcomes to the success of the business. You organise democratically to delegate the work and get the results you need. Someone good at sales can handle the sales side of things. Someone skilled in web design can make the web site. Someone such as yourself may work on a specific project for a client. The structure all together can do the work required while also managing having visibility, discover ability, and reputation. And if it isn’t working you can vote to change what you are doing.

Not the OP, but I have a different perspective you may find useful.

Productivity has increased due to automation and mechanisation. The same number of labour hours produces more output. That means that if we wanted the same output we could put in fewer hours to get it.

Wages have not matched this growth since the 80s. Productivity went up, production went up, but wages stayed flat. So for the same number of hours of work we get the same amount of money, but the produced output is higher. Where does the difference in output go?

It goes to the owners, the rich, the class of people who by virtue of owning the factory, company, means of production, and they get all of those extra bits of value without expending any more effort or innovating in any meaningful way. They bring in automation and mechanisation and increase the productivity of the employee without compensating them more for it.

They then continue increasing their wealth by turning everything into a comodity, something that can be made into a financial instrument and traded. They wrap housing up in REITs and healthcare in health insurance companies. They make everything work for their personal wealth and give nothing back.

So in a sane society if you wanted your cup of coffee in the morning it would cost half or less of what it did in the 80s, so you could afford it with half as many hours of your labour. If it took you an hour of labour to afford a week of coffee in the 80s then now it should take 15-30 minutes instead. You should have more free time.

So yes, people would still work at this point. In the future some things would be completely automated and you would not have to pay any meaningful cost for them, they would be essentially free. Other things would be harder to automate and you would still have to exchange hours of your time to afford them. One day everything would be fully automated including the machines to maintain the machines and no human effort would be required to have a decent standard of living, so you could spend time engaging with people, exploring the universe, learning about how things work, making art, and enjoying culture. Essentially, Star Trek.

ausclusive

Ftfy