At some point I can see ‘working’ being much more phased out and perhaps it should be like military service. 4 years standard for most to do labor and then the smallest life allowance. Then more the longer you do, with extra ‘combat pay’ style for more dangerous or nasty jobs. Over time technology will automate away more and more jobs and humans can spend their time on education for awhile and then working on the technology for a limited time.
I agree. I'm bothered by the thought because it seems to contain more than a hint of a central organization controlling a labor pool where everyone does a 4 year stint of service. Much of that bothers me. And yet I see that as somewhat inevitable if society gets to the point where 40 hrs a week, 48 weeks of the year, for 45 years is no longer what is required for "work". If you don't need to work very much at all, then how does that sort itself out? I can't think of anything better than something like 4 years of national service.
To expand a little: I believe Jay Kinney wrote an article years ago entitled "Where did you get the axe?" he took some back-to-the-earth hippies to task because they were too smug about being "completely off the grid". They had absolutely no dependency on the industrialized world. They grew their own food, chopped their own wood and had no need for the Imperial Western Way of Oppression. Kinney, of course, asked "Where did you get your axe?"
The point was that people may live off their own property, and have a very high degree of self-sufficiency -- but someone, somewhere needs to spend time in the axe factory. Or the tractor factory, or the well pump factory. Maybe not 40 years laboring at the machine that churns out axe heads, but maybe 4 years of that -- then go back to the farm and be "off the grid" and if anyone says "Where did you get your axe?" you can say "I spent 4 years making axes. I did my time."