You're asking the wrong question. Regardless of the specific number of work hours that would be necessary to live a minimal but decent lifestyle (however you choose to define that), some people will always choose to work longer and harder in order to raise their social status. That status is often denominated in money but it can also take the form of possession of scarce resources, athletic skills, physical appearance, or fame. Most people are very status conscious and will then work harder themselves in order to keep up with the competition (or at least not fall too far behind).
You might claim that this status seeking is irrational or unhealthy or whatever, but that's a moot point. It's fundamental human nature and will never change.
social status is, by definition, cultural, and cultural values are malleable.
i think it's also worth pointing out that work is perhaps not so connected to status as may be assumed. there is plenty of work that provides no status, and it seems to me that higher-status people work less.
After you acquire a certain amount of resources, you’re able to care less about increasing your social status-for what else does “more social status” bring, if not more resources.
I’m unable to avoid thinking back, again and again, as Shohreh Aghdashloo voices Avasarala in The Expanse talking about how they have UBI (Basic) because they can’t provide enough jobs-and if you take it you can’t work.
We’re heading directly there, not as we produce things off-world (for now), but as we automate and head more and more towards post-scarcity. Our current models of microeconomics (and maybe macro, I can’t say) only hold up under a scarce amount of resources. If we somehow let a combination of “not-scarce-resources” plus a level of centralization over control of production and delivery of those not-actually-scarce-to-produce resources, but which cuts out people who don’t do “X” (whatever “X” is), we’re going to have an especially nasty problem.
The things that people really want and which signal high status will always be scarce. You can't make more real estate in desirable areas. Ferrari intentionally limits production numbers to create artificial scarcity.
Social status is indeed cultural, but the search for it comes from deep instincts found in a lot of other mammals besides us. Trying to go aginst the search of a higher social status is trying to stop gravity.
> social status is, by definition, cultural, and cultural values are malleable
Is it? It turns out it's usually easier to tackle "fixed" characteristics coming from biology or physics. Cultural / social aspects are usually near-impossible to change by any single person or group.
By definition of “social status” or by definition of “cultural”?
That something is malleable doesn’t imply that it is infinitely malleable.
Also yes, more work does not correspond to higher status in any monotonic way like that. This doesn’t cause any problem for the claim that some people would opt to do more work in order to gain more status?
Even if humans would continue to attempt to gain social status by training to become buff pole-vaulters, I think it would be a massive improvement if that status seeking was decoupled from the economic system.
You might claim that this status seeking is irrational or unhealthy or whatever, but that's a moot point. It's fundamental human nature and will never change.