Tangentially, if we could support everybody at the medieval peasant level without work, well, why don't we? By which I mean, let's institute a Universal Basic Income. What a familiar, yet so profoundly different, world it would be if you didn't have to worry about having a safe (although Spartan) place to live, clean water to drink, basic, nutritious food to eat, and care if you get hurt or sick, no matter what. You'd still have to work for all the modern luxuries.

I guess the workers would have leverage against abusive, exploitative employers, if the cost of quitting a bad situation was simply not going to Paris this year, rather than life-or-death struggle, and we can't have that!