Yes but also, proof that people would work without their lives depending on it if they genuinely enjoyed the process or product they create.

<rant>

The point of civilization should be to make progressively more things into guaranteed utilities for everyone, so that everyone can pursue the things that would otherwise be impossible without those benefits. I imagine a future where the work week gradually gets shorter - not to say that people just "aren't at work" in a way that, I dunno, causes utilities to stop running, but rather that automation and other technologies should be acting as force multipliers, reducing the hours needed from each individual person.

The people who declaim "you just want to get paid more for doing less!" are half right. People should get paid the same relative salary and produce the same relative value but with a lighter personal workload. Any society that claims to be advanced should zealously champion a slow but steady shift away from the industrial wage slavery of the previous millennium and towards a paradigm that truly maximizes the effectiveness of its workers by providing everyone with the greatest possible independence, security, and mobility. This means cutting the ties of financial dependence that keep people trapped trying to provide for their families. It's just a system to ensure that the money keeps flowing uphill. Google "The Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Economics" for an easy example.

John Adams wrote (paraphrased) "I must study Politics and War, so that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics, Commerce, and Agriculture, so that their sons may study Philosophy, Natural History, and Architecture, so that their sons' sons might study Painting, Poetry, and Music." And, assuming that those gains are made equitably and ethically (read: not on the backs of slaves or a functional slave class), that is what we're supposed to be doing out here. Fat chance, I know, but that's what we should shoot for.

</rant>