All Day

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BK · Book · 1974 · novel

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

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The machines

None, beyond the computers that run Divlab, the Division of Labour.

What people do all day

On Anarres nobody is compelled to work and there is no property, no wage and no law. A computer posts people to jobs anyway — sometimes for years, sometimes far from the people they love — and almost everyone goes. Refusal is permitted and quietly unsurvivable.

Pattern

Allocated labour — A system decides what you will do, and people comply — sometimes willingly.

Note

The most sophisticated treatment on this site of who allocates work once nobody has to. Le Guin's subtitle calls it an ambiguous utopia and means it.


Same answer, different work