Poetry by Alastair McIntyre
Hobbies Take Over From Unemployment

Unemployment can be a terrible thing
For people brought up to work for a living
They lose all sense of direction in their lives
And start to wonder if life's worth living.

In my era life's very different
Few if any of us work for a living
And yet we are all happy and content
And life is definately worth the living.

We are trained at school in a trade
And the better the trade the better the status
The kind of trade depends on your ability
And only on ability and not on status.

Our standard of living depends on our trade
But we never expect to use this trade
We have robots to do all our work for us
To leave us free for our leisure hobbies.

You see, we are brought up to expect no work
And as a result our games are sophisticated
These games take over our daily lives
Usually five days a week, nine to five.

Those trades that are required to work
Will do so on a rota basis
There are also those that like to work
And they can do so instead of their hobbies.

No benefit arrives from work rotation
Apart from pleasure and satisfaction
We pick our workers from volunteers
And let them pick the path they wish to steer.

The most important factor in your era
is to eradicate your work tradition
By all means educate people for a trade
But please get rid of that work tradition.

If all were unemployed together
Would it not be very much better
Equal rights will be there for all
And all will feel very much better.