https://allthatsinteresting.com/medieval-peasants-vacation-m...
We live in a time of immense wealth, but not leisure.
The average medieval peasant was illiterate, slept on straw, had to work if they were sick and God forbid they broke a bone they would likely have the bone set incorrectly handicapping them to varying degrees for the rest of their life.
The average American has air conditioning, electric or gas heat, a smartphone, watches television several hours a week and rarely has to worry about food poisoning or getting intestinal parasites.
Give up the air conditioning, the car, the 3000$ laptop every 2-3 years, the 1200$ smartphone every 18-24 months, the Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Spotify subscriptions, never purchase a single item that is (or contains a component that was) imported, the exotic vacations 0.5-4x a year, the 4-9$ cup of coffee 1-3x a day and that food delivery service you use 1-7x a week, running water and all electricity at your residence and you too could work considerably less.
"what do you do for a washing machine"
"what do you do for internet"
"what do you do for heating"
"what do you do for air conditioning"
"what is your toilet setup"
"what do you cook on"
"what sort of PV system do you have"
The article also talks about how peasants took frequent rests, but this is because they were doing extremely physically demanding work, not because they had a chill schedule.
Edit: A great example is that in Mexico and the American Southwest one of a woman's traditional tasks was grinding corn by hand, which could take up to 5 hours for her families supply. Other areas of the world that ate grains and didn't have access to mills would have had to spend a similar amount of time.
Cleaning, paying taxes, commuting, exercise (because most workers don't get it at work anymore), buying and cooking food, taking care of house and car, laundry, etc.
I huge amount of time is spent on those things and that wasn't included in the 40 hours.
How much work is the right amount of work? 40 hours? 80 hours? Are people working 2 jobs but still not making ends meet not 'pulling their own weight'?
How does supply and demand figure into this? Are people who get automated out of a job no longer pulling their own weight?
Does the fact that someone exploits their employees and only pays them 10% of the value that they generate while keeping the 90% meant that business owner is just 'pulling their own weight'?
According to your missing definition of 'pulling your own weight' slavery back in the 1800 could be viewed as just people 'pulling their own weight'.
Are people in towns where no jobs are available even though they want to work...just not 'pulling their own weight'?
Your simplifications are not well thought out and frankly stupid.
The benefit of van life for me it was the fact that if you're not rich, you spend all your time simply surviving in this current economy and can never truly thrive and follow your dreams, whether that's meeting people, or chasing a hobby project, or working a lower paying job to make the world a better place. Your job is to just survive.
For example:
30%+ of our income goes to taxes
20%-30%+ to rent + utilities
15% to student loans(if you have any).
10%+ (or way more if you're sick) to healthcare
5% to a car payment + insurance + gas
After all of that you only get 20%ish of your paycheck?
Then you have retirement to worry about because you can't rely on social security anymore.
Slavery still exists it's just expanded to include every race.
Van life at least frees you from that extra 20% plus it frees you from signing a 2 year lease obligation just to have a place to live. And in a job market that is chaotic you may have to move sooner than that so van life gives you the freedom to choose your life a lot better and is actually a lot more financially responsible.