The central ideological support for the work ethic is that remuneration be tied to suffering. ... Whether for a religious or secular goal, suffering is thought to constitute a necessary rite of passage. ... A life without suffering is seen as frivolous and meaningless. This position must be rejected as a holdover from a now-transcended stage of human history. The drive to make suffering meaningful may have had some functional logic in times when poverty, illness and starvation were necessary features of existence. But we should reject this logic today and recognise that we have moved beyond the need to ground meaning in suffering. Work, and the suffering that accompanies it, should not be glorified.

— Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams