by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books
Because your parents and grandparents and their parents had jobs, you might think having a job is normal. But, actually, jobs are abnormal, bordering on the bizarre.
In the long and turbulent timeline of human history, having a job is a very unusual thing.
We hunted and gathered things for the vast majority of our existence. Then we started planting crops and, through trial and error (and through learning astronomy), we got really good at it. So much so, we turned civilization on its head and created an agrarian economy, where people could stay in the same place and form societies.
The first corporation, though, wasn’t created until relatively recently in the 17th century. They were initially set up to finance trips to the New World.