Free Phase Memo

A companion memo to The Shorter Working Life stack clarifying what a shorter working life is intended to create beyond the reduction of required labor itself. It explains that the free phase is not idleness, pure leisure, or the absence of contribution, but the portion of life no longer governed by mandatory full-time labor, where care, civic participation, mentoring, education, creative work, self-maintenance, optional labor, and local institution-building can continue beyond the baseline compulsion of market participation.