A companion memo to The Shorter Working Life stack explaining why retirement is the primary institutional mechanism through which reductions in required lifetime labor can be staged, administered, and made legible. It reframes retirement as labor infrastructure, shows how it absorbs reduced labor demand through lifecycle adjustment, and explains why partial and phased retirement function as the transition technology of the shorter working life.
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BRIEF · shorter-working-life-retirement-mechanism-memo · May 13, 2026
Retirement Mechanism Memo
Retirement as labor infrastructure