Cover for The Shorter Working Life by Scott Jellen

The Shorter Working Life

A Framework for Reducing Required Lifetime Labor

A framework paper arguing that the modern work lifecycle no longer matches current economic and demographic conditions. It proposes reducing the duration of mandatory full-time labor over time, using retirement as the primary institutional mechanism for transition.

Framework PaperFuture of WorkRetirementLabor PolicyInstitutional Design
Published: April 20, 2026
DOIRead Paper

The Approach

Scott Jellen is an independent researcher focused on protocol design, rights modeling, and interoperability across digital and public systems. His flagship work, the Universal Sports Graph (USG), defines a neutral infrastructure layer for representing sports rights through published RFCs and a versioned reference registry. Additional briefs and whitepapers explore how incentive clarity and structural design shape scalable institutions.

© 2026 Scott Jellen. Licensing varies by publication.