In the middle of the 20th century, some sociologists and economists began to speculate on what society would look like in a post-capitalistic world – a world that had become so wealthy that the big “problems” of the day would revolve around how to distribute wealth and what to do with “free time,” i.e., leisure. Technological progress would remove the burden of workday drudgery, leaving mankind free to engage in nobler endeavors. But which leisurely pursuits would be pursued? This newfound interest set in motion the creation of leisure studies departments.

University of Iowa professor Bejamin Hunnicutt has become a prominent defender of the field. He recently gained attention with the 2013 release of Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream, a book that argues that the American Dream has “been reduced to economic growth and confined by government budgets,” and that our lives would be enriched by working less. Earlier this year, in an article on Politico, he asked, “Why Do Republicans Want Us to Work All the Time?” He was responding to conservatives who had pointed out that one of Obamacare’s detrimental effects will be cuts to Americans’ work weeks. For Hunnicutt, of course, that unintended effect is a desirable one.

George Leef, in today’s Pope Center feature, looks closely at the leisure studies field, and upends its defenders’ basic assumptions. The inescapable problem of scarcity is completely ignored by leisure studies scholars, according to Leef. The Marxist utopia envisioned by many academics disregards the fact that “goods and services only appear when individuals work to produce them.” Also, argues Leef, individuals have different preferences for leisure, and those preferences are revealed by how much time they spend working. “Some poor people prefer to allocate more time to leisure while some rich people choose to be workaholics. People have different values,” he writes.

Also overlooked by leisure studies academics is that free market capitalism provides workers with more leisure, without any coercion from central planners or regulators. As our standards of living progress and as the division of labor becomes ever more expansive, our options – including how we choose to spend our free time – multiply. As Leef points out, “Only in American universities – fulsomely supported through people’s work – could [leisure] become the grounds for a field of study.”