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I hate winter in the northern hemisphere – London to be precise. It is barely daylight when you have to leave home to go to work. It is dark again at 4pm. It is too cold to be outside for any length of time. No wonder many suffer with Seasonal Affective Disorder nowadays.

Perhaps a nice winter sun holiday would do the trick, somewhere hot. How would you afford it when you have to work every day to make ends meet?

And then there's summer. Beautiful days stuck in the office 9 til 5 – need I say more!

Isn't it a romantic idea to work from home! You could work whatever hours you choose, and free up all the time you need to do the things you enjoy, spend time with your family, etc., and still earn enough to pay all the bills. Dream on!

Everyone wants to work at home nowadays, and for a lucky few it is a reality. I have been job hunting recently and am stunned by the amount of so called "opportunities" advertised everywhere. I find this a worrying trend. What would happen if we all gave up our jobs tomorrow to work from home? Chaos, that's what! Allow me to explain.

This is the scary part – I will now introduce you to my own brand of political ideology, which I will call dot.communism. Don't worry, I'll keep it simple!

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher. Thomas More, an important politician and intellectual of the 1500s and aide to King Henry VIII. Marx and Engels, political commentators of the 1800s. What do these men have in common? Their own gripe with society. For Plato it was slavery (you might say we have our own form of this today – wage slavery). For More, it was the separation of the Church from the State and the subsequent class divide. For Marx and Engels it was capitalism. All of these men illustrated their own particular gripes by writing about a fictional society known as Utopia.

To translate this into modern, understandable terms, Utopia would be a society in which no one would have to work any more than necessary to meet their needs, and no one would be forced to do a job they hate. No one would be in competition with the next person for a better car, a Prada handbag or whatever. Everyone would have enough free time to do what they enjoy doing. Poverty would be eliminated, there would be no need for currency, and everyone would be doing something useful and enjoyable.

I will not explain the hows, whys and wherefores here, but supposing this were possible? If currency were eliminated, why would you need to get rich? Wealth would be measured in other ways. Would there be a place for what you are doing now in Utopian society?

If we all worked at home in a Utopian society, we would have to be doing something useful. There would be no need for hard selling or marketing of any kind. There may not even be a need for the products we are currently selling. So what would you do?

Utopian society is unfortunately just an ideal, and we live in a capitalist society. However, I believe the same rule applies. If you are not doing something useful, you should find something that is. If the product you are selling isn't useful, find one that is. Will a new car or a Prada handbag really make you happy? Do whatever you can to find your own personal Utopia.

About the author:

Julia Bates is works at home part-time, and is always investigating useful ways to earn a second income. She publishes a monthly e-zine, The Newbie Netpreneur. To subscribe, mailto: Genuineincome@aol.com