Work ethic has become a work fetish. How and when did this happen?
Is there any definitive consensus that work has to be conducted 40hrs/week and 54 weeks/year.
When we only work for half the year, we can employ more people and bring down unemployment.
Give people time the learn another skill, study, spend time with family, recuperate and also leave a smaller carbon footprint..
Many industries are already seasonal: farming, ranching, fishing, drilling.
Not that efficiency should be the end-all and be-all. Your job gets along without you for two weeks a year, or 4-6 weeks if you live in a first world country. In a world where we expected people to work only six months might produce fewer programs, or programs a few months later than otherwise, but it might not really be poorer for that. Silicon Valley prizes getting your MVP out immediately, but if somebody else got there ahead of you, the world hasn't really lost anything.
But it's not easy to get there. The winner is often (not always!) the one who works hardest and longest, and the winner often takes all. There's often no second place, or a very meager one. It's kind of a prisoner's dilemma, where we'd all be better off if everybody would just relax, but since they won't, you can't.
There are definitely people who work that way. Some software developers work on short-term work when they feel like it, make as much money as they require, and spend the rest of their time doing whatever they want. I'd kinda like to be one of them some day.