I did read a National Geographic article about these Hadza tribesmen in Africa that are hunter-gatherers.
The dude that did the article was amazed at the absurd amount of time the Hazda spent doing much of nothing at all. They did not need to stay busy, the actual business of hunting and preparing for hunting and everything else occupied very little time. Granted, they did'nt exactly do much of anything fun on their free time, either.
Although, you could probably do this in modern society as well. You can live simply and legally and reasonably comfortably for something like 500$ a month, which you could make with a 20 hour work week in a minimum wage job. Or a trivially modest pension.
Thing is most people are willing to work a little harder then that in return for more material stuff and comfort.
Only problem being probably better than 50% of the human population would have to die to make it possible. When you've got seven billion plus people mucking about, there really isn't enough space for a system like that to work.
Well, the Adbusters article guy implied this population drop is going to happen anyways in the future with peak oil and energy, food shortages, prices for basic goods, ect. Oh, and war and government oppression, of course. Mentioned his model would really only work in Canada because Americans are too naturally violent to cohabitate like that.