In the dark days of the early 1970s, Britain was obliged by a coal-miners’ strike to go on to a three-day working week (our power stations were then mostly coal-fired, and hence there was a shortage of power). Strictly speaking, production should have declined by 40 per cent, but instead declined only by 20 per cent. This surely meant that, on average, people spent one day at work completely unproductively, which will come as a surprise only to those who have never worked in an enterprise or organisation of any kind.
In other words, at least a fifth of our working time is spent doing nothing, or rather nothing productive. Most people are incapable of doing nothing, in the strict sense that a meditator does nothing. Moreover, much of their activity may not merely be unproductive but positively counterproductive, in so far as most people at work feel obliged to do something, and by far the easiest thing for them to do with their superfluous time is to obstruct others, to have unnecessary meetings and so forth.
If taken seriously, not only offices, but millions of journeys to offices, would become unnecessary, pollution would decline and leisure time would increase. This latter would be a disaster, since most people do not know what to do with themselves as it is. It is for this reason that work is not arranged as efficiently as possible, but its productive aspect is diluted by myriad unnecessary tasks — unnecessary, that is, from the narrow point of view of production. Except in the factories of the East, where production is all, a great deal of work is designed to keep us occupied while we produce nothing. It ameliorates boredom and prevents the bad behaviour in which boredom results.
Anthony Daniels, “The Pleasant Embrace of Fear”, Quadrant, 2020-05-06.
August 31, 2025
QotD: The “working” world
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