Your first job sounds similar to that of the worker in the pin factory in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Later on he describes the "torpor of the mind"[1] that

Your first job sounds similar to that of the worker in the pin factory in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Later on he describes the "torpor of the mind"[1] that you must have felt doing all that copy/pasting. Smith's argument at the end of the same passage and throughout the WoN is that government intervention and regulation is necessary to avoid the societal decay that the invisible hand of capitalism can produce. Specifically he suggests government-sponsored education as the best solution to the problem. [1] http://www.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html http://www.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html