>Busyness has become a badge of honor as elites boast of their workloads: A 2015 advertisement for The Wall Street Journal stated, “People who don’t have time m

>Busyness has become a badge of honor as elites boast of their workloads: A 2015 advertisement for The Wall Street Journal stated, “People who don’t have time make time to read The Wall Street Journal.” It's the hustle culture of capitalism applied to every facet of life. If you're not productive every single moment, you're falling behind and your self worth deserves to decline because of it. We've eliminated any "slack" from our jobs, from our lives, from our relationships in pursuit of ever more efficiency. We procrastinate because we feel guilty about not being maximally productive 100% of the time, there's no room for honest slack, we have to self-flagellate. We can't enjoy our time off because we know that work is piling up in our absence, having slack staff to compensate would be a waste. Our time with friends has to be scheduled and planned so it doesn't get in the way of our productivity, there's no room for slack in our social activities. We do all of these things because if we fall behind our job might be on the chopping block when the shareholders decide to squeeze fractions of a percent out of the share price. If we lose our jobs we lose medical care, food, shelter, and more. We could fix all of these things if we chose to make our society that way, but we find it preferable for one man's divorce to have global implications for dozens of organizations and charities, all the people who work for him, and all the people who depend his whims for aid.