Ronald Coase is one of the most famous economists of the the previous generation. His most influential work is 'The Nature of the Firm' which starts fro a very

Ronald Coase is one of the most famous economists of the the previous generation. His most influential work is 'The Nature of the Firm' which starts fro a very interesting premise. Why do Firms exist? If bargaining, prices & markets are such an awesome and efficient thing, why don't the different employees in a firm just form markets, ecosystems where they buy and sell good and services and make ipods or packaging materials. Why do firms get so big? Why are firms run like market-less totalitarian dictatorships internally? If 10 year plans created by bureaucrats about how much lubricates, steel & cutlery should be produced fail so terribly relative to a prices/markets based economy, why are big plans dictated by executives and filtering down layers of management any better? His answer was transaction costs. Markets have transactions costs. Every transaction needs to be negotiated, sold, etc. That's a cost. To get efficient transactions really need to be repeated. The market needs to be big enough and transparent enough. The totalitarian nature of the firm has costs too. But, as long as these are less than transaction costs, it's preferable. Anyway, back to the slacking… I think a lot of the pathologies of our life at work are a result of this sort of totalitarianism. They are the inefficiencies. People are estranged from their work because they are estranged from it. There's a strong social pressure to express (or even feel) deeply connected to your work. It's an explicit demand from employers. The demand isn't as far fetched as wise guy cynics think because there's an inherent human tendency to vend meaning in work and in groups of people. We're wired that way Still, we're in this system where the motivation to work is unnatural (money, social pressures, your boss) to us. The feedback from our work is disconnected. For every Leonardo there have been a million oil painting sweatshop monkeys. A million poor shmucks trained to implement agile development in some dark dingy bank tech consultancy. Our personality at work is different. A meek, boring shell. Non work is one pathology among many. But, if you like positivity, it also means that our world is full of unutilized people.