The Abundance–Bullshit Paradox
Why We Work When We Don’t Have To
"The love of money as a possession… will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.”
—John Maynard Keynes, 1930
A thought has been gnawing at me: we fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem.
Let me elaborate…
Just weeks ago, a provocative question I posed on LinkedIn ignited a cascade of thoughtful discussions, spilling over into private messages. This led me down a rabbit hole of fascinating essays, which I couldn't help but compare with the lived experience of my grandmother.
A Life of Work, Without Pretence
My grandmother was a force of nature who never truly ceased working. Even after retirement, when most would embrace repose, she leaned further into life. She became a nurse for her community: administering injections, chauffeuring neighbors to hospital appointments, and steadfastly sitting by their bedsides through years of illness. This quiet vocation she pursued with tireless energy, still driving patients at ninety-six (much to her family’s desperate pleas for her to stop!). Only in March, when illness finally claimed her, did her service come to its natural close. She passed away in June.
At her funeral, over a hundred souls gathered: family, of course, but also friends, patients, and the community she had devoted decades to serving. They came to honour a life undeniably defined by care. She was not “productive” in the contemporary economic sense—she barely managed to send a text message on her trusty brick phone—yet her impact on countless lives was immeasurable.
This is one model of work: deeply lived, profoundly dignified, utterly indispensable.
Contrast it with the prevailing culture of modern employment: the endless revisions of slide decks that vanish after thirty seconds in a meeting, the meticulous crafting of reports never truly read but meticulously filed as proof of diligence, the elaborate rituals of busyness whose primary purpose seems to be signaling one’s continued participation in the game. The chasm between my grandmother’s purposeful existence and this sterile environment is not merely generational. It reveals a profound structural paradox at the heart of modern economies.
A Promise Made to Our Grandparents
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously envisioned a future where his grandchildren would work a mere fifteen hours a week. He believed that technology, relentlessly multiplying productivity, would banish scarcity. The fundamental challenge, he predicted, would shift from survival to the purposeful use of abundant leisure (“the art of life”).
He was, in part, correct. Productivity has indeed soared. Yet, the workweek stubbornly hovers near forty hours. The promised dividend of abundance has not materialized as freedom, but has instead been absorbed into new, often meaningless, layers of activity.
Keynes wrote amidst the Great Depression, a world gripped by unemployment and pervasive anxiety. Yet, he offered a vision almost shocking in its optimism:
Within a century, relentless technological progress and the magic of compound interest would definitively solve the “economic problem” of scarcity. Humanity would work a mere 15 hours a week. The vast remainder of their time would be liberated for what he so eloquently termed the “art of life.”
I cannot help but ponder: Why, in an era of unprecedented plenty, do we still cling so fiercely to the rigid structures of full-time toil?
The Age of Bullshit Work
Almost a century later, anthropologist David Graeber offered a compelling answer: we have simply filled the void with what he unblinkingly called bullshit jobs. These are roles that even their own occupants suspect are utterly unnecessary. He meticulously categorized them:
Flunkies who exist solely to inflate the perceived importance of their superiors.
Goons who either inflict harm or defend against other goons (think lobbyists, PR gurus, corporate litigators).
Duct Tapers who tirelessly patch over systemic flaws that should never have existed in the first place (this resonates with my personal experience with AI: I often automate tasks that, in a saner world, wouldn’t need doing at all).
Box Tickers who orchestrate the illusion of progress (think compliance reports, internal surveys that gather dust).
Taskmasters who, through their very existence, generate superfluous work for others.
Critics quickly pointed out the inherent subjectivity of "usefulness." Yet, Graeber’s broader indictment still cuts deep. Modern capitalism, he argued, sustains vast swathes of low-value labour because it serves political convenience and cultural legitimization. Politicians proudly trumpet “job creation.” Executives flaunt their influence through the sheer size of their teams. And society, conditioned over generations, continues to equate busyness with virtue.
It’s a scene both familiar and strikingly contemporary in modern corporate life.
In fact, a disturbingly similar scenario recently unfolded before my eyes. An executive, seeking a veneer of innovation, commissions a high-priced consultant to produce a “fresh” strategic analysis, despite an identical study gathering dust somewhere within the firm. The new version, bloated into 25 dense pages, will likely remain largely unread, yet it now sits on the executive’s desk as a tangible talisman of certainty. The crucial decision it purportedly supports was, in truth, cemented long before the first slide was even drafted.
Elsewhere in the gleaming office tower, teams dedicate days to finessing a single slide for a quarterly review, fully aware that its meticulously crafted figures will be rendered obsolete within a week. Such episodes are rarely deemed scandalous. Instead, they are seamlessly absorbed into the very fabric of “work”—the quiet, intricate choreography of tasks whose primary function is to signal diligence rather than to yield enduring value.
Months of meetings, an endless parade of slide decks, “alignment workshops” stretching into eternity. All orbiting a product that, in the end, never shipped.
Perhaps the elaborate corporate system was initially conceived to solve a genuine problem. For example, poor communication, a need to standardize operations for consistent branding, or to build an operating model robust enough to survive employee turnover. Over time, however, no one bothered to revisit the system, until it morphed into something designed primarily to signal that something was being done. I vividly recall leaving a meeting during my consulting days, a single thought echoing in my mind: “If an alien were to land here, they would undoubtedly conclude our species survives on PowerPoint.”
Graeber branded this reality a form of “profound psychological violence.” Not because the jobs were inherently difficult, but because they demanded that individuals pretend their work mattered, even when they knew, deep down, that it didn’t.
Keynes vs. Graeber
Let us place these two thinkers side by side:
Keynes believed that the relentless march of technology would ultimately liberate us from the necessity of work.
Graeber, in stark contrast, illuminated how technology, instead of freeing us, enabled us to create fake work rather than cultivating more jobs that genuinely enrich our environment and our lives.
Keynes underestimated the ingrained reverence for the work ethic deeply sanctified within Western culture. Graeber, perhaps, overestimated our collective capacity to forge meaningful lives without a robust moral framework for the very act of work. The result is a searing paradox: we produce more than at any other point in history, yet we struggle more than ever to articulate precisely why we are working at all.
A Third Voice?
There exists, however, another profound way of contemplating the nature of work.
My formative years were spent immersed in the study of Catholic social teachings. These teachings recently resurfaced in my mind when the new pope, Leo XIV, announced he had chosen his name in homage to the pontiff who penned the first era-defining encyclical letter addressing the tumultuous impact of the industrial revolution and its accompanying social upheaval. And now, we find ourselves at the precipice of the next—and likely even more profound—industrial revolution.
Long before Keynes or Graeber graced the intellectual stage, popes were wrestling with the burgeoning forces of industrial capitalism and the very essence of human labor. Here are the core ideas that resonated most deeply with me (I apologize for isolating these singular insights from documents that are, in their entirety, lengthy, dense, and incredibly valuable—truly worth reading in full).
Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891): Work is not merely a transaction, but a profound source of human dignity and a participation in God’s ongoing creation.
Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio (1967): True human development encompasses the flourishing of the whole person, extending far beyond mere economic growth.
Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (2009): Markets, to be truly just, demand an ethical foundation rooted in truth and love, transcending the narrow pursuit of mere efficiency.
Francis’s Laudato Si’ (2015): Even boundless abundance becomes meaningless if its cost is the degradation of our planet and the continued marginalization of the poor.
This alternative lens is crucial because it fundamentally shifts the terms of the debate.
Keynes inquired about the optimal amount of work once scarcity had been conquered. Graeber exposed why so much of our current work feels utterly pointless. Catholic social thought poses a far deeper question: what kinds of work are truly worthy of a human being?
My grandmother, who never studied economics or worked in what we deem today’s top careers, yet her life exemplified this principle far more than most corporations.
Why the Fifteen-Hour Week Never Arrived
Three powerful mechanisms explain why Keynes’s prediction failed to materialize:
Status and identity: In many cultures, busyness remains the ultimate measure of worth and success. Our identities are often inextricably linked to our professional roles and the sheer volume of our commitments.
Political incentives: Leaders are often rewarded, both by constituents and by their peers, for the raw number of jobs created, rather than the substance or quality of those roles. This incentivizes the proliferation of work, even if it’s unproductive.
Moral conditioning: Generations have been taught that leisure without visible, economically productive activity is wasteful, even morally suspect. This deep-seated belief makes it difficult to embrace a future where less work is needed.
These mechanisms act as the invisible scaffolding of the modern economy, preserving the workweek as a ritual, even when technology makes it fundamentally unnecessary. They allow appearances to be maintained while the core meaning of work can be hollowed out.
AI and the Next Test
Why is this discussion crucial for "Honest AI"? Because the burgeoning AI revolution resurrects Keynes’s fundamental question with unprecedented urgency. What happens when intelligent machines can perform the vast majority of tasks currently undertaken by humans?
If history serves as our guide, we will not automatically be granted a leisure dividend. Instead, we risk falling into deeper layers of “AI-enabled bullshit”—generating endless dashboards to monitor other dashboards, creating prompt engineers to find workarounds for tools that were never truly needed in the first place. The prevailing temptation will be to measure success by the sheer number of processes automated, rather than by the genuine, enduring value they create.
But there is an alternative path—a profound opportunity.
We can leverage AI to decisively eliminate work that genuinely is bullshit, repetitive, demeaning, or even harmful. This, in turn, could expand the vital space for uniquely human endeavors: care, creativity, critical thinking, and stewardship of our planet.
The technology itself holds no inherent moral compass. Well, …it inherits a weird and opaque one from its training data and one from its creators… But the point remains—it cannot make this decision for us.
Whether AI deepens or ultimately resolves the paradox of our time depends entirely on finding our purpose: why we do what we do, and what we choose to encode into our institutions, our policies, and our cultures. It boils down to a fundamental choice: do we measure success in units of ephemeral output, or in the currency of lives lived with dignity, purpose, and genuine flourishing?
And that, above all, demands profound cultural courage.
A Humane Framework
(Fans of Honest AI’s newsletter know I always like to propose a human override!)
If we synthesize Keynes’s optimistic vision, Graeber’s incisive critique, and the enduring tradition of vocation, a clear path forward begins to illuminate itself:
Retire work of negligible value: We must actively identify and eliminate tasks that machines can—or should—handle, embracing automation to free human potential.
Corollary: Why don’t we first question whether work of negligible value can be entirely eradicated? It’s 2025—do we truly still need those ubiquitous, often unread, slide decks?
Redistribute work for greater equity and stability: We should actively seek ways for more people to work fewer, more focused hours, without a proportional reduction in pay. Consider the intense hours demanded of a mid-level corporate lawyer on, say, a $135k salary. It's economically unfeasible for them to simply halve their salary to work less. The opportunity, therefore, lies in a broader societal agreement that "full-time" becomes fewer hours, with compensation maintained. The burgeoning 4-day week movement is a start, but it's only the beginning of reimagining work schedules without penalizing individuals financially. This would foster greater balance and allow for more widespread participation in meaningful work. Economic incentives play a critical role in behavioral change.
Reclaim leisure as cultural enrichment: Leisure should be seen not merely as a recovery period from work, but as a vital component of a flourishing culture. Embracing and valuing leisure time could significantly boost the economic and social value of arts, education, and community engagement. My spiritual father insisted on educating people to appreciate beauty. Can anyone disagree with that?!?
Prioritize virtuous criteria over efficiency in governing technology: When deploying new technologies, particularly AI, our primary aim should be optimizing for human well-being and societal good, rather than solely for narrow definitions of market efficiency. Is there any politician today whose primary aim is to optimize for virtue rather than market outcomes?
Tie economic ambition to ecological reality: Our economic models must be fundamentally aligned with the health and sustainability of our planet. It is astonishing how quickly many green initiatives have faded into the background since 2022 (when genAI utopia became the new global imperative), despite the escalating urgency of climate change.
What I propose isn’t merely a suggestion. This is a demand for profound renewal. We must fundamentally rethink how we define work, why we engage in it, and what truly makes it matter. While businesses focus on productivity, the challenge is more about the very structure of our economic incentives and our collective willingness to prioritize human flourishing or something else.
At her funeral, my grandmother was honored not for her measurable productivity or economic output, but for her quiet, unwavering presence and her countless acts of service. She lived in a world largely untouched by the digital torrent, yet her work was imbued with a profound sense of dignity and purpose.
Our world, by stark contrast, risks becoming its inverse: overwhelmed by digital devices and hyper-connectivity, yet often empty of genuine meaning. We are surrounded by unprecedented abundance, yet troubled by the nagging doubt that much of what we do is merely for show, a performance of busyness rather than a contribution of value.
The true challenge of our era lies in whether we can bridge this ever-widening gulf.
Can we, in an age defined by machines and algorithms, rediscover a profound sense of vocation—a calling that transcends the mere transactional, and where economic structures support a life of purpose, not just profit? So that our lives, like hers, are ultimately measured not by what we accumulated or by how busy we appeared, but by the enduring good we leave behind?
