Slack and the Imaginary Economy.

“The divergence between technically feasible production and actual consumption has visibly reduced the number of blue-collar workers and peasants in the population and inflated, for compensatory purposes, a gigantic service sector which must be unproductive of material goods, brimming with employees, managers, consultants, supervisors and various e... See more

Fabbri’s book suggests that to keep everyone busy, humanity is creating more and more jobs that are not necessary:

In the industrial world, the main unit of input was man-hours. In post-industrial work, the main unit of input is concentration.

Another inefficiency associated with the old industrial world is that people were scarcely matched with jobs that they had the potential to be great at; most jobs were within large firms. Most large firms had clearly defined roles and procedures that employees had to fit into. The result was a world that was safe for average people.

As geographical constraints diminish, the world is becoming more dangerous for those who aren’t great at their job.

In a world powered by human concentration, giving every employee the power to “grab” every other employee’s attention is the ultimate form of featherbedding. It keeps everyone distracted just enough to make sure we’re not innovating too quickly.

The best ideas come up when smart people are allowed to focus — on their own or with a small group.

This does not mean that Slack doesn’t help some or even most employees. But it holds back the most productive among us and prevents them from coming up with ideas that would make all their colleagues redundant.

Geography and scarcity handicapped above-average performers and protected the average ones.

a small minority of the most productive office employees can now capture a bigger share of all work (and all rewards) in a variety of industries.