I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.

-George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it's hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorized stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)-and particularly its financial avatars-but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.

-from "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs"

— Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (71%)