Productivist ethics assume that productivity is what defines and refines us, so that when human capacities for speech, intellect, thought, and fabrication are not directed to productive ends, they are reduced to mere idle talk, idle curiosity, idle thoughts, and idle hands, their noninstrumentality a shameful corruption of these human qualities. And what might be cause for ethical distaste in the case of the individual can, when compounded into a generalized indiscipline, become a threat to social order. This fear of free time, whether manifested as idleness or indiscipline, should not be underestimated.
Kathi Weeks, The Problem With Work
Kathi Weeks, The Problem With Work