“Although this bit of figuring work need not be taken too literally, it quite adequately serves to show what technology has enabled us to do: namely, to reduce the amount of time actually spent on production in its most elementary sense to such a tiny percentage of total social time that it pales into insignificance, that it carries no real weight, let alone prestige. When you look at industrial society in this way, you cannot be surprised to find that prestige is carried by those who hep fill the other 96½ per cent of total social time, primarily the entertainers but also the executors of Parkinson’s Law. In fact, one might put the following proposition to students of sociology: “The prestige carried by people in modern industrial society varies in inverse proportion to their closeness to actual production.”
(E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, pp. 159–160)
Just an acknowledgement of this post. I’m halfway through Small Is Beautiful and googled “executors of Parkinson’s Law” to see what references I might find. Besides your post, the only other was a link to the digital text of the book.
I can’t help but to think we would live in a better world if our leaders were aware of and promoted Schumacher’s beliefs.
Best wishes.