Overwork is a response to lower value production
Tim’s thoughts on the breakdown of value production as a source of American overwork are novel. He uses many well-trodden arguments, but I think there’s something to be said for the “arms race” that exists in white collar professions. My work at Relativity met this description; even though we were firmly ensconced as the number one e-discovery software company, serving a community notorious for its reticence to change, we worked like Cold War arms dealers to stay ahead.
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What counts as work, in the skilled trades, has some intrinsic limits; once a house or bridge is built, that’s the end of it. But in white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities—that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs.
The trade analogy was helpful. An engineer is finished when the bridge exists, but software can always be “better.” A tweak here, a change there, perhaps a rewrite in a fancy new language, a conversion to a new delivery model, the replacement of a core system or two…
Another direction Tim might have gone is that loss of social meaning drives overwork.
Also, there may be a large number of what David Graeber calls “Bullshit Jobs.” Adam Gordon Bell has a writeup with examples.