"Doing nothing" does not mean that manual workers, managers of
productive enterprises, speculators in the natural resources of wealth
production and manufactured goods, as well as financiers, are not busy
people, or that their activity does not result in accomplishment. They
are indeed _the_ busy people and their accomplishment is the world's
wealth. Nevertheless the intention of all and the spirit of the scheme
is to do as near nothing as possible in exchange for the highest
return. _The whole industrial arrangement is carried on without
the force of productive intention; it is carried forward against a
disinclination to produce_.

I have said that industry was shorn of adventure for the common
man. Adventure in industrial enterprise is the business man's great
monopoly. His impetus is not due to his desire to create wealth but to
exploit it, and he secures its creation by "paying men off." Commonly
he is peevishly expectant that those he pays off will have a creative
intention toward the work he pays them to do, although in the scheme
of industry which he supports the opportunity provided for such
intention is negligible. An efficiency engineer estimated that there
is a loss in wealth of some fifty per cent, due to the inability of
the business man to appraise the creative possibilities in industry.

When exploitation of wealth is referred to, those who own it are
generally meant. But exploitation of wealth is the intention of
the worker as well as of the business man. To get, as I have said,
something for (doing) nothing is the dominating _motif_ in the
industrial world. It is supposed to reflect the self-interest of
individuals, to reflect, that is, their economic needs.

This motive of circumscribed self-interest during an era of political