[stuxnet79]

IMO the truth is somewhere in the middle. A lot of people tend to underestimate the extent and pervasiveness of 'make-work' in the economy. But then again there are lots of vital but rather onerous tasks that would never get done if there wasn't any financial incentive.

[skidoo]

Financial incentive wasn't attached to labor for the bulk of our species' history though. That's relatively new. Prior, there was working for survival (far less hours per week than today), and beyond that the obvious slavery that was more overt than modern industry. All said, now I think it would take a mother of a global psychogenesis to remind people of benefits to working other than the mere monetary (physical, spiritual, etc). But it is in our genes. We are just lazier than our forefathers, that much less willing to scrub our own toilets and the like unless we can see the carrot at stick's end.