kleinbl00 had some great comments on this mentality that I can't currently find. As I recall the gist of it was, we do this to ourselves. Ain't no one forcing you to work 40 hours a week. I work 15-20 hours a week on top of my coursework, but when I graduate you can be damn sure I'm going to be working 40 hours a week in some form or fashion. I'll work more if they'll let me. Why? Because while I could live easily on 15 hours a week in the shithole that is Norman, Oklahoma, I want to live somewhere interesting, and I don't want the first major health problem I have to cripple me. That's my personal reason, others probably have their own.And yet in all the time that’s passed since Fuller made that statement — and all the technological advances since then — we’ve clung stubbornly to a 40-hr workweek.
You're looking for this comment. The article above is specious at best - it puts forth as "convincing" some nobody's-ever-heard-of-you AD who lives downtown and pretends to commute everywhere by bus and Metro. So really, the "oh yeah you can save money and time" is really "oh yeah you can save money and spend 5 hours a day on your smartphone but not talking to anyone because there's no wifi in the tunnels." Nick Redding argues convincingly in Methland that amphetamines are a peculiarly American drug to abuse because they actually push you closer to the ideal American ethic of hard work and success. Not saying he's right, but from a fundamental standpoint, disorder is entropy, entropy is death and doing something is actively pushing the Grim Reaper away. A syllogism that fundamental is not going to just evaporate because some hippie says "work is immoral."