The targets of our performance-driven society are no less absurd than the five-year plans of the former U.S.S.R. To found our political system on production figures is to turn the good life into a spreadsheet. As the writer Kevin Kelly says, “Productivity is for robots. Humans excel at wasting time, experimenting, playing, creating, and exploring.”31 Governing by numbers is the last resort of a country that no longer knows what it wants, a country with no vision of utopia.
The victory of the unimaginative man
