"It is scarcely worth belaboring the point that work is not just a source of drudgery and inconvenience, but also potentially a craft in which most people would prefer to take pride. Freud had it right when he observed that the two great pursuits of the human experience were love and work. Professor Robert Lane, in his magisterial work on markets and human psychology, The Market Experience, points to the multiple developmental functions of work: Work is a source of self-esteem and mastery; an engagement with the social world; a basis for positive or negative self-identity; and the source of ongoing learning. Work gives structure to life; it combats boredom and alienation. Lane, summarizing more than a decade's study of markets and human society, concludes that the signal failure of the market system is its inability either to provide enough work, or to structure enough jobs that allow people to realize their basic human needs for challenge, mastery, the intrinsic satisfaction of being one's own boss, and "cognitive complexity"."

Source: Robert Kuttner, "Everything For Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets", p.84, 1996.