Work and its Discontents

A familiar scene in contemporary American life is someone winning the lottery, and then promptly quitting their job.  One aspect of such scenes is onlookers who insist that even if they did win the lottery, they would not quit the job.  Thus, there is evidence of a distinction between Work that is in itself enjoyable, and that which is endured merely as an end to remuneration.  Now, study of that distinction seems to be lacking, so there is available neither hard numbers  of the comparative incidence of the two types, nor reasons why work is enjoyable for its own sake.  But the latter can be reasonably speculated about--such activity involves skill and/or is socially satisfying.  So, even one exemplification of that possibility disproves Smith's cardinal thesis that Profit is the fundamental motivation to Work, and the more of them that there are, the wider the discontent of having to Work under conditions that are determined by that thesis.  In other words, having to work among those who fundamentally dislike what they are doing is a psychological drag on those who enjoy what they do.