It really is so outdated, this commitment where you spend 40 hours a week at your machine on the assembly line, pulling the right levers to produce products to sell. Some knowledge workers really are spending 90+ hours thinking about the various problems the company has and how to fix them. Of course some are lazy and just play politics to get ahead/avoid the axe. It's all so nebulous understanding who actually provides the value, at least when you have a 10000 foot view of the organization.
Luckily, the economy has companies of all shapes and sizes. So if the (supposed?) overhead of office politics gets too large at big organisations, they can be outcompeted by nimbler outfits.
If existing laws and regulations allow competition, that is. Some sectors are severely locked down.
