ABSTRACT
Work avoidance flows naturally from the premises of market analysts: work is a disutility and pay and leisure are the compensations for incurring this sacrifice. Pay as the compensation for giving up leisure suggests an unpleasant interpretation of work avoidance. Just as the employer is believed to seek maximum work for minimal pay (buying at the cheapest so he can increase profits), so workers, by the same logic, will try to get maximum pay for minimal work (and maximal leisure). This is, of course, the rational thing to do. What appears to the employer as workers' laziness is simply the employer's own rationality in reverse. The fact that this interpretation of the situation does not prevail is not so much a compliment to workers and their employers as an indictment of the premises of market analysts, so trenchantly criticized by C. E. Lindblom.
