Author makes a generalization here - one I have seen first hand not to be true on many occasions.
My first job was effectively working 2-3 hours a day in a medium sized company (>400 employees). The company inherited local market monopoly and a lot of employees had shares after privatization from communist era - which kept the communist hiring/work policy for almost 15 years after the fall of the regime.
Very few people actually disliked the fact that they accomplished little to nothing in their 8 hours at work, a lot of them were involved in stealing (drivers using company gas for their cars, reselling raw materials, stealing product labeled as "defective", etc.)
I would say 95% of the people were not only happy but probably proud that they were getting decent salaries for below reasonable amount of work (by any standard). There were people who didn't like that kind of environment and incentives (myself included) but we were in minority. I would say that what separated us from the others was ambition - we actually wanted to accomplish something in our career and majority of people working there were perfectly happy where they were.
Eventually the financial crisis hit, the market shifted, company profits went to shit, employees dumped their shares in panic and all of those incompetent people found themselves on the street with no career prospects after 20+ years of doing practically no work. The guys who were semi competent were long gone by then.
My point is - this sentiment of needing to accomplish something at work is not shared by everyone (some may pay lip service to it but in practice won't behave accordingly) it's not something I would generalize.