Good luck doing nothing of value in a restaurant with 20 employees.
2011 Tigerlogic in Irvine, CA and 2018 JPMC in Seattle, WA, I would do NOTHING for days while collecting rather nice paychecks by today's standards. The fact I then chose to QUIT these jobs for a rather unknown working situation (and slightly more pay) astounded my friends.
At my current position, I make a great living and do very little. Maybe once every two weeks I work all day. Most of the time it's gaming metrics by picking (or creating) issues that are unknown, such that I'm writing the docs and specializing in code corners nobody else wants to. Numbers of developers are tight, so we don't see the redundancy from previous years. That's great for me.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AutoHotkey/comments/1p7xrro/have_yo...
You understand that for you to do “real work” all day someone and to research and decide to pay you to do that.
And before you say you are self guided answer me if you took up painting tomorrow would you be allowed to continue.
The parent post specifically mentioned large organizations, where the "employer" is not some person who hires and pays employees from their own funds. Hiring and personel management is done by middle managers with their own interests and incentives, which can differ substantially from those of the owners or capital providers.