The Efficiency Monster™: How Capitalism Codified Ableism – and Called It Progress
3 min read
The Efficiency Monster™ is a framework for understanding how capitalist systems moralise productivity, weaponize efficiency, and reinforce ableism – punishing slowness, fluctuation, rest, and refusal, especially in disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent bodies. It lives not in shadows but in spreadsheets and performance reviews, turning output into identity and systemic harm into personal failure. Rooted in industrial-era ideologies and perpetuated by neoliberalism, it feeds on hyperproductivity, invisibilised suffering, and institutional complicity while protecting meritocracy myths, white neurotypical norms, and grind culture. It persists because it serves systems built on high output and low resistance, cloaking oppression in the language of common sense. Liberation requires rejecting its logic, honouring changeable capacity, restoring interdependence, and designing for sustainability.
There’s a monster living in our inboxes, our schedules, our being. You won’t find it snarling in the shadows. You’ll find it glowing in a spreadsheet. Hidden in a deadline. Smiling in a performance review.
It’s The Efficiency Monster™.
It explains why slowness is punished. Why burnout is glamorized. Why deviation from “optimum function” – especially by disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, or otherwise non-conforming bodies – is treated as both inconvenience and failure.
It’s a framework that’s not just about workplace culture, but about the values underpinning the entire system – naming how capitalist systems weaponize efficiency not just as a metric, but as a moral code.
When Productivity Becomes a Personality
Capitalism didn’t just elevate efficiency – it consecrated it. Over time, productivity became a proxy for morality. You are what you produce. You are worth what you output. And if you can’t “keep up”, you’re “rightfully” seen as disposable.
In this way:
Ableism is reinforced, not as an anomaly but as a feature.
Rest is pathologized – seen as indulgence, not necessity.
Interdependence is erased, replaced with self-sufficiency myths and “resilience” propaganda.
Systemic violence is reframed as personal failure – e.g. you’re just not managing your time well.
Anatomy of the Monster
The Efficiency Monster™ doesn’t stomp. It hums. It diarises. It streamlines. It feeds in the following ways:
Its Roots Run Deep
The Efficiency Monster™ didn’t appear overnight. Historical anchors built its body:
Industrial Revolution – Human beings were rebranded as tools. Workhouses punished those who couldn’t produce.
Taylorism / Scientific Management – Labour was atomised and mechanised. Time became tyrant.
Fordism – Standardisation ruled. Efficiency meant uniformity. Difference was disruption.
Neoliberalism – Productivity became personal. You are your own project. Rest is weakness. Care is liability.
What the Monster Punishes
If you’ve ever been side-eyed for needing more time, overworked because your pain is invisible, or penalised for riding waves instead of running in a straight line – you’ve met the monster. It punishes:
Fluctuating capacity or energy.
Non-visible disabilities.
Non-linear cognition or communication.
Intermittent availability.
Slowness, softness, stillness.
Rest, repair, and refusal.
In short, anything that doesn’t serve the bottom line – financially, culturally, operationally.
What It Protects
The Efficiency Monster™ has favourites. It protects:
The myth of meritocracy.
White, male, abled, neurotypical tempo.
Overwork as status.
Grind culture as virtue.
Institutions posing as neutral.
The false binary of “fit-to-work” and its use as both gatekeeper and noose.
Why It Persists
Because it delivers. Not for everyone – but for those who benefit from systems where high output meets low resistance.
It thrives on the lie that it’s just common sense:
“That’s just how work is”.
“We’ve all got to pull our weight”.
“If you can’t handle it, maybe this isn’t the right job for you”.
These aren’t neutral statements. They’re how oppression cloaks itself in reason.
Fighting the Monster
The silver bullet isn’t laziness. It’s liberation.
We fight The Efficiency Monster™ by:
Refusing to internalise its logic.
Honouring capacity as fluctuating, not fixed.
Designing systems around sustainability over speed.
Restoring interdependence as a cultural norm.
Naming and challenging the institutions that still feed the beast.
This isn’t about slowing down for the sake of it. It’s about remembering we are not machines. Because The Efficiency Monster™ doesn’t ask if you’re well. It asks if you’re useful. And, as many have said, we are human beings – not human doings.
What do you think...?
© It’s Nadine™ | The Efficiency Monster™
For educational, analytical, and commentary purposes only. If referencing or teaching, please cite and attribute authorship.
