That is also the case with the majority of current human activity..

But its so clear in this example, its like a caricature. I think also the old-timeyness of it makes it easier to think about in such a way.

I agree it's comical, and that it's a lot of intense repetitive drudgery. Pointless? I dunno. I wouldn't call art or decoration pointless.

Images of 20th Century factories can be gloomy or downright gruesome, but there's an optimism in it too. Those factory jobs were safer and gentler than backbreaking agricultural labour. People tried hard to get them.

Oddly enough they still miss them too. Lot of British nostalgia for the days when they made _things_. Gold leaf might seem useless to us, but how useless do we seem to them with our marketing, our software startups that mostly go nowhere, our YouTube influencers, our Uber and Deliveroo quasi-jobs. I don't actually have much sympathy for that nostalgia, I find it grotesque when they want to do shit like keep coal mines open, but I get where they're coming from.