This happens in all areas of work, it's just that the geeks are honest about it..at least when asked in an anonymous poll on the Internet. I happen to not be a slacker, and a casual observation of the room around me makes it pretty obvious that most people waste huge amounts of time and effort. There is no reason to believe that it would be different in a profession not related to computers.
The reason there are consulting companies where the annual wages are more than twice as high than in the economy at large is that these companies have focused employees that put work first and life second, squeezing results out of every hour. In a regular company, you'd be insane to put in the kind of effort that these guys do, because you wouldn't be rewarded in any halfway reasonable way. The system breeds mediocrity, but there is thankfully a world of smaller companies (and in the extreme, startups) that allow overachievers to get compensation for their effort.
There is a corollary to this observation: it isn't really necessary to work more than 4 hours a day to have a good standard of living. Unfortunately, this particular niche isn't yet filled by any kind of company. Solo consulting may (marginally) work, but you won't get the best clients. There's an opportunity here..not to earn big bucks, but to create a different kind of company. How few (although focused) hours can each employee work and still earn more than the median wage?
