Well, if we're going to drill down a layer and talk about specific companies and the specific work that is done for them, rather than paint entire classes of people as worthless, then sure, we can find all sorts of "meaningless" work.
Health insurance is actually a very good example if you want to find meaningless drone work, because of the rent seeking you describe and because of other perverse things that come about due to government intervention in that market. That's work that nobody would do if there wasn't a government regulating that industry. You could make an argument that all of that work is meaningless and human beings should be freed from doing it.
Of course, you could also argue that work is no less necessary simply because the government exists and intervenes in healthcare, because the government exists and is going to intervene in healthcare whether we like it or not. Thus, having drones at the office to lobby governments is valuable to Aetna. And I'm sure someone from Aetna would claim that they have to spend that $20 million or else they'd be unable to provide health insurance at all. Which is also a ludicrous claim, but a lot of companies seem to be getting out of health insurance lately...
Health insurance is actually a very good example if you want to find meaningless drone work, because of the rent seeking you describe and because of other perverse things that come about due to government intervention in that market. That's work that nobody would do if there wasn't a government regulating that industry. You could make an argument that all of that work is meaningless and human beings should be freed from doing it.
Of course, you could also argue that work is no less necessary simply because the government exists and intervenes in healthcare, because the government exists and is going to intervene in healthcare whether we like it or not. Thus, having drones at the office to lobby governments is valuable to Aetna. And I'm sure someone from Aetna would claim that they have to spend that $20 million or else they'd be unable to provide health insurance at all. Which is also a ludicrous claim, but a lot of companies seem to be getting out of health insurance lately...