alt Hacker News> (...) a singular hypothetical where suddenly all that work must be done (...)
This is far from being a hypothesis. This is an accurate description of your average workstation. I recommend you casually check the list of processes running at any given moment in any random desktop or laptop you find in a 5 meter radius.
I've done more than that - after noticing high CPU use I investigated what those processes do, discovered services that I never need and tried to disable them. Now try to actually prove your point