Busy-ness

It's so obvious that I'm kicking myself for not seeing this sooner. Now, I'm not a linguist, but I'm going to submit a little theory.

Usually we can break words down into their roots and their inflectional endings to derive their meaning. Today, as I was describing how busy my yesterday had been, I wanted to literally say that I was compounding my "busy-ness." I then realized that the correct spelling for this word would be "business."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that word means something slightly different from what I was attempting to say. Business is the word that we use to describe and define most of our capitalist units. Business describes the place in which the free market gears grind.

But where did the word come from? Is the root of business, busy? Does this mean that when I head to work, my selected career path is literally keeping my plate full, regardless of efficiency or added value? Does anyone have a sledgehammer that I can borrow to hit myself over the head with? (Aack...my grammar is going too!)

Why wouldn't we call it something more descriptive of our ideals? Efficiness. Qualiness. Integriness?

Is it possible that whoever named our free market functional units knew exactly what he was doing? It seems likely that in the face of all our insistence on "working to better the world," and "giving back," and "putting out a quality product for the smart consumer" stares the reality that we're just keeping ourselves occupied. The outcry of "I'm swamped!" is simply the proclamation that things are running exactly as they should.