Fred Reed Gets it:

https://www.unz.com/freed/buffer-overflow-the-ghastly-future-of-work/

Everything I said two days ago about how pointless work has become and how stupid it is to tell people to seek meaning through work is relayed brilliantly in this essay by Fred Reed that came out the day after.  Great minds think alike:

"Then there is makework. A great many governmental workers do little or nothing of use. This amounts to paid unemployment. Sometimes this unemployment is distributed: A hundred workers do useful work that thirty could do. Then there is the military. It produces nothing and, since the US has no military enemies, amounts to more paid unemployment. The arms industry uses more multitudes in building things of no use, such as ever more intercontinental nuclear bombers. For engineers, this is marginally more dignified than digging holes and filling them in. It is as much a jobs program as the Depression-era CCC.

Another phenomenon we see is the disimportantification (patent applied for) of work. In 1850, work done was genuinely important: growing food, without which we tend to be dead and not of much use in an economy. Then the farms automated and everybody went to work in factories, making cars and refrigerators. These were pretty important, but not as important as food. You can’t eat a refrigerator. Then the factories automated or went away and people became massage therapists, nail salon operators, psychologists, sociologists, consultants, or diversity counselors. Others ran massage parlors, restaurants, gymnasiums, or cutesy-wootsy boutiques selling unbearable kitsch. They were employed, but in occupations of ever-increasing triviality. We have gone from feeding people to rubbing their backs. How far can this go?"

* * *

The answer is not much further.  People without self-respect and without the respect of their peers tend to shrivel up and die, one way or another.  There is a valid employment prospect for everyone, staring us all in the face.  It's called mother, father, husband, wife.  But I'm the only one who seems to have connected the dots.  Fred Reed identifies the problem well enough, but I'm the only one with a solution.