This is something I've noticed. I bought a 1-acre plot of land and built a house on it. I grow my own food, produce my own electricity, and work part-time customer service/dd driver. As a result, I have more money left over at the end of the month than I ever did working a 'regular job' and living a typical American life. Also I have the time to explore interests, or just fuck off if I want to. I'm not bragging, virtually anyone can do this with motivation. However anytime I am around my family, they ask me when I'm going to get a “real” job or a full-time job. This has driven sort of a wedge between me and my family, as they don't understand why I don't do something more prestigious, considering my education and previous employment history. “You could be doing anything!”, i.e I could spend 60% of my waking hours working for someone else, while receiving a fraction of the actual value that I produce for that person.
Economically it would make zero sense for me, but I feel like it's the equivalent of being a house slave vs a field slave. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter which one you are, you are still a slave. But in the dynamics of human relationships and social hierarchy, it quite literally matters more than anything. People want to feel more important, more desired and “needed” than other people. I guess this is a good thing for everybody, as we can form complex societies and branch off into different fields that make life better for people, on the margins anyway. But then actual math is completely irrelevant. My old boss cleared 150k a year easily. Dude lived paycheck to paycheck. His job was financing his fancy life in the big city. Take away the job and he is fucked. So then what is the point? What is the point of being completely dependent on this job existing, when there is a 99.99999% chance that at some point in the future, it will not? It makes zero economic sense to tie his livelihood to this job. It only makes sense socially, and for the here and now. And this is why I think most people are fucked in the long term, but business and the economy as a whole will be just fine. They can always sell the dream to someone else.