Having to work to survive is far more depressing than knowing I'm free to do as I please. Death by ennui is a straw man and anyone living near subsistence levels will tell you as much.

It may be selection bias but when I did community service in coal country WV there seemed to be only two kinds of people in those forsaken towns. Depressed or self destructive. No opportunity and no escape is a hell of a combo. They weren’t starving, but they didn’t have money for much of anything else so their house was decaying around them (our job was fixing up the houses) along with the rest of their lives. This was back in the 90’s. I suspect those towns have been lost to opioids and meth now.

Those people would have benefited from UBI for sure. They are an example of people who’s jobs we’re lost to modernization.

There’s nothing more “destructive” then spending your life working to survive. It’s literally wasting the most valuable thing you have. Putting those guys back in a coal mine so we don’t have to see them is not a solution.

Work does not need to be the purpose in life either.