This is completely wrong. A majority of people only work because it's necessary to put food on the table and purchase other necessities. You know this is true because you can see how many of them choose to do nothing productive with their free time. Basically nobody is performing research in their free time.

I concur, a majority are not productive most of the time. However a majority is far from everyone.

Leaving aside for the moment people working multiple jobs for whom free time is a luxury.

Leaving aside working parents who are also raising children who choose to spend that time with them.

Of the rest, though we do see some productive outlets. Open Source Software for example being perhaps the poster child for work done without return.

Or what about those who volunteer? Perhaps in a church context or charity context or whatever.

Or all those with a side hustle, selling home-made goods in weekend markets. Some of that to earn more, some to exercise their creativity.

Yes, in countries where there are sufficient social nets that unemployed people can survive some choose not to work. And yet the overall unemployment numbers in those countries is pretty low.

So maybe "majority" isn't really the right term?

I work on hobby projects when I'm not burned out from working + getting all my other stuff done in the remaining 4 hours of the day I have left.

People need down time, even researchers.

When someone tries to argue based solely on "common sense logic" like this comment, we all know it's baseless. If there was any truth to your statement, you'd refer to statistics that show your idea to be true, but it isn't.