This is a good point but I think you're missing about half of the equation.
There is tremendous unique potential (geniuses, savants, etc.) being wasted right now due to poverty or socio-cultural repressiveness. Those one in a thousand or one in a million individuals who are stuck somewhere and unable to live up to even a fraction of their potential. Einsteins, chandras, or feynmans who will live their lives doing menial work in a ghetto in the developing world instead of advancing human civilization.
On the other hand, that perspective also downplays the contributions that "ordinary" people can make. And in a way reveals some of the deep seated classicism that exists in our culture today. The truth is, that if you can work a job at McDonalds (and almost everyone on Earth is capable of doing so) there is a ton of other work that you can do that is vastly more valuable. If you can work at McDonalds you can be a scientist, no joke, or an engineer, or an artist. Maybe you can't be einstein, but for every einstein in science there are thousands upon thousands of researchers whose jobs aren't that much more challenging than working a typical "service" job. And that kind of thing is as much how we cure cancer and build/better civilization as the work of geniuses.
Which, I think, puts the waste of work/talent from having so much of the workforce stuck in "menial" jobs in even greater perspective.
I don't know. Working at McDonalds hardly qualifies one for understanding current scientific hypotheses, debating and testing them. Sure, there are lots of jobs in science other than theoretical, but it might be very tough, unrewarding and thus frustrating to spend a life chasing things without ever fully grasping their complexities.
There is tremendous unique potential (geniuses, savants, etc.) being wasted right now due to poverty or socio-cultural repressiveness. Those one in a thousand or one in a million individuals who are stuck somewhere and unable to live up to even a fraction of their potential. Einsteins, chandras, or feynmans who will live their lives doing menial work in a ghetto in the developing world instead of advancing human civilization.
On the other hand, that perspective also downplays the contributions that "ordinary" people can make. And in a way reveals some of the deep seated classicism that exists in our culture today. The truth is, that if you can work a job at McDonalds (and almost everyone on Earth is capable of doing so) there is a ton of other work that you can do that is vastly more valuable. If you can work at McDonalds you can be a scientist, no joke, or an engineer, or an artist. Maybe you can't be einstein, but for every einstein in science there are thousands upon thousands of researchers whose jobs aren't that much more challenging than working a typical "service" job. And that kind of thing is as much how we cure cancer and build/better civilization as the work of geniuses.
Which, I think, puts the waste of work/talent from having so much of the workforce stuck in "menial" jobs in even greater perspective.