The desire to survive is a fundamental instinct of all animals, and thus you'd do almost anything to survive. Effectively we are slaves of our own biology and wiring. Thus, due to resource allocation, most of us have to or had to work in order just to survive.
Our utility and thus QoL is measured in how the surrounding system values us. In a capitalist society that is visible through our salaries and our income as provided by other parties. In a marxist-leninist-like society, your value depends on your connections and how much you get done for the rest of the ruling party.
Thus, because we need to survive, we are forced into working for the system in any of the different ways it materializes.
When we are no longer useful to the system as productive members, we are forced into becoming useful for it.
Rooflessness is very much a solvable problem, but the roofless' purpose within the system to exist as examples for avoidance. "Stay in life or you will end up like them". "Be productive", "work hard in this rat race", "keep grinding", or you will end up like them.
When we are old and no longer productive, we are sent to hospice care, which costs a lot of money, it involves very expensive healthcare, and thus any money we have accumulated go to our care and back to the system, recycled to be used by consumers, and recycled all over again. Our kin and their love for us gets exploited, we become money sinks.
What for? We spend 40 years working to do what, live hopefully 20 years later, old frail and weak? To become a money pit? So that our loved ones and their love for us gets exploited?
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I am laboring for others, but that doesn't mean I see myself as a slave. I am very lucky. I get paid a relatively excellent salary, and I get to work a nice and interesting job that satisfies my curiosity.
But very few people are as lucky as I am. Most people are not living and thriving, they are surviving, and I don't want that.
It's not the fact that they labor, it's the fact that they need to do that in the first place.