There's a place for everyone

I only skimmed but I don’t find this philosophy particularly interesting.

The implication here is that everyone has one best place, but in reality there are many local maximums. The opportunity cost of traversing a valley for a slightly higher maximum may not be worth it.

The post also conflates employment with happiness. Not having a paying job is a valid life choice. Stay at home parent is a completely valid niche.

Picking a job or career based on the free time it allows to pursue hobbies is also valid.

None of this is easy and the post doesn’t seem to provide any insight into finding a good fit.

The idea that we have one “best” fit is the self-help equivalent of “perfect is the enemy of good”.

5 is correct but for the reasons not related to niches or purposes

Oddly enough I think a lot of abberant personality types can fit into group dynamics.

In fact go to any large, long running, stable, 3rd place and there will be some non violent psychopaths and narcissist in the community.

Serial killers usually won't kill people within their own community. The BTK killer was president of his church council.

Deserve really doesn't really enter into the equation. A serial killer might know a lot about webrtc or building operating systems and may be on this thread contributing niche info right now!

Society isn't a friend group. A co-working, community or church space isn't a friend group. One of my most rewarding experiences was in a space where >20% of people were bidirectionally incompatible for personal friendship.

This article isn't about the "whole self", it's actually the opposite in some ways, it's about how in a big world there is value in finding how a distinct and "flavourful" part of your interests has unexpected value.

It's interesting indeed, but is missing an important factor. Every niche requires resources for someone to fill it: time, at a minimum, but also raw materials (engineering, art), land (agriculture, wildlife preservation), power (pretty much everything) and so on. These are all finite, although some are now used more efficiently than they could have been in the past.

By having more children, you contribute to more people fulfilling their purposes in the future, but this is true only to the point where resources would become too scarce when divided between the niches.

I would guess that in the future, the Earth could sustain maybe double its current population, due to much more efficient resource utilisation and extraction, relieving the demand on these resources, and the large number of people who would prefer to live in cities, reducing the demand on land. But the Earth could not sustain such a growth of its population immediately; we need time to let society and technology improve and adapt.

The mistake you are making is thinking the sentence is meant to assign individual responsibility for finding your niche.

Not at all. The article and I agree on that point is pretty clear that it is a societal responsibility. People not being able to flex their individual talents is a failure of society not the individual. And yes there are niches for depressed, traumatized people, there is a place for everyone.