@skylar @WoodshopHandman @Dicer I don't think anyone's encouraging "working for money" for its own sake, but encouraging activities that provide fulfilment.

Lots of modern jobs are make-work that only exist because of one another. Coke only advertises because Pepsi does, and both move in a multimillion dollar arms race that leaves them back where they started had neither done anything.

Office work is considered so soul-sucking because people kind of know they're stuck in such red queen scenarios, not making any real change or actually producing anything, yet doing so in a stressful environment where they're required to act as though it matters.

Video games give a nice illusion of productivity, because they have the good parts of work without the bad. Minecraft was a good example. Even non-autists went to the trouble of tending fields and making big safe greenhouses and such. Why? Because you don't have anyone who'll get pissed at you for not doing some pointless thing how they want, or for missing a quota by three units, or being five seconds late to a do-nothing meeting, or for not following a regulation you know doesn't matter.
People are aware of what genuinely fulfilling work free from petty obligations feels like, and they crave it so much they even spend their limited leisure playing make-believe that they're doing it.