For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry.
More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what you're making, but you're known in your village by the quality of your work.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a good job for 40 hours a week in return for a salary. Being a competent professional who does quality work is rewarding!
I just think if you're doing work of that nature (which _most of us are_, BTW) you need to recognise it for what it is. Don't burn yourself out trying to squeeze every drop of initiative/creativity/productivity out of yourself. Definitely don't answer emails at the weekend. Don't tolerate under-payment. Don't accept non-legally-binding promises from the boss.
Just deliver the best work you can in the time you get paid for, then stop.
Or is it too soon already?
1. What fraction of our resources do we want to burn while eliminating which of the worst parts of capitalistic tendencies?
2. How do we preserve diffuse power distributions in the face of actors who will actively work against that goal?
Not to trivialize it too much, (1) is just a policy decision. Being completely hands-off is probably sub-optimal. Burning 100% of resources fighting fraud and other abuses isn't ideal either. It's a reasonable framing though for comparing strategies. There's no free lunch, so if somebody sells you a governmental structure which eliminates the worst parts of capitalism without _some_ cost, it's likely snake oil.
Point (2) is the harder one. The majority of people wouldn't mind a little extra power and a few extra resources. If that's possible, it's also (usually) possible to create sub-populations which together have much more power than other groups and thus subvert the goals of your anti-capitalist strategy. How do you create a system that's robust against most individual participants (potentially inadvertently) working against it?
So, sure, let's do away with capitalism. What do you replace it with that's both better and won't revert back?
Under capitalism, a boss might try to persuade you to work hard harder than you might otherwise for dubious or illusionary future reward.
Under some form of collectivism, there will still be pressure to attend some sort of goal, even if it is non-financial in nature. That pressure will ultimately come in the form of a leader of some form, and one of the tools they will have to achieve that (possibly collective) goal will be to persuade you to work longer and harder than you might otherwise for some dubious or illusionary future reward. Perhaps this future reward won’t be in money, but that won’t change the underlying dynamic.
If I have a choice between being jailed in the country and having VCs drive some companies into the ground, I'd choose the latter every time.
Or is it that any day now workers are going to reach unanimous consensus and go on a national strike, siezing power from the owners of capital? Or maybe a violent revolution in which the bourgeoisie and class traitors get guillotineed alongside the capitalist oppressors?
The medieval blacksmith / freelancer may be in a better position to feel meaning in their work, compared with an employee, because of the system of incentives around them.
