Something should be done, but trying to fix it on an individual level won't work -- you have to fix the way the system operates so agency isn't something that's reserved for a small subset of the wealthiest individuals in society. UBI would go a long way towards this, I think.
I just want to be in charge of my own life, but as long as I have to show up at the same place from 9-5, five days a week, I really don't have that ability. My life exists solely to serve my masters. Yes, I can choose which master to serve, but ultimately I am not free to do with my life what I please.
We have no agency against death, nor ability to ignore the survival needs of the body. We have little agency against many forms of suffering intrinsic to being human.
The economic requirements you mention seem small, to me, compared to the larger tragedies of life, the real limitations to our agency.
If the time sucking effect of economic needs are your primary focus, you are lucky not to be born in a prior era. I've worked minimum wage, rented the smallest room I could find, counted every penny when buying my needs. The agency granting economic power I had was objectively superior to most humans throughout history.
What have we done with this power? For the most part, we trade it for safety, comfort, security, not freedom. We trade it for entertainment, sometimes addiction. We give up our agency for more. Which is fine, my point is that the problem is not economic power, the problem is what we, both individually and collectively, choose to do with it.
You say we have the more agency than the people who preceded us, but you fail to realize the only reason that is the case is because those people reached out and took it for us. You're a bit of a hypocrite if you lavish in benefit from their actions, but fail to pick up their torch.
> We have no agency against death, nor ability to ignore the survival needs of the body.
When death becomes escapable, I can guarantee you that the escape won't be affordable for us. There are 2,000 billionaires on this planet, and every single one of them will have access to it decades before you or I can dream of it.
Their achievements don't warrant the power or privileges they enjoy as a result of their wealth, and everyone deserves a shot at that kind of success. If the game is rigged from the beginning, the winners get to run the world, and they want you to work 48+ weeks every healthy year of your life for them, what's the point of playing?
I'm not even asking for their power or wealth, I'm just asking for the same ability to pursue my own ideas with my time instead of being forced to trade my time for money through employment. We live in an era where the vast majority of "essential" jobs are beginning to be automated, and this is achievable within our lifetimes.
> What have we done with this power? For the most part, we trade it for safety, comfort, security, not freedom.
This wasn't ever our choice. As long as fields need to be plowed, and factory lines staffed, you weren't allowed freedom. The people who are in charge want you to work, so they can be rich, so they made sure you had to do something for them in order to feed yourself. Now? With automation the need for human laborers is dropping, so we can feed and house ourselves with less effort than ever before. Let's use this to free everyone from the shackles of wage-labor, and allow them to pursue their own desires with their lives, like the billionaires get to do.
