I like what you wrote, thanks for that comment.
>because I'm drawn to the project of creating a certain kind of space in the world, and having control over it so that it can stay close to my vision.
So you have multiple success conditions. You just want a space, maybe it's a restaurant ? A bar ? A pub ? Maybe it's actually just decorating it, not owning it ? Co-managing it ? Could be as well a hackerspace ? A school ?
> it's much harder for the meaning in your life to come from the work itself, because there are so many things waiting to punish you if you try to live that way. But there are still certainly ways to do it.
I'd say untrue. I see many colleagues identifying with their job even though they are "just" employees. The global economy, to some extent I'd say, run because of such people. Managers, directors, lead whatevers...
>In my opinion it should be a major goal of society to remove as many barriers to doing meaningful work as possible.
I'd argue the barriers are a feature, not a bug : how do you know you truly want something ? Make it hard to get. So only deserving people will get it, and we will have the best of it.
Gosh, no, the barriers just make few people feel like there's any meaning at all. You want a world designed to keep everyone depressed? No, it's a skill issue: it shouldn't be that way but we suck at fixing it, or even conceptualizing the problem. So much so that they do what the managers and directors and a lot of everyone else fo: pretend really hard that their life is giving them fulfillment. It's so hard in this economy to find meaningful work that pays decently that it's easier for most people to lie to themselves and pretend (or take the right drugs) because being honest about how fake it is would reveal the falseness of the whole thing.