Or, to quote Jim Seymour from way back in the 1980s: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." He made essentially the same points you did. You're in good company!

I'd like to suggest a place that has worked under this model for a very long time: the university. It's one of several reasons why universities have thrived and survived for something like seven or eight hundred years (depending on your definition), across multiple cultures and across seismic shifts in economies, political systems, and social norms. Professors pretty much meet the criteria: they get paid "enough" (not that some don't complain!); they have autonomy, purpose and mastery; and they serve a greater good. As for whether or not they could build an ocean liner, the point of the presentation was that building an ocean liner is comparatively trivial because it is a known task with known parameters. Just because the task is complex doesn't mean it's conceptually difficult. Dan's point is that we need to be concerned about the kinds of thinking that requires *new* thinking. The rest of it is being automated or outsourced.