I think that is respectfully viewing the world through eyes that are too westernized. Yes, robbing people of purpose and motivation is bad. It is something that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then again, you have regimes like the Khmer Rouge and leaders like Pol Pot who went on a spasm of violence and threw all their people into the purpose of "do what they tell me so I don't end up a skeleton in a rice paddy".The danger of big government, whether we call it a liberal democracy or not, isn't controlling people; it’s making life too easy and too comfortable. And for the majority of us who are not white and male, that push toward a life free of bumps is more profound. This robs individuals of something far more important than property or material goods, it takes away purpose and motivation.
The "elites" and "thought leaders" are pushing to take meat out of diets and switch to bugs. To make society an ownerless and cashless one. To stack housing so that we are all using less space. Lars mentioned less need for people in the future. How is that enforced? Bored poor people have lots of sex and make lots of children. What happens when everyone is bored and poor?....
People will go on. We always have as someone mentioned above. However, the lifestyle that people have lived and the freedoms they have had have very rarely come close to what a good portion of the world enjoys now. I think UBI and AI turn the clock backwards on all of that.