I’d just like to jump in here to challenge the idea that labour only counts if it’s ‘helpful to society’. I know you clarified this already, so this isn’t a critique of what you said, but to dig into the issues.

I’m thinking about plumbers, builders, agricultural workers, dockers – all jobs which have become increasingly comfortable and easier (not necessarily easy with modern tech, but that’s a side issue). When these workers go to work, it’s to do the bidding of capital. So the construction worker builds cheap, shitty homes. The agricultural worker covers our food in pesticides and ruins the environment at the same time. Etc, etc.

So the fact that e.g. a software engineer works for Amazon or Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean much for the abstract job. The problem is, if the work is not socially useful according to an ideal of socialism (in capitalism, if it makes profit, it is socially useful), it’s because the worker is, like others, doing the bidding of capital. Under another social structure, their work could be more useful if, for instance, they were working on software that ensured food or medicine was distributed effectively.

This doesn’t really resolve the other aspects relating to buying off the labour aristocracy, though.