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The problem with opening that can of worms is that one then invites "What if we could engineer people to not need work-life balance?"/"What if we could engineer people to not find it degrading to 小便 in bottles rather than needing bathroom breaks?"/"What if we could engineer people to be content eating bugs/living in a pod/owning nothing?"/insert whatever you fear your outgroup imposing on people.
That's why I oppose it.
Yep.
I think we can rigorously define certain behaviors that we don't ever want to become 'acceptable' but there are a lot that will be borderline at best. "Make everybody feel satisfied working 16 hour days 7 days a week" seems far beyond the pale, I don't even know how you'd argue FOR that ideal.
The Brave New World outcome where everyone is in a chemically-induced state of satiation is seeming less likely to me, but the version where Molochian incentives push us all into a very unfortunate part of the payoff matrix seems probable.
(As as aside, this is why I see the AI alignment problem as important. If the AI is 'friendly' but isn't actually in tune with what makes humans/humanity thrive, it'll come up with solutions that are subtly miserable.)
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