I wonder how much amazing art and literature is being lost because the people who yearn to make it are stuck doing pointless jobs instead.
There is a reason that the economy treats art like a luxury to be reserved for the wealthy - for most of those artists, it is a luxury and we only put up with it because they are wealthy.
Second, the job market was never designed to encourage people to express their potential at best. The incentives are not aligned.
Additionally, throughout history almost all early *scientists* where wealthy people that did research out of passion. If it was for market forces we would be still in the middle ages.
There's plenty of people with good skills and advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, philosophy and whatnot that end up working in completely different fields only out of need.
If anything, this is a big argument for basic income.
You're right, but let's see this in a different way.
Let's not devalue Art too much. What you speak of is a more general problem, that the race is not to the swift... Humanity faces myriad problems, all solvable by smart, motivated young people. Yet we fail because we do not motivate, reward and support them to become all they can be. We turn their "solid technical contributions" around and make them the very thing that keeps us stuck in bureaucracy and systemised hopelessness. Without the spark of "art", the imagination that Einstein and Feynman spoke of, teche is no more valuable than wanky modern art [1].
Our interregnum then becomes one of disappointment and frustration for most, who cannot exercise their power as creative, rational and compassionate beings. Ironically, the thing that often signals a new direction and seeds revolutionary progress is Art. It's proper place is in the hands of the poor and disenfranchised. In the hands of the trustafarians it's just more stuckness for the status quo.
Creativity is not a product. It's an attitude, as applicable to computer science as to sculpture, oil painting, or music.
[1] see C.P Snow's "Two Cultures" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
I don't know your life story, but you probably don't know how an artist works and you probably don't know the power that art (especially music) has to heal people, but let's focus on your question.
An unhappy artist in a profession that doesn't make sense for him/her could be dangerous: The person can be mentally affected because he/she works in a shitty job, that can lead to stress, depression, etc. And the last thing you want is to be treated/envolved/engaged by a depressed {put any profession here} doctor or to travel in an airplane with a burned out, stressed, depressed pilot.
The probability that something REALLY good and life changer can come out from an unhappy and unfulfilled person is really low, let alone the cure of cancer.
Very little. 200 years ago people who had to work for living didn't have time or resources to pursue their art. Today there is 2 free days a week and more free time.
There is oversupply of art and literature. The real challenge is to find anything good from the sea of mediocrity.
Most books don't find publishers or readers. Even self published or given free, people don't care about them. People don't want to watch most paintings. There are plenty of bands trying to get recognized but nobody want's to listen them.
As lamentable as it may be, if a larger proportion of the population was able to be artists there would still be a struggle to be recognized. In fact, it might even be harder for them.