For most of history anybody could just claim land. You literally just said "Mine!" And it was yours. You could shoot anyone who tried to enter it. You could do whatever you want - hunt on it and trade the fur and meat for pure gold, fish, drill for oil, create 100s of acres of opium fields.
Frankly, for most of history, nobody needed a job.
Today all land is owned by somebody, and even if you do own it, you still owe taxes and it comes with all sorts of restrictions and zoning for how you can use it. Often they are managed by POAs and HOAs, so it's not much different than renting. For those that do rent, it's even worse - you stay working forever.
I digress - even as recently as the 1970s or 80s, if you wanted a job, you had one. If you wanted a house, you had one.
Today, you need a job to survive, there's no safety net (at least not the United States) and basically no way to legally obtain the resources, space, and structures a typical human needs to survive well in the world.
So yeah, something like a 35% unemployment rate - where rent is the most expensive thing in the economy, nobody is allowed to build houses, nobody except for a few are allowed to sell goods, nobody is allowed to freely trade or construct anything - is a cause for immense daily suffering for no good reason.
hIsToRy will not look back on this brief era fondly. It's poverty and suffering for no reason, and we could (and will) do better.