If all they did was make a battery, that's messed up. That many people? That's so much less useful to society than teachers, food service workers, doctors, lawyers and etc. combined. The insult to those people would be to have them spend their lives doing something so meaningless. Operating a crane in a construction crew has maybe a thousand times more dignity because they are making something people want. I have truck driver friends and that job isn't the best but they're doing something people want, they don't get out of bed unless something is out of place in the world, and they fix it.

> The insult to those people would be to have them spend their lives doing something so meaningless

Why is working on power storage and generation meaningless? Cheap energy is literally the basis of our civilization, tech, and standard of living. Would you consider power plant work or oil drilling work meaningless?