An insightful HackerNews comment about how hollowed out modern society is:

"The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job.

We have created people that never develop as human beings outside the context of their being economic entities in the workforce and that's not something to celebrate."