I have no opinion either way but this doesn’t follow. I can imagine a world where people don’t need oxygen to breathe but they still do. If we say people need oxygen, the argument is obviously about the world such as it is rather than the world as it could hypothetically be.

I don't think that's how "evidence" works. I can imagine a lot of things in a lot of domains, but that doesn't make it real.

I absolutely can imagine a society organized around some other source(s) of happiness, but the fact is we don't have that society, and humans are not acclimated to that society. Humans are acclimated to the society we have, and there's plenty of research out there showing that many, many humans derive a significant chunk of their self-worth and life's purpose from their jobs.

And when they lose their job and can't find satisfying work, their quality of life is meaningfully impacted, in ways that cannot be fully explained by the financial impact of losing a job.

Another fine example is retirement. Many older people end up finding work again in retirement, not because they need the money, but because it helps them find purpose. Others don't retire until the day they die because they can't imagine a life without work. Yes, some people love retirement and are happy and thrive, but there are also many who aren't and don't.

We have a word for imagining a society with different sources of happiness: utopian. We generally don’t regard utopian musings as evidence of anything.

There's a massive spike in mortality for those who retire from work versus those who keep working. In fact, working just a single year after you're 65 is associated with 11% lower risk of death for healthy people and 9% for unhealthy.

Working is objectively good for your health. Stopping work is associated with an extremely large increase in mortality risk, for both healthy and unhealthy people.

Any alternatives must weigh the resulting death it will cause.