Well, the economy in general didn't make much sense in that episode. The people "working hard just to get by" spend all day on these bicycle things that genera

Well, the economy in general didn't make much sense in that episode. The people "working hard just to get by" spend all day on these bicycle things that generate power, but thermodynamically there's no way they could be producing more than what it costs to feed them. Nor do I recall any sort of education or training for actual careers going on. And that's not something I can entirely ignore, when "how empty everyone's lives are" is relevant to the general plot. Maybe they could have substituted some kind of factory assembly work, although that might have raised questions of why it's not automated.