nobody who has ever achieved notoriety in any intellectual field ever did it to "meet demand." if your goal is to be an interchangeable widget that produces value as part of a corporate machine that exists for the enrichment of your shareholders, you are certainly free to choose that path, but don't imagine that is the limit of human existence. also, don't be surprise when you are replaced by AI, because it is a superior widget.
how is it even possible to think like that? or maybe it's some kind of coping mechanism
Remember, the top 1% of households have $12M+ in assets. That's over a million households for whom work is somewhat or completely optional for them and their children. They can live a good quality life off capital returns without any hardship.
This logic still holds down the wealth gradient. Households at the 95th percentile still have to work, but the need is more flexible. The buffer of need could be years long.
So you have millions of people who genuinely don't need to worry about getting paid that much.
Unfortunately many countries like the US are very under-developed, and have trained it's citizenry to approach education as job training. This is obviously an abject failure, and probably a contribution to our anemically slow and pathetic growth rate.