I know this it your position, but this argument is exactly the one made by hard-line conservatives about how when someone is unemployed it's his own fault.
If an entire public agency is unable to come up with work assignments for people that need jobs because every possible thing that can be done is being done, then yes, I'll call it a lack of creativity.
The problem with the conservative argument is that they say that people should be let stave or otherwise be punished for not having the resources or inspiration to find productive activities to engage them, not pointing to the fact that there are many people who need the help of others to sort that out.
Since I know that's not at all your conviction I would suggest to you that this line of reasoning of yours leads inevitably to conclusions drawn by John Birchers on the subject.
Goodwin by any other name? Hitler built cars and supported medical research. Are those bad things then? Pointing out that people that come to bad conclusions acknowledge things that are factual doesn't mean the facts are bad, just the reasoning that got them to the bad conclusions or policies from those facts.
All of this is true but irrelevant. That fact that there are many useful and productive things to do in life other than work at Walmart has no bearing at all on whether a successful business model can be created to turn what used to be a pastime or volunteer work into an industry.
What business model. You need work? You go to a public work office, they assign you to what would have been volunteer work if we were still trying to make people do it for free, and you get benefits and a check for doing it. I'd include a decent cut out time for education (if we didn't just count being a student as a kind of work that you get basic pay for unto itself) and searching for other employment, but the model is pretty simple and doesn't really need many fancy bells and whistles. MAybe al little more planning where it comes to farming people out to businesses or non-profits looking for interns, just to be sure taht they're not displacing permanent paid positions with free public labor, but we already have some bounds on that given the current rules about internships and the like that would just need to be adjusted a little.
Hell, there's so much artistic expression and production that goes unpaid too, and yet I promise you this will not suddenly congeal into a new sector of the economy when service tanks in favor of automation.
There are many people that with the combination of a basic income and a Project One type of income would be freed to not only concentrate on artistic work but also free up private employment for others, that it would be a major boon to overall economic activity.
The new job areas that will arise will become more and more technically demanding (IT and computer technicians is only the start), and very few people will be able to fill them.
In our current system where few can afford the time and education, sure. In a system taht gives them the time and education, then that's not so true. Especially if we can pay them to learn it as an internship type of job.
I'll also note, since we're on the subject of a basic income, that a great deal of the volunteering that goes on now exists precisely because of poverty, and therefore if abject poverty was eliminated the demand for volunteers of this type would be dramatically reduced.
People aren't going to stop littering because they're not poor anymore.
It would be very interesting to me to see new types of volunteering begin, such as even government volunteers to help the community, but even so this cannot be converted into an out-and-out industry that could replace service.
It doesn't need to become an industry. It should, perhaps support certain industries taht can benefit entry level workers that cost it nothing with experience that they can apply to future jobs, the the program itself should just serve as the baseline to mop up the people that don't fit into any current industry- to meet their need for work and reward them with a bit of extra income so that they're not left hanging if they can't figure out some other way to invest their time that they find fulfilling.
