Plenty of unemployable PhDs here Australia. I know one who is tutoring high school students to earn a living. His thesis was on phycology and the production of sustainable fuels. A nuclear physicist with a PhD is unemployable and is retraining as a data scientist. Another phycologist is retraining as a counsellor. A molecular biologist is running a plant shop.
The first phycologist is charming but a century ago, he would have been a charming but very average greenkeeper or a gardener.
Bright people in Australia head into finance, medicine or law not into dead end PhDs. The problem is that universities sucker too many into PhD programs for the sake of the departmental government funding. This leads to indiscriminate entry into virtually all the PhD programs in Australia. When they graduate they are often underemployed or unemployed.
The ultimate harm to society is the production of research slop that worsens the SN ratio in published work.
more pointedly: the commenter presumes that the friends are unhappy with their lives. Also that some them would be better served performing back-breaking menial low-wage labor while otherwise being illiterate. Any PhD (even one in specializing in Plankton and especially nuclear physics/engineering) would equip you with a bunch transferable skills that normally would be valued in a modern society ... 1) public speaking 2) initiative 3) resourcefulness 4) analysis and communication etc etc. If I was being uncharitable I would say finance and law are actually worse for society: at least the subset of those that get paid the highest with respect to their impact on the broader society (but that is debatable).
Would you think it would be better for "society" to allow more people to go into finance and law? Or that advanced knowledge should be gate kept by only the select cognitive elite that are most adept at playing the "glass bead game" by age 18? Would you change any of your opinions if AI renders most High IQ practical/technical tracts obsolete? Perhaps, a more sane society would be one where curious people could develop themselves in whichever way they so choose: if they want to study the mating habits of marmots in the Central Asian steppe then so be it.
Bright people in Australia head into finance, medicine or law not into dead end PhDs. The problem is that universities sucker too many into PhD programs for the sake of the departmental government funding. This leads to indiscriminate entry into virtually all the PhD programs in Australia. When they graduate they are often underemployed or unemployed.
The ultimate harm to society is the production of research slop that worsens the SN ratio in published work.