> Therein lies the confusion. Freedom and the lack thereof is not a line, but a cone.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that in a space of societies there is a point of anarchy – no rules whatsoever – and you can add various restrictions of freedom, leading to different societies. In particular there are various possible societies with a given level of freedom (which is the y-axis in your cone drawing).

Please correct me if I got it wrong.

> e.g. thorough environmental protection, public-dominant transportation, communal acoustic improvement

Arguably, freedom the practical sense is different from simply "fewer restrictions" or y-axis of the cone. Often you can frame decisions as "freedom to" vs "freedom from":
* Freedom to take and use anything vs freedom to own private property.
* Freedom to enter binding contracts vs freedom to do whatever.
* Freedom to punch people in the face vs freedom to walk around safely.
* Freedom to have a loud party vs freedom to quietly enjoy your place.
* Freedom to talk on the phone on a train vs freedom from such disturbance.
* Freedom to cut down the forest vs freedom to walk in the forest.
* Freedom to pass through the land (right of way) vs freedom to use the land exclusively.

In other words, some things naturally understood as "freedoms" are practically and sometimes logically in conflict and the boundary needs to be put somewhere. Some of your examples might be like that. 

There are also cases where there is no such obvious trade-off against another kind of freedom (there might be other benefits – judgement is out of scope here), e.g.:
* Restrictions for no reason whatsoever. Hypothetically tomorrow blue t-shirts could be banned. 
* Protecting you against yourself, e.g. in the UK you usually can't just buy more than 2 small packs of Ibuprofen at a time (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/956857/Appendix_4.pdf).
* Not being allowed to criticize your government.

Freedom understood this way is not a single thing – more like a possibility space which can take different shapes. It is still useful to think of the greater and lesser freedom, but it is not maximized by absolute anarchy (which would be extremely short-lived anyway without at least enforced non-violence).

> Freedom is only instrumentally valuable

It seems quite reasonable to hold freedom in a more practical sense as a terminal value or nearly terminal value – closely related to such things like staying true to oneself, taking responsibility, pursuing one's own goals rather than someone else's, roaming free instead of being caged, resisting oppression, self-governance.

FWIW this story is much older than Mickey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer's_Apprentice

It still operates, but I haven't kept in touch closely enough to know how well it's doing and what has changed – https://talent.edu.pl/. 

Short answer: hired by NGO which helped me skill up first.

Long answer: Where I was growing up there was a comp-sci training NGO. Their approach was quite interesting:

1. Grouping by skill, not by age. You decide which level you attend. You choose your pace - you can progress very quickly, but no one will force you to progress at all.
2. Competition-oriented - primary activity would resemble IOI. Add lectures, math, sport and psych workshops on top.
3. Teachers and technical organisers recruited almost exclusively from current top students and recent alumni. Often they would teach one level and partcipate as students at a higher level. This had a bunch of benefits: community vibes, access to smart hard-to-hire people with relevant skills, and opportunity to learn the practical side of things for the team.
4. Big chunks of the work paid pretty well - like local senior developer effective hourly rates for (top) high school students.

I joined as a student first, did well in some external national and international competitions and then I was asked to join the team.

Data point: I started working professionally at the age of 15 (part-time, in parallel with education) and it was one of the best things that have ever happened to me. Definitely found it way more enjoyable, rewarding and beneficial than traditional school.

It was software engineering, which is probably the best case scenario - the field is desperate for people and there's a lot of room for growth.

I assumed it was intentional, as in person-who-tries named Lsusr (as opposed to Great Blogger Lsusr).

The counterargument also does not work because it is not central. The negative X phenomenon can persist even if death continues. Lack of progress, eternal dictatorship, overpopulation and degradation are possible in societies where people have short life expectancy.

This counter-counterargument doesn't work. Just because phenomenon X is possible under both scenarios doesn't mean it's equally likely or as difficult to avoid.

(Note: I think that death is bad. My point is about a specific line of reasoning.)

For a few days it was very enlightening and I cared enough to reflect upon them. Then I continued for a few more months.

In my case it also covered data analysis work, video meetings etc.

I annotated all the screenshots with time, so I could immediately see how much time I spent on things (system clock was too small and not visible in full screen mode).

For meetings specifically it helped me reflect upon how much time I spent in various kind of meetings and how useful they were. It also let me easily see how much time I spent afk (e.g. how long was my lunch break).

I did the same thing for a while (I had a habit of watching a 5 minute timelapse of my screen at the end of each workday). At some point I hit diminishing returns and it became a chore, so I took a break. That said, I highly recommend trying this (not only for programming!).

BTW I implemented it in the same way as OP (screenshot every N seconds, put together with ffmpeg). Actual screen recording software was too resource heavy and didn't support very low fps well.