 Formative arguments face at least two difficulties, one empirical and one normative. The empirical difficulty is establishing the connection between meaningless work and autonomous choice (or another intellectual faculty). More evidence is needed. The normative difficulty is that formative arguments make certain assumptions about the nature of the good and the state’s role in promoting it. They assume that it is better for people to have fully developed faculties of autonomous choice (etc.) and that the state should help to develop them. These assumptions might be challenged, e.g., by liberal neutralists (Roessler 2012; Veltman 2016). Yeoman (2014) seeks to surmount this challenge—and make meaningful work safe for liberal political theory—by conceptualizing meaningful work as a fundamental human need, not a mere preference.