The role contract is older than achievement. It says: do your duty, fill your role, contribute, be dependable, earn your place within the larger order.
For enormous numbers of people, work supplies exactly this. “I am a mechanic.” “I am a nurse.” “I build houses.” These are not income descriptions — they are locations inside a moral and social structure, answers to the question of where one belongs.
Why robotics strains it
Where the achievement contract is threatened by knowledge automation, the role contract is threatened by physical automation. If machines increasingly perform the socially necessary role, the question a person faces is no longer what will I earn? but what am I for? That is a crisis of place and purpose, not only of income — and it reaches deeper into identity than unemployment alone. See Power, Purpose, and Participation.