Perhaps we should refine "minimum necessary to maintain reasonable quality of life" to something like "minimum necessary to maintain reasonable quality of life, given that the area is relevant".
By way of analogy, I don't own a car. The minimum necessary skill in driving to maintain reasonable quality of life is absolutely nothing for me. But for many, driving a car is necessary; for them, the minimum necessary skill is being able to remain within the lines, use indicators, park and three point turn, etc. Pass the driving test, in other words. There's no point standardising levels of driving skill to include my lifestyle! Given that driving is relevant to your quality of life, you need pass-driving-test levels as an absolute minimum. So that has to be Level 1.
Being able to get by without a skill isn't the same as having the minimum amount of skill necessary. Being Level 0 in driving and still having a reasonable quality of life is a fact about me, and maybe about the public transport system where I live, and maybe also about the willingness of my friends to give me lifts - not a fact about how much skill is required in driving.
(When I crossclass into Professional, though, and Driving becomes a class skill, I'll have to get to at least Level 1)
I see, and basically agree with, your point, but that benchmark seems to still have some problems: Specifically, I'm having trouble coming up with a scenario where programming would be a relevant skill but level-1 ability (equivalent in difficulty to other level-1 benchmarks) at it would be sufficient.
I just got this random idea that people who want to become better at life could benefit from a common scale of "leveling". No, I don't mean vague Lesswrongey things like "changing your mind". I mean a set of concrete criteria like "you qualify for level 2 if you can do 5 pull-ups, have solved 30 Project Euler problems, and did 10 cold approaches". Obviously there would be separate ladders for different character classes, but not too many. Also obviously, my example was a bit too high for level 2. So I guess I really want to ask some meta questions here:
1) Do you think agreeing on a common leveling scale would be a good thing for a substantial subset of LW users? Would you feel good about leveling up and telling other people about it on LW?
2) Is there some good way to determine leveling criteria that are neither too high nor too low? Maybe make an intermediate scale of "experience points"?