[baash05]

There's a third option to the inherent equal worth vs freeload. That is, that people are just not of equal inherent worth.

I'm a coder, and I do not believe for an instant that I am as valuable to the population on the whole as a nurse or a doctor. I mean even even just reading your last full sentence one might argue you feel the same.

If you were trapped on an island, would you want a DR or a coder with you?

[dane-pgp]

I think the problem is that "How much is someone worth?" can't (or shouldn't) have a financial answer, in the same way that slavery is morally wrong.

(Yes, technically it is necessary to calculate things like the amount of money a society should spend to increase the number of Quality-Adjusted Life Years of the population as a whole, given that there are finite resources and competing things to spend them on, but even then we don't typically try to judge recipients by their skills or professions.)

If I were trapped on an island, I wouldn't want a doctor or a coder to join me, I'd want to not be trapped on the island. That's dodging the question a little, but just because a doctor might be more useful to me in some circumstances doesn't necessarily mean that I want society to produce worse outcomes for coders (or anyone else) than for doctors, except to the extent that providing better outcomes for doctors is necessary to produce more/better/enough doctors.