[notabee]

Any system is going to have a free rider problem. I genuinely believe that if we stopped trying to force a large chunk of the population to look like they're busy when they have zero intrinsic desire to do anything well and will continually cut corners wherever they can, we'd reach a productivity golden age where there would be enough surplus for them to fuck off and be lazy out of the critical path. The stumbling block here is always the perception of unfairness, and it's a big one, but for anyone that really cares about their work or its quality, do you really want to always have to work with people who will only do the bare minimum to survive? Hopefully you aren't cold enough to want them to starve, but should they be forced to participate and drag everyone else down just to prove some kind of innate moral ethic? I wish that we as a society could approach this pragmatically instead of moralizing under a veneer of pragmatism.