Comment by fasterik

The problem isn't effort, though. All of the things I mentioned constitute effort and could be rewarded. The job economy was created by mathematicians incentivizing the proof of difficult theorems above all else and valuing all other work at approximately zero as far as career advancement was concerned. Now they're pulling a 180 and claiming that math was never really about proving theorems, but that's contradicted by their revealed preferences. The strip-mining problem only exists if they continue with the status quo ante.