It's kind of inevitable for coasting to be the norm. There will not only always be a majority of mediocre contributors (I don't mean this as an insult) and most

It's kind of inevitable for coasting to be the norm. There will not only always be a majority of mediocre contributors (I don't mean this as an insult) and most companies don't provide enough incentive for excellence or pressure against slacking off. People just eventually figure out that there's no consequence to coasting, especially when the job is no longer novel to them. And why shouldn't they? The fact that we can coast at work is actually pretty great, and something that wasn't really tolerated in other times. Now we can "check out" and spend at least some of our lives doing things other than being corporate drones for our entire waking lives.