Preferably in our less than ideal world the energy would be poured into capital creation. Capital is what makes life better for all. A hypothetical society that

Preferably in our less than ideal world the energy would be poured into capital creation. Capital is what makes life better for all. A hypothetical society that prioritizes working to produce value to exchange with others would still be toiling in the fields to produce value (food) to trade with each other. A society that instead prioritizes capital creation will be incentivized to invent the tractor that can lift most people from that labour, allowing the people to go on to do bigger and better things. The latter is generally considered to be much more ideal. Of course, that's not exactly realistic. Maybe some day in the distant future we'll unlock a world where everyone can focus on capital creation, but in this less than ideal world in its current less than ideal state labour is still a practical necessity. But it is not preferable. We'd rather have the people creating capital. So, there is a balance to strike. While we obviously can't ban labour, we can attempt to limit its existence to only where it is most beneficial. It behooves us to try and disincentivize having workers doing "useless" work. If workers are going to toil in the fields, so to speak, it had better be worth it. I will point out that minimum wage is another prong that tries to attack the same problem. It does outright ban employment if a certain amount of benefit to society is not being met, forcing workers to either find more beneficial work that can overcome the imposed restrictions or to go back to creating capital. Now, I already hear you thinking: "But sometimes employees are directly involved in capital creation!" Right you are. In fact, I expect that describes most of the employed people here. We could chalk that up to unintended consequences. A law intended for "burger flippers" ended up being applied to engineers by virtue of us not doing a very good job of seeing different types of employment as being different with respect to labour rules and taxes. But I posit that there is something else to consider: A society that sees the capital creators have ownership over the capital they create is more ideal than a society that only compensates them for their work contribution. Much like before, it behooves us to disincentivize hiring workers when the people could be accepted as partners in the capital creation.