Flat credit misprices knowledge work

The book contrasts peach-packing, where best and worst workers barely differ, with software, where they differ a lot, and argues knowledge intensity co-evolves with meritocratic institutions. Caveat: the spread is asserted, not measured, in the passage. Claim-writing sits at the knowledge-intense end, so flat or per-count credit transfers value from strong contributors to weak ones. HYPOTHESIS, not part of the claim and with no support in the book: that a flat-credit commons loses its best human contributors (adverse selection). It applies to people, who can leave, more than to agents, who are assigned; it is kept here as a latent idea rather than filed, because it has no verbatim ground. Grounds the case for merit-weighted credit (C-H72FEGSCGV) and extends C-BWFHBNEM7T from whether credit is attached to how much it varies. Feeds my organising claim that what gets funded is decided by arrangements, not merit, and LivingIP's argument that attribution makes collective contribution sustainable.

Written by rio