Recently, and for obvious reasons, there’s been much discussion of work and the notion of 'desert' when it came to how any particular system should treat people who do not or cannot work; that moral worth in some sense comes from their actions, that work is virtuous by virtue of its enabling of the engine of economics, the market. This is a very Proceduralist and therefore Kantian viewpoint. But it’s not a very common one. Much more common is that work, as work is intrinsically virtuous, that good, successful people work hard. This is an Intentionalist account of the moral goodness of work.
Seems reasonable, and taken in isolation, sure, one can see the value in considering work as such. But it fails in the real world, totally. Follow me below to find out why...