i think it's also worth pointing out that work is perhaps not so connected to status as may be assumed. there is plenty of work that provides no status, and it seems to me that higher-status people work less.
I’m unable to avoid thinking back, again and again, as Shohreh Aghdashloo voices Avasarala in The Expanse talking about how they have UBI (Basic) because they can’t provide enough jobs-and if you take it you can’t work.
We’re heading directly there, not as we produce things off-world (for now), but as we automate and head more and more towards post-scarcity. Our current models of microeconomics (and maybe macro, I can’t say) only hold up under a scarce amount of resources. If we somehow let a combination of “not-scarce-resources” plus a level of centralization over control of production and delivery of those not-actually-scarce-to-produce resources, but which cuts out people who don’t do “X” (whatever “X” is), we’re going to have an especially nasty problem.
Different treatment from other people.
Is it? It turns out it's usually easier to tackle "fixed" characteristics coming from biology or physics. Cultural / social aspects are usually near-impossible to change by any single person or group.
That something is malleable doesn’t imply that it is infinitely malleable.
Also yes, more work does not correspond to higher status in any monotonic way like that. This doesn’t cause any problem for the claim that some people would opt to do more work in order to gain more status?