"in in an effort to prove they're working hard to the other ants"
"all ants to be comfortable allowing some of their ant peers to work less"
Or maybe on some instinctive level they realize they just literally cannot work in the crowd and wait until they can and that's that.
No, I don't believe ants are actually acting with intelligent, social behavior in an attempt to win over their fellow ants. They're just little statistical robots searching for optimality.
That said, there have been times that I've been frustrated when I feel I am working harder than my peers and, in those moments, it's been easy for me to feel justified by looking at what's optimal for me rather than extrapolating to what's optimal for the greater good. I thought adding a little anthropomorphism to my descriptors would be a gentle way of helping others reflect on similar situations.
Humans think they have free will. I don’t think so, we all do what we are compelled to do (and that could just be follow the herd)
Yes, there needs to be a statistical distribution of effort for intrinsic reasons --in this case of physics. Even if it wasn't needed, it would exist. The workers can console themselves with the thought that when times get hard, the idlers will be nice, tender, succulent food.