1) I never said the problem was effort; I was trying to explain the strip mining analogy, and it's one of the two anchors that make the analogy work.

2) Mathematicians didn't create this economy; it was foisted upon them by the same managerial mentality that brought us "publish or perish" and "the monthly sales quota".

3) I can't tell if you honestly don't get why the strip-mining analogy resonates, or...?

Here's another analogy: if we suddenly discovered personal teleportation, and marathon runners were complaining that it was ruining the sport, would you say "they're pulling a 180 and claiming that marathon running was never really about getting to a point 26 miles away as fast as possible, but that's contradicted by their revealed preferences"?

The strip mining analogy is better though, because it captures the sense of irreversible goal-loss when a problem goes from being "unsolved" to "solved".