The verification tradeoff is how a high-capacity ecology decides when policing access is worth it. Every worthiness test — proving need, deservingness, compliance — carries a cost of its own, and when a good is cheap to provide, that cost can exceed the good: a system can spend more verifying eligibility than the benefit is worth. As AI and robotics push the marginal cost of baseline goods toward zero, elaborate gatekeeping becomes not just ungenerous but irrational.
The lower the marginal cost of a standing good, the weaker the justification for policing access through worthiness tests. The scarcer and more consequential the resource, the more legitimate careful allocation becomes.
That yields a continuum rather than a blanket rule. Abundant baseline goods are best supplied broadly, close to unconditionally; moderately constrained goods warrant simple eligibility and prioritization; genuinely scarce goods warrant explicit, transparent, contestable allocation. It also reframes free riding: the question is never whether a baseline can be exploited — any unconditional floor can — but how much exploitation is cheaper to absorb than to prevent, once prevention has its own price.