To understand my argument against admirable activities, it helps to understand the concept of inefficient signaling. Here is a simple example. Imagine there are two equal sized groups of employees: good and bad. Good employees produce twenty units of value for an employer, while bad employees produce ten units of value. The problem is, it is not easy to tell which employees are which. With many competing employers, each employee will be paid what he appears to be worth on average. A good employee will be paid twenty, a bad one will be paid ten, and an employee of random unknown type will be paid fifteen.