Yes, it would be a suit of armour stuffed with straw. On the other hand, I find nothing to disagree with in the actual arguments presented for inefficiency. This article could stand on its own without the steelman framing. All of its arguments can also be found elsewhere with their authors standing behind them instead of beside them.

• Taleb has pointed out the efficiency-resiliency tradeoff.

• The efficiency of kidnapping people because they are made of atoms we can put to better use has frequently been frowned on here.

• The danger of effective government of whatever stripe has been commented on widely (fictionally in Frank Herbert's stories of Jorj X. McKie of the Bureau of Sabotage), even if it isn't a mainstream idea.

• People seem to acknowledge the practical impossibility of building an actual global utility function.

• That it becomes a totalitarian morality admitting no revision has been pointed out e.g. by C.S. Lewis. I have in mind where he says that every self-professed new morality turns out to be merely an elevation of one of the many components of what he calls the Tao into the only principle.

In a humorous vein, I recall Mark Twain's story of the old woman whose health was failing:

So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw over [to] lighten ship withal.