Your argument always fails because it assumes that the path of least resistance is bad and people only choose it because they are lazy. In almost every case the path of least resistance is the better path. People choose it because they are intelligent. Almost all the advances we see in the world today are because engineers etc are constantly finding better ways of doing things more efficiently. The average person today has wealth the exceeds the imagination of people centuries ago. And its all because people have worked to make more and better paths of least resistance.