But your compensation still depends on having some "provably lousy coworkers", or worse, if they're all gone some people who are good will perforce get labeled as lousy.

The quiet ones, the different ones disabled, gay, female etc who wont push back look for the ones who where bullied at school. If you team is lucky you might have some terminally ill people you can dump at the base of the stack - this sounds worse than it is as there was medical retirement available for these poor devils.