I think the problem with those thought experiments you mentioned is that they are always going to be limited in their perspective. Mostly because the human mind tends to reflect his own desire as it is now (and desires definitely change over time!) and project them onto others.

To give you a slightly different perspective, I can give you an example of my own life.

Once it was my desire to "lay at the beach and live a very luxurious life without working at all" and I was thinking similar thoughts. But now after achieving alignment with previous desires my desires changed to the complete opposite of this idea.

Right now, I never want to stop "working" (aka having fun) to just lay at the beach and bore myself to death. In fact, I would rather enjoy myself to death and croak at the peak of my physical experience working on something.

The by-product of me having fun actually is that I'm more productive than at those times when I was thinking that I would rather do nothing and lay at the beach.

Alignment brings inspiration and inspiration leads to highly productive action.

The only reason many people think of wanting to do nothing as the ultimate life goal is that they just feel that working is some kind of punishment. They feel, powerless, overwhelmed and stressed out. Then, of course, it's logical to rather want to do nothing. Everyone would prefer doing nothing to being whipped.

Now the question arises why we have the joyful desire to be producitve (or to better put, why we have the desire to be involved in the creation process rather than just creating everything instantly out of thin air) ones we are in alignment with ourselves. The answer is simply that the Universe orchestrates things perfectly in this process of creation on earth. Without the process of creating/working, it would be boring to create everything out of thin air.

We could eat all meals of our lives instantly, without chewing and tasting. But wouldn't you rather eat one meal at a time and enjoy every bit of it and process it slowly over time by extracting every taste, aroma and good feeling out of it?

The Universe orchestrates desires to keep everything in its perfect order. It could do it without the creation/production/working PROCESS but than we wouldn't need this physical experience here on earth.

From a physical perspective, we humans tend to think that on logical level we know it all. But we don't.

The desires to drink, eat or have sex are just a few of many desires that keep the ball rolling. There are general desires like these and there are more specific desires such as wanting to be a ballet dancer or a butcher, wanting to travel the world etc. And we really have no clue why we have those desires even if we come up with seemingly logical reasons.

So, the Universe orchestrates everything perfectly in this process of creation even if we choose to not take part in it in a good feeling way. Alignment of every desire is guarenteed forever.

The real question is:

Are you interested in participating actively in this perfect, giant orchestra by feeling miserable or by feeling wonderful, exhilerated and ecstatic?

There's a few flaws with your thinking. Imagine all the millionaires and billionaires in the world right now e.g. Elon Musk, Richard Branson why don't they all just quit and lay on the beach all day.

Although that sounds like a fun thing to do, this is only from a perspective of someone slogging through life, 'trying' to make things work which will make you very tired, wanting to lay on the beach all day.

From someone who is in alignment and having fun doing "work" this sounds like the most boring thing, me included.

Leaving the Law of Attraction aside, if you believe in something like God, an all powerful being, a creator, or whatever you chose to name it, I don't see why there cannot be enough of everything.

Maybe you DO have to give back, but your definition of "giving back" may be a bit wiry, because you seem to think that "giving back" can only be giving back to humans and in terms of work.

You could actually also be giving back, for instance, to Mother Nature instead of humans. Mother Nature could be the one giving you food such as wild animals, plants, etc, instead of humans. She could also be the one giving the things you need apart from food.

Who knows, humans might eventually evolve to a state where they do not require food anymore. The only reason why humans need to work now is because they need food and shelter in order to survive. If these two are eliminated, then there is no reason why people can't just sit around all day long doing nothing.

EDIT: Forgot to add too, in today's increasingly digital age, it is not hard to see how one can manifest freely or do not need to exchange something substantial in return. For instance, people who create e-books or games - They might only spend a few months creating these items, but go on to sell them for like ten years or more. These ten years they would be practically "Doing nothing" and "manifesting out of thin air" as you mentioned, especially if there is not much cost involved in updating the e-book or games.

• Coming from an anti- law of attraction person, here is my answer:

Your skeptical questioning is evidence of a healthy mind.

Largely because, what has been described in your question and what Abraham preaches is (my fact) utter BS, and I think you are just clued in enough to see through all of it.

Just because something is popular, or has a following, or has lots of books/videos/teachers/seminars about it, does not make it truthful or valid. I fell pray to this years ago, evident on the amount of posts I have posted on here from years ago.

The sad thing was I believed in this stuff enough to apply myself as fully as I could. Yet deep in my psyche, I knew something was off. I was not able to come to a conclusive place that the law of attraction could be used as a tool of helping me out.

Here's the reason I stayed in it for so long: one somebody tells you all you have to do it feel good for a situation to resolve itself or get what you want in life, that advise is very appealing to the ego. It is a calculated, brain gymnastics way of letting you off the hook of facing issues directly in your life. Eg: Instead of doing an action you know will produce a result, feel good first and then take action. ISSUE: You will end up waiting around forever.

And sad to say, people with depression are usually attracted to this material because it asks to do little psychological effort to improve your situation. Have you noticed most of this law of attraction stuff is very easy work to do? People are wired to go towards easy things and avoid things that require effort.

You can get practically anything you want in life if you have this: a willingness to work for it, self discipline, and then actually working for it. Inevitably, yes, you will probably feel good pursuing your goals and taking action to achieve them. However, a big secret of successful people is that they sometimes do things that need to be done to get them to their goals, whether they FEEL like doing it or not.

And this is one prime contention I have with the law of attraction; it defines feelings and gives feelings more authority and conviction than they deserve.

Don't get me wrong, feelings are an important aspect of your life...But you do not have to be at the mercy of them in order to get things done or create results.

And I hate to end this on a bad note, but I guess your are intelligent enough to hear me out because this last point is a practical point for all: If a person is not willing to experience even the tiniest bit of negative emotion, or discomfort...they are in an incredibly weak position. They are not going to be able to get anything done, and they will not have the adult skill of being able to help themselves.