We can consider three point-based justice systems.
In the asymmetric system, when bad action is taken, bad action points are accumulated. Justice punishes in proportion to those points to the extent possible. Each action is assigned a non-negative point total.
In the symmetric system, when any action is taken, good or bad, points are accumulated. This can be and often is zero, is negative for bad action, positive for good action. Justice consists of punishing negative point totals and rewarding positive point totals.
In what we will call the Good Place system (Spoiler Alert for Season 1), when any action is taken, good or bad, points are accumulated as in the symmetric system. But there’s a catch (which is where the spoiler comes in). If you take actions with good consequences, you only get those points if your motive was to do good. When a character attempts to score points by holding open doors for people, they fail to score any points because they are gaming the system. Gaming the system isn’t allowed.
Thus, if one takes action even under the best of motives, one fails to capture much of the gains from such action. Second or higher order benefits, or surprising benefits, that are real but unintended, will mostly not get captured.
The opposite is not true of actions with bad consequences. You lose points for bad actions whether or not you intended to be bad. It is your responsibility to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
When (Spoiler Alert for Season 3) an ordinary citizen buys a tomato from a supermarket, they are revealed to have lost twelve points because the owner of the tomato company was a bad guy and the company used unethical labor practices. Life has become too complicated to be a good person. Thus, since the thresholds never got updated, no one has made it into The Good Place for centuries.
The asymmetric system is against action. Action is bad. Inaction is good. Surprisingly large numbers of people actually believe this. It is good to be you, but bad to do anything.
The asymmetric system is not against every action. This is true. But effectively, it is. Some actions are bad, some are neutral. Take enough actions, even with the best of intentions, even with fully correct knowledge of what is and is not bad, and mistakes will happen.
So any individual, any group, any company, any system, any anything, that takes action, is therefore bad.
Related excellent writing by Zvi: Assymetric Justice. Relevant excerpt:
Also the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics, of course, which nobody should go through life without reading and internalizing its lessons, and the Toxoplasma of Rage by Scott.