point-system
Explanation
The Joke
Two engineers are discussing a social system. One proposes: "What if we made a point system to tell citizens how well they're doing?" The other objects: "Won't that be dehumanizing?" The first engineer cheerfully responds: "Hmmm, let's add a point system for humanizing. There we go!" A small inset panel shows a display reading "The Death Star: an HR job" -- and the caption below states: "Everyone likes technocracy until they hear engineers chatting."
The Humor
The comic skewers the engineer/technocrat mindset of trying to solve every problem -- including deeply human, philosophical ones -- with quantifiable metrics and systems. When confronted with the concern that a point system is dehumanizing, the engineer's solution is not to abandon the point system but to add another point system on top of it to measure humanization, completely missing the point of the objection. This recursive, tone-deaf approach to human values is presented as typical of how engineers think: every problem is a technical problem that can be solved with another layer of abstraction.
The caption and the "Death Star: an HR job" detail reinforce this theme by suggesting that the engineers who designed the Death Star probably had similarly casual, breezy conversations about their work, treating planet-destroying superweapons as just another project management challenge. The overall joke is a warning about technocracy: the people who design systems often lack the humanistic perspective to understand why those systems might be harmful.