The article was a bit pretentious for my taste, but I agree with the title. I've noticed a small but definite "trickle down" effect to the things I do well from spending time doing things that I'm bad at.
Could the performance of the lottery winners have been "environmental"? That is, they benefited from being surrounded by competent people (which was, in turn, guaranteed by those people having gone through the interview process) and "leveled up" due to that?
In other words, maybe as long as you let in a small number (but only a small number) of non-performers, you're fine (which is bound to happen anyway - I'm sure there is some noise in the interviews).
The standard argument is that it is the other way around -- we've settled on a 8x5 scheme _because_ our breaking point is around 40 hours. However, like others in this thread, I'm not sure I agree.
There can be legal issues from the candidate's side too -- people on an H-1B visa in the US may not be able to accept payment for work outside of the company they've been hired by.