We need to get rid of the latter without sacrificing the former.
Too often people fall into the trap of conflating the two concepts in the OP, leading either to people rejecting the concept of strength as "fascism" (left mistake) or actually supporting fascism (right mistake).
@Hyolobrika
You did explain it well! Everyone should just be given a chance, but those who perform worse shouldn't get unfairly rewarded for it, because it disincentivises them to perform better (they get rewarded anyway) and it disincentivises those who perform well (they don't get rewarded adequately).
@Hyolobrika
Of course no one should be struggling with basic necessities!
But outright antisocial behaviour shouldn't be sustainable either, some people have to hit rock bottom to muster the motivation to get their shit together. This was quite common in USSR — people were becoming alcoholics, and you were of course frowned upon — but you don't really care about such things, you ARE anti-social. But society still somehow kept you afloat — people were doing their work, at times completely drunk.
@Hyolobrika
People in more prosperous countries have never seen any of this with their own eyes — so they don't understand the true implications, which might be very destructive for society.
But these are extremes — I think there is more to this "supporting the underdog", which might be bad — people think they are just levelling the playing field, but coupled with their obsession with oppressor-victim dichotomy, they become vulnerable to those who are good at presenting themselves as victim.
@Hyolobrika
There are those who exploit this quite consciously and there are e.g. people with BPD — they aren't even attempting to manipulate you and yet if you've ever communicated with them in this phase — they give off the impression that everyone they have interacted with before you were absolute monsters — and it's just their mind playing tricks on them, they might not even believe that everyone is mistreating them at later moment.
@Hyolobrika
They couldn't get that something that would incentivise them to return back to their normal life — so something relatively minor that made you start drinking could ruin your life forever.
At the same time those who were exhibiting personal initiative were hated upon in their work collectives — because you doing something better than the others didn't mean that you would get rewarded, in most cases it meant that next time everyone HAD to perform better.