<p>To address various problems brought up by your question in turn, from my perspective:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"it could take away work people who do professional consulting for a living."</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Frankly, if the services of a particular statistical consultant can be replaced by a few questions on CrossValidated or StackExchange, they're not providing enough service for their clients for me to feel bad. Beyond that, there are a considerable number of answers on CV that amount to "You're in over your head. Go find a statistician, use these words, and they'll be able to help."</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Also are we encouraging laziness as someone who has a problem they
  find to be difficult might instead of thinking out the problem and
  doing their own research to find the solution decides it is much
  easier to raise the question here and just see all the great ideas
  poor out with practically no effort. We even help them reformulate
  poorly posed questions."</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It's possible, but if they don't put the effort in, they'll get little lasting knowledge from 'Give Me the Code' questions. For example, I on occasion post questions like that, but generally it's "I don't even know where to start with x..." and the question is meant to be something I can build off of and learn from. It's very hard to distinguish between that and a 'lazy' question.</p>

<p>Beyond that, being neither their boss, professor or mother, <em>I don't care</em>. Laziness as a vice is a particularly...puritanical notion. If someone just wants to get their plot, p-value or test name and go away, it's little enough to me. And I'd rather tolerate that than turn away someone genuinely floundering who could use a hand to produce a meaningful, robust and thoughtful analysis.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Some students come here for free tutoring. There seems to be an
  awareness here that this poses problems. Students should study the
  course material and try to solve the problems themselves. Cross
  Validated asks that these questions be labelled as homework and the
  approach to answering is to give guidance rather than a complete
  solution. Nevertheless doesn't this also also encourage laziness as
  the student can just pose it here or in several places on
  StackExchange to get as much help as possible before doing any of the
  work on their own?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Students also come here to ask questions when they don't have access to teaching resources, are trying to self-learn and have run aground, or are looking for a deeper understanding. I'd suggest the problem of a freeloading student is relatively minor compared to those things - especially as CV is fairly adept at not giving complete solutions.</p>

<p>Students being able to get "as much help as possible" while they learn isn't a bug. It's a feature.</p>
