[harimau777]

What alternative do you suggest?

The alternatives that I can think of:

Enjoying the work and similar motivations: This tends to only apply to certain jobs. In addition, just because I'm intrinsically motivated to work on programming, for example, that doesn't mean that I'm motivated to program the things that society wants me to.

A sense of duty: I think this motivation tends to have limitations and is likely hard to achieve consistently without propaganda, nationalism, or a state religion.

Social status: Call me cynical, but I think this only works if someone can use their social status to get the things they want; in which case it doesn't seem that different from capitalism.

[petra]

In the old Jewish tradition, religious studies gave people high status, but also, because of the culture, were considered very valuable.

This meant that those who we're good religious students(a life long pursuit, and not financially rewarding) married the most desired women.

And that's just on culture.

So maybe there are ways to cretae a motivating culture .