[_delirium]

To put it simply - when all the wealth is equally spread, there is no incentive for anyone to do anything.

I don't think this is true in general, though it's true for some jobs (mostly jobs that nobody wants to do). For example, I don't think scientists, or even most HN types, are motivated solely by money, and would just sit around drinking beer if they couldn't make more money. Many of us are more motivated by science and technology. Making money is nice, but I would still work on tech if it made absolutely no difference to my salary. The reward is finding interesting things, gaining recognition for my ideas from my peers, etc., not just some monetary bonuses.

If anything I think there's a slight negative correlation between in-it-for-the-money and quality in science. The people who are there to optimize money are usually good game-players, adept at working the system and working their way up bureaucracy. Brilliant scientists often aren't even very good at that, and are more often really driven by the science first, perhaps peer recognition second, and maximizing money a distant third.

[jakeonthemove]

True, but what's the incentive beyond creating your new product/tech? There's no one to buy it but the government (unless it's something that appeals to the ordinary citizen and is not banned because it's competing with a gov-issued product), and then what? How will you develop your new theory/tech in the future?

[_delirium]

I don't have in mind some kind of Soviet-style authoritarian state that would censor things and whatnot. Was just commenting on the more general issue of whether people would create things if it had no effect on their salary; I think many people would. I certainly would; actually I probably do more things as side projects than as "real" projects as it is. The incentive is that technology is interesting, and people using and commenting on my stuff is rewarding. How to actually set that up in practice, I have less confidence in. My own politics tend towards more Scandinavian style social-welfare state, rather than communism, because it seems much clearer how to make it work in practice (market economy, but with high taxes, high level of public services, and a strong social safety net).

Even within a strongly capitalist system like the US, being motivated by things other than money actually used to be closer to the norm for a large number of professionals. The current situation where people change companies a lot, get large bonuses, and have widely differential pay, is a pretty recent phenomenon. At Bell Labs, everyone got fairly similar salaries, despite the fact that some people were much more successful in research than others. Of course, you had to be at a certain level of success to get there at all, but once you were there, you just got the normal Bell Labs salary, with raises tied to seniority, old-corporate-style. Yet many people there excelled anyway, despite the fact that they could've sat around pulling the exact same salary without putting in much effort. Why? Because they were motivated by things other than money, I would guess.