[lusr]

It rewards people who contribute to science, who in turn can use the reward as they see fit. It is logical to believe that allocating wealth to people who have demonstrated high quality results will increase the number of future high quality results, which is surely a desirable result.

I'm puzzled by Feynman's attitude in those comments - he doesn't discuss the prize money at all, which one can easily see e.g. funding a number of students who might otherwise not be able to afford the type of education he received and thereby not receive the type of pleasure he speaks of.