> thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whethe

> thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). Your assertion that all necessary work is roughly equally valuable is wrong. And then you compound the error by ignoring supply. (It's unclear whether you're ignoring demand as well.) > Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses That's irrelevant because few people are geniuses, so it doesn't much matter what motivates them. I get it that you think that you're not motivated by money and think that other people shouldn't be, but the brain-power going into high-wealth fields suggests that money does have some motivating power.