That's the issue with your "social good" approach, is that by capping the upside, you're capping the control one can exercise over their own livelihoods.
The smart scientist wanted to send their kid to a more expensive Montessori preschool instead of a neighborhood preschool? Too bad. You are capped at the socially accepted able salary range.
No matter how much extra work, training, contributions, the smart person would inject into their career, they are forever capped at the socially good rate.
Most engineers can’t scale companies. Just take a look at the wasteland of personal projects demo’ed on HN. Great technical execution, but they don’t get off the ground as a profit generating company.
And a company scaled to to billions of dollars is even more of an outlier. It’s absolutely a skill.
And yes, you can have a conversation of what value an exec brings vs the value generated by scientists inventing the products their selling. But the original point was that no one is coming after workers salaries — they’re not the ones making $15m a year.
Social goods that we ostensibly invest in, often are crappy career paths in terms of pay. If you don't believe me, talk with a teacher. We know that few things contribute to the social good as much as a good education, but tell me honestly. If you knew a poor, smart, hard working kid, what career path would you suggest, teacher or software developer?
Depends on what they like to do. There is a lot we can change so that people can do what they love without punishing careers that aren't directly tied to profit.
I’m all for smart people being paid well to work hard. But there has to be a better model. Perhaps something similar to the massive payouts we see lawyers getting in class action suits, except instead of law firms and defendants we have drug researchers and illnesses.
There aren’t enough resources out there to tackle every disease.
"Free market" isn't really the right term for this method of price discovery when life and limb is on the line. "Highway robbery" might be more appropriate.