Seems like what most people want is something more akin to self-determination. It isn't quite power, and it isn't quite freedom, but somewhere in the middle.
Having the power to attract your desired mate is also a power, and it involves showing you have power.
Do you want to enslave your partner? Compel them to live with you against their will?
Do I want to enslave my partner or compel them to live with me against their will? No. I am sure others in history have wanted that and still do today. But the important thing is you need power to not be enslaved by others, even if that just means living within the borders of a tribe of people who act against slavery.
Since money is a proxy for power, and since resources are finite and we do not live in this world without effecting others, I would say the distinction of having the power to be free from compulsion and the power to compel others is very, very murky.
For example, I am not using my power to directly compel someone with violence like a slave owner, but I know that living the quality of life that people in the top 10% to 20% of the US do is for sure compelling others to live with more pollution and/or fewer resources due to me consuming so many resources. I am pretty sure this claim could be made for anyone living in a detached single family house, or even people with more than 2 kids. Or maybe even 1 kid.
If we go back to the original claim:
> The idea that the only, or even primary, incentive to do stuff is money is an invention of 20th century economics.
Yes, people like doing things for their community or helping others here and there, but functionally no one is going to change bed pans in a nursing home without getting something in return.
Alexander the Great, the embodiment of power, approached notorious hobo philosopher Diogenes the Cynic and asked if there was anything he can do for him. Sunbathing Diogenes asks Alexander if he wouldn't mind stepping to the side a bit, as he is blocking the light.
Alexander is able to compel armies and lay countries to ruin, but Diogenes is resistant to all compulsion but is without land, possessions, rank, title, nobility, reputation, and so on. There is nothing you can take away from him he hasn't already given up, no hardship you can impose on him that he does not willingly endure. Even the times he is de facto enslaved, he is still free, because he willingly subjects himself to any punishment.
It would be an absurd conclusion that the reason Diogenes is able to make a mockery of this request is because this homeless man is more powerful than Alexander the Great.
The only moral of this story I understood is that it is nonsensical to compare two different metrics. I do not know how one would come to the above conclusion, comparing Alexander’s power over many others to Diogenes’ power over himself and presumably pain receptors.
Alexander being able to kill Diogenes more easily than Diogenes being able to kill Alexander would be a proper comparison, or Alexander being able to compel more people than Diogenes, but even then, I fail to see the utility for this discussion.
> Money is a proxy for power. Has a better alternative proxy to power been demonstrated to exist?
Here the a man with no possessions suddenly has power, and the richest most powerful man in the world struggles to exert power.
When Diogenes asks Alexander to move aside, it demonstrates the limits of this power, and therefore Alexander's virtue as a ruler: someone who doesn't want anything gets exactly as much benefit from this king as from anyone else. If the only thing Alexander can contribute is threats, that would simply make him unvirtuous - and equivalent in power to any armed madman.
This seems like a trivial fact to me, or I am missing what is notable about this “virtue”.
> If the only thing Alexander can contribute is threats, that would simply make him unvirtuous - and equivalent in power to any armed madman.
I guess so in this specific interaction, but it would be ridiculous to say a person that commands armies is equivalent in power to any armed madman in the big picture. My responses are in the context of societies using money as a tool to incentivize people, to which I am not aware of there being a better known alternative.