As PG states:

  it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things 
  worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary.

If this is true, rational companies should be willing to pay salaries between 100-1000x of average for great programmers.

All hail the $100M/yr rockstar programmer.

I can't wait to see the cool things that will come out of a greater distribution of wealth to hackers, geeks and programmers. Think of all the neat kickstarter campaigns that will get funded... and all of the startup ideas that can find angel funding. And all the open-source and Makerspaces and rockets etc, etc.