Socialism?
I think you meant 'communism' as practiced by those countries that have hi-jacked an otherwise pretty good idea to serve the interests of a select few fat cats.
Business incentives stifle creativity; even in creative products. It may wax and wane depending on context, but it's a pretty uncontroversial idea. From the high end of LA creativity-through-the-sausage-machine film and tv, all the way through to the low end, where nobody wants to attend my one man show.
But the parent poster used the HN tigger word "capitalism" when discussing the idea, so lets down-vote the shit out of him! /s
Open source isn't anti capitalist. It's capitalism at it's best form. People join at their own free will, the rule of contracts (open source licensing) are strictly enforced, and there are lots of ways people can profit from open source.
Capitalism is much more than "expecting a financial reward". It's a complex system of signals which let producers determine what is the most valuable and efficient use for their resources.
What Should I build in my basement? A sous vide cooker? A drone with a camera? A computer game or a new social network? Capitalism and profit give the correct signals - what is it that the market demands. What do people truly feel they need?
Art is the big gap here. Few could argue successfully that the world is not a better place for the creations of JS Bach, Kafka, Keats, Van Gogh, yet these people did not make their fortune from their life's passion and work. Only after their death were they appreciated for what they did in their figurative basements.
Capitalism provides one set of signals, an overpoweringly large one at that, but it does not provide a complete picture of value to humanity.
Just as a farmer is not trying to satisfy the world's demand for food, monitoring which crop is most needed. All the farmer does is he prefers a certain amount of money over a certain amount of labour and grows crops that maximize that amount of money. The world signals their demand by price.
It's also at risk of the Is/Ought problem; the stories are not justifications.
You're taking the exceptions (and actually Bach earnt quite well from music). Van Gogh was almost unique among his painting contemporaries, partly because his paintings were, by the standards of the time, weird (I suspect this applies to Kafka as well). And what vindicates him now is an ultimately capitalist consideration - his works are popular, people pay for copies of them. Nowadays there are capitalistic art speculators who will buy the work of underappreciated artists if they like it themselves - see the recent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8829277 - which would solve that problem.
As for Kafka, he had a famously... weird approach to his work. IIRC he wanted his works destroyed; it's only the capitalism of his descendants that means we're able to appreciate them.
Gov't incentives meanwhile often create unintended effects. For example, incentivizing investment in the arts leading to rich people creating their own private museums, often inaccessible to the public, and using them as convenient funnels for tax deductions while still enriching themselves.[1]
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/art-collectors-ga...
Contemporary pop art, on the other hand, entertains huge masses of people, gives them pleasure and delight, and makes their days happier.