This sounds nice in theory, and perhaps if we lived in a different type of society that would even be true. We don't though, we live in the world where our rewards are tied to our accomplishments. those rewards are the incentives for us to do the work, it might not be 100% of the incentive, but it's a large part. Of course, if someone steals your idea, but wins the race, they're probably executing better. That's capitalism, that's the beauty of competition. First mover advantage is often a disadvantage. You have to pay for all the mistakes. If you're an established player, you can afford it. If you're brand new though, you might not be able to.
True. I understand the emotional impact of ideas too - every time I see someone executing on something I spent time thinking about, I feel as if I've just lost hit points. That said, I try to promote a more global view on things, because as a society, we're in dire need of more of that. Self-centered view is easy to have.
If you had a great new idea in the Soviet Union, for example, do you suppose you would be just given the resources necessary to execute it well? Of course not, and moreover the incumbent solutions were a lot better positioned to crush your novel way of doing things in order to protect their own positions than the incumbents are under capitalism.
The Soviet Union was a variation of capitalism, called state capitalism. I hope you weren't implying that they were socialists or communists in any way. We have not seen socialism, only small forms of democratic socialism. We have definitely never seen communism, only dictatorships and their one-party systems.
Back in the late 90s I worked at a US bank with an older and wiser dev who'd done long stints at DEC and IBM. HE used to comment that it's no accident that IBM nearly collapsed at the same time as the Soviet Union actually did, as they were very similar organisations :) I guess Lou Gerstner was a better turn around exec than Gorbachev.
Let me state it explicitly: that "state capitalist" theory is false (and so absurd it makes me suspect you are part of some sort of Russian troll farm.) The USSR was both socialist and communist in character, and not at all capitalist.
I think it's important to remember that capitalism is a reward system, not the reward system.
If your biggest reward in life is a giant house where you can check out of society and spend your time look down on people, then you're going to have to step on a lot of toes to get it and more to keep it.
