Re:Devil's Advocate... (Score 1)

. . .thus motivated to invent when a paycheck is on the line.

Labor can be motivated by money. Invention cannot.

True enough, but as Edison noted, invention requires a lot of work. And turning an invention into a product is likely to require a great deal of labor.

. .then by chargin for their product they would be causing their econmy to grow.

Simply charging for something does not create wealth, it just moves money around. Money is just a bit of paper that represents something. If there is no something behind the money there is very little point in moving it.

Just charging for something doesn't even move money around; I could charge a thousand dollars to smile at people, but all it would mean is that I wouldn't do much smiling. Charging for something people are willing to pay for moves money around; creating something that people are willing to pay for is the creation of wealth.

Your statement works as well for books and music as for software. Stephen King writes books that people want to read. Thus his output is "wealth". It takes a lot of work to turn his ideas into readable prose, and if he didn't get any return, he probably wouldn't do it. If he didn't have the talent, he'd have to pay somebody to help. That labor may not have much to do with invention, but it is necessary.

(disclaimer: I have never read a novel by Stephen King; I am making no judgment on the "readability" of his prose.)