What a trite and naïve rephrasing of Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs</a> ). I will certainly grant that Economists and Business people need to have these ideas battered into their thick crania, however it's irritating to have the speaker present ideas as if they were novel which are not only <i>not</i> novel, but actually <i>thousands</i> of years old.<p>If you pay people well enough to decouple their concerns about economic survival from their work, it shouldn't be surprising that there isn't a relationship between increased reward leading to increased performance. That's a pretty fundamental part of the humanist movement which predates the French and American Revolutions (Liberté, égalité, fraternité! or Americans might prefer Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness). Even then, Humanism was merely the popularization and egalitarian movement to provide for everyone the model which the wealthy and elite have been following since at least the time of Aristotle!<p>Put succinctly, this guy isn't describing the Open Source movement, he's describing at least 2500 years of Academia. You pay people a tenured salary, because they, free of concerns regarding economic security, will produce works for the benefit of all.<p>And this is telling for two reasons. First, Academia is not free from woe and misery. Second, and i would hope that Economists would realize this, just because you have (partially) removed monetary incentives, does not mean that there is no currency or economics in Academia. The reason why the "Publish or Perish" mentality exists, is because it's what's used to differentiate academics. Academics trade on their reputation, and their reputation is measured based on publication.