As an investor, you'll want a business' value to improve in the future. Thus, you'll want to take actions in the present that maximize the chances and magnitude of success. It is generally not the case that simply rewarding everyone in perfect proportion to their contribution (an impossible goal to begin with) is the best way to improve future outcomes.

One of the biggest confounding factors is the external market. The price of something/someone isn't determine solely by their value, but also by their rarity in the market. Water is essential to life, but you won't pay $infinity for it, because someone else will offer it for cheaper. Whereas a golden nugget may be close to useless in your eyes, but you still can't get one for cheap, because someone else who values it is willing to pay more. That's the market at work.

Analogously, many rank-and-file employees (us programmers included) are easily replaceable. We've developed a well-defined set of skills that slot perfectly into some box that was defined by business owners, so of course many others have squished themselves to fit into the same shape. They're our competition. So yeah, perhaps we contribute meaningful value to our companies, great. But why should they pay us $X if someone else will come along and do the exact same job providing the exact same value for $X-1? Whereas many stellar CEO candidates highly sought after and will have many competing offers and opportunities, driving up their price. If you were easily willing to hire your perfect CEO candidate for $Y, will you also hire her for $Y + $1? What about $Y + $100K? What about $Y + $10MM? Obviously there's a cutoff, yes, but obviously it's significantly higher than $Y if you really value this person and can't easily find an equivalent replacement.

Okay, what about rewarding employees en masse? If you pay _all_ of your developers a higher salary, won't that attract a higher tier of developers than your competition is hiring? Probably. A lot of companies do exactly that. But it's not universally true. It depends on your industry, your competition, the role, etc. For example, due to diminishing returns, your business might not _need_ the highest tier employees at certain roles to have a significant impact. Or there might be such a massive surplus of people to fill that role that it doesn't matter what you pay, you'll still get good people.

Etc.

My personal takeaway from all of this is that, as an employee, you should think of yourself as a business. That means you have to consider your competition (other ppl who have your skillset) as well as your customers (the businesses that pay you for your services). More specifically, you need to figure out how to differentiate yourself from the competition so your price isn't easily driven down. At the same time, you should work to maximize the value you provide to your employer's bottom line, so they have a stronger reason to pay you more. And of course you'll need to be able to do so in a measurable way if you want them to believe you. This last part is why salespeople can easily charge commission, but programmer #5532 working on Tiny Part of Major System cannot.

On a broader scale, I personally believe that it's society's responsibility to create a safety net that prevents people from going hungry or living on the streets. If you're not particularly skilled at, interested in, or capable of playing the capitalism game, it shouldn't mean that you aren't guaranteed basic human rights and dignity. Let the people who want to run fast do so, and let everyone else live happy lives regardless.