alt Hacker NewsMoney is not the "only" reason people do things. But it sure helps.
Would we have nearly as many slime-balls scheming up ways to plaster ads upon everyone's eyeballs and record our every movement and click if not for the money in it? At a societal level almost nothing ever gets done at scale if there isn't money in it. You remove the financial incentive and things atrophy, new investment stops replacing old, etc.
Sure, but the incredible skilledness in a single craft, which we are discussing here, doesn't happen at a societal level. That is the hard work of an individual and has always been.