Are you sure that's not the result of social conditioning? Surely, humans, esp. males have an innate aggressive/competitive behavior but it hasn't always been the case that people want to be compensated for their work with material goods to be satisfied. Michelangelo was rich yet he barely ate, Einstein wasn't rich but i doubt he was unhappy. Someone from a former communist country could chime in about the differences of an egalitarian society.

> Someone from a former communist country could chime in

I am from a former communist country. If you ask my opinion, communism was the most repulsive and despicable experiment in the history of mankind. Nazism was communism under a different name. The way people bonded with each other was through vile and resentful hate of the westernized upper class (communism) or the Jews and the British (nazism). Schoolteachers brainwashed children from the early age to become haters as well. Both were populist movements enabled by "liminal" conditions of post-WWI period and spearheaded by ruthless Machiavellian manipulators of public opinion who harnessed the newly emergent mass-media to appeal to the disgruntled poorly educated populace lacking a better leader. See any Dostoyevsky's novel where he portrays the character known as the "Underground Man" for a better background, as well as the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality#Imitation.2C_leaders..., http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/.

You introduce a dichotomy between wealth (aka Bill Gates) and fame (aka Michelangelo, Einstein). It's a false dichotomy. As PG wrote, money is not wealth. The way money works is that it makes you important in the eyes of a number of people. The way fame works is it makes you important in the eyes of a number of people as well, perhaps a different kind of people, but the underlying logic is the same. It's not one against the other, and whoever ardently defends that idea carries an agenda. Ultimately both money and fame are tokens for power. If you were infinitely powerful, you would need neither.

What makes you think that a society in a position of universal material wealth would be egalitarian? It's just as likely that the basis of social hierarchy would shift even more towards connections, beauty, style and knowledge. And there would still be striving for limited resources; there are only so many people that this season's hottest media stars will sleep with, so many housebuilding plots available with a view of the Taj Mahal, a limited number of penthouses overlooking Central Park. Yes, you could live a physically comfortable life anywhere you choose, but admiration, acclaim, worship and respect would still have to be earned.

A society where almost everyone was living at the level where self-actualization was their primary concern would not be boring, even if it contained boring people.

GP means (s)he derives pleasure and self-identity from having people to look down upon.

I'm not sure how you are getting that I am looking down on you, let alone deriving pleasure and self-identity from it.

I simply was observing that your statements fit the pattern I mentioned. I think it is unfortunate that people try so hard to find ways to be superior at the expense of others, but I don't really take pleasure in the fact that I see others doing it, and I certainly don't derive my self-identity from who is my "better" or my "inferior". Nor do I think everyone is "equal" in the mathematical sense, but that is not really what egalitarian means; such accusations, and the equating of egalitarianism to Marxism, are merely strawmen.