Coming from an academic world, the primary currency in my network is the number of publications/citations. Faculty/postdocs/Phd's salary in most universities are not worth bragging about; but it is not uncommon for people to put in regular 60+ hours week to get that extra publication so that you can stay ahead of the curve ( or at-least catch up )to your peers. From my perspective ( of course the domain bias exist) human ego is as powerful a motivator ( and we invariably have a desire to be ahead of people in our immediate network! ).
The fact that Switzerland is a really rich country, with the wealth distributed not so unfairly, makes this experiment even more interesting ( compared to the communist style takeover which happened in past in then poor nations including Russia or China).
To summarize, one of the things that makes capitalism work is competition; and money necessarily is not the only thing ( and might not be the primary thing) that we compete for!
The fact that Switzerland is a really rich country, with the wealth distributed not so unfairly, makes this experiment even more interesting ( compared to the communist style takeover which happened in past in then poor nations including Russia or China).
To summarize, one of the things that makes capitalism work is competition; and money necessarily is not the only thing ( and might not be the primary thing) that we compete for!