This may sound familiar if you read brave new world…
Lets say that a huge government takes over the world, then creates castes of people through control of the embryonic envrionment. Lets say, then, that this organization creates a bunch of intelligent people, trains them with the skills necessary, and drops them off at an island, with some technology, allowing them to progress as they see fit. Unfortunately, when they did this in brave new world, the people fought for the most intellectually stimulating jobs possible, imposed regulations on each other, failed to produce, went on strikes in the factories, etc. This cumulated into a civil war.
But, my question is this. If they had instead adopted a free-market society, could they have all lived in peace and prosperity?
One word: technology. One of the reasons If these were truly intelligent people they can develop technology such that no one need do any jobs they did not choose to do. Many “menial” jobs have become obsolete. There is no reason why, in a truly free society, any menial tasks need exist that could not be taken care of via technology. Of course, the candle makers might complain J
Assume that technology to eliminate the menial jobs does not exist, as the government has not found it profitable to eliminate them (they can just produce the workers themselves). How do the menial tasks get done, as it takes time and savings to find technological improvements?
Your original question was “If they had instead adopted a free-market society, could they have all lived in peace and prosperity?” Yes. Now, it will take time and energy to find and / or develop this technology, granted, but if this global government allows these highly intelligent people the freedom to do so, they will. In the mean time they can compose music while they sweep, write their next novel while acting as a barista and work out the next digit of pi while they collect the garbage. Intelligent people have ways of making menial jobs less menial.