I think that's a naive view. It's not just academics optimising for money. It's academics optimising for a balanced relationship, or a family, or even just friends (since the current academic system will also often mean displacement).
I was very passionate about the work I did in academia, but I did not want to force my wife to live in a region where she could not really get a decent job, and my income would barely have been enough to support children in the early part of the academic career. I am strongly considering going back to academia in a few years, after the income doesn't matter as much anymore.
Making the financial disincentive even stronger would filter out a certain type of person, and is not a great way of achieving diversity of people.
This is what I'm going to do, I left working in academia in 2015 even though I'm still super fascinated by the research we were doing (although I though our lab application was bit banal for my tastes, but it's what got the grants) and started expanding on it on my own in my free time while working in industry.
I about to quit my job and work on it again for fun.
I was very passionate about the work I did in academia, but I did not want to force my wife to live in a region where she could not really get a decent job, and my income would barely have been enough to support children in the early part of the academic career. I am strongly considering going back to academia in a few years, after the income doesn't matter as much anymore.
Making the financial disincentive even stronger would filter out a certain type of person, and is not a great way of achieving diversity of people.