This is interesting to me. It makes me wonder "are there cases where someone made the market more efficient and was not made very wealthy?" I think you're right that there is a massive incentive for the market to be more efficient, but I suspect there are cases where people were able to develop alpha without being able to capitalize on it, because the market denied or neglected the insight.

Were there free markets in the 17th century, would they have been able to incorporate Galileo's insight? Or would they have joined the church in denunciation? Part of me thinks that if they did eventually come around to the solar system, it wouldn't be all that quick.