Good points. I don’t know, I genuinely don’t know yet; this problem is by far the biggest obstacle in the face of a non-capitalist economy (all the rest require more easily conceivable technological and institutional infrastructure). Still racking my brains...
(A more detailed, but still incomplete presentation of this little snippet of an idea was actually the theme for a mega-post I got planned, but it looks like every time I open my mouth about a potentially controversial topic my karma barely manages to break even and I get trolled to hell and back, so that’s a bit of a deterrent for me to even talk about politics any longer.)
The challenges are on multiple levels: 1) to show up at all at work; 2) to exceed expectations and do a great job; 3) to innovate, invent, revolutionize a field.
The only other bunch who has about the same stated goals consists of the anarcho-communists (which provide most of the availabe discussion on the topic), but they don’t go about it in a rational way. When confronted with the problem of laziness, their approach is 60% “revolution will kiss it and make it better”, 30% “we need to indoctrinate everyone thoroughly into communism” and 10% “if someone refuses to work, off with their heads!”. (Broadly, the three approaches you mentioned.) They can’t into incentives, disapprove of even mild and justified hierarchy, are heavily into Marxist concepts, and allow wishful thinking to heavily bias their model of how things would happen. That’s not how you succeed in such an endeavour.
Coercion is probably the worst way out of this. Creating an atmosphere of fear is inimical to prosperity, innovation, industry, and the entrepreneurial drive. It puts people out of the “thrive” mode and into “survive” mode. The output is bound to be mediocre at best.
It might be very necessary to think outside of the box on this topic, to step outside the contemporary Western paradigm and explore the matter from all possible angles. Who knows, maybe money isn’t the end-all-be-all of it. The neural underpinnings of self-interested motivation certainly predate the invention of money. I’ve considered rewards in luxury goods and in status, promotion to aristocracy, demotion to serfdom, consumers as management class… heck, even getting people on stimulants to improve their productivity. I’ve even considered limited monetary circuits for certain classes of goods, but before becoming convinced of the merit of this idea, I need to quell my fears that down that road lie Wall Street, landfills, corporate jargon, and mandatory ubiquitous advertising.
I won’t expand on this any more until I feel like I have something especially useful to say, and will only post that essay (which gets a few FAQs out of the way) if I have reasons to expect that more good stuff than bad will come out of the ensuing discussion. And even that, probably not here but on Omnilibrium.
Good points. I don’t know, I genuinely don’t know yet; this problem is by far the biggest obstacle in the face of a non-capitalist economy (all the rest require more easily conceivable technological and institutional infrastructure). Still racking my brains...
So do you have any evidence this is doable, because right now you sound like the crackpot saying “my perpetual motion machine will work just as soon as I figure out a way around the second law of thermodynamics”.
By the way, getting money for your work is not only about motivating you by a reward. It is also a way to give you resources for your future plans.
“If your plans work, you get money, which you can use to finance more ambitious plans” is a nice feedback mechanism that channels money towards plans that work, as opposed to wasting resources on stupid plans that fail. (Yeah, it does not work perfectly. But in many small cases it does.) Without this mechanism, your ability to realize your plans would only depend on your military power or social skills.
So it’s not just about the risk that the possible startup investors would not be allowed to keep their profits, but also the risk that they would simply not be allowed to create the startup, because they couldn’t accumulate the necessary capital. -- Imagine that you have a great startup idea, which requires 100 days of uninterrupted full-time work, and then will revolutionize the world. But as soon as you don’t participate in your usual work for 20 days, your comrades become resentful, and after 40 days they will physically stop you from working on your startup (which they believe is a bad idea that cannot work; this is why no one already did it before you). Even without violence, maybe just everyone will refuse to cooperate with you anymore, and let’s say that you need some cooperation to succeed.
Good points. I don’t know, I genuinely don’t know yet; this problem is by far the biggest obstacle in the face of a non-capitalist economy (all the rest require more easily conceivable technological and institutional infrastructure). Still racking my brains...
(A more detailed, but still incomplete presentation of this little snippet of an idea was actually the theme for a mega-post I got planned, but it looks like every time I open my mouth about a potentially controversial topic my karma barely manages to break even and I get trolled to hell and back, so that’s a bit of a deterrent for me to even talk about politics any longer.)
The challenges are on multiple levels: 1) to show up at all at work; 2) to exceed expectations and do a great job; 3) to innovate, invent, revolutionize a field.
The only other bunch who has about the same stated goals consists of the anarcho-communists (which provide most of the availabe discussion on the topic), but they don’t go about it in a rational way. When confronted with the problem of laziness, their approach is 60% “revolution will kiss it and make it better”, 30% “we need to indoctrinate everyone thoroughly into communism” and 10% “if someone refuses to work, off with their heads!”. (Broadly, the three approaches you mentioned.) They can’t into incentives, disapprove of even mild and justified hierarchy, are heavily into Marxist concepts, and allow wishful thinking to heavily bias their model of how things would happen. That’s not how you succeed in such an endeavour.
Coercion is probably the worst way out of this. Creating an atmosphere of fear is inimical to prosperity, innovation, industry, and the entrepreneurial drive. It puts people out of the “thrive” mode and into “survive” mode. The output is bound to be mediocre at best.
It might be very necessary to think outside of the box on this topic, to step outside the contemporary Western paradigm and explore the matter from all possible angles. Who knows, maybe money isn’t the end-all-be-all of it. The neural underpinnings of self-interested motivation certainly predate the invention of money. I’ve considered rewards in luxury goods and in status, promotion to aristocracy, demotion to serfdom, consumers as management class… heck, even getting people on stimulants to improve their productivity. I’ve even considered limited monetary circuits for certain classes of goods, but before becoming convinced of the merit of this idea, I need to quell my fears that down that road lie Wall Street, landfills, corporate jargon, and mandatory ubiquitous advertising.
I won’t expand on this any more until I feel like I have something especially useful to say, and will only post that essay (which gets a few FAQs out of the way) if I have reasons to expect that more good stuff than bad will come out of the ensuing discussion. And even that, probably not here but on Omnilibrium.
So do you have any evidence this is doable, because right now you sound like the crackpot saying “my perpetual motion machine will work just as soon as I figure out a way around the second law of thermodynamics”.
By the way, getting money for your work is not only about motivating you by a reward. It is also a way to give you resources for your future plans.
“If your plans work, you get money, which you can use to finance more ambitious plans” is a nice feedback mechanism that channels money towards plans that work, as opposed to wasting resources on stupid plans that fail. (Yeah, it does not work perfectly. But in many small cases it does.) Without this mechanism, your ability to realize your plans would only depend on your military power or social skills.
So it’s not just about the risk that the possible startup investors would not be allowed to keep their profits, but also the risk that they would simply not be allowed to create the startup, because they couldn’t accumulate the necessary capital. -- Imagine that you have a great startup idea, which requires 100 days of uninterrupted full-time work, and then will revolutionize the world. But as soon as you don’t participate in your usual work for 20 days, your comrades become resentful, and after 40 days they will physically stop you from working on your startup (which they believe is a bad idea that cannot work; this is why no one already did it before you). Even without violence, maybe just everyone will refuse to cooperate with you anymore, and let’s say that you need some cooperation to succeed.