lumpenproletariatmotivation
IninewCrow“Without a profit motive, we wouldn’t take advantage of people who are productive!”
SomeoneSomewhereI’m not sure it’s that simple.
All of these except Minecraft have perpetual funding and labour issues, especially for the less sexy parts.
You’re not going to staff a pharmaceutical factory with volunteers.
BioHacking with local made open source pharma is already a thing.
And is that actually achieving reliable quality and traceability? Not that mass-market pharmaceuticals are perfect, but I don’t remember hearing that many scandals about actual contamination/mismanufacturing (as opposed to testing/development failures like Thalidomide).
AlbumLet’s not exploit people either.
Employment doesn’t have to be exploitative.
It doesn’t, but under capitalism and ever increasing profits, it does.
OtterThis seems like a post about UBI or a post scarcity society, and whether or not humans will be lazy/do nothing if they no longer need money.
So within that premise, those 3 things wouldn’t necessarily have labor issues if people can have a good life regardless of what they’re up to. I think a lot of people would want to spend time contributing to Wikipedia, FOSS, firefighting, etc. if they were compensated all the same. Similarly, if profit was no longer a concern, resources could be allocated to projects based on need, and so funding wouldn’t be a factor.
It’s fun to think about, and I think the post has value for what it’s pointing out
I have usually seen this argument applied as saying that we’re post scarcity now and that if we just gave everyone UBI, you’d be able to fill all the jobs you actually need with volunteers today, and just ‘get rid of’ the unnecessary/wasteful consumer goods.
Yeah, if you centrally applied resources to fields that actually needed it rather than profitable fields, that would in some ways be great. Ads would basically die overnight, for starters.
There’s a small proportion of the population that loves what they do - and more would if you were able to get rid of middle management. A good part of the reason volunteer projects tend to be successful is that they’re almost entirely composed of people who completely believe in the project.
Are you going to find a few thousand people in the same area who really believe in building great quality drugs/aircraft/electrical cables/plastic pipe when their job is mostly repetitive labour?
I’ve worked a fair bit of construction. There’s a feel-good factor for certain kinds of projects, but at the end of the day you’re installing stuff. Are we going to be able to build, staff, and maintain a semiconductor fab, a pharma factory, or an aircraft/engine assembly line with volunteers? What about the wire/steel/pump factories that make the bits used to build the building?
Part of how we’ve got to record low levels of e.g. aircraft fatalities is meticulous documentation (certain issues notwithstanding), procedures, and double/triple checking. And no-one really wants to be QA for long, or have QA watching over them like a hawk, especially when it’s both.
Replacing some of these roles with AI/robots doesn’t necessarily help that much. AI is bad at meticulous paperwork. So are unenthusiastic people.
UBI is supposed to cover basic needs, no? It doesn’t mean you’ll get the funds to cover the things you do to stave off boredom or fill your life with meaning. Thus people still work making, installing, and doing the less pleasing jobs, but there’s no longer the “work or starve in an alleyway” pressure in the background. It also provides leverage against abusive employers, as you don’t need the job to make rent and groceries. (Though people are willing to withstand a lot of abuse to reach their goals as well)
Yes. You’re still going to need to reward those people in some way that isn’t generic feel-good or worthless karma. People won’t go “I’m on the UBI and all my needs are met, but I’ll go build water pumps where one in fifty might get used in a pharma application just for the feel-good”.
I always think of the worst jobs that exist and how there would need to be incentive beyond feel good for those jobs to be worked. Think what you’d see on the show Dirty Jobs. Most of these are jobs that need to be done but nobody would want to do them without additional incentive
Not volunteers, per se, but my career has been 20+ years of vaccine and biologic discovery and manufacturing. All non-profit.
Yeah. I’m not saying that no positions can be filled by volunteers or people working for feel-good rather than profit motive… but it’s a lot easier to find people willing to do novel research or development than it is to find someone to keep the plant chilled water systems running, or to build the pumps for the plant.
hubobesCan not speak for all firefighters but we have morw applicants than we have spots. We currently need 100 for the municipality we work for and we have some 110 firefighters.
Firefighting is probably one of the best fields to attract volunteers to. Save lives, glamorous, awesome PR, play with cool ‘toys’. Downside is danger but there’s enough people for whom that’s an upside.
Does that mean they’re all/mostly trainable, stick around long enough to justify the training, and willing to put in the work even when it comes to more mundane tasks like training, cleaning, equipment overhaul, drying pipes etc?
I believe most places have both paid and volunteer firefighters and I imagine it’s for a reason.
Yeah I mean you could do something interesting one day and then just watch some place for a few hours after a fire on another. We have a turnover rate of like 2-5 people per year, but that includes people who are too old since there is a maximum age or people move and join the chapter at their new place.
And trainable, I mean we need people who guide traffic or something else that is not physically taxing so there is something to do for everyone.
And at least here the paid firefighters are usually the first responders since they are on alert 24/7, volunteers usually need up to 15 minutes (our record is 2 Minutes) to respond. So the professionals go im first and then get backed up by the volunteers. Or if it is just something small the professionals will not respond at all and let us handle it.
Downside is danger but there’s enough people for whom that’s an upside.
Worth noting that the shit firefighters breath in absolutely will shave years off their lives.
There’s a growing body of evidence that the payouts from the 9/11 first responders funds are for medical care that’s not exclusive to first responders to 9/11 specifically but just normal long term effects of being a first responder to fires and disasters in general.
explodicleMinecraft tangentOn my family’s Minecraft server we’ve been using a trick to prevent labor issues. Let’s say we’re making that building in OP’s pic. I’ll stack a bunch of building materials at the front in a pile, set up a bunch of extra scaffolding, and we build from the bottom up.
That way if we find motivation waning, it’s easy to pause and resume. Because it’s not an incomplete Minecraft build. It’s a completed Minecraft build of a building under construction, that we might later upgrade.
Boomer Humor DoomergodFYI those open source coders are probably working some kind thabkless job that will age the bills but gives them enough time to pretend to be a big dev firm making main level code contributions.
And other ones are being paid by a big firm to work on FOSS projects because it’s still easier than reproducing something from scratch.
lennybirdIs that not somewhat the point though? They want to be doing meaningful work and they’re so motivated to do meaningful work they’ll sit after a day of work and chip out more code just so they can do something meaningful to them.
The problem is more about financing to commercialise ideas and keep the businesses operating than looking for incentive to work. Many socialist states of the past have pretty good innovative products, like in biotechnology, but lack the money to commercialise or keep the business going.
And of course we are in the Great Enshittification where every platform turns into profit squeezing machines with the greatest minds working on showing more ads. More ads doesn’t sound that productive to me.
This is the most important video I’ve ever watched on the subject of what motivates us:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&t=32s
Everything from capitalism to linux to this meme is explained. That video explained why I was unhappy making $80K, taking every Friday off on PTO, vs. making $40K and putting in hours at home for free.
Are you happy in your work, your life, or unhappy? Maybe give the 10-minute video a spin? Not like they’re selling anything, just an analysis of human behavior and emotions. I found it life changing. You do you. I’ll never take another job that doesn’t give me those three, simple things.
RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
I like what I do, and I hate the people I work for.
IDK where I land for motivation.
I need a new job.
Even if someone knows they would be happier in another job, that isn’t always a choice you can actually take. There is pretty limited choices for work where I live, but I can’t really move as my house is here and my partners job is here. Quite a bit of retail/care work, beyond that choices are limited.
Yep. Tons of places are hiring and getting any job isn’t really that hard (in my area at least), but if you’re wanting a job that pays decent or at least more than $15/hr then you’re gonna be searching pretty damn hard. I got a new job a couple months ago that shot me up from getting paid $27k to getting paid $50k. However the hours suck with my shift starting at 5 AM and going for around 10 or 11 hours. When I look for other jobs in my area that offer similar pay, all I get are sales or something like building fences which I imagine would make me more miserable.
DigitalprimateHey chill fellow internet person - the video was very cool (thanks), so don’t spoil it by meaning man in the comments, eh?
Not sure what you mean? Spoiler in my OP? I removed that so the video is more of a surprise.
Was I being mean to my replier? I honestly hoped they would watch the video and get inspiration, understand where they are at in life.
To my ears what you said to the first reply sounded a bit “fighty” that’s all. But it didn’t derail the discussion so all good.
I think I do. I’m very self critical and self aware; it comes with the territory for my particular brand of executive function disorder. I’ve spent most of my life trying to find ways to motivate myself to do things. Even things I want to see done…
I’ve just been a bit on the busy side for the last few days. I’ll take a look at the video tonight if I remember to.
Be well.
Many wars have been fought on defense of homelnyas the driving force and those thatfeel that tend to win against the odds
This world is not lacking people with good intent.
I’d reason greed is not the only issue of corruption. More generally i believe whoever has ‘fear of death’ can be manipulated. Reportedly there is manipulation going on in forms unimaginable to unaffected people…
To give an example: Anneke Lucas is one of many women sharing her CSA/SRA experience. She says many were harmed themselves at a young age and are now trapped in a vicious circle. Some info by her:
- Short clip on her own channel ‘realwomen/realstories’: www.youtube.com/watch?v=piaLOnNFLgw
- Recent long interview. Trigger warning : www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EFTQpvki9I
Anneke Lucas: Why I Won't Publicly Name Names (SEQUEL-PART 2)
Money (and hence profit motive) is an analogue for being able to acquire and do things we need and want.
There’s two kinds of miserable people in relation to profit motive - those who can’t acquire enough money for the basic things they need to be happy, and those who took the analogue so far that they think money = happiness.
There is generally very little issue getting people to do things they want to do (things that feel meaningful) as long as they manage to cover their basic needs somehow, but there are definitely issues getting people to do things that they don’t want to do - which is where profit motive shines.
There is much more garbage to collect than there are people who want to collect garbage, more deliveries to make than people who want to make them, more places to clean than people who want to clean them.
Luckily, there is someone who wants the garbage collected, someone who wants the toilets cleaned, someone who wants their trinkets delivered. Hence, we get people to pay for that, and thus we can use profit motive to incentivize someone to do those things, at least until we manage to automate it.
Funnily enough, the less someone wants to do it the more of that “incentive” is purely stick and no carrot. Almost as if there’s something fishy about that whole notion 🤔
Unless… people actually prefer to be garbage men over the grueling work of an investment banker?
If it weren’t for the pay difference, I’d certainly prefer garbage man. A huge percentage of kids want that job before the economy crushes their dreams. It’s cool!
It’s overtaken deep sea commercial fishing for deadliest job in the US.
That is true and I’d still rather be a garbage man than an investment banker. I’d die of depression and they wouldn’t blame my job.
Fair FairyThe question is - what are u gonna do about it?
AeonFelisNothing wrong with that. I became organized on a socialist organization mostly thanks to social media propaganda.
MinnesotaGoddami’m a musician. about half of my gigs i don’t charge anyone and it’s free for attendees. The vast majority of my gigs are free/no cover/no drink minimum.
I always make all of my source code available, provide the most detailed bug reports, help people for free whenever I can, and use / pay for open source software instead of buying commercial software.
I also try to avoid companies actively causing harm. I don’t buy from Amazon, I switched to an electric car to stop paying oil companies, I installed solar panels and got a wholesale energy provider so I can minimise paying fossil fuel energy providers.
I run a business providing tech support for elderly, disabled, and low income people, and only charge for parts (with no markup).
If you can think of anything else I can do, I am happy to take suggestions.
Really doing open source programmers dirty with that insane code formatting