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Indeed. There are roughly three ways to convince people to keep the discipline needed for the collaborative work: force them, interest them economically, or hav
by Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago
Indeed. There are roughly three ways to convince people to keep the discipline needed for the collaborative work: force them, interest them economically, or have them believing the cause. Slavery, capitalism, and monastery.
Real systems usually are mixes. E.g. Soviet system is largely slavery plus some bits of capitalism and a lot of propaganda to cover the monastery aspect. Or a capitalist company with a visionary leader may be quite a monastery too.
Now, the most pleasant way to work is indeed a monastery, but the one that scales well is capitalism :) Slavery is inferior on both counts, but may work when there's no way to add economic interest.
- smitty1e 7y agoMy point is that the monastery (or clan) represents roughly the maximum facile size of a voluntary (internally motivated) organization. Scaling above that starts to require some external management structure (your corporation). Then there is the military (retired Navy here) where there is an explicit hierarchy and a Uniform Code of Military Justice to as an external driver. Hence the authoritarian fascination with military terms. If that's your thing, then organizing society like some vast bipedal ant colony seems attractive.
- Pfhreak 7y agoWhat about worker coops? Not capitalist, but not necessarily driven by believing in a cause.
- someguyorother 7y agoOr tenured professors in fields where they could get paid a lot better if they went private, yet they don't? That's basically a position that makes money go away as an immediate problem, and then the rest of the appeal is having one's hobby as one's job. Scientific freedom and intrinsic value.
- smitty1e 7y agoOr we can agree that money is the common, well-understood metric. And immediately allow that it's not the sole metric.