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Give equal reward to everyone regardless of their contribution or success, and people lose motivation for work. After a while the nation as a whole collapses. W

Give equal reward to everyone regardless of their contribution or success, and people lose motivation for work. After a while the nation as a whole collapses. We have seen it in the communist era.

obscurette 4y ago
While I agree with the point, communist area just isn't good example of that. There were huge differences in wealth in communist society as well. It's probably because the pure communist society is impossible anyway - it's impossible to keep people away from maximizing their own well-being without violence.
- habibur 4y ago
  How do you plan to force someone to work who isn't willing to, just to make sure everyone in the society gets equal wealth? The communists had a solution.
  - obscurette 4y ago
    Yes, it was called GULAG and immediately on top of that the class with "better than others" wealth appeared - guards etc.
jfengel 4y ago
And yet open source software exists. People create lots of valuable things just for fun. "Communism" never called for equal pay for everybody. Communism is about common control over the means of production. There are lots of ways to distribute the proceeds. One is to say, "Here's a basic level that everybody gets. Now we'll take whatever is leftover and pay for stuff according to market pricing." There will still be farmers and garbage pickers and hotel maids. They just make the equivalent of $200,000 per year, which is what they deserve for doing unpleasant work. Tech CEOs, sports stars, and actors will continue to be incredibly desirable jobs -- they'll just get paid little to nothing. Some will sit around all day, and I don't really care. It takes only one farmer to feed hundreds or even thousands of people. We'll pay that farmer a million dollars a year, and it'll be a bargain. He'll use it to buy art, or video games (same thing), or travel, or whatever the hell else he wants to do -- purchased from people who are getting paid in proportion to how hard something is, rather than because they were lucky enough to be desired.

Give equal reward to everyone regardless of their contribution or success, and people lose motivation for work. After a while the nation as a whole collapses. We have seen it in the communist era.

obscurette 4y ago

While I agree with the point, communist area just isn't good example of that. There were huge differences in wealth in communist society as well. It's probably because the pure communist society is impossible anyway - it's impossible to keep people away from maximizing their own well-being without violence.

habibur 4y ago
How do you plan to force someone to work who isn't willing to, just to make sure everyone in the society gets equal wealth? The communists had a solution.
- obscurette 4y ago
  Yes, it was called GULAG and immediately on top of that the class with "better than others" wealth appeared - guards etc.

jfengel 4y ago

And yet open source software exists. People create lots of valuable things just for fun. "Communism" never called for equal pay for everybody. Communism is about common control over the means of production. There are lots of ways to distribute the proceeds. One is to say, "Here's a basic level that everybody gets. Now we'll take whatever is leftover and pay for stuff according to market pricing." There will still be farmers and garbage pickers and hotel maids. They just make the equivalent of $200,000 per year, which is what they deserve for doing unpleasant work. Tech CEOs, sports stars, and actors will continue to be incredibly desirable jobs -- they'll just get paid little to nothing. Some will sit around all day, and I don't really care. It takes only one farmer to feed hundreds or even thousands of people. We'll pay that farmer a million dollars a year, and it'll be a bargain. He'll use it to buy art, or video games (same thing), or travel, or whatever the hell else he wants to do -- purchased from people who are getting paid in proportion to how hard something is, rather than because they were lucky enough to be desired.