I had no idea about stallman's programmer tax - that actually sounds kind of awesome! I think that ends up in a situation similar to The sciences - if you want

I had no idea about stallman's programmer tax - that actually sounds kind of awesome! I think that ends up in a situation similar to The sciences - if you want to take on pay as a free programmer, not only does your work need to be open source, but it needs to take on a genuine need as defined by the rest of society. I imagine a market of sorts, where programmers are able to shop for valid "jobs". Jobs may even be defined by organizations of some sort. No jobs in this market are designed to help exploit users, and the generated code belongs to the legacy of all of humanity. You start getting paid once you start sending accepted PRS to established projects. And you can start your own projects and get them accredited. It's not a perfect plan by any means - after all the sciences are already funded by about 4% of federal spending, and they use a similar accreditation process. But they too are struggling due to misaligned incentives and capital structures, such as publish or perish and the academic publishing industry. The resulting replicability and accessibility crisis is a serious inefficiency in turning science into a benefit for humanity. It's quite hard to put the finger on the precise cause of all these misaligned incentives. But it is getting very very critical that we do. The ever increasing urgency of the matter will capture our best minds, I believe. I know it has guided my work as an open source commune director, open source contributor, open source mentor, and mathematician.