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it's a matter of motivation (quokk.au)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/mop
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A meme counter-arguing the claim "Without a profit motive, no one would be productive!" by showing examples of unpaid productivity: Wikipedia, complex Minecraft builds, open-source code, and volunteer firefighters.
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[–] 16 points 7 months ago (17 children)

I honestly struggle to understand people who say stuff like this

Like, do they honestly not have anything productive they would choose to do if they didn't have anything else taking up all their time? What do they envision they do with themselves?

We're humans, humans innately get a kick out of building and creating things, that's the human nature part. When we don't experience that, it's usually down to having the energy ground out of us from our current work or die existence.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (15 children)

    Problem is, no one wants to lay concrete if instead they could be playing violin.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago

    I don't even think that's necessarily true. Sure I don't want to lay concrete all afternoon in the blazing sun just like yesterday. But if I had the opportunity and material and could wait for a nice day, I'd totally redo the side walks around my neighborhood three squares at a time. And then go play the violin (ukulele).

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    I think you'd be surprised. Lot of people like doing things like that and are more put off by the conditions we ask them to work in.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    No one would work fast food or retail, but that might be ok.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Even that would happen.

    In the Freedom Town debacle, the Libertarian dream^tm^. Where everything was profit -centered. They had a problem with trash because nobody wanted to do that no matter how much they were being paid.

    So the town had giant trash heaps everywhere, which attracted bears. And everyone moved or died. The end.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah it would, it just wouldn't look the same. Looking to pre-capitalist societies you find people still making and selling things. Are they doing it for money? Yes and no. An Ale house for example was literally just Ale being sold out of a person's house and that person would change on a rotation as it was made and sold by different people. This was for like a community service than a profit based business venture.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    And let's say 95% of people act civilly, but 5% of the population is extremely greedy. How do you limit the greedy from drinking all the ale and not contributing to the community?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Well the example I gave was literally during the time of feudalism so in that society you didn't. I'm a social sciencentist but I don't have all the answers as, like you pointed out, bad actors are typically a minority which hijackes the society they are in. I don't think we need to know everything to make a better world, we should start with what we can. If you or I ever find a definitive answer I hope we share that with everyone we can.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That's a noble goal. This is basically the biggest argument against collectivism. If you don't have even a framework for addressing it I doubt you will get much support for your ideas.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Uhh buddy I said I didn't know because I was being humble and not trying to act like I have 100% answers to everything when I'm just commenting to a post on my phone. We can easily look towards work around self determination theory if you want motivation, but I think you more meant organizational structures and incentive structures or maybe trying to identify and handle potential bad actors through dark tetrad personality assessment. I actually do research in these areas and the evidence isn't some nebulous idea, I just don't have the time to collect and present to you the work on a topic like this. Go read some science, there is a lot of good stuff out there if you want to learn.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Wdym no one. Like, that's bascially how ancient civilisation do stuff, no profit, just building.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    Actually, that's wrong. Developed ancient civilizations (the ones that build roads) used money too. And slavery. And i'm not only talking about ancient Rome or Greece. Mesopotamia, Hindus valley... all of them.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That's not ancient enough. Go even way back, where people build for community.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    African tribes? But they were small enough, that top-down ruling worked somewhat.

    Not that this way of living – our instincts are geared to – is wrong. A modern interpretation is federalism, no? Only that the details of what is ruled on which level are often subotimal and the smallest piece usually too big.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    How many concrete pours did ancient civilizations do though?

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    We're not talking about "pouring concrete" in a literal way though, right? What i take from OP is people don't express themselves with hard labour work when they can do it with easier stuff, which is completely wrong, because one, people build big stuff for fun all the time, and two, people can and do actually do both.

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