I would like to live in Equal-land, I could live there, slouch around, work the absolute minimum and avoid work, and enjoy exactly the same benefits as those working the hardest to maintain that utopia.
No you don't. Money is a terrible motivator. If the only thing that is keeping you from working hard is the prospect of making more money, might I suggest that you've chosen the wrong career?
I'm not saying that Equalland is desirable. I'm just saying that I think you're overestimating the effect money has on how productive people are.
When that money is used to fund something you love to do outside of work, it can be an extremely good motivator. Not everyone requires that their job be the most fulfilling aspect of their life. Plenty of people live for a hobby, a local sports team, travel, raising their children, etc.
"Can I hire you? Money doesn't motivate you right?"
You failed to provide any alternate motivation. Some people actually take conditions similar to ones you described but they work in the greatest labs on the most interesting problems of contemporary science. They also usually get a phd after a few years.
There is also no implication from "Money is a poor motivator for me" to "80 hr week is not a demotivator for me".
Oh, so we're playing the reductio ad absurdum game now? Ok, I'll bite. I'll pay you $1 million to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Wait, what was that? Money can't motivate you to do that?
Gladly. New meaning to the term golden parachute. Additionally I bet you'd find that there are people who would take that offer even if it meant their certain death.
Fyi, reductio ad absurdum is a valid method of argument.
I imagine I'd get a lot more applicants applying to my job post if I paid $1million vs. minimum wage. You may say money is a terrible motivator, but people will go through all sorts of horrible things for very small amounts of it.
Reductio ad absurdum is only valid if the proposition is a binary true or false proposition. This question involves a matter of degree, not a binary true or false.
Also, it's important to note that if you posted the job for $1 million you'd get a lot of applicants, but they wouldn't be happy or last very long. It turns out that there is such thing as paying someone too much. The reason being that money is a form of external motivation. Too much external motivation decreases intrinsic motivation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrin...
You wouldn't get me to work 80hr weeks even if you offered me a lot of money. Money wouldn't be enough of a motivation to do that.But I did 80hr weeks for minimum wage already because of other benefits (keeping rights on the source-code which I wrote in that time).
I think we can all agree that your point was not well supported. By the way, how much do you get paid for participating in HN? Your average karma is 4.4; by the community's judgement, you put some good work into commenting.
Money is a terrible motivator? lol. What's this nonsense? Give me your name and address, I'll write you a check for $1500 free and clear to take back what you just said.
Did I say that money provided no motivation at all? People perform better when they're doing what they love. At a very minimum, money is a terrible motivator when it's the only form of motivation a person has as the person I was responding to seemed to suggest.
And for the record, nobody paid me to write that comment in the first place.
That depends on how much money you have. If you are well taken care of then yeah money is a poor motivator. If you are in real need then money becomes quite the motivator(If only as a proxy for those other needs.) Most of the crime around the world is solely driven by the need to acquire wealth by means easier, quicker than legally possible. Crime seems to be doing quite well for itself even with the serious consequences for breaking the law.
And we could threaten someone's family to show the counterpoint to that point.
Money's a great motivator until you're near your threshold earnings, and then other things start slipping in, like, for instance, the ability to make a point. Then, of course, is the discussion about why anyone wants money...and the fact that there's more direct ways to affect the value in someone's life. Hate to sound the sociopath, but money doesn't stack up against a family.
>And we could threaten someone's family to show the counterpoint to that point.
That's why a hell of a lot of people are working - if they don't work, their family would get to go live in a box on the sidewalk. That's another way of saying that workers are motivated by money, for a sizable fraction of workers.
After reading your post, I'm tempted to tell my boss to compensate me instead with hugs, rainbows, high fives and other family-like perks. Since family should motivate me more than money can. </s>
You're missing the point. The point is that even when everyone is actually equal, there is still some apparent wealth inequality because different people are at different stages of life.
I believe that was the promise of communism - which failed due to most people's inherent desire to be better than others or to excel. Also, people realized that they could/should do the absolute minimum, as there was no benefit for working harder.
They did end up adding incentives (in the USSR) which started looking more and more like capitalism.
Linux is not a good example, because many (most?) good programmers love their work and would do it without payment.
But this is not the case for many (most?) other workers - they would rather do something else and only work because they have to, or because their job pays better than other alternatives.
I think you're missing the point. That's only because other people aren't usually paid to do what they enjoy. However, most of them will have a passion like cooking, wood working, gardening, competitive video games, basketball, etc.
If money were such a strong motivator things like video games would be a lot less popular. Pickup basketball would be a lot less popular.
Linus really can't be used as an example of what normal behavior would be.
Noone's saying it's the only significant benefit, but for a lot of people, it is the overwhelming majority of the benefit of what they do. Programmers live in a privileged bubble compared to most.
I disagree. most people I know have some passion that they do for the love of it. Whether it's playing guitar, doing wood work, cooking, etc. Many of us here happen to have a passion for programming.
But in all cases, money is not the motivator. If money were such a strong motivator video games would be a lot less popular.
Weren't we talking about livelihoods? Of course people have hobbies... For a very large percentage of people, their livelihood and their passion are not the same thing, and it's mistaken to use programmers like Linus as representative of most people or what would happen in something like Communism.
Of course, when we're talking about the top of the income scale, we're very specifically talking about the group of people who live in that privileged bubble.
Ugh. The reasons Russia's communism failed is an incredibly complicated and still debated subject. Throwing it all to "people's inherent desire to be better than others or to excel" is completely wrong.
Lots of reasons. You could watch the movie "Reds" with Warren Beatty. It's just a movie, but it should be a good jumping off place to see what parts to investigate.
For example, I'm sure sanctions from the rest of the world [1] from the beginning didn't do them any favors. Having a wolf in with the hens (named Stalin) was also unfortunate.
[1] All terrified that revolution would kick off in their countries. Justified fear as well, it did just that in Spain.
That's pretty short term and pessimistic thinking. If you no longer had the burden of providing for yourself and your family would you seriously not do anything productive? Do you seriously not have any projects or things you would love to work on but never will because you can't easily get paid to do so?
Further, capitalism can't possibly be the solution to every problem. For example, capitalism will probably never take us "to the stars". There isn't enough money in it to cover such a massive expense. But yet, going to the stars is the only possible way to defend against the thread of a "planet killer" meteor/asteroid. The only time there would be money in it is when we knew such an event was imminent but by then it would be too late.
I made the wrong presumption that we should use government to funds these kind of projects.
But if life problems, accidents, aren't as urgent due to capitalism solving most of our problem, I am assuming we would be thinking of large aspiration beyond a nice house and 2 1/2 kids.
Except we've had capitalism for thousands of years now and the majority of people who seem to have those large aspirations are psychopaths who want to rule the world (or at least the ones who manage to achieve really large scale success of their goals).
I also think "due to capitalism solving most of our problem" is a bit of a stretch. It's solving most of the problems of the rich people of the west but I bet the world's hungry don't find it so grand. Especially since there is plenty of food to feed them. There's just no money in doing so.
