Voluntary charitable donations of time/goods or money don't make any sense. Our current economic system upholds work for income - for survival, yet people voluntaily give their time/money to those who need it more than they do.
Is there any reason why the money, or preferably the actual resources, should not go direct to those who need it, rather than via a donor, or do we like the feeling of control we get from choosing how much to give, and what causes are deserving?
Sponsored events oddly require someone to endure some ordeal or undertake some in itself pointless venture in order that others may give to charity. Perhaps this is the work ethic intruding again. I will save the life of a straving child in the third world if you wear a plastic red nose for the day.
Those who give to charity realise that the work for income system fails most markedly at the extreme poor end of society, where people have no real possibility of work, but where is the line to be drawn between those who for one reason or another really cannot work, and those who can (though of course the distinction is not so sharp as there are people who do lots of work and people who do little, and every shade between)?
Yet charitable donors are prepared to give something for no direct return, which demonstrates that they are not motivated by money, as our current economic system holds that they should be.
The logic of an RBE seems inevitable. Let everyone have what they need (or a fair share of what's available), and share out the work that needs doing amongst those that can and will do it.
Showing posts with label money and motivation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money and motivation. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Friday, 5 August 2011
Motivation; abundance
So a critcism of TVP/RBE is that people won't work without the motivation of money. Well we know this is not true of everyone at all times - we know that people do voluntary work, give to charity, and undertake all kinds of recreational activities in their own time and often at their own expense. But there remains a logical possibility that there will be those who if given their fair share of the plantet's resources for nothing, will input nothing from their own resources to the maintenance of an environmentally sustainable, socially just and peaceful planet for the benefit of humanity.
To overcome this problem, basically everyone has to work. Access to resoures is tied to money and money to work. Therefore, it is in the workers' interests that there is work for them to do. Police need crime, doctors and nurses need people to be ill, firefighters need fires, and so on ad infinitum.
This artificially created need to work is supposed to capture those people who would not contribute without being rewarded, but how many of those people are doing work that is actually productive for society and the planet now? Some, like many people, may be doing a job because they have to, and some may be doing jobs that involve clearing up the mess created by the system - to quote my favourite example, they may be employed mitigating or solving the effects of smoking to counterbalance the cigarette promotion industry in which people are paid more the more people smoke. Or they may be doing "jobs" that are unequivocally anti-social, even by current standards - acquistive crime, drug dealing, or whatever.
So, the naysayers' claim is that we can't risk a moneyless society just in case there are enough people who currently do something socially productive but will stop if no longer paid to mean that the required human work in an RBE - work that is increasingly encroached upon by automation - won't get done.
Well look. If we in fact found it to be a problem that the human work needed to have a successful RBE was not being done because people felt there was nothing in it for them and were not motivated (even though they would benefit from the successful RBE), we could re-introduce money. We would see it though for what it is - a claim on the planet's resources over and above one's fair share.
If there truly is abundance, this wouldn't make sense. It would surely be a rare person who would seek to deprive someone else of something of which there is plenty for all, just because s/he could.
So these are the issues: Will there be motivation to do the human work that needs doing, and will there be abundance so that people will not try to reserve resources for themselves to the exclusion of other? Maybe this is a risky experiment, but I don't think it is. We can easily switch back to our current system if the RBE doesn't work, but if anyone can stand up and say that the financial collapse, war, starvation and servitude that the planet currently faces is clearly better, then I would like to hear their arguments.
To overcome this problem, basically everyone has to work. Access to resoures is tied to money and money to work. Therefore, it is in the workers' interests that there is work for them to do. Police need crime, doctors and nurses need people to be ill, firefighters need fires, and so on ad infinitum.
This artificially created need to work is supposed to capture those people who would not contribute without being rewarded, but how many of those people are doing work that is actually productive for society and the planet now? Some, like many people, may be doing a job because they have to, and some may be doing jobs that involve clearing up the mess created by the system - to quote my favourite example, they may be employed mitigating or solving the effects of smoking to counterbalance the cigarette promotion industry in which people are paid more the more people smoke. Or they may be doing "jobs" that are unequivocally anti-social, even by current standards - acquistive crime, drug dealing, or whatever.
So, the naysayers' claim is that we can't risk a moneyless society just in case there are enough people who currently do something socially productive but will stop if no longer paid to mean that the required human work in an RBE - work that is increasingly encroached upon by automation - won't get done.
Well look. If we in fact found it to be a problem that the human work needed to have a successful RBE was not being done because people felt there was nothing in it for them and were not motivated (even though they would benefit from the successful RBE), we could re-introduce money. We would see it though for what it is - a claim on the planet's resources over and above one's fair share.
If there truly is abundance, this wouldn't make sense. It would surely be a rare person who would seek to deprive someone else of something of which there is plenty for all, just because s/he could.
So these are the issues: Will there be motivation to do the human work that needs doing, and will there be abundance so that people will not try to reserve resources for themselves to the exclusion of other? Maybe this is a risky experiment, but I don't think it is. We can easily switch back to our current system if the RBE doesn't work, but if anyone can stand up and say that the financial collapse, war, starvation and servitude that the planet currently faces is clearly better, then I would like to hear their arguments.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Pulling in manual labour
In an environmentally sustainable, just and peaceful world, the world system would only pull in the human work it needed to remain sustainable just and peaceful. If it could reduce human work through automation it would do it gladly. But for this to work the link from survival to work via money must be broken.
People are sceptical that people would work for no reward other than the satisfaction of it. I share the scepticism, but I'm prepared to give it a go. The world is so dysfunctional now, as we destroy each other and our environment, that I'm prepared to risk this motivational problem. And anyway, if we really needed money we coulkd re-introduce it easily in the twinkling of an eye. It's just numbers in computers.
People are sceptical that people would work for no reward other than the satisfaction of it. I share the scepticism, but I'm prepared to give it a go. The world is so dysfunctional now, as we destroy each other and our environment, that I'm prepared to risk this motivational problem. And anyway, if we really needed money we coulkd re-introduce it easily in the twinkling of an eye. It's just numbers in computers.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Motivation
"A heating engineer from Devon has won almost £1.5m on an accumulator after placing a bet of just £2 at Exeter Racecourse on Tuesday. But despite his win Steve Whiteley, 61, still went out to work".
BBC video here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12690765 but I heard him say on the radio that he had to do something - keep himself occupied. As a heating engineer he is doing something useful, and he seems to be motivated by that, and not by money, of which he now has plenty.
BBC video here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12690765 but I heard him say on the radio that he had to do something - keep himself occupied. As a heating engineer he is doing something useful, and he seems to be motivated by that, and not by money, of which he now has plenty.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Money and motivation
I've written on this before. Money in itself is not a motivator, becuse it is only a means to an end, except that perhaps it has acquired a value of its own as we like to see it in our wallets and bank accounts. If we have enough of it we feel more secure and more content.
This contentment, though, is only there because deep down we know that money will get us the things we need and want (given that those things exist and can be provided to us).
So it is having, or potentially having, the things we need and want that motivates us. Now, however rich or poor we are, we get 168 hours a week. Lets say we spend a quarter (42) of those sleeping, that leaves us 126 hours for non sleeping activity. Apart from work, we in the developed world can spend these entertaining ourselves, learning, exercising, being with others, etc.
There is far more than 126 hours per week of entertainment available when we combine online and on air entertainment, let alone what we have stored locally on our computers, optical disks and other storage. What we seem to desire here is choice - the idea that if we want to listen to (say) Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic playing Ligeti, we can, because we have a CD of it (somewhere ...). In an RBE we wouldn't need to have this stored locally, we'd just search for it on line and stream it, but in our current set up, the idea of choice seems to be linked to having possession of a physical thing.
The richer we are the more physical things we have, and the less time we can spend deriving any pleasure directly from each of them. We can derive pleasure form having the option of using them and we can derive pleasure, perhaps, from abstract possession, devoid of any utility.
With technology we can decouple having choice from having personal control over (possession) of a physical thing to a very large extent. The need to physically possess something is odd, though. It needs to be stored (allocated space) such that it can be conveniently retrieved, and secured appropriately to its value.
I'm going to back track in this thought process. It started from the widely held view that money stops being a motivator once you have enough of it. I've already explained why the money itself is not really a motivator at all, but only goods and services. There must be a stage beyond which someone has more choice than they can cope with. Enough CDs to listen to 24/7 till they die, along enough TV channels to watch continuously till the same fate befalls them, plus books to read, cars to drive, hobbies to indulge in.
This contentment, though, is only there because deep down we know that money will get us the things we need and want (given that those things exist and can be provided to us).
So it is having, or potentially having, the things we need and want that motivates us. Now, however rich or poor we are, we get 168 hours a week. Lets say we spend a quarter (42) of those sleeping, that leaves us 126 hours for non sleeping activity. Apart from work, we in the developed world can spend these entertaining ourselves, learning, exercising, being with others, etc.
There is far more than 126 hours per week of entertainment available when we combine online and on air entertainment, let alone what we have stored locally on our computers, optical disks and other storage. What we seem to desire here is choice - the idea that if we want to listen to (say) Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic playing Ligeti, we can, because we have a CD of it (somewhere ...). In an RBE we wouldn't need to have this stored locally, we'd just search for it on line and stream it, but in our current set up, the idea of choice seems to be linked to having possession of a physical thing.
The richer we are the more physical things we have, and the less time we can spend deriving any pleasure directly from each of them. We can derive pleasure form having the option of using them and we can derive pleasure, perhaps, from abstract possession, devoid of any utility.
With technology we can decouple having choice from having personal control over (possession) of a physical thing to a very large extent. The need to physically possess something is odd, though. It needs to be stored (allocated space) such that it can be conveniently retrieved, and secured appropriately to its value.
I'm going to back track in this thought process. It started from the widely held view that money stops being a motivator once you have enough of it. I've already explained why the money itself is not really a motivator at all, but only goods and services. There must be a stage beyond which someone has more choice than they can cope with. Enough CDs to listen to 24/7 till they die, along enough TV channels to watch continuously till the same fate befalls them, plus books to read, cars to drive, hobbies to indulge in.
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