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Fwd: Re: [ox-en] extrinsic motivation = coercion (was: The nature of apple trees)



hello Stefan,


That's the very problem: You and others assume, that the self-labeled
communism was even that: communism (or socialism, the term does not
matter). But that's not true. Concerning the topic debated here it was
nearly the same type of economy based on exchange and money (value). The
victory of capitalism did happen, because a state driven economy is far
less efficient than a free market economy. Thus on the common playground
of exchange and money free capitalism will always prevail over
"restricted capitalisms", no matter how far the restrinctions go (this
is the very real fundament of neo-liberalism).

thx for the clarification. as i said, im not very literate on economic
theory so this is a welcome correction.

So the challenge is _not_ to compete on the same old playground, but to
create a new playground where the "old players" can't compete on
sucessfully. Look at Free Software or Wikipedia: They created a new
playground free from exchange and money (in its core logic) and they are
out-cooperating its proprietary opponents.

i disagree. first, running wikipedia costs lots of money and there are
therefore often calls for money by the foundation. closely related, lots
of hardware are donated by capitalistic corporations. second, wikipedia is
very young (though its results and usefulness are very impressive). but
before i dare to say it "out-cooperates" (i assume you mean that it
outcompetes britcannica) i would wait and see how google's knol (or some
other initiative which directly (!) financially rewards the creator based
on the quality of his/her writings) work out in a few years from now.
waiting and seeing is especially appropriate if you want to justify a new
world order on this "new production form". third, what os software is
out-coperating proprietary software? linux (with a market share of less
than 3%), openoffice, the gimp? even firefox (to my knowledge the most
successful os application) has a market share of 30% (and the mozilla
foundation is an economic subsidiary of google). as i said, my personal
obsveration is quite to the contrary in that commerically backed os
software (openoffice) outcompetes os software that is not commercially
backed (who is using abiword?).

indeed, this is what im having the most problems with. as much as i like
your basic ideas, i just cant see a real os success (in the sense of
outcompeting) story outthere - other than the apache foundation  with a
budget of roughly 100 000 us dollar - that would justify claims for a new,
more effective mode of production. looking at all the os outthere, i get
the impression that the apache foundation is the exception and not the
rule.

>> sorry, i just cant picture a
>> world where everyone is free and basically does what (s)he wants
>> and things overall still work. there are just too many boring,
>> repetitive (even interesting, repetitive tasks often become boring
>> over time), and "servant" tasks outthere that need to be done.
>
> Indeed this is hard to imagine. But this is part of the challenge
> of Oekonux to imagine and research exactly that.

one problem im having with is that you aim to kill money as a very
effective extrinsic motivation tool.

Yes, that is goal: replacement of extrinsic with intrinsic motivation.
Yes, I know, many people believe, that this is not possible, but it is
-- like sucessful projects show.

why do you want to eradictae an effective extrinsic incentive? it helps a
society to function effectively and jumps in when intrinsic motivation
aint there (who wants to do bookkeeping or cleaning?)

But don't confuse the today *germforms*
living in a hostile environment with its "unfold" derivatives existing
in an environment strongly rewarding behavior of individual
selbstentfaltung, which is the condition of the selbstentfaltung of all
people and vice versa (network effect in free society).

people are the way they are and
money causes them to do things that are needed.

... and they would otherwise not do. This is a coercive system. A free
society can only be a non-coersive system.

there is also coercion in Siefke's model that seems to be one of the front
runners here. irrespective of that, i just dont believe a non-coercise
system is possible because humans are prone to act in their own interest.
logically, if more than one person is living together, this causes a
conflict of interest situation resulting in one of them giving in (or
adapting their behaviour or adjusting their self interest) to the others
around.

look at all the
amazing work ngo do and even companies with a social conious. do you
really think that a society where people only do what they want can,
for example, pull of a thing like google earth in such a short period
of time? im sure the non-interesting tasks in this project by far
outweigh the interesting ones.

If people can answer your question freely, where their lives did not
depend on the answer they give, then some developments would not go so
fast. That is true and in many circumstances it makes sense to lower the
speed of developements -- due to environmental reasons etc. But any
coersive system ("extrinsic motivation" is an euphemism) like the money
system is structurally blind for demands which can not be expressed in
terms of money or which are not in the focus of profit making ("negative
externalities").

Money systems can't do the right thing, they are structurally
(=independent of the will of the participants) destructive in the long
run.

you take a very long time frame on that given that money (and barter) are
here for a couple of thousand years and are more important than ever in
todays very efficiently functioning society.

And this -- sorry to say this again -- does not depend on the type
of money ("extrinsic motivation").

Ciao,
Stefan



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Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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