Zardnaar
Deity
I think America will drift left I don't see them going Socialist anytime soon.
More center left or social Democrat in near future.
Incentives under communism?
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I think America will drift left I don't see them going Socialist anytime soon.
More center left or social Democrat in near future.
First, while I think that the intrinsic motivation to create something is important, it is (at least for me) usually not sufficient to actually finish something. Once the interesting part is done, I quickly lose interest and need some extrinsic motivation to make it a usable thing. If I were to rely on intrinsic motivation alone, I would end up with a load of unfinished, undocumented projects that do not help anybody.
Then, people have very different views on what needs to be done, because they have different views on what state is acceptable and what is not. Whether it is cleanliness, how things are being ordered (or not), or how ugly code is allowed to be. If it always falls to the one who is dissatisfied with the current state of affairs to fix things, it will always be the same people having to do the dirty work.
Which would not be so bad if humans were not so curious. It is much easier to appeal to ones intrinsic motivation to try something new than trying to get someone to volunteer doing the same thing over and over again. Yes, you can try to rotate people, but having a 20 minute group meeting every week who does that thing this week becomes tiring and frustrating for everyone involved.
And then there are the things that no one really likes. At work there are a few tasks, which are necessary, but everyone dreads. So no one volunteers to do them, which means that these deteriorate further (and then there is even less motivation to clean up this mess). More than once, I needed to go to my boss, say that these things need doing and nobody is doing them an that he needs to force someone to do them. If generalized to society, I fear that if we have no easy way to motivate people to do tasks that no one likes to do, we would have some things in a perpetual bad state.
On the team level, there is already some friction, but the problems increase once you look at a bigger organization. There are only so many people I care to bond with, so if there are problems in other teams I might regard them as their problems and not my problems (because, just for the sake of my mental health, not everything can be my problems). So I won't be doing something until somebody explicitly asks me to. And then of course, you have the tribal behavior of humans: they form groups which tend to be at odds with each other and cooperation within the own group is contrasted with confrontation against other groups. The larger a group of people is, the harder it gets to get everyone to cooperate with everyone else. At the level of a small village, this might be doable, but on the scale of a city there is no chance in my opinion.
Finally, relying on intrinsic motivation usually requires a lot of social cohesion and the question is, how would you get that? The groups where I have observed voluntary distribution of tasks to work best were churches, but those were also the groups that required the most conformism: If you believe, do, or (although no one would say that) are something shunned, you get sidelined very quickly.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
most of the reasonable arguments i've found (again, i'm not a communist) for motivation within a moneyless system is to utilize our ingroup connection within an institution of production to maximize productivity over it actually being monetary.
like, now, let's honestly sideline the various issues with that (upscaling past the individual institution being an issue, and the inherent issues of in-/outgroup thinking), and note something;
see: interesting thing is, that at least in western countries, this is a fundamental part of actually getting people to work. sense of belonging and identity within the business you work for, escapades of amenities outside the actual work environment with your "tribe", is vastly a part of our current capitalist structure, and most importantly, keeps worker costs low. it's already fully ingrained in how we deal with business in capitalism, and the point of it is to remove money from the equation of production costs, specifically irt wages. even zard's triades noted that a huge component of his youth work was the social environment around it. some afterwork social activities, some nice people to hang out with. today, it's foundational to the hiring & working process, at least in the States. how much are you going to participate in your social environment? how much of your identity is going to be tied to the business? like - you can look over r/antiwork (yea yea raised eyebrows whatever, but please, for the love of god, bear with me) for how these instances of attempted identity-attachment qualitatively look like. skip the rest of the subreddit ideology and look to the point of this; social attachment and tribalism is regarded as a motivator, independent of money, because either money can't cover it, or the businesses simply don't want to cover it, and it's completely foundational to western business when dealing with internal populations.
the point is, notably, in capitalism, this mechanic is throughoughly toxic, because capital (wages) is a foundational component for not just ability to compete (which is, like, the whole point of it), but also sheer survival. attach your identity (or, pretend to) to the business or you won't be able to pay rent. remove capital interest from it, and it's incidentally just a business doing things for its own sake (again, bear with me for the abstraction); social bonds mean that you just do stuff, because of soft power, without this being a factor relegated to suppressing your actual method against starvation.
this is integral to a service economy structure in the west. just focusing on the west here, looking away from indian pistacio pickers.
so my question is, like - well - you recognize the tribal attachment to your business as a function - you know it's present within capitalism; i presume my outline here isn't news to you - you understand how soft social force is used in business - so it's not because i'm asking you to be a communist (again, i'm not), but are you accepting this force within capitalism; and if so, why there, and why not within systems that rely on it solely?
(i don't know your position btw; and again, i'm not asking you to be a communist, i'm not.)
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like, i guess the whole brunt of it that annoys me is that this attachment is definitely a part of human nature, whatever that's supposed to be, by virtue of capitalism making it part of the monetary equation of power (that's what capitalism does with human nature, whatever that is, after all); we already see it applied within a capitalist system to depress wages. so why isn't it a thing if capitalism is natural? (... not asking uppi here, just generally wondering.)
Lexicus
Deity
What need have I of omens? The future shall be as I make it...
Because if it were possible to rely on it solely, capitalists would have done it by now? Why use it only to depress wages if you could rely on it so much to eliminate wages and make even more money?
More serious answer: First, it is hard to achieve: The fact that there is enough corporate propaganda in my inbox that I could spend the entire week reading/listening/watching it, does not make me want to do anything more than my contract demands. Building a sense of belonging is a hard task, especially if it recognized as a task. Once people recognize that it is used to manipulate them, they start resisting it.
Second, it has its limitations. There is only so much people are willing to contribute to "the cause" while neglecting their own wants and needs. How much that is depends on the individual, of course, and on how much individualism and collectivism are valued in a culture. Admittedly, this is something that can be shifted somewhat with society engineering if we really wanted to.
Finally, it has its costs. Tribalism boils down to "us" versus "them". This means that you need to define and limit what "us" is (which usually excludes some people at the edge of "us"). And you need a "them", an enemy, a scapegoat. Both can be detrimental to cooperation with anybody outside of the "tribe". If a manager tells their subordinates that their department A is the best ever, not like those idiots in department B who are responsible for the mess they are in, it is going to be awkward starting a joint project.
On a grander scale, nationalism is an example that tribalism can somewhat work on a national scale. However, this has also lead to the greatest atrocities humans have committed against each other. It is part of human nature and can inspire humans, but it is also very dangerous. I would not want to live in a society, which solely relies on it to motivate people.
Joij21
🔥Hail Satan!🔥
No I believe it will go genuinely left because of the impasses that have been preventing reform. The longer change via reform gets stagnated things will (and already are) begining to radicalize.
Capitalism will no longer be seen as viable by (a sizable portion which can throw it's weight around of) Americans who choose to stay (or rather will be stuck here) when things become inevitably worse.
Those who choose to cling to capitalism but are either too poor themselves to flee to Europe or some sh**, or don't want to, will be forced to confront the rising tide of shifting attitudes and in turn will be forced to increasingly radicalize in a fascistic direction.
Zardnaar
Deity
Well it's a republic with built in safety valve. They would have to rewrote constitution.
Think economic inequality will radicalized people more and a lot of that is directly attributable to the right at least more so than the democrats.
Citizens United for example.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
for this, i'd like to just note that within a system of capital, free labour (which is already an institution, also in the west) means people won't afford being able to eat, so wages are foundational for people to work, even with the numerous ways businesses look to get it. the question of wages applies within the capitalist model, but not the hypothetical; so in the former, they're always fundamentally going to be possible to undercut.
wanted to say thanks for answering here! there's some nuance i'm unsure as to how well it translates between the two systems; you indeed note that the nature of this belonging lies within the inherent manipulation. in capitalist business models, the relationship between employer and -ee is fundamentally antagonistic, and it's indeed very hard to leverage through spamming your inbox appealing to "the cause"; even within capitalist systems, however, i literally know well of a few businesses that are formed, organized and produced democratically, and through a sense of belonging - not massive businesses, they are tiny, but they make money without much economic issue - where the sense of belonging is very much there, as those who formed the businesses just kind of did it and are producing together; there's a very far cry from this method of production and headhunting on LinkedIn as an HR department. self-formed businesses like that are rare, of course, but they usually work fine; the issue is then upscaling, there is not capital to compete with the big boys, and not leverage to undercut the market or the government.
i'll add something btw; i'm not sure the attempted formations of community within capitalist business to incentivize with methods other than wages is actually cheaper. but businesses sure as hell think it's cheaper, otherwise they wouldn't dedicate resources and company time to increase production this way. maybe @Hygro knows something about this? like, just straightforward question: all these attempts at teambuilding, locuses of community & identity within the business, hawaiian shirt days, company vacations, all this, does such methods of incentivization towards production actually save/make money? one would think so with the invisible hand and all, but businesses waste money all the time.
and lastly, i'd like to add i have severe issues with this aspect of it; i assure you that i have real issues with how one may organize through tribalism as a primary motivator. you pretty much summed up where it can go really bad in your comment here without much need going further into it.
but yea my whole issue with it is not that i want to organize this way, necessarily; i just get miffed when we already do and it's usually somewhat accepted. most people that have issues with such a model of production are, incidentally, the antiwork type people, who'd rather eschew identity through work for the sake of getting properly paid.
Well, yeah, that was why the statement was only semi-serious. But still, if you could harness it, there would still be areas where you could pay people enough too live and not much more and save a ton of money. I could easily live on half of my current wage, but if my current employer offered me that, I would walk away. (Disclaimer: I am aware that there are a lot of jobs where this does certainly not apply).
I would say, the problem is not upscaling itself, but upscaling without losing that character. A boss of three can be aware of the needs of every individual employee. A boss of thousand simply cannot.
I would also say that this is not without costs. A business that is like a family might also be prone to escalate conflicts to something akin a family fight. A friend employed at a family-run company remarked once, that he needed to get used to his bosses fighting like brother and sister instead of arguing like professionals, because that is what they are.
To some degree it is certainly cheaper. A happy employee is likely more productive and less likely to shop around for other jobs. If you can get this at low cost (what does a hawaiian shirt cost?), I cannot see how this would not be worth it (provided the hawaiian shirt day makes employees happy). However, I don't think that is universally agreed on, because when money gets tight, these are usually the first things getting cut. I also think there are limitations, hawaiian shirt days can do only so much when an employee gets a really good offer from another employer.
I once worked for a husband and wife team that had screaming fights in meeting and in the halls. It was just part of the culture. Mostly, though they were pretty nice owners. In the end, they divorced and the company closed.
amadeus
burning out his fuse out here alone
There’s a bottom-up aspect to the “team-building” exercisers and proliferators of wacky shirt day: tiny bits of status afforded to the executor, and the need to justify the continuation of their position. The fact that executives want results on the cheap is just part of it.
The USSR at its pinnacle was a pure communist system. The state ran and regulated everything. Workers as skilled as scientists were forced to share apartments with other families. ‘ From all their ability, to all their needs.’ The KGB employed 1 million people. 600,000 of those people worked inside the USSR, keeping order, spreading propaganda, taking down dissidents, etc.., they were not there to keep people out, they were there to ensure people did not leave. The same reason the Berlin wall was built. People were not seen trying to get in to East Berlin. Countless people tried (and many succeeded) to make it out east Berlin. Neighbors spied on neighbors, and reported them. Can you imagine a more paranoid society? People lived in constant fear. It was a horrific place to live. Much like nearly all socialist/communist countries past and present. If you ever meet someone who lived in the USSR during the 60s or 70s. Talk to them. They tell us about going to the supermarket and not having a choice in what to buy. They bought what was available. They see us buying meat, chicken, fish, bread, etc. and believe that we are very lucky and do not realize it. I believe they are correct.
Which system is better than the one we have or had? What we have is much better than whatever comes in second. We are spoiled, and we don’t even realize it because we are so close to it. Sometimes we need to look from the outside in.
amadeus
burning out his fuse out here alone
I snipped out the rest because nothing what you said was wrong, but I’m going by the book definitions of communism being a stateless, classless, moneyless utopia.
I’ve mentioned on more occasions I can count that I think this is impossible, but Narz’ initial post was that of incentives in an ideal system.
Bravo! Communism has never worked and will never work. It is a rotten structure. It’s been tried 40 times and has failed. The current socialist/communist countries are already failing.
Yes. Ideally and buy the book, It was supposed to be a classless and stateless society. Of course that would never come to be. As we know that government is the ultimate monstrosity in practiced communism.
But I agree with you completely.
@Joe Biggs Welcome of Off topic. 
Thank you for your reply, sir.@Joe Biggs Welcome of Off topic.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
it was just a hello. (also hello!) off topic is indeed just a the subforum for a lot of non-civ topics
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