The thing is, the people would still be making a profit under socialism and communism.
The difference is it wouldn’t be at the expense of others, it wouldn’t be to a point they can hoard necessities from others, and it wouldn’t all be funneled to some trust fund rich kid asshole who’s provided nothing of value to this world.
The difference is [the profit you make under socialism/communism] wouldn’t be at the expense of others
How is that possible? Isn’t “profit” defined as value you get in excess of the value of the thing you traded for? Isn’t profit “at the expense of others” by definition?
Depends how you define “expense”. A good service provided at a fair price, all stakeholders benefit. My CSA share of a farmers produce gives me cheap, quality veggies and gives the farmer consistent cash flow regardless of disease/weather/whatever. We clearly both benefit. Someone else buying UPFs from Walmart because they have literally no other option to affordably feed their family in their neighbourhood… maybe not such a good deal for the consumer.
P.s. Profit is the value in excess of the cost of good sold, not over what the buyer values it as. In a “good” transaction (where the parties are transacting at parity, without monopolistic/exploitative practice) the price is less than the consumer would be willing to pay (the “value” for them) but still enough for the seller to be compensated for the risk and cost they took in buying/making and stocking the product.
You know the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? Trade creates value because certain items are most valuable to certain people, and getting them where they’re most needed is a valuable service.
Profit can also be achieved without stealing from others via the creation valuable items. A finished product can be more valuable than its individual pieces and the time and skills used to create it.
Socialism and communism isn’t about abolishing production and trade, it’s about collectivising ownership of the means of production and its profit so that just a few people can’t eat up all of the profits.
You forgot non-profit organisations
A lot of them are just indirect-profit. Let’s limit this to [some] charities.
A vast majority of Foss programmers get paid. Linux would not be where it is at without people getting paid.
You’re confusing two concepts. Even volunteer firefighters get paid, in the OP. But they don’t operate under a profit motive.
The profit motive is seen as integral to the success of capitalism, in economic theory. The idea is that owners of capital will invest in ways that maximize the profit of their capital, and, in so doing, maximize the total value creation from the capital. Hence, the profit motive incentivizes everyone in capitalism to maximize total productivity. Therefore, the profit motive maximizes the gross economic production, and hence utility, of the entire system, even though individual agents are only pursuing selfish maximization of profits.
All of that is true. But it also doesn’t tell the whole story.
In particular, it breaks down in two main points:
- Externalities are not captured by the profit motive. Negative externalities, like pollution, but also positive ones, like companionship and happiness.
- The profit motive is true for total creation of utility, but it completely ignores the distribution of utility. Neoliberal trickle-down free-market economic policy is inimical to equity, despite, on the surface, seeming like an effective policy to maximize total utility generation through the profit motive.
There’s a whole other problem with the profit motive, too: we all have an innate drive toward creative expression and helping others. I suppose you could, cynically, say that these motivations count as “externalities”, but I think that’s a bit reductive. People will want to create things even without profit motive. UBI studies all confirm that people will want to continue “being productive”, even if they don’t need to work.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.
Not in my county, volunteer fire fighters are not paid. There are paid EMTs and paramedics in the county as well as volunteer EMTs. But I would assume most volunteer firefighters are not paid. Some towns also have a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters. (I guess the volunteer firefighters get paid by their employer for the other job they work)
Weird. In Canada, they’re called “volunteer” firefighters, but they get paid for training and for every call they respond to. It’s only like $18/hr or something, but it’s not literally volunteering.
Linux foundation doesn’t operate under a profit motive AFAIK. Maintenance of operations doesnt equate the profit motive
Everyone needs money. But it’s not a “profit motive” driving them to develop for FOSS. Most of them would get paid >2x their salary by working for top-tech. They are more motivated by passion.
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- People who put their shopping cart back in the corral
People who put their shopping cart back in the corral
… are not creating jobs for supermarket employees to do it instead.
(not including the ones who do it to get their £1 coin back)
Christ, what are the coins made out of?
i think it’s wrong to say that “without profit motive, no one would be productive”, but it should rather be “without a profit motive, people would be less productive”.
Volunteer firefighters get paid when they’re working, it’s just implies that it is not a full time position. They have normal jobs that they all drop on a dime to rush to a fire scene to stand around and collect.
Not salty about the system or anything
Income/ revenue is not the same as profit, just like a meat patty is not a hamburger.
Socially acceptable to use interchangeably and even a dictionary might call them synonyms but they’re not.
Yes volunteer firefighters are paid for their time when responding to an emergency but no one else is making money off the firefighter or the equipment being deployed. We all pitch in through taxes and get a service in exchange, no one is enriched by it.
In my experience, the fire department sues through the country for “restitution”, so I got to pay twice…
Really doing open source programmers dirty with that insane code formatting
Where is my payment for lemmy shit
postcommenting? /sMoney (and hence profit motive) is an analogue for being able to acquire and do things we need and want.
There’s two kinds of miserable people in relation to profit motive - those who can’t acquire enough money for the basic things they need to be happy, and those who took the analogue so far that they think money = happiness.
There is generally very little issue getting people to do things they want to do (things that feel meaningful) as long as they manage to cover their basic needs somehow, but there are definitely issues getting people to do things that they don’t want to do - which is where profit motive shines.
There is much more garbage to collect than there are people who want to collect garbage, more deliveries to make than people who want to make them, more places to clean than people who want to clean them.
Luckily, there is someone who wants the garbage collected, someone who wants the toilets cleaned, someone who wants their trinkets delivered. Hence, we get people to pay for that, and thus we can use profit motive to incentivize someone to do those things, at least until we manage to automate it.
Funnily enough, the less someone wants to do it the more of that “incentive” is purely stick and no carrot. Almost as if there’s something fishy about that whole notion 🤔
Unless… people actually prefer to be garbage men over the grueling work of an investment banker?
I would personally prefer the hands-on labor of garbage collection to a desk job, provided good working conditions and treatment like a human being are included.
If it weren’t for the pay difference, I’d certainly prefer garbage man. A huge percentage of kids want that job before the economy crushes their dreams. It’s cool!
It’s overtaken deep sea commercial fishing for deadliest job in the US.
That is true and I’d still rather be a garbage man than an investment banker. I’d die of depression and they wouldn’t blame my job.
Just add another motive or gamify it.
“Without a profit motive, we wouldn’t take advantage of people who are productive!”
The question is - what are u gonna do about it?
I always make all of my source code available, provide the most detailed bug reports, help people for free whenever I can, and use / pay for open source software instead of buying commercial software.
I also try to avoid companies actively causing harm. I don’t buy from Amazon, I switched to an electric car to stop paying oil companies, I installed solar panels and got a wholesale energy provider so I can minimise paying fossil fuel energy providers.
I run a business providing tech support for elderly, disabled, and low income people, and only charge for parts (with no markup).
If you can think of anything else I can do, I am happy to take suggestions.
i’m a musician. about half of my gigs i don’t charge anyone and it’s free for attendees. The vast majority of my gigs are free/no cover/no drink minimum.
Post on social media, mostly
Nothing wrong with that. I became organized on a socialist organization mostly thanks to social media propaganda.
This is the most important video I’ve ever watched on the subject of what motivates us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&t=32s
Everything from capitalism to linux to this meme is explained. That video explained why I was unhappy making $80K, taking every Friday off on PTO, vs. making $40K and putting in hours at home for free.
“Holy shit! He’s going to bring up Linux and Wikipedia!” And he did.
Are you happy in your work, your life, or unhappy? Maybe give the 10-minute video a spin? Not like they’re selling anything, just an analysis of human behavior and emotions. I found it life changing. You do you. I’ll never take another job that doesn’t give me those three, simple things.
I like what I do, and I hate the people I work for.
IDK where I land for motivation.
I need a new job.
Watch the video? It’s only 10-minutes. Maybe you do need a new job?
Even if someone knows they would be happier in another job, that isn’t always a choice you can actually take. There is pretty limited choices for work where I live, but I can’t really move as my house is here and my partners job is here. Quite a bit of retail/care work, beyond that choices are limited.
Yep. Tons of places are hiring and getting any job isn’t really that hard (in my area at least), but if you’re wanting a job that pays decent or at least more than $15/hr then you’re gonna be searching pretty damn hard. I got a new job a couple months ago that shot me up from getting paid $27k to getting paid $50k. However the hours suck with my shift starting at 5 AM and going for around 10 or 11 hours. When I look for other jobs in my area that offer similar pay, all I get are sales or something like building fences which I imagine would make me more miserable.
UK has a reasonable minimum wage (one of the best on the planet), a job isn’t too hard but often it could be part time or irregular hours. Or just kinda shit work.
Hey chill fellow internet person - the video was very cool (thanks), so don’t spoil it by meaning man in the comments, eh?
FYI those open source coders are probably working some kind thankless job that will pay the bills but gives them enough time to pretend to be a big dev firm making main level code contributions.
Is that not somewhat the point though? They want to be doing meaningful work and they’re so motivated to do meaningful work they’ll sit after a day of work and chip out more code just so they can do something meaningful to them.
No lots of open source coders are getting paid. Linux and lots of FOSS is so far past the coder working in their spare time.
And other ones are being paid by a big firm to work on FOSS projects because it’s still easier than reproducing something from scratch.
Students and Junior devs alike also contributing to pad their resume and document experience.
Sure but pretending the the majority of contributes are not being paid is just fake. FOSS is big companies paying people to develop.
