[ox-en] Breaking what you're tying to get
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 09:44:17 +0100
Hi list!
There was one comment on the Slashdot discussion which had a point in
it, I'd like to comment on:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24713&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=2686378
I'll comment it here, since I guess it gets more fruitful than on
Slashdot and because the list is archived on the Web it's accessible,
too.
Second, even if we could completely automate every layer of food
production (and every other industry and commodity) it still
wouldn't work because of this sort of scenario: I want my kids to go
to a good school, so I check out all the local freely offered
schooling (because I live in the GPL Society, all the schooling is
provided by people who want to do that sort of thing as a
self-unfolding project that makes them feel good, and they get to do
this because they don't need anything at all) and I decide that
nobody around me can provide what I think is a brilliant education.
So, I go out and find a teacher who's REALLY REALLY good... the
thing is, this teacher also has 6000 other parents clamoring for her
time, so she gets to choose who she picks. The only way I can have a
better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher; I
have to figure out how I can give her something she WANTS (she's
already got everything she needs).
So s/he distinguishes want and need. I'm not sure whether this is a
good distinction. At least I'd like to nail it down.
Guess what... we're right back to
capitalism. Maybe she wants a bigger house and a bunch of handcarved
art-nuveau accent work, and the only way I can give it to her is to
get a bunch of house-building hand-carving type guys together to
build it for her... but some of those guys want some incentive to
drop their own architectural self-unfolding projects and come help
me instead... how can I compensate these guys for their time? What
if I don't have anything they want? Well, I guess I need to give
them something they can use to trade for things they want... like
money.
Well, I think that giving the teacher an external incentive *prevents*
the quality the giver of the incentive tries to get. At least the
theory is, that in general any self-unfolding provides better results
than any alienated work - as we see in Free Software and I think for
schooling this assumption holds very well. The teacher's work,
however, would be alienated if s/he gets payed in some way. If s/he
really is interested in the incentive / payment, s/he'll start to work
for the payment and so the quality of their schooling will drop. We
all know that effect from the societies we live in: Employees working
for the money instead of the usefulness of the product or service they
are providing.
The one interested in good schooling of his/r kids, however, would
have a chance to get what s/he wants, if s/he's able to provide more
self-unfolding to the teacher than in other cases. But how this higher
self-unfolding is accomplished deeply depends on the process - here:
schooling - they're trying to pursue together. Instead of simply
asking for his/er price, they have to communicate about what they want
to do together and how it is done. For instance if the parents
promises to provide additional support to their child this could be
interesting for the teacher because her/is teaching will be more
fruitful. So there is at least a tendency, that they have to care
about the use value of their activity instead of the exchange value.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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