Comment by reflexive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reflexive | Hacker News Reader

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Imagine if you could work on startup ideas and software projects simply because you were passionate about solving a problem or creating something, and not because of the money.

I've been in this position, and I've concluded: if you really have no financial constraints, you'd be daft to spend your time working on a startup, or solving the dull, pedestrian problems that are of such utilitarian concern to society.

If you're creative, why wouldn't you just be an artist and make things that are personally and intensely meaningful to you (but only to you)?

If you're an engineer, why wouldn't you just spend your time inventing new esoteric programming languages to implement Conway's game of life, rather than the drudgery of, say, making and debugging a robust automated toll booth, that could save society millions of dollars? That only makes sense if you're anticipating an eventual return to the monetized (wage) economy.

Or - start a family and invest your full time into raising and educating your own children - probably the most rational choice, with the least value to the rest of society.

I get far more enjoyment out of working to fix actual problems for actual people than working on vaguely creative disputes.

Making a robust automated toll booth sounds a lot more appealing to me than making yet another programming language.

I get far more enjoyment out of working to fix actual problems for actual people

I'm with you - the catch is, how do you know what are the actual important problems, except by how people allocate money?

We could each list a thousand problems that ought to be solved, but we can only work on one thing at a time. Thus we use a scarce resource (money) to communicate our actual priorities.

Can't reply to reflexive, but they say:

> ... the catch is, how do you know what are the actual important problems, except by how people allocate money?

Attention is another scarce good that has value. Many open source projects have value because they are solving a problem many people have. The original authors knew they were on to someone because people laid attention to the solution.

> invest your full time into raising and educating your own children - probably the most rational choice, with the least value to the rest of society.

That seems like a strange way to describe preparing the next generation. :D

Don't most people consider raising and educating their children to be one of the most valuable things to be done for society? eg having more knowledgeable/skilled/clueful young is better "for everyone" (as a generalisation) than not

If that's the case, then your specialized economic role in society is purely as a professional breeder. Other people would need to see that you are contributing your fair share by raising your own family, and be willing to supply you with food, shelter, etc in recognition of this.

In fact people generally don't recognize this value. If I thought to myself, "That's a fair division of labor - I'll do the work, and instead of raising my own kids I'll support this guy's family" - my own genes would be removed from the pool pretty quickly (unless group selection pressure were so intense that this was the only way we could out-compete the neighboring villages).

On the other hand - if you were willing to raise my kids alongside your own (as a teacher or babysitter), there's a much better chance I'd see that as a fair exchange of value.

Heh Heh Heh, it really sounds like you don't like kids. ;)

Well, you may be on to something with this idea. I believe that with the exception of humans, all eusocial species have specialized reproductive castes, while the workers are sterile. Certainly some humans are willing to give up their own reproductive success so others in the group may be fertile. We have professional "adult entertainers" so maybe it's a small step to professional parents?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_eusociality

That's a false dichotomy. Even with, say, UBI, you can still pay people to work on important problems.

I'm not arguing against Universal Basic Income - provided that, in practice, the proportion of people who elect to work for money remains relatively high.

I am arguing against the idea that we don't need money to create incentives.

I didn't see anyone arguing that money is not needed for incentive purposes.

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