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