The science behind getting smart people to do amazing things.
ElectricAye
Posts: 4,561
It's probably not what you think....
ElectricAye
Posts: 4,561
Comments
How about Self-enrichment or some such thing.
You see a carrot on the end of a stick and that's all you can think about?
I wasn't far off, people want to be "Masters of their own Domain" - it's all there, autonomy, mastery, purpose!!
I'm even more convinced economists don't seem to live in the real world. Is it so they have never done anything just for the fun? Or just as a challenge? Or Just because? They don't play games, they don't play music, they don't spend hours on crosswords or soduku?
If they had they might not be so surprised by this amazing new thing they have discovered.
On the other hand I have a little quibble with the Linux thing in there. Already back in 2008 75 percent of the work on the kernel was sponsored by big companies like IBM, RedHat, Intel, Oracle. Companies see the need for an OS so they are prepared to pay for it. A lot of the rest of the contributions are coming from people working for companies that use Linux and these guys happen submit a few patches. There are many of them all doing a little bit.
Greg Hartman does a great presentation on how and my whom Linux is developed here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2SED6sewRw it's kind of mind bending, the size of Linux and the rate at which it is changing.
Sure, until some wise-acre brings up white space or braces or lack of proper variables in Forth and there goes your kumbaya moment as people head to far corners to gather in tribes......
Which reminds me of my 11th-grade physics teacher's favorite joke:
Noah's boat finally comes to rest as the flood waters recede, and he lowers the gangway and send the animals out calling to them, "Go forth and multiply".
Most of the animals leave, but two snakes are left behind. Noah looks at them, and commands "Go forth and multiply!"
The snakes look at him but do not move. He tries again, "Go forth and multiply!" The snakes do not move.
Noah gets angry and in his most commanding voice shouts, "Go forth and multiply!"
The snakes look up at him and say, "We can't, we're adders".
Noah thinks for a while, then grabs his saw and hammer and runs off into the forest, where he cuts down a tree. He saws and hammers and builds a small table. He carefully picks up the snakes and puts them on the table.
"Go forth and multiply!" he commands.
The snakes look at each other, and then at Noah. "We can't, we're adders".
"Yes", Noah replies, "but, even adders can multiply on a log table".
Thanks. I'm feeling kind of nauseous now.
Speaking of Noah and his log tables, did you know:
Biology is the only science where multiplication and division are the same thing.
South African mathematicians used to differentiate, dwhite by dblack.
Greed still tops the list as the number one deadly sin. So I take some comfort in the fact that there are people that are both smart and not greedy participating in worldly affairs.
And I am extremely happy to see that it is not all about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
We still live in a world where some people excel due to being motivated selfishly, or by hatred and such. Some are even self-destructive. What makes people tick and preform well are still very big questions.
BINGO! ....... This is what drives me every day ........
I've been guilty of falling into the trap of bidding projects at far less than I should have because the project was interesting and something I 'wanted' to do.
C.W.
"equitable compensation". There is the confusion.
The rich guy has a problem that needs solving.
The geek and the rich guy strike up a deal to deal with this problem.
The geek gets what he wanted and asked for, the opportunity to work on an interesting problem and money enough he can eat whilst doing so.
The rich guy gets what he wanted. More money.
Totally equitable.
Exactly.
The problem is geeks are suckers, the 'rich' guy would have paid far more, but the geek was dumb enough (in a financial sense) to do it for a few meals.
This is basically why we have the 1%.
All you have to do is look at the typical pay of 'creative types' to see the overall effect of this.
C.W.
Just looking at it a bit sideways. We only have one life. The "rich guy" gets to spend his thinking about money. The geeks get to spend theirs thinking about..well..anything more interesting. Quite equitable.
Anyway it's not clear that the "rich guy" would have paid more. There is always another geek willing to work for less. Without getting unionized the geeks can't win.
Also we should not generalize. Plenty of "rich guys" were/are geeks. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Graham Bell, Hewlett and Packard, all the way to Bill Gates, bless him, and the Google brothers.