MoneyAndCommunity/Talk

NathanielThurston -- Fri Sep 4 08:19:44 2009

Fridemar, I do not understand how an individual community's non-profit nature has anything to do with "an increasing flood of spam from disintegrated attackers". My general impression is that most spam comes from financially secure, antisocial individuals, intent on pursuing personal monetary gain without regard to the societal damage they incur, and not that it is related to their inability to make a decent living in other ways. Please elaborate on your assertion that an individual community's non-profit nature is somehow related to the spam plague.

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, we know that both kinds of communities have to struggle with the spam plague, communities with a (visible) motive for profit or such without. So I ask how strongly motivated are the members (independently of the above distinction) to reflect on and handle defective actions as spam and vandalism. To a community of occasional, not very invested hobby wikizens such attacks are not such a big thread to reducing their quality of life as in a community of professionally engaged members, whose income is proportional to the wellbeing of their supported and supporting platform. As a consequence there are probably more defendants in the latter type of community.

NathanielThurston -- Mon Sep 14 09:17:27 2009

Fridemar, I think I'm starting to understand where you're coming from: you put global-village effects on the same scale as community effects. But I think you're ignoring a fundamental law of human (and community) nature, that people and communities have a very strong tendency to act in their own perceived self-interest. You're not exempt from this -- if I read you correctly, your perceived self-interest is along the lines of a desire for recognition as something like a saint. More to the point, the rest of us are concerned first for the health of this community, and so if we're presented with a choice that is damaging to our community we will reject it, even if it might have some positive global-scale effects.

Personally, I feel that it is wrong to put global concerns above local concerns. An analogy would be the instructions you get in an airplane: put your own oxygen mask on before you put your child's mask on. The reasoning (in both cases) is that we're in a much better position to help others if we take care of ourselves first. The challenge, in my view, is to find win-win solutions, which are better for both our community and for the world at large; and I think that here at Meatball we're doing just that, for our goal of creating a guidebook for nurturing healthy online communities will be, in my opinion, crucial for the health of the global village.

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, agreed: we always have to find a win-win situation and creating a guidebook for nurturing healthy online communities is a nice thing. To get the maximal motivation and collaboration power, however we need to integrate income models in the sense of WikiNomics to transform hobby wikizens into professional wikizens. Otherwise (in the longer run) the free floating intelligence in the Web will be drained to those locations, where community work and earning one's life are brought together.

NathanielThurston: Fridemar, your claim about the "brain drain" is an example of "an economic concept without any apparent connection to reality".

The reality: much has been written about the negative effects of money; and in addition, several of us have personal negative experience with integrating money and community. I would add [one of mine] -- I was never as involved as the friend of mine who is party to this lawsuit was, but I was witness to much of it, and I would encourage you to read the PDF.

Your assumption: Integrating money with community without damaging the community is possible.

What's missing: We need first to be convinced that you have a respectful awareness of the pitfalls, second to be convinced that you have taken careful precautions to avoid them, third to trust that you will inform us about the potential disadvantages to your ideas, and finally to judge for ourselves that the inevitable risk of trying something new and different is worth taking. If you wish to convince this difficult audience that your ideas have merit, the burden of proof is yours.

I think that what you're doing is poor marketing -- you act like a used car salesman, pointing out all the shiny features and glossing over the defects. You may convince some people that way, but you won't convince us. I think that your economic ideas may well have a connection with reality; please convince us that such a connection exists.

SunirShah -- Tue Sep 15 15:29:54 2009

Here are some tried and tested concepts.

Maximal motivation is created through personal gain. Collaboration typically does not benefit from environments that encourage personal gain, unless the situation exhibits properties of the IteratedPrisonersDilemma with communal punishment. What is valued as personal gain depends on the person and their purpose for being in the situation. I don't volunteer to make money.

Introducing monetary motivation in a domain with seeming altruism (i.e. where motivations are either improving the world around them or strengthening PersonalRelationships) is often considering insulting. If your neighbour loans you his lawnmower, you don't return it with rent money. Your neighbour just wanted to deeper your PersonalRelationship, and by paying for the lawnmower you indicated you merely want a transactional, disposable relationship.

Other situations are obviously commercial, such as industry associations like standards organizations. There it is clear that everyone is collaborating insofar as they will presumably make more money in their normal trade. And of course more typically, companies, where people collaborate because they are paid to do so.

For decentralized, commercial collaboration, the most efficient systems create property (e.g. though Enclosures) and grant ownership to individuals or organizations to develop that property independent of others, whilst maintaining a common public governance to regulate infrastructure and global resources and costs. When there is no enclosure, the bottom of the BellCurve? will interfere with or steal from the top, causing the best CommunityMembers to leave.

: NathanielThurston: Sunir, I would change one small detail: when you say "Introducing monetary motivation ... will totally fail", I would instead say "Introducing monetary motivation ... has a long and sordid history of totally failing, and I see no way around this end-result". Fridemar is an imaginative individual; the possibility exists that he might have in mind just such a solution; and by leaving him this narrow target through which he might squeeze his viewpoint, you avoid creating the impression that you are trying to force your opinion onto his mind, while sparing us from another "apositive claim detected through the use of ePrime" defense.

SunirShah -- Wed Sep 16 01:21:35 2009

I am confident that if I whipped out $20 when my neighbour lent me his lawnmower I would always look like a complete jerk.

Fridemar is dancing around a different point. My comments about ownership are more relevant.

Demanding eprime is just the same selfish bullshit as demanding NonViolentLanguage?. I'll just set the bozo bit for good if anyone does that to me again.

NathanielThurston -- Wed Sep 16 05:54:20 2009

Fridemar, I would like to call your attention to a possibility that I feel looms within the minds of at least some of the other participants in this conflict -- Sunir wrote recently regarding the Meatball mission, "Since they have nothing to back up their ideas except for their egos". If I were to judge solely by your actions in editing MoneyAndCommunity, it would be easy for me to leap to the conclusion that this statement applies to you.

Personally, I think that you likely have something to back up your ideas, for my viewpoint is not so far different from yours. I would ask that you refrain from asserting conclusions (and in particular from asserting conclusions in the DocumentMode portion) and begin to flesh out the supporting facts and reasoning.

Sunir, I would agree that it's unfair for anyone to demand eprime. The reason I think that eprime and non violent communication makes sense in this case is to avoid further inflaming Fridemar's passions about the issue -- my observation is that when I care deeply about a topic, I often feel a violent burst of anger when someone baldly contradicts me, while statements of fact have no such effect. Perhaps it would also be useful for Fridemar to do this translation for himself when he detects such statements -- but it would be kinder for the rest of us to treat him as he wishes to be treated.

SunirShah -- Wed Sep 16 11:41:57 2009

I didn't write my comment in response to Fridemar. I wrote down as many principles on money and community as I could remember. You can't have a page here on this topic without including commonly known, well establised evidenced based principles. I truly do not see how it contradicts WikiNomics

NathanielThurston -- Wed Sep 16 12:52:15 2009

Sunir, I think that

: "Introducing monetary motivation in a domain with seeming altruism ... will totally fail"

is in direct contradiction with the intended meaning of:

: "Earning income by an activity, originally done from the heart, ... can also lead to a more integral approach, where heart and ratio get reconciliated"

(I moved the latter quote from the DocumentMode Issues section of the page to the discussion section, knowing that you would disagree)

Do you see now? I think we should allow Fridemar his voice, while making it very clear that he does not speak for the community unless and until he has won our agreement... and that he has an awful lot of explaining to do before that could happen.

I'd like to propose another rewording:

: "Introducing monetary motivation in a domain with seeming altruism ... has always totally failed"

very slightly weaker (excluding only that history is on occasion made), but now it admits the possibility of finding contrary evidence.

SunirShah -- Wed Sep 16 15:56:08 2009

I don't agree with changes for the reasons you mentioned. You don't get to make up facts through consensus. I don't care about anyone's bad feelings about possibly being wrong--given that I am arguing fairly to the point and not unfairly the person--because a future reader five years from now will be oblivious to this exchange, just as you are oblivious to even extremely heated exchanges that happened five years ago. If we finish with a conclusion that is useless or wrong, what is the point of expending energy at all? And in this case, how would that help Fridemar, who would then go off into the world and a) fail to successfully sell anyone on poorly thought out ideas, b) execute on ideas that are built on shoddy foundations?

However, I only wanted to state findings from actual research. Claiming it will 'totally fail' is unnecessarily editorialized. I will make a change above.

That being said, I would also say that Fridemar's stated reformulation is not better for two reasons. I don't understand what "heart and ratio" means. That doesn't seem to be the right use of the word 'ratio'. If ratio means money, then there is a logical flaw. If you state that maybe X will happen, but also maybe not X, you eliminate the purpose of the sentence. It would be better to paint the spectrum. For instance: [[exposition moved to MoneyAndCommunity]]

NathanielThurston -- Thu Sep 17 10:12:37 2009

Fridemar, there's something important here that I'd like you to see. The transitioner's wealth page describes three forms of wealth: the tradeable (what we ordinarily think of as wealth), the measureable (things like productivity and health), and the acknowledgeable (things like friendship, beauty, freedom, integrity, reputation)

It seems clear that at Meatball we are focused on creating the acknowledgeable forms of wealth (in particular, the beauty of the pages, and the personal relationships) -- and that the effort has been a stunning success. I cannot begin to describe the beauty I saw in the first hours after I encountered the pages the Meatball community had created, but I will say that in my opinion it was and remains one of the wonders of the world.

Where it seems to go wrong is your attempts to "cash out" on this collaborative work of art, through the various economic ideas on which you have tried to execute. To me, and I think to the rest of the community, these acts seem insulting and cheap, for these actions are, in my mind, directly analogous to "Giving a $20 tip to someone who helped you up from a fall".

Like you, I think we would do well to do more to share the "acknowledgeable wealth" we have created in abundance. Where I differ is in the method, for I think that all is required is a more vigorous pursuit of MeatballOutreach.

FridemarPache -- Thu Sep 17 20:23:32 2009

FridemarPache: Sunir, Nathaniel: here in Germany the meaning of the pair heart and ratio (Herz, Ratio) is rather standard. So I have to give it more context to eliminate the gross simplification ratio=money. Heart stands for spontaneous, intuitive, compassionate, emphatic action to help your neighbor, whereas ratio stands for reasoned, well planned, deliberate action that helps you and your neighbor integrating the economic plus the noneconomic context, provided that you act on the principle of the Golden Rule (as e.g. positively formulated in FosterEachOther).

Sunir, your example of lending a lawnmower with an expected 20$ compensation, doesn't describe not at all the typical scenario of my social engagement. Fortunately I can take this as a challenge to give you another example that fits better the concept of social entrepreneurship, as I understand it.

I read of a "social entrepreneur", who lent 20$ to a poor fisherman, to buy him a net to catch fishes. One month later he got back 40$ from the fisherman without any further work of the lender having done.

Now contrast this with the following scenario, where heart and reason (reason, replacing "ratio") are reconciliated:

As before the lender (who himself knows the craft of fishing, but happily has some money over) lends 20$ however additionally collaborates on fishing together with the borrower. The two produce a gain of say 60$. Now they divide the money in equal parts, such that every one has earned 30$. (The additional advantage of the new net for the borrower, based on generosity, is omitted from the calculation) Only if they both had a very back luck, the lender has done a donation of 20$ plus his work. But this is the worst case, which both of the partners try to avoid with their best effort.

Sunir, I don't think that it is a necessary condition to split the mind into a hobby part for things, done by the heart and and a professional part for things, done by reason.

In the case of SocialDomaining the lender offers FreeGainSharing?; he gives away a domain, his initial conceptional work and time for further collaboration on it. Besides that he does the (often) not very much enjoyable PR work, working like a HoofSmith.

Of course the burdon of proof is my responsibility.

Nathaniel, I thank you for the appreciated link to the WhuffieBank?. Could you or somebody else here in the sense of mutual barnraising, please give me a ReTweet? to start a WhuffieBank? account?

SunirShah -- Thu Sep 17 22:30:53 2009

Fridemar: To clarify: the lawnmower is lent without an expectation for compensation. Just a thank you and a better relationship with his neighbour.

I agree. Social entrepreneurship is much closer to what you're describing; it very likely is what you're describing. I also agree that it isn't necessary to split the mind into two parts, money and hobby, money and love, money and community, but this is an enlightened perspective beyond what is common, and it's not common because it's really hard. You asserted,

: To get the maximal motivation and collaboration power, however we need to integrate income models in the sense of WikiNomics to transform hobby wikizens into professional wikizens. Otherwise (in the longer run) the free floating intelligence in the Web will be drained to those locations, where community work and earning one's life are brought together.

but this has not been determined. Doing it stably is some trick, and it's defies common belief (which again I emphasize doesn't mean that it isn't possible), and that is why it needs to be demonstrated in actual practice rather than merely asserted or debated.

NathanielThurston -- Sat Sep 19 04:41:48 2009

Sunir and Fridemar, you may find a blueprint of mine useful in this context: TheThingBook? [1] is a design of mine for a brick-and-mortar community that integrates money and love. I would agree with Sunir: It defies common belief, and it's really hard. My wife and I spent something like three months of intense effort on the exposition.