[PLUG-TALK] Insurance

[Russ Johnson]

Jeme A Brelin wrote:

>On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, AthlonRob wrote:
>  
>
>>There's nothing like removing incentives from working harder than the
>>guy next to you to bring society to its knees.  If I didn't have to work
>>hard to provide some 'personal wealth' (albeit very little), I'd be
>>perfectly content to fiddle around with my computer all day, every day,
>>and not go and be productive for the rest of society.
>>    
>>
>
>You amaze me, Rob.  You toe this outrageous conservative party line even
>when real life shows you the assumptions are just plain not true.
>  
>
In your mind.

>You insist we need punishment and threat in order to keep people from
>doing bad things, but you admit that you wouldn't do bad things even if
>there were no such punishment.
>  
>
That's because he's been taught right from wrong, and has a good sense 
of that concept. Many folks do NOT have the same concept, or choose to 
ignore it. Even with the punishment in place. And negative reinforcement 
DOES work. In some cases, better than positive reinforcement.

>You further insist that profit-motive is the incentive for working hard,
>but you participate in the Free Software community where people work very
>hard for the benefit of all.
>  
>
I doubt very seriously if many folks are doing this purely to help their 
fellow humans. I know for a fact that many are in the employ of various 
entities (Redhat, IBM, HP... to name a few) with the specific purpose of 
writing the OSS projects. These folks realized that they HAD to make a 
living to survive in this world. Someone was willing to pay them to 
write the code, and there you go.

So, *NO*, they aren't working hard just to benefit all. Although your 
statement above makes it sound like that's why they do it.
I would surmise that the "benefit of all" part is mearly a very nice 
side benefit recognized by those involved.

>And I think you'd be perfectly willing to ride the garbage truck once a
>year and empty trash cans if it meant getting your trash handled by
>someone else the other 364 days.  In urban areas, this would be
>significantly cheaper and less demeaning than the current system of paying
>people to dedicate their lives to cleaning up after others.
>  
>
In many cases, this is true. I have, and will in the future, volunteer 
to help out with some project so that I can get something in return.

Russ