{"items": [{"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114987071963782993407", "anchor": "gp-1319656763489", "service": "gp", "text": "Reminds me of the work solution in Walden 2. have you read it? You need to do a certain number of time units of work to stay in the community, but gross(sewage &rubbish), technical(medical&planning) types of things are worth more time units, while more enjoyable forms of work(gardening, tutoring) are worth less time units. i could go into more detail, but it's all in the book too.", "timestamp": 1319656763}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1319657514084", "service": "gp", "text": "@Danner\n The babysitting coop (linked) also did something similar, with people earning time and a half for babysitting at undesirable times (on weekends or after midnight).\n
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\nYou do have an issue where not everyone gets the same level of enjoyment from a task: perhaps you really like gardening and I really like cooking. But I would expect that overall this would work better.\n
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\nTSOR suggests that a bunch of communities tried to implement the system from walden two, including work credits. Do you know how this turned out?", "timestamp": 1319657514}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114987071963782993407", "anchor": "gp-1319658046192", "service": "gp", "text": "looks like Los Horcones is still running with it. With the brain for game design, manipulation of how people play and act is a part of the game, running and being a part of experiments seems reasonable to me. If the community was large enough to support technical abilities that I like, I would probably fit in well.", "timestamp": 1319658046}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1319665722975", "service": "gp", "text": "\"If you look at the market, you notice that some people earn a lot more for an hour of work than other people, which seems unfair.\"\n
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\nHow so? I think your post outlines compelling reasons to believe that it is fair (abstractly, at least, if not at the detail level of specific comparisons between different tasks).\n
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\nAs for weighing different tasks different amounts in this time share system... at that point, you're basically doing the same thing we do with money, only in a more confusing and less useful way. Hard to see what the point is.", "timestamp": 1319665722}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114987071963782993407", "anchor": "gp-1319668010428", "service": "gp", "text": "Todd, possibly the issue seen with money is that it has gone so far beyond just work value that it now associates with extraneous issues beyond basic 'fancy bartering' with banks creating 'money' out of thin air, loaning against partial debts, and the like that it ceases to have the same type of value as work hours, even if our work hours have different value.", "timestamp": 1319668010}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1319668236962", "service": "gp", "text": "That doesn't seem like a problem with money itself. Nor does it seem like something that using hours as currency would inherently avoid.\n
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\nFor instance, starting with 5 hours (as Jeff describes) is creating time out of thin air.", "timestamp": 1319668236}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1319669148844", "service": "gp", "text": "@Todd\n I think you're right that timebanking not working well is evidence against it being unfair that some people earn more than others. Before looking at how it would work to try and trade hours, though, it seemed to me, and I think it seems to many people, that an hour trading system would be more fair. You see this with the occupy [place] protest discussions: the idea that some people are making 100x what other people make is taken as evidence that people are not being paid fairly.", "timestamp": 1319669148}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1319669490339", "service": "gp", "text": "I'll take your word for it that it seems more fair a priori, it certainly doesn't to me. At the very least, if I am twice as efficient as you at completing a task, I shouldn't be punished for that by virtue of receiving half the credit. Time invested isn't really what you want to measure, it's the value of what's produced with that time, which is why my initial reaction to the idea was negative (and why I think money functions as a better proxy, whatever other problems it may have).", "timestamp": 1319669490}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1319674742004", "service": "gp", "text": "@Todd\n From a fairness perspective, I think it depends why you are twice as effective. Let's say you're much stronger than me, so in our jobs as porters you are twice as efficient as I am. We're both getting lots of exercise, so the strength difference comes almost entirely from how lucky we were in the genes lottery. My naive conception of fairness would say that we should earn a similar amount, or if you should earn more it shouldn't be nearly twice as much. Whereas if we were both salesmen, and you were bringing in twice the sales I was, it feels far less intuitively clear to me that it would be unfair for you to be paid twice as much: perhaps if I spent some time reading up on how to be a better salesman, took some classes, or if I put more enthusiasm into it, I might become a better salesman and so match your sales. But perhaps even that is not reasonable: maybe you are a better salesman because of how you were raised, and because of your greater intelligence, verbal ability, and conscientiousness which all appear to have strong genetic components. Is your greater success then really due to greater efforts on your part and deserving of greater reward?\n
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\nTo me, the problem with \"from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs\" is not that it is unfair, but that it doesn't turn out to work well.", "timestamp": 1319674742}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1319675366729", "service": "gp", "text": "I don't know if it's adding much to say this when I already covered it in a sense, but I think that demonstrates that fairness is not the right metric. So perhaps rather then saying \"why does that seem unfair?\", I should say/have said \"why does it matter if it's unfair?\" Except people would probably have a much worse reaction to that response.", "timestamp": 1319675366}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114987071963782993407", "anchor": "gp-1319715546374", "service": "gp", "text": "I think the unfairness is that these high payed positions are supposed to be based on the fact that their job is risky, carrying the worth of billions of dollars on their decisions, so if they do their job correctly, they \nare\n worth 100 times as much as the next person. the problem is that when these people do a poor job, they STILL can that massive wage, even though they lost billions of dollars. If I do a crappy job, I get fired. I disagree that getting paid more than someone else is unfair at a core level, but in the complaints of OWS, I see unfairness as payment is not based on quality, only based on position.", "timestamp": 1319715546}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1319726166164", "service": "gp", "text": "I don't think that's at all surprising though. Suppose you have two offers- one for $X, where X is very large, but you lose most/all of it if you don't preform; and $X-y, where y is fairly small in relation to X, and you keep all of it regardless of performance. Which do you take? You can see this dynamic in baseball- only fringe players who are very high risks not to produce significant value end up signing contracts where a significant amount of their compensation is determined by performance.\n
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\nAlso, I don't see that this has anything to do with choice of currency. Even if you think this dynamic should be legislated against, changing the currency from money to time wouldn't be a way to accomplish that.", "timestamp": 1319726166}, {"author": "Lawrence", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/115836667815667734993", "anchor": "gp-1319774912007", "service": "gp", "text": "I would suggest that Perhaps what is \"fair\" can be separated from what is \"rational\". It is certainly rational for some people to make more than others, for example payment for production, but I think it is a legitimate use of the word fair to suggest that payment for effort is more fair.\n
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\nAt my job as a computer programmer, I am paid for both productivity and effort. This week, I've been working on a problem not of my creation whose solution depends on inputs from people who do not report to me. It has been slow going, and I have very little to show for my very significant effort. If my wage was directly dependent on number of problems solved, I would not be getting a paycheck, and that would be unfair. Extrapolating from my week, it doesn't take much effort to find that a teacher with a masters degree whose students routinely perform well (and idefining that is cleary out of scope) has probably amassed a comparable level of skill and is putting in a comparable level of effort, and therefore Fairness would dictate our salaries be comparable even if rationality says otherwise.", "timestamp": 1319774912}]}