We’re arguing past each other.

My parents installed “Net Nanny” to keep me from watching porn or spending too much time on the internet as a middle-schooler. (Trust me, they’re good and accepting parents.) Anyway, I figured out that all you had to do was not click “okay” on the startup-induced message window and Net Nanny never started the controls or timer.

I think you take my defense of the usefulness of the profit motive, and the wonderful things it’s gotten us, as a declaration that it is the best external motivator and should be used in all situations. Of course not.

Your first paragraph is simply not true in the sense that even if everyone’s basic needs were met (and we should create a society where they are) money would still be the main source of power outside violence. Most people are not satisfied by basic necessities, especially when given examples that better is possible.

Your second paragraph is an excellent example of the limitations of the profit motive, and it’s why we should continue to fund public research and development in areas where the profit motive fails. We already do it and in fact we should significantly increase our funding levels. There are other areas where the profit motive fails (utilities, healthcare at the point of delivery, national defense, education, etc.) and I think we (the United States) should expand into internet and universal health insurance.

For your third paragraph… What do you want? For humans to be better? They will nearly always go with the easy solution. It’s weirdos who look at difficult problems and take the honest, long term, responsible solution at the expense of themselves or even just short-term pain. This is fine. You’re not going to change human nature. I just don’t know what kind of system you want to set up where money still exists, yet greedy short-sighted people don’t exist or work their ways into leadership positions at companies? I think the current punishments they receive for their bad behavior isn’t nearly harsh or immediate enough, but… They’re still gonna do it.

I have lots of improvements I want to make to the world, they just don’t involve denying human nature when you keep the fundamental structure of the system they exist in.

But like, money is what creates the profit motive? How do you keep money and remove the ability to accumulate wealth? Money is power and there are those who crave power. I agree, the less money you have, the more help you should get. Same with the opposite. But like, this discussion is based off “innovation exists without the profit motive” and I chimed in to point out that it’s not really the innovation that the profit motive is good for. It’s all the support systems around the invitation that enable these ideas to become big. The ultra-fast pace of innovation is enabled by these systems and given us all the wonderful medicines and quality of life improvements. I am on disability. My lifestyle is immense luxury compared to royalty from even just a dozen generations ago.

You’re looking at the source of new ideas: inventive people, and saying they would exist under any system. I’m looking at the system and saying great ideas go nowhere without a way to engage people who don’t care about your idea.

Imagine a world without money. In order to convince people to promote and enable your great idea, you have to convince them it’s valuable, beneficial, and actually a great idea. Imagine a world with money. In order to convince people to promote and enable your great idea, you have to pay them. I’m being serious here: which do you think is easier?

You can do it on any PC if you’re willing to look up how.

Seriously, we do not need to live with unpredictable, dangerous billionaire middlemen in order to make the world a better place.

You’re right! I do not believe the concentration of wealth into so few hands is necessary or even a good thing. What I am saying is that the profit motive is necessary in order to mobilize people who do not care about your great new idea, no matter how great it is. Do you really think intentional shipping would function at any recognizable level if there wasn’t profit in it for the sailors, ship builders, insurance companies, port authorities, and so on and so forth? None of then give a shit about your really cool idea. They don’t even know about it. But they’re necessary for you to get ahold of that molybdenum you need in order to prove your idea works, much less scale it to production levels that would actually benefit society.

You have to remember, the world is filled with people who mostly just want to hang out with their friends, and that’s fine. Some of us are movers, shakers, and innovators, yes, but we need help from all those people who would rather be tanning or at a soccer match. How do we get them to help out? Pay em. Give them money for their trouble.

When the Tulsa race riots happened, black applications for patents in the US fell dramatically. Why? Because black people saw that they could put in lots of hard work, become hugely successful, and the US government wasn’t gonna protect them and their wealth like it would other people’s. Why spend your time on something that could be taken at at any moment? It should be unsurprising for you to learn that increases corruption and authoritarianism cause decreases in inventions and economic activity. Why? Same reason. Why put in the hard work and take the risks if some official’s cousin is going to get a contract at ridiculous rates and drive you out of business? Why even bother when the government could just nationalize your industry on a whim?

You mentioned that businesses will kill ideas they don’t think are profitable or will cannibalize sales. Do you know who used to be the biggest killer of innovation? The government and the workers. Most innovation is fundamentally finding ways to do things better with less labor. You know who doesn’t like suddenly not having a job? Workers. Why would a government oppose labor saving devices? Too many people out of a job can lead to political unrest.

I suggest: Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.

In order to take an innovative idea, develop it into a product or service that can be delivered for reasonable time, cost, and effort, and then spread that innovation to anyone who wants it, you need massive bureaucratic organizations and simple ways of trading effort between organizations. Very few people are passionate about bureaucracy, even fewer when they’re not getting paid. Without the safety systems in place to allow for big organizations and reliable imter-organization collaboration, most cool ideas would stay in the garage.

Also, in the modern world, most innovations require access to machines and resources too expensive to be secured by some guy playing with ideas and materials in his free time.

There are examples of innovative individuals doing amazing things for the love of the game on their own dime and on their own time, yes, but their achievements are dwarfed by the innovations created by people working in systems and bankrolled by organizations.

Yeah I did the same using WinUtil. Still, I only fire up windows when I need to use software without native Linux support.

So they can have an excuse to force you to upgrade to Windows 11 beyond “whoops, turns out making an operating system as a ‘buy once’ product is a bad idea.”

People do it with fruit trees all the time. As the other commenter said, it’s called grafting.

The benefits of homework depend on how old the kid is and how much homework they’re getting. Too much homework too early is either a wash or an overall negative, but homework as a concept does have benefits.

That’s really the crux of this stupid argument. Is a neural network that analyzes x-rays before handing them to a doctor AI? I would say no. At this point, AI means “over hyped LLM and other generalist models.” But the person trying to judge others over AI would say yes.

Fucking love my Framework 16 and I’ll tell everyone every chance I get.

If we’re talking half-scale, you’d need a private jet, or something similar.

Lol, it’s literally labeled other. 🤦🏼‍♂️

It could be “other” or it could be “transportation mode unknown.”

To be clear about Lincoln, he was handed a request for an even bigger mass hanging, and reduced it down to 38. He didn’t think he could deny the having request entirely without ending up ignored and having even more people killed. You can call him whenever names you like, but his intent was to keep as many people alive as he thought he could.

Try Vintage Story! The devs are high quality and there are plenty of mods. Plus the graphics range is accommodating for potato computers and beefy rigs.

I like guns.