Comment by dclowd9901
2 years ago
> “Let me tell you, I never felt I was going to work, never,” said Romero, who retired as a corporate accountant in 2009 from the famed Bell Labs headquarters in Murray Hill.
Every. Single. Amazing endeavor that’s ever happened has people who describe contributing to that endeavor this way. Every one.
It brings to mind the kind of world that could exist without profit motives, where people do things simply because they’ve never been done before. Like maybe the world that Star Trek illustrates.
I think the greatest regret in my life isn’t that I won’t see Alpha Centauri with my own eyes, but that we can’t fucking figure out how to make our world like this.
I used to feel the way you do. I am also a big Star Trek TNG fan.
But I feel in the real world the profit motive is pretty important. In systems that have been tried so far that attempted to eliminate the profit motive (Soviet system, Chinese economic system prior to free market reforms) the lack of profit motive seems to have led to stagnation and bloated centralized bureaucrats unable to do things effectively.
Also remember that there are lots of important jobs out there for society to function properly that are unglamorous. Lots of jobs in the medical field for example or waste disposal or toilet cleaning and so on. In a world without money who would be doing such jobs? Why would anyone clean toilets without being paid for it?
In the Star Trek utopia the assumption is that people would do it anyway for the betterment of society. But today in the real world it seems money and the profit motive is necessary both on a micro level and on a macro level.
EDIT: I realized this comment may come off as too argumentative. Not my intention. I sympathize with your underlying sentiment. I just wanted to add my thoughts too. I apologize if any of this came off as hostile in any way
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