MeatballWiki

MoneyAndCommunity

The phenomenon of "money" is tightly connected to the phenomenon of "community", because a stable and reasonably large cultural context is needed to create money; and because a monetary system is needed for interaction with society. So "community" may refer to a society or state, to increasingly larger units historically, so that we may expect that at some time a world currency supported by the UNO will come into existence.

Money is created and used because it solves a number of problems (maybe MoneyPattern), it creates advantages for the society as a whole, especially for its economic activities. Of course, not everyone is equal, there are winners and losers of money systems. Those in control are typically best off. Is money good, bad or does this depend on how it is managed or controlled?

In a world of injustice, money looks as the source of a lot of evils. People and communities think about a life without money. They think about money that is somehow purified, to get more social justice. Alternate and regional currencies are in use, often with great success. Are AlternateCurrencies, RegionalCurrencies or VirtualCurrencies a way to go?

Relatively small communities have to use the money that is available. Some communities, e. g. online-communities may be in a situation where money is not needed and this may look like idyllic. If goals go beyond being a discussion group, then real resources may be necessary or desirable. The introduction of money into an existing online community that worked without money up to that point, may create all kinds of PureOnlineCommunityMoneyProblems.

Online Communities are often grown as part of a business plan of some corporation. A Mass of member or contributors are attracted by some free service and when some critical mass has been reached, then paid add-ons can be introduced as cheap services, without burdening the typical member strong enough to blow the community. Maybe MassServiceCommunities?

Pure online communities could also be created to produce or provide services, but it seems that it seems not easy to make them work. It might be very attractive to think about a workplace at home, working for an online community, maybe one that you co-own, that provides a living. Maybe OnlineCooperatives?

Introducing money in a new context

The psychology of money holds that people separate the world into moneyed things and non-moneyed things, and you should never confuse the two. An act done for altruistic reasons should not be rewarded with money, but rather through means that deepen PersonalRelationships. Giving a $20 tip to someone who helped you up from a fall would be considered a grave insult. You can't give the cashier at the grocery store helpful advice in lieu of payment.

However, it is a common myth that the pursuit of money is always counter to doing good in the world, sometimes expressed as "Money is the root of all evil." There are enlightened approaches, such as SocialEntrepreneurship, where people are in business to support a social cause.

Keep in mind that money is an abstraction of resources. If you want to make an impact in the world, you need resources, and therefore money. You have to keep money coming in to remain operating. Charity is a business too, which is why charities spend a lot of money on fundraising. In some cases 90% of funds raised go to pay the fundraiser, but it's worth it to collect the 10% and get the donor on the donor list.

For big problems, if you want to scale a charity's operations to meet the challenge, you need to keep bringing in more and more money. The most efficient legal structures for raising the funds are for-profit businesses. Profit can be invested in building scale, which will generate more profit to keep building. Moreover, businesses are more easy to make self-sustaining than donations. Eventually you could naturally and sustainably grow your business to meet the whole challenge. If the business is fundamentally about fighting for a social good, it's considered to be a SocialEnterprise. The revolution must be profitable, or at least 'not-for-loss'!

People also often turn their hobbies into their careers. There is a huge psychological change when this happens, as hobbies are done primarily for fun, whereas work is done primarily for survival. It's such a big shift that it's common advice to do the thing you love the most as a hobby and the do the thing you love second as a career. Nevertheless, if you can navigate the change, you can do what you love for money, which is amazing. If your hobby is about helping other people, this can be truly rewarding. On the other hand, because all your psychological rewarding activities are in the same basket, it's common to burn out if you take this path.

Conflicts of interest

HelmutLeitner: I was engaged in an NGO for regional development (because I was interested of the effects of wiki as a tool). Lots of people did a lot of unpaid work for a better future. There was a lot of idealism and of "poverty" in a sense, which was accepted in face of a grand vision. After two years it became clearer and clearer to me that certain resources had to be made available to reach the goals. Partly to pay for external resources, partly to decrease "poverty" internally. This creates a number of problems. First of all, a problem of leadership. Second, when you start to distribute money, no-one thinks he is treated fair. Do you give those who do most, or those who need it most? Third, as an Organization you can get at money e. g. by funding, by project contributions, by providing (partly) paid services. All this needs entrepreneurial abilities. The need to "sell the community" is often contrary to what people seek, an alternative world beyond "selling". There come a lot of tensions. To me, it ended in a retreat, because I would have had to either give up on the explicite social goals or on my system knowledge.

[[This section needs work. It might be a good idea to move some of the other personal experiences here, and add a general introduction]]

Ideas for mitigating the harmful effects of money

Contributors: NathanielThurston, HelmutLeitner, JuanmaMP, FridemarPache, SunirShah

Conversation:

Todo: making subtitles and reorganizing conversation parts

JuanmaMP: Long time ago, I was in summer's course about chemical and enviroment, I was surprised a bit off topic this paper about the matrices of [Manfred_Max-Neef] (Human-scale Development). Always that I read about others economy, I remember of that model. I suggest the [book].

HelmutLeitner: As I suggested this page without actually creating it or a stub, I'm a bit astonished about what course it took. The topic seems to me very general. One could talk about families or NGOs and their ways to deal with money, one could even talk about the different catholic orders, rich and poor. Online communities seem to me just one more kind of social system. One can learn from tens of thousands other social systems that have existed. So my questions would be: What special ways do social systems have to deal with money? Is a separation between a social community and a non-social community (e. g. a corporation) senseful and possible, in relation to this topic? What are the advantages and problems of certain policies? / Actually it seems to me - ad hoc, without much analysis - that money is uninteresting if it is not related to things like ( "disposition" "power" "control" "competencies" ) being connected to "social status" in one way or other. / There is also a difference between money in internal relations and in external relations. It is interesting that coorporations whose business is making money externally have found organizational forms where money plays hardly a role at the workplace internally. / I think this is a vast topic.

Todo: making subtitles and reorganizing conversation parts

HelmutLeitner: Fridemar, I think that understanding online phenomena starts with understanding the real world and looking where online systems differ. Not the other way round, to think that the online world is beyond psychological or functional cause-effect relationships, a world of wishful constructivism.

FridemarPache focusing on actions instead of wishful constructivism: Helmut, it goes without saying that each knowledge, gained from the off-line worlds, can help to build a better on-line world, and it is clear that wishful constructivism, doesn't bring food on the table. It is not enough to ventilate and share ideas, we have the wonderful opportunity to actually realize new WikiNomics ideas in this MeatballWiki and beyond. Most of the people here appear to be not aware of this.

JuanmaMP: Fridemar, yes, I meant things as you say about extras, despite there's no parallel world, life online offers new opportunities by itself, not always from osmosis thanks to real world

FridemarPache: I changed the formulation into the more neutral wording: "Earning money", which doesn't tacitly presuppose, that there operates a powerful employer agent, upon who's mercy a kind of one sided dependency status is established. Instead of this we can explore alternatives, where each one is each other's employer and employee in a generalized sense.

FridemarPache balancing "negative" with "positive": Looking for Google:MoneyAndCommunity, I found in the search extract: the attribute "negative" prominently exposed. To not reinforce the classical cliché in the general conscience and to invite participants of either couleur, I added "positive" into the Intro.

NathanielThurston: On the subject of the utility and danger of money, my view is that money can be a powerful force, and as such that it has a tendency to illuminate, concentrate, and magnify existing social problems. Money is often introduced to serve the community, but somehow after some period of time has elapsed it has turned the tables, so that the community serves money. I think we all agree that money should serve community -- but how can we keep it in its proper place?

Antitheses to the issues given in the DocumentMode

FridemarPache: Earning no money by an activity done from the heart, can lead to unsound consequences, e.g. a segregation of the society into rich philantropists and kept poor people, who have no energies left to do "activities from their heart", because they have to work hard enough for (little) money elsewhere, whereas rich enough people can enjoy to be good-doers, not motivated by money. This way poor people are also deprived of the opportunity to build up their self-esteem.

Not integrating the income motive within communities can and does lead to a braindrain towards paid "serious work" outside the communities and thus to the death of communities in form of GhostTowns. On the other hand it tends to burdon the communities (administrators) with an increasing flood of spam from attackers, due to less vested wikizens (with little interest to defend their wiki "work"place) on a platform with increasing economical value.

NathanielThurston: Fridemar, would you please try to find a restatement of these assertions in a form to which you think Sunir would agree?

FridemarPache: Nathaniel thank you, for not deleting my balancing antitheses, but only moving them to this discussion section. I suggest to recover the original pairs of theses, antitheses in a form that needs reformulation of all the

involved statements. This is not an easy task, since the term money is loaden with lots of negative associations. Perhaps we need another more general page name like CurrencyAndCommunity to broaden our horizon.

FridemarPache: I would reformulate the statements in the issues section as:

  • Earning income by an activity, originally done from the heart, can eliminate the original pure motivation, but it can also lead to a more integral approach, where heart and ratio get reconciliated
  • Integrating or not integrating the economical dimension can lead to conflicts of interest, which can lead to community melt-down or community prospering

The evidence and reasoning I have to support this proposed reformulation is Insert argument here

BiLinks: <->

DiiGo annotated page.

CategoryWikinomics, CategoryPayment

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