For the record i do pay creators that make the stuff i enjoy because i am not impoverished and i recognize that within this economy i am the group that should support their livelihoods.
The way i see it when it comes to the poor only 2 options exist.
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poor person cant afford to purchase the game so valve gets 0 dollars and the poor feel worse because they see everyone enjoying this thing they are financially excluded from
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the poor person obtains a free copy, valve gets the same 0 dollars but now the poor person can be included within the games community, potentially aiding its popularity. Absolutely nothing is lost.
Currently everyone who want to pirate can do so, and yet creators still exists, evidently enough people are paying to maintain it.
I understand your argument in context of a functional fair economy but i am an anti-capitalist
I know you may disagree with this and i respect the focus in wanting to make the current system work but ultimately my ideal is that the means to live should be separate from our productivity. If food, healthcare, housing, family and entertainment are all guaranteed. Then a creator does not need money to share their work. They can create because they want to create because they enjoy to create. And the face that people would copy and enjoy their work is the highest form of flattery as it means people really like what you do/make. The enjoyment of those people becomes the creators contributing to society.
You may think that people wouldn’t do some work anymore but that is where i would wholeheartedly disagree. Many people would do volunteer work if they didn’t need a job, i would still do the very same thing for free that i am getting paid for now but arguably id be even more motivated because id feel like i am helping the community rather then having it be a business transaction for personal gain.
I respect that perspective, and hey some games even say “yeah pirate it and share it with your friends who might buy”. The place I still would have issue is that the society you’re discussing does t exist NOW in the US so it’s a little unfair to live by how things would be if the world were perfect.
I am not sure what you mean. I am not vouching for people that buy games now to stop and become pirates. I also sincerely hope no one has forgone a daily hot meal or sold a kidney just to obtain a game which can be pirated.
Piracy does exists right now in the us and many people do so; i have yet to see it being the main factor of a studio going bankrupt.
Its an indication that most people are willing to do the right thing which is a different thing depending on their socio-economic circles.
To simplify, it would be nice if everyone got a universal provision for food, housing, and money, but they don’t. Your argument is that “if we had these basic things, there’s no reason not to have X game for free.”
BUT, we don’t yet have those things. That makes it not fair to just take it.
Big tangent here, but
They can create because they want to create because they enjoy to create.
Okay so now everyone is a creator, who manages them? Who deals with distribution, with bugfixes, with all the tiny minutiae in Yung modern world?
My job is that I maintain the electrical power that goes to the servers that host the software that people use to create. No one has a “passion” for power and cooling system maintenance, but it’s an absolute necessity even in a fully automated world. Someone has to make sure the robots are working. Who has a passion for creating a controls monitoring system that is 2% faster and 8% more efficient than the previous iteration? Who will decide to create, in their spare time, one tenth of one percent of one percent of one project that eventually becomes the next iphone? Who will volunteers their time to make sure tickets are routed properly between these departments? Who lies awake at night wishing they were independently wealthy so they could have the time and energy to tell people that their poor performance is hurting a project and the project doesn’t want them anymore?
You envision a world where there are billions of artists and no one who knows how to replace the insulation in your attic, or would do it if they could.
I don’t think everyone has a passion for art either.
Honestly your picked the wrong person to lay out this particular example :), no offence.
I have a very big passion for creating small % efficiency every iteration. In fact i refuse to do any task any other way. If i am not improving the flow of a task every time i do it then my talents are being wasted. As long as i can do such improvements even the most repetitive menial tasks are fun. Ive nevee had a task go stale besides when a bosses specifically barred me from looking for potential improvements.
Ive spend much free time to specifically tweak the airflow and temps of my desktop. I absolutely wouldn’t mind to use those skills elsewhere.
Some people get annoyed knowing something is broken/not perfect and get a kick out of solving that no matter what its about.
Some of the stuff you mentioned like routing tickets and much of the work i do know can soon be automated by ai and robots.
I very much agree robots need human oversight/caretakers but it again confused me that there be no people willing to this. Most fellow nerds love robots, some already build and improve them as a hobby, seems only natural that the opportunity to use that skill for a greater good can be even more rewarding.
I am sorry to hear you dont seem to feel this kind of excitement with your job now. I am not sure how you became burned out or where nudged in a career path doesn’t interest you.
I am not assuming your actual personal ability to do a great job but i admit that the fact many people aren’t excited about their job is something that worries me towards work quality. If i wasn’t I would not trust myself to get optimal results.
My hope is that once your livelihood is guaranteed without work income you no longer feel pressure to do what you don’t love so you can go out, discover what you do love and find there is almost certainly something you can do that you are passioned about that can be used helping society rather then just yourself.
I know a few fellow jobless autists with untapped potential as they were failed by the school system that would love a chance to work in your industry.
That’s so incredibly naive. I’m not even mad at you, I just feel sorry for you. You seem like a bright and hopeful person but if you keep looking for this version of society you will constantly be disappointed.
I’ll just say, there are a lot of people who like their jobs. I’m actually one of them. Almost none of those people enjoy their jobs enough that they would choose to work rather than not work, for no additional gain. Maybe you’re one of that tiny sliver of people. But if so, there’s not enough of you to keep society functioning, much less progressing.
