Good points. I don't know, I genuinely don't know yet; this problem is by far the biggest obstacle in the face of a non-capitalist economy (all the rest require more easily conceivable technological and institutional infrastructure). Still racking my brains...
(A more detailed, but still incomplete presentation of this little snippet of an idea was actually the theme for a mega-post I got planned, but it looks like every time I open my mouth about a potentially controversial topic my karma barely manages to break even and I get trolled to hell and back, so that's a bit of a deterrent for me to even talk about politics any longer.)
The challenges are on multiple levels: 1) to show up at all at work; 2) to exceed expectations and do a great job; 3) to innovate, invent, revolutionize a field.
The only other bunch who has about the same stated goals consists of the anarcho-communists (which provide most of the availabe discussion on the topic), but they don't go about it in a rational way. When confronted with the problem of laziness, their approach is 60% "revolution will kiss it and make it better", 30% "we need to indoctrinate everyone thoroughly into communism" and 10% "if someone refuses to work, off with their heads!". (Broadly, the three approaches you mentioned.) They can't into incentives, disapprove of even mild and justified hierarchy, are heavily into Marxist concepts, and allow wishful thinking to heavily bias their model of how things would happen. That's not how you succeed in such an endeavour.
Coercion is probably the worst way out of this. Creating an atmosphere of fear is inimical to prosperity, innovation, industry, and the entrepreneurial drive. It puts people out of the "thrive" mode and into "survive" mode. The output is bound to be mediocre at best.
It might be very necessary to think outside of the box on this topic, to step outside the contemporary Western paradigm and explore the matter from all possible angles. Who knows, maybe money isn't the end-all-be-all of it. The neural underpinnings of self-interested motivation certainly predate the invention of money. I've considered rewards in luxury goods and in status, promotion to aristocracy, demotion to serfdom, consumers as management class... heck, even getting people on stimulants to improve their productivity. I've even considered limited monetary circuits for certain classes of goods, but before becoming convinced of the merit of this idea, I need to quell my fears that down that road lie Wall Street, landfills, corporate jargon, and mandatory ubiquitous advertising.
I won't expand on this any more until I feel like I have something especially useful to say, and will only post that essay (which gets a few FAQs out of the way) if I have reasons to expect that more good stuff than bad will come out of the ensuing discussion. And even that, probably not here but on Omnilibrium.
Good points. I don't know, I genuinely don't know yet; this problem is by far the biggest obstacle in the face of a non-capitalist economy (all the rest require more easily conceivable technological and institutional infrastructure). Still racking my brains...
So do you have any evidence this is doable, because right now you sound like the crackpot saying "my perpetual motion machine will work just as soon as I figure out a way around the second law of thermodynamics".
Note: I'm terrible at making up titles, and I think that the one I gave may give the wrong impression. If anyone has a suggestion on what I should change it to, it would be much appreciated.
As I've been reading articles on less wrong, it seems to me that there are hints of an underlying belief which states that not only is capitalism a good economic paradigm, it shall remain so. Now, I don't mean to say anything like 'Capitalism is Evil!' I think that capitalism can, and has, done a lot of good for humanity.
However, I don't think that capitalism will be the best economic paradigm going into the future. I used to view capitalism as an inherent part of the society we currently live in, with no real economic competition.
I recently changed my views as a result of a book someone recommended to me 'The zero marginal cost society' by Jeremy Rifkin. In it, the author states that we are in the midst of a third industrial revolution as a result of a new energy/production and communications matrix i.e. renewable energies, 3-D printing and the internet.
The author claims that these three things will eventually bring their respective sectors marginal costs to zero. This is significant because of a 'contradiction at the heart of capitalism' (I'm not sure how to phrase this, so excuse me if I butcher it): competition is at the heart of capitalism, with companies constantly undercutting each other as a result of new technologies. These technological improvement allow a company to produce goods/services at a more attractive price whilst retaining a reasonable profit margin. As a result, we get better and better at producing things, and it lets us produce goods at ever decreasing costs. But what happens when the costs of producing something hit rock bottom? That is, they can go no lower.
3D printing presents a situation like this for a huge amount of industries, as all you really need to do is get some designs, plug in some feedstock and have a power source ready. The internet allows people to share their designs for almost zero cost, and renewable energies are on the rise, presenting the avenue of virtually free power. All that's left is the feedstock, and the cost of this is due to the difficulty of producing it. Once we have better robotics, you won't need anyone to mine/cultivate anything, and the whole thing becomes basically free.
And when you can get your goods, energy and communications for basically free, doesn't that undermine the whole capitalist system? Of course, the arguments presented in the book are much more comprehensive, and it details an alternative economic paradigm called the Commons. I'm just paraphrasing here.
Since my knowledge of economics is woefully inadequate, I was wondering if I've made some ridiculous blunder which everyone knows about on this site. Is there some fundamental reason why Jeremy Rifkin's is a crackpot and I'm a fool for listening to him? Or is it more subtle than that? I ask because I felt the arguments in the book pretty compelling, and I want some opinions from people who are much better suited to critiquing this sort of thing than I.
Here is a link to the download page for the essay titled 'The comedy of the Commons' which provides some of the arguments which convinced me:
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1828/
A lecture about the Commons itself:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf
And a paper (?) about governing the commons:
http://www.kuhlen.name/MATERIALIEN/eDok/governing_the_commons1.pdf
And here is a link to the author's page, along with some links to articles about the book:
http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/pages/Milestones.cfm
http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/pages/Press--Articles.cfm
An article displaying some of the sheer potential of 3D printers, and how it has the potential to change society in a major way:
http://singularityhub.com/2012/08/22/3d-printers-may-someday-construct-homes-in-less-than-a-day/
Edit: Drat! I forgot about the stupid questions thread. Should I delete this and repost it there? I mean, I hope to discuss this topic with others, so it seems suitable for the DISCUSSION board, but it may also be very stupid. Advice would be appreciated.