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Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by derefr on Saturday May 04, 2013 @08:34PM (#5656922)
> I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work.

The drive to seek "intermittent rewards/thrills" isn't universal. Specifically, in people with naturally low dopamine responsivity[1][2], it's almost non-existent. Within this group, you don't tend to see anyone who enjoys casinos and/or casual-social-mobile games, for example; they experience no dopamine hit from one session, so they aren't drawn to replay.

There's a categorization system of psychological reward profiles, originally derived from MMO play-styles, called the Bartle test (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm). Of the four Bartle types, people with low dopamine responsivity are almost never "Achievers"--instead tending to focus on the other three. Here's the description of the category:

> Achievers regard points-gathering and rising in levels as their main goal, and all is ultimately subserviant to this. Exploration is necessary only to find new sources of treasure, or improved ways of wringing points from it. Socialising is a relaxing method of discovering what other players know about the business of accumulating points, that their knowledge can be applied to the task of gaining riches. Killing is only necessary to eliminate rivals or people who get in the way, or to gain vast amounts of points (if points are awarded for killing other players).

In a business context, people who aren't Achievers are almost[3] inherently MacLeod "Losers."

---

[1] Low dopamine responsivity is diagnosed around 7% of the time as ADD/ADHD. It is so widely prevalent in modern populations, though, that many doctors refuse to recognize, diagnose, or treat for that condition, dismissing it as "a healthy psychological state which just doesn't mesh very well with the expectations of the labor market." However, you will frequently find that someone treated for ADD/ADHD, whether or not it is a real condition, will become a Bartle "Achiever" where they previously were not.

[2] People who have had chronically-low dopamine responsivity their whole lives also tend, more than the median member of the population, to self-identify as either "nerds" or "creatives" (or both.) When you don't derive any internal "rush" from competing with others (whether "doing the sports" or "going into finance" or "making the sale"), you tend to need to "make your own fun"--which leads to such pursuits as programming, science-fiction, and Minecraft; or to painting, writing, composing, et al. There is a reason, besides their market value, that an MBA in a down market will "hustle", while an Illustration-major will work as a barrista.

[3] The "Explorer" play-style/reward-profile gives them the ability to also be "Technocrats" (in your terminology), though.

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by jjoonathan on Saturday May 04, 2013 @09:02PM (#5657003)
> The drive to seek "intermittent rewards/thrills" isn't universal.

Perhaps not, but so long as the market can offer something to everyone people will still have incentive to work. Basic Income doesn't mean you can afford everything without working.

The market is extraordinarily good at producing carrots yet we seem hell-bent on using sticks. I think there's room to improve on that front.

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by derefr on Saturday May 04, 2013 @09:08PM (#5657020)
Right, I didn't mean to suggest that the MacLeod "Losers" will drop out of the labor market entirely--just that their participation will shift dramatically.

For a lot of them, for example, they'll see this as their chance to switch from feigning interest in Achievement-based work, to genuinely striving at Explorational work: likely in the form of making (and perhaps trying to sell) artistic works all day, or doing original mathematical/scientific/philosophical research.

I imagine that you'll see a sudden glut of Great American Novels, itch-scratching open-source software, and enough treatise to compare to Venice in the 1600s, but relatively few dishwashers. :)

We might also see a resurgence in Social work: people who can now afford to spend all day doing volunteer work for various causes. I'm unsure as to the impact of this, but it would probably be a minor revolution and solve several "just needs more bodies" welfare problems (like getting everyone immunized for things, or having an appropriate number of daycares/preschools.)

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by jjoonathan on Saturday May 04, 2013 @09:15PM (#5657032)
Don't you think that's a much healthier configuration than what we have now? I like the idea of rewarding grunt work more than we presently do. After all, if wages of dishwashers get high enough, we might just have to invent a machine to do it for us, no?

Besides, even Great American Novelists have use for money. They could buy equipment for a roadtrip, buy a nicer computer for writing, buy services that help them focus on more writing (e.g. pay other people to be dishwashers), and so on. In turn, this gives them incentive to work. It's capitalism as usual, it just doesn't fetishize the 40 hour workweek.

EDIT: just saw you added social work to your list. You're beating me at my own game, perhaps I'd better stop preaching to the choir?

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by dllthomas on Saturday May 04, 2013 @11:14PM (#5657312)
In light of this article (and this comment thread), what we're seeing at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5655243, previous reading I've done, and my increasing exasperation at supply-side solutions for economic troubles that don't seem to be particularly on the supply side...

How do we make BI happen?

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by xavi on Sunday May 05, 2013 @03:26PM (#5659432)
About rewarding grunt work more, that's also the idea on which the work is distributed in the utopian community described in Skinner's Walden Two:

"About four labor credits are required per day, which translates to anywhere from two to six hours of work depending on the number of credits that are awarded per hour for a given job. Unpleasant jobs, like cleaning sewers, are given higher credit values than easy ones. Members are free to choose their jobs each day, except those that require special training, like medicine."

I recommend that book. (I read it when I was a teenager, more than twenty years ago.)

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by ajuc on Monday May 06, 2013 @08:21AM (#5661929)
Isn't it basicaly salary, just centralized?
Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by xavi on Monday May 06, 2013 @01:05PM (#5663390)
I do not understand your comment. Do you know of any salary whose amount depends on how pleasant/unpleasant the job is? The idea here is that unpleasant jobs, i.e. jobs that most of the people do not want to do, are paid more. I don't think this is the case in our current society.
Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by saraid216 on Sunday May 05, 2013 @08:38PM (#5660379)
I'm pretty sure Dr Bartle would object to generalizing HCDS out to the general population.

Also, to 'lifeisstillgood, Bartle actually expands on his paradigm in the book Designing Virtual Worlds, where he introduces another axis for the four types (bringing it to eight) and also specifies two progressions between the types as players grow.

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-Bartl...

The man is alive and kicking and will probably take questions.

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by batemanesque on Saturday May 04, 2013 @10:41PM (#5657255)
do you have sources on "low dopamine responsivity", the ADD/ADHD connection, or the "nerd"/"creative" thing?
Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by gregholmberg on Sunday May 05, 2013 @12:13AM (#5657420)
Time Magazine science writer Maia Szalavitz interprets ...

[0] "Your Drive to Compete May Come Down to Dopamine" http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/02/your-drive-to-compete-...

[1] "Amphetamine Spurs Slackers to Work and Workers to Slack — at Least For Rats" http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/29/amphetamine-spurs-slac...

.

... some research by Michael T. Treadway and nine others.

[2] "Dopaminergic Mechanisms of Individual Differences in Human Effort-Based Decision-Making" http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/18/6170.full

> " ... We found that individual differences in [dopamine] function in the left striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex were correlated with a willingness to expend greater effort for larger rewards, particularly when probability of reward receipt was low. ... "

You could argue that this mechanism is a neurochemical amplifier of entrepreneurial behavior.

Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by batemanesque on Sunday May 05, 2013 @10:59AM (#5658491)
this is interesting research but describing it as "a neurochemical amplifier of entrepreneurial behavior" is both premature & absurdly reductive - the equivalent of people referring to oxytocin as "the love hormone". and I don't see a solid ADD/ADHD connection
Re:Experiment in paying villagers in India an unconditional ... by lifeisstillgood on Sunday May 05, 2013 @12:07PM (#5658766)
Ok you just expanded my mind and gave description to a whole new vista - can you write this up as a book?