Before the more intrinsic motivators start to take effect politically, we need to respect people’s cognitive investment in original ideas (patents, trademarks, copyright, and trade secrets as intellectual property[1] (‘IP’)) and for captured market share and business value for managers and owners through remuneration-compensation: payoffs.
It is incumbent to foreground the political nature of extrinsic motivators, in a market economy, of patents for original inventions, trademarking, copyrighting original content creation and business specific confidential knowledge as valid branches of intellectual IP, and the rewards of capturing market share resulting in profits paid to owners (including shareholders) in competition, as within the design and political and economic structures of capitalism itself.
The implementation of intelligent progressive politics, means a universal basic income (‘UBI’) is feasible, as a future desired outcome. Therein, we are capable of meeting everyone’s basic needs unconditionally. This eventually means we will no longer need extrinsic motivators, such as money, through labouring in the job-market. This is made particularly more realisable, in political implementation, through the intelligent reflexive development and design of automation and artificial intelligence (‘AI’), to outsource rote labour tasks as much as possible thereto. Extrinsic motivators are more useful, indeed, at incentivising rote and menial labour. Well, they – rote and menial labour – are definitely less enjoyable particularly if the labour reduces a human being to an acutely and chronically underpaid and overworked – in a hyper-Fordist factory business model – excessive cog-in-a-wheel ‘machine’ without much productive agency in the manufacture of the entirety of the product/s the business produces – an alienating anti-Marxist nightmare – such as is the case in sweatshop labour today.
A progressive political transition[2] may look like the following:
- Social Democracy;
- Market Socialism;
- Participatory Economics (‘Parecon’);
- Resource-Based Economy (‘RBE’)
In transitioning to market socialism[3], it would be ethically compulsory, I suggest, for graded governmental handsome lump-sum payments to IP holders and business owners (including shareholders), and managerial workers, in reflection of value-added in the terms of skill-based conceptions of capitalist workplace demand and capitalist production itself. Importantly, I hold that in political movement into market socialist workplace democracy, that we begin, across all citizens, to share five types of work a lot more equably:
- Rote and menial labour;
- Physical manual labour;
- Cognitive sedentary labour;
- Emotional labour;
- Duty of care labour
By the time and stage of Parecon[4] institutional implementation, the populace would be socialising for the abolition of money or credits, not just the legislative regulation of money to reign in its most anti-social excesses. A RBE[5], with an extensive legal framework for state enforced social solidarity[6], would make use of intrinsic motivators for all forms of human labour.
Intrinsic human motivators in adults are a bit like, or can be likened to, how children love to learn, play, be creative and socialise, without needing extrinsic monetary reward. Daniel Pink has made very important scholarly inroads into the science of human motivation, of which – this science – will be a topic for another blog post of mine, particularly after I have read his seminal book – Drive[7]– cover to cover!
Before concluding, I would now like to briefly return to, and flesh out, some more ethical reasons underpinning this need for compensation for intellectual property and differentiated hierarchical business positions. This is against what might otherwise amount to a ‘robber-baron’ working class or ‘robber-baron’ working class faction(s). Typically, revolutions can be based on violent envy[8].
Owners do labour, albeit sometimes a lot more conceptual than rote. This is breaking from a strict Marxist analysis: a Marxist analysis holds that workers create all the value in a business from which owners purportedly extract a surplus value made by workers materialising in profit[9]. It is natural for small business owners to work hard[10] to try to keep their prices, for goods and/or services rendered, lower than competitors, whilst simultaneously attempting at offering better quality goods and/or services, to capture more market share and maximise profits.
Furthermore in examining the role of managerial workers, they often work hard to be promoted, and as indicative through labour-actions, showcase high levels of individual self-sacrifice and/or merit. This can often be evidenced by their accrual of personal opportunity costs[11] in their commitment to workplace work-ethic and/or excellence in labour. As with many small business owners, managerial workers may intently and consciously forgo opportunities in their personal lives through an outstanding commitment to their integral roles and labour-positions in the economy at large.
As a general rule of capitalist economics, when capitalists are pursuing their narrow self-interests in business, there is also the unintentionally benefiting of others through the invisible hand[12] positive externality[13] of business markets: they made their fortunes through the pre-existing rules of the game, which lends them weighted positive ethical significance and gravity. This – conforming to legalised gaming strategies in pursuing accumulation of resources – has merit and commands respect, since therein they had economic success without directly harming others, and within a socially sanctioned matrix of economic justice with an internally consistent intra-rationality.
To conclude this blog entry, it is important to gradually socialise, through implementing progressivist stepping-stone politics, for intrinsic motivation to contribute to fellow humans, and other sentient beings, and for more pro-social behaviours. This is particularly so with the advent and streamlining of automation production and AI technologies and the convergence of these technology types with each other. However, it is imperatively noted that even with rote and menial work labour demanded and needed to be performed by humans themselves, without outsourcing to technology, we should share this as equably as possible, as a guiding social justice and political-economic principle.
References
Albert, M 2003, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, Verso, London.
Australian Government, 25 September 2024, ‘Intellectual property’, Business, last accessed 5 January 2025, https://business.gov.au/planning/protect-your-brand-idea-or-creation/intellectual-property
Ellerman, D 2021, Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy, Springer Nature Switzerland Ag, Cham.
Fresco, J 2018, The Best That Money Can’t Buy, 8th edn, Global Cyber-Visions, Venus.
Marx, K 2013, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Wordsworth Editions Limited, Ware.
McTaggart, D, Findlay, C and Parkin, M 2010, Economics, Pearson Australia, Sydney.
Miller, S, 12 November 2021, ‘Modern General Counsel: Four types of intellectual property’, Thomson Reuters, last accessed 5 January 2025, https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/insights/articles/four-types-of-intellectual-property
Pink, D 2010, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Canongate Books, New York.
Smith, A 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edited by J.R. McCulloch, Adam Black and William Tait, Edinburgh/London. The Institute of Art and Ideas, 10 December 2024, ‘Why Steven Pinker is against all world revolutions’, YouTube, last viewed 5 January 2025, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uZgaUmh7imw
Footnotes
[1] Extensively, IP covers: patents are for “inventions and new processes”; trade marks as for “logos, words and other branding”; copyright as for “art, writing, music, film, and computer programs’; registered designs for “visual design of a product”; circuit layout rights for “layout designs or plans of integrated circuits used in computer-generated designs”; plant breeder’s rights for “commercial rights of new plant varieties”. Trade secrets for “any information…[a business]…would not want..[its]…competitors to have”.
https://business.gov.au/planning/protect-your-brand-idea-or-creation/intellectual-property
https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/insights/articles/four-types-of-intellectual-property
[2] Note, this is implicitly pro a reformist – not revolutionary – mass progressive political party as a progressivist vanguard; perhaps the term revolutionary by reformist means may just qualify as apt? I believe nuanced reformist progressivism is superior to reactionary revolution, as evidenced by my writing, particularly in the entirety of my writing.
[3] See Ellerman, D 2021, Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy, Springer Nature Switzerland Ag, Cham.
[4] See Albert, M 2003, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, Verso, London.
[5] A RBE was envisioned by the late Jacque Fresco, the inventor, technocrat, and futurist. See Fresco, J 2018, The Best That Money Can’t Buy, 8th edn, Global Cyber-Visions, Venus, pp. 52, 55, and 61. In partialist departing from Fresco, I am for retaining some already entrenched progressive elements to politics, extant in already in some countries, such as for nation state territories; legal systems and legislation; law and order; separation of powers in the legislature, executive and judiciary; the rule of law; and private property to stipulate a few thereof. Furthermore, my progressivist politics includes, non-exhaustively, eventualising in small state socialisms; and small policing forces in the long-view. However, in the short view I am pro larger progressive taxation and a very well-funded and very well paid policing force to assist particularly in bringing serious crime to justice, and also particularly in dis-emboldening, and thus deterring, serious criminal acts. Note: I define serious criminal acts as acts which do serious harm to another or others.
[6] This is at the least a contingency catering for the existence of the irrevocable pledge to ‘absolutist evil’ by individuals and/or groups, in a perspective that is somewhat Manichaean, herein adapted to politics.
[7] Pink, D 2010, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Canongate Books, New York.
[8] On this point please see Professor Steven Pinker on revolution: ‘Why Steven Pinker is against all world revolutions”, last accessed 5 January 2025, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8up6jWpSztU
[9] See Marx, K 2013, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Wordsworth Editions Limited, Ware, Parts 3-5, pp. 120-374.
[10] I like the social justice conception and idea of “the travails of small business”! It is very apt, I find.
[11] Opportunity cost, of any action, as an economics’ concept, can be understood as “the highest-valued alternative forgone” McTaggart, D, Findlay, C and Parkin, M 2010, Economics, Pearson Australia, Sydney p. 35.
[12] Smith, A 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edited by J.R. McCulloch, Adam Black and William Tait, Edinburgh/London, p. 246.
[13] “An externality is a cost or a benefit that affects someone other than the seller or the buyer”, see McTaggart, D, Findlay, C and Parkin, M 2010, Economics, Pearson Australia, Sydney, p. 117. Here I mean it as a positive externality on society, but also I note that the seller and buyer benefit too, naturally.
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