reparations & exploitation

[Peter van Heusden]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 06:13:14PM +0000, Carl Remick wrote:
> >Sure, but how big the incentives should be is an empirical question in 
> >part.
> >Rawls suggests that inequalities of income are justified if they improve 
> >the
> >well being of the least well off. Would you consider it a  reason to 
> >licence
> >greater differentials if experience showed that allowing, say, 100%
> >differentials made a significant positive difference to those on the 
> >bottom?
> >--jks
> 
> Probably not.  In any event, why not give overachievers high-visibility 
> praise, etc., instead of financial rewards?
> 
'Free' software seems to sometimes use 'cultural capital' - i.e. 
higher prestige for good coders - rather than money as payment. This
might even be within a particular project - Nick Ing Simmons is well
known and appreciated in the perl development community, but pretty
much unknown outside of that sphere.

However, does 'payment' in 'cultural capital' not eventually lead to 
inequality - can 'high-visibility praise' not be traded for political
clout?

I personally tend to be suspicious of big pay differentials as 
incentives - also, in a world where money is not convertible into capital 
(i.e. there's no inheritence, you don't have wage labour, etc.), will
pay differentials be effective? I'm just trying to point out, however,
that even absent pay differentials, you might have a problem of 
creeping inequality in a future society.

But then again, in a future society, everyone will understand the
negation of the negation. :)

Peter
--
Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com>
NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics
"Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man 
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain 
and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844
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