Pyramids

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226789

Basically, at a certain point in infrastructure-level creative work, you need to decouple work product from compensation.

You’re creating an investment pool, there may or may not be payoffs, and the longer the pool is working the thinner and smaller those payoffs will be. (Law of Diminishing Returns.)

But if you don’t support the work you won’t get any benefit at all.

Market-capitalism works reasonably well for commodity goods and unskilled labour. It starts failing rapidly as those assumptions are violated.

The Egyptions were a civilisation based on cutting-edge stone technology. Pyramids provided an interesting problem to solve, mobilised and maintained a workforce, kept skills current, and supported ongoing R&D. There’s some recognition of this (see response to my HN comment above), but it’s a little-appreciated notion.

(From: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/c963ebd0a9e801394c46002590d8e506)

#pyramids #CreativeCompensation #InformationGoods #Infrastructure #SkillsDevelopment #SkillsRetention #R&D

A documentary on rocket science features several former Soviet rocket scientists talking about their experience after the Soviet space program was shut down. Rocket scientists, literally, with no place to turn for employment. That's where you start thinking about inefficiencies in usefully allocating talent. Neither the Soviet nor American economic systems seem to have a particularly good answer for that. Though in the US, Wall Street seems to have a capacity for sponging up some of the potential. I don't find that particularly useful.

The Egyptians built pyramids. I wonder if that wasn't in part a large skills-retention and problem-solving exercise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226789

#SkillsRetention #PyramidBuilding