For my 300th post, I thought I’d go a little high-brow and talk about a book I’ve been reading called Beyond the Profits System by economist Harry Shutt. The subtitle is “Possibilities For a Post-Capitalist Era,” so that should give you a pretty good idea of what he’s about. I’m really not interested in economics and things like that, but I picked up the book for five bucks when I was buying a textbook, and it was certainly worth the price.
[REST OF THE POST AT HIS TUMBLR / REBLOG LINK]
Excellent post, Demi. I was going to post to your facebook but decided here instead.
Before I begin…
Why use “cursory” instead of “quick”? It’s pretty rare that I find a word I don’t know that actually has its own unique meaning. For a while I was mentally throwing out words I’d never use, but now I try to keep them in mind because others may use them. However, cursory does not seem as quintessential as the words aureate or lithe. Continuing.
“Privately owned companies like we have now would be encouraged in different ways to not accumulate profit, such as tax breaks for distributing the money to their shareholders or employees. ”
I really like that idea. Reflecting on when we talked about economics this week, I think my biggest fear is simply guys like me. Small “start ups”, 3 or fewer people, that eventually may make a decent amount of money. Aren’t we entitled to the money we make? Then we have places like the place I work at - we’ve just expanded our operations to Texas. We install about 225 security systems each week, and the company wants to be 300 in September. Since these are not one-time system installs, but rather, monthly recurring, this company is basking in money. I could give you estimates of how much money we dredge from Money Bay each month, but those would probably still be under what we actually make.
Now it’s not that they don’t deserve every penny of what they make with the company, but, I think a system that rewards them for rewarding the workers with extra benefits or even higher pay, would play a big part in fixing what I think it is you dislike about big business. As long as the system plays out as “rewarding your workers nets you less money, but it’s only a little less than you would normally make if you didn’t reward them”.
I loved your relation to game companies and modern authors. Kickstarter truly is brilliant. I’d love to see the day where I could sell Andellan’s adventure - which is completely free, always, and I’d just give you the PDF with some extra crap - for $2/$3. I don’t write Andellan for profit, as much as I don’t make music for profit. I do it for sanity, and admittedly… love/influence. MurCity is an example of what I make for profit, but I didn’t design it to be for profit. (this is another thing Demi and I have discussesd) If I designed for profit, people would play and forget. I’d have aesthetic unlockables (dragon wings!) and probably would’ve comissioned an artist, which is fine because the “higher production value” could potentially suck in dummy players - and dummies, as you may know, love to spend money on dummy-fodder.
Ultimately, I don’t think I’d want to be a start-up. The only way I would consider being a start-up would be if MurCity made lots of money, and its success would cause me to actually not make as much by going to work. (this scenario is hard to imagine) Perhaps one day I could pay Demi for his contributions to game 3, if such a thing is even possible. I doubt I will ever get to relive the glorious times I would have talking to him about game design in meatspace. I felt like an actual developer, working with someone, even though it was more like a volunteer.
Anyway; nice post, Demi.