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With a self managing structure. The basic goals of the business are made in to a constitution of sorts, and then each worker makes their own mission statement in line with the business's goals, which their colleagues agree on and hold them accountable to. Salary depends on how important you are to your colleagues, if you add more value, you get paid more.

I was reading a book called: The End of Average, which called in to question how efficient Taylorist structure / hiring practices (The separation of the worker from management, interchangeability of workers, strict hierarchical structures, and the creation of averagarian human resources practices) as it applies to education and work. In chapter 7, He addresses a lot of your questions with case studies of why Costco, Zoho, and Morning Star. (The tomato company, the site I linked to earlier is run by them.) I can PM you a copy of the book / chapter if you want a more in depth read.

1. Not everybody is paid the same, but everyone has stake in the company
   
   
2. Like any company: to get paid, to have a greater input / control over their work, generous benefits. By hiring those who are highly skilled, but passed over by Taylorist metrics (Think this sub, and people form unconventional backgrounds), providing them with work and opportunities to learn themselves to better positions in the company. Being able to have well paying secure employment for a lifetime.
   
   In that chapter I referenced, the case study of Zoho, talks about how they had great success training and hiring the misfits that other Indian outsourcing companies like Microsoft wouldn't touch. You don't have to have traditional "higher skilled workers", to be able to have highly skilled workers.
   
   
3. Even if they aren't the highest skilled workers, when they feel like have input in to their work, are well compensated, and respected, they produce more than the worker who does the bare minimum to keep their job. All three of the case study companies referenced show this well.
   
   In the end, it's more about the self managed structure than it is about the workers owning the company. It's just that traditionally, worker coops were one of the few companies to adopt this structure. I do think that the workers owning the company is important though, as it eliminates the conflict of interest that comes from having private owners.

It is actually very easy to cause the average person to follow you. You can learn it from a book. Also, some people have a values system that legitimately ranks safety over liberty. I see no easy way to deal with that.

The only proposals for transitioning to a basic income/post-scarcity state that I have found ask that during the transition, people will still need to have incentives to work. Not all people have a "goodness of their hearts" out of which they will work for society and receive no rewards. Many people will work for largely, or only, social rewards (i.e. being respected for keeping the community running) - but structuring a community sociologically so that it rewards people who work with increased status is going to be very difficult (possibly nearly impossible). Several orders of magnitude easier is to provide physical rewards and luxuries for working for society, and let the social rewards grow from things like having the newest cars, being located in better areas, etc. as it does now. In such an arrangement, corruption will happen. This is not a question. This is a prediction that is very strong, given what I know about human nature.

I do not know if it is possible to Good Societal Memeplex one's way to a legit non-coercive anarcho-communist society. I think that it is a really cool end goal, but I don't know if we can make literally everyone adhere to it without exercising coercion at the educational level, by instilling very strong collective values in children, which incidentally prevents parents from raising their children in all the ways they currently do. Which is an imposition on the parents' freedom. Closely related question: is government propaganda to make people adhere to the standards of society coercive? How about peer pressure?

Is banding together to "rehabilitate" (or, more realistically, punish) someone who defects on the social contract (i.e. by killing his wife for cheating, which has existed as a crime-of-passion for millions of years and will exist as long as humans retain our current neurology) coercive?

Hi BrentonTheBadger,

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.

It's actually far, far more complicated than that - and your assumption seems to be that I was referring to visual queues. I am actually talking about verbal queues.

Again, you are more than welcome to your opinion. But as somewhat of an eternal student of my discipline, I am aware of the psychology relating to my industry and how it is frequently and heavily abused. It might be a comforting thought to assume that there is only perhaps "a set group of people" that you suppost just "weren't raised to realize" their actual level of need, is completely inaccurate.

You've also assumed that my particular take and "my target audience" are these people. You've actually completely underestimated the entire practice. YOU are our target audience. YOU the supposedly discerning consumer, who couldn't possible buy a product you don't need or believe in something ultimately wrong for you. Why buy HTC? Why mention the brand? You've just told me that you have had one for a long time that is perfectly functional - you just recommended me a product and you didn't even realise it. Your character profile and your convictions make that recommendations all the more powerful. Don't you think people like me know that...? There's not enough people with enough funds of those your assume are my targets - so where do you think my industry goes next....?

Now, I grant you that I have discussed consumer focused advertising but I actually don't work in consumer focused advertising. I work in public focused advertising. My particular line of work is one of behavioral change. For everyone - and that means you. Just because I'm not trying to sell you a product, doesn't mean that I haven't dirtied my soul manipulating the supposedly 'discerning' public, of things they don't really want, need, believe or understand. In most cases, it's the final point. I don't say that as coldly as it sounds - people get tired and mental fatigue is the number one cause of silly beliefs and purchases. We take on too much in the modern world, and hence can't effectively cognitively process to make better decisions in our current lifestyles.

So, again, to assume advertising is just about trying to make you buy the latest product, is a vast underestimation of the industry. It is also an opinion that is created irrespective of the facts or figures and years of research both in academic circles and industry - from the corporations like Coke-a-Cola who specifically created Coke Zero because Diet Coke was a female orientated product and this was hailed as the 'male equivalent' because market research indicated that a low fat version of the product needed to be more manly to sell, to offices like mine - where we frequently commission market research to see the public awareness of issues we are promoting and targeting demographic and much much more to enlist behaviourial changes, as so desired by those above us.

Why do you trust such things in the hands of those who can and will profit from you despite what you really want?

If you want to learn more about a topic, read up on it (I recommend this as a starter for 10). Don't assume you're above it, or impervious to it, because at the end of the day? That's what we want you to think.

LOL this is a small Midwestern town, but no not San Francisco,I'd be homeless there. But it is like San Francisco, wealthy people from a huge metro city come here with their second vacation homes. Most of the populace is at the six figures level. I can't name where I am at, but think this place has the golf courses, expensive spas, etc etc. Yes many of these are very religious conservative wealthy people. I come out of a more well off family and know for a fact many got jobs via connections. I was the scapegoat so not allowed to share in the "wealth" so to speak. I have a few Baby Boomer friends, they get upset when I talk about generations, I understand, there are exceptions to all generational generalities, but I have to admit when I read this book, I agreed with a lot of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

Programming is not for everyone. People like to talk about future saturation of programmers but I don't believe it will happen simply because the majority of people will never cut it as programmers and of those that do most will be terrible at it. It's not a sleight on your brain power or intelligence to say you won't be a good programmer, it is simply an observation of the way your brain and mind work and the way you think. Most people just flat out do not think the way a programmer needs to think. It doesn't mean you can't give it a go and it doesn't mean you'll fail but it might mean you'll struggle to understand advanced concepts and may find yourself over your head and slow to adapt.

It's also important to make a distinction between a 'programmer' and a 'designer.' While there is plenty of work in web design, web design is not programming. Neither HTML nor CSS are programming languages. There is such a thing called web application development that involves HTML, CSS, and back end programming but this requires the knowledge of one or many programming languages such as PHP, Ruby, or C#.

For anyone interested in programming I would recommend you read this book before you start trying to learn programming. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735611319/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 If you find yourself lost or confused and cannot finish, programming is not for you. Again, that doesn't mean you're stupid or less intelligent than anyone else it is simply an observation that you think differently. It is not an observation of inferiority, I can't stress that enough. If you can finish this book you will likely find success learning advanced programming concepts. Pick a language, any language, and start learning.

The military (mil spec manuals) was one of the primary drivers & advocates of the development of the SGML system.

And again, HTML was a subset (initially very crude & limited functionality) of it -- which, among other things, allowed the leveraging of various (already existing) parsing algorithms.

That really DOESN'T lessen the "great achievement" status of Timothy Berners-Lee (the so called -- and not entirely inaccurately so -- "inventor" of the "world wide web") work -- which was really more the creation and distribution of a combination of tools, and perhaps most importantly "giving it away" -- openly/freely sharing the specs: the http protocol (based on other internet protocols, but again simplified, initially all it did was a "GET" request), along with a small footprint ("web/http") server application, and the first (text only "web") browser application.

Several Many others had TRIED to craft "hypertext" (i.e. user editable text/documents with click-able "links" or regions) systems -- protocols and the accompanying server/viewer application sets -- but they all failed or fell short of wide adoption for a number of reasons (some of them for being to simplistic, others for being too complex, and most for being "commercial/proprietary" and working only on specific platforms).

BTW, if you can lay your hands on it, TBL's book "Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web" is well worth the read, and is not only interesting from a technical and historical perspective, but also to see what his original "vision" was, and how that has been both fulfilled, and on the other hand in some ways went unfulfilled (or even subverted) as the web actually developed and grew.

I am an old linux guy ( since 92-3ish ) and this reminds me of ... me...

If you are still that guy that likes to just know, I ( the unix guy ) would recommend an awesome book for anyone wanting to emulate your / my up bringing and it is actually from microsoft press called Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Oh that's cute. You linked me Sowell. Now try reading a big boy economist: https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496878948&sr=8-1&keywords=Capital+in+the+Twenty-First+Century

I know the math looks really hard but trust me, it won't be so bad.

Well, a little while ago, I read 'This Book will Save Your Life' it's about a guy who has been successful, but is living an incredible safe, predictable, and boring life (daily grind.) The book is about what happens when some unexpected events lead him outside of his daily routine.

All too true.

I am a former adjunct who can testify to what is happening to/at higher ed. Unless something quite serious is done, and done soon, the American university will be over. Done. Finished.

I offer two links. First, B. Ginsberg book on how universities came to abandon their faculty in favor of administrators: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Faculty-All-Administrative-University/dp/019978244X

And second, a book which references the plight of Gen-Y folk in general, Tristan Gans' Stranieri: Life among Italy's Tourists, Expats, and Immigrants (don't be fooled by the name): http://www.amazon.com/Stranieri-Italys-Tourists-Immigrants-ebook/dp/B008SS74BY

In the interest of full disclosure, I am connected to Belfort and Bastion, the company that published Gans ebook.

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: http://smile.amazon.com/Womens-Lives-Medieval-Europe-Sourcebook/dp/0415466830/ref=sr_1_2


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|




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Oh I don't point fingers at them, but you have to admit it has an effect on the economy. Elizabeth Warren wrote an entire book on this subject http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907 Even accounting for the workforce doubling the reality we are seeing is beyond that.

>The people who fly them wont starve. Now you are just starting to sound like an idiot.

Sure, they will. Most of us will, since we're turning all of our arable land into desert.

>you should start with this: http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X

Alright, Alex Jones.

Here's their book on Amazon if you want to analyze the study further.

Looks like they just wrote a book on this topic.

Why do women get so much hate in the comments on articles like these? It seems like all the guys who got "friend-zoned" or whatever just salivate at another article talking about how GIRLS WON'T DATE US SEE THEY'RE ALL FEMINIST SCUM BAGS WHO SHOULD DIE or something.

Peter Joseph is wrong for a number of reasons, and we can predict with a good degree of certainty that his system would fail in practice, if implemented. The techno-utopian society that forms the dreamscape of the RBE crowd is just a rehash of mid-20th century modernism which gave us the likes of Brasilia. The best book disproving modernism is Seeing Like a State:

> The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. And in discussing these planning disasters, he identifies four conditions common to them all: the state's attempt to impose administrative order on nature and society; a high-modernist ideology that believes scientific intervention can improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale innovations; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

What annoys me, though, is the number of ideologues rehashing Peter Joseph's arguments word for word without adding a single meaningful thought or contribution to them.

https://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-400-Year-History-America/dp/0143129678

I don't have to...just read this.

Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it:

https://www.amazon.ca/Two-Income-Trap-Elizabeth-Warren/dp/0465090907

It's not just women.. there was this from a few years back.

The people who fly them wont starve. Now you are just starting to sound like an idiot.

you should start with this: http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X

Because despite huge growth in worker productivity, grow in worker wages has been stagnant. You can ignore technological and efficiency advances and blame it on overpopulation and a world facing peak oil and other peak resources (meaning less consumption would be available per person), but that hasn't stopped capital gains from going through the roof, so that doesn't make any sense.

No. The political and economic system we've tacitly settled upon is designed to concentrate wealth (which is what the phrase "the 1%" was supposed to allude to). What's happening is that everyone except the single richest person in the country is being screwed, everyone up to that just slightly less and less so the higher you go.

That's why your wage sucks.

Okey dokey, so, lets start from the beginning. First "Medieval Europe" covers about 1000 years of history, across an entire continent, and dozens of different cultures. Where and when are just as important as what. Making generalizations is pretty much impossible. For the purposes of this, I will be sticking to the typical conditions in England and southern France. Northern europe operated on a COMPLETELY different, and MUCH more egalitarian set of rules. I will touch on that later.

Yes, of course there were non-white people in medieval europe. Moors from north africa who invaded what is now southern spain, and parts of italy. They ruled for about 500 years. They were expelled in the early 1200's. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania).

In addition, merchants from the middle east were common in some parts of medieval europe. Things were actually pretty shitty for them, due to the legal structure.

Speaking of the legal structure, laws as we think of them today didn't per se exist, and could vary wildly from one town to the next. They were closer to an amalgam of local custom and general policy. A codified legal system was pretty much nonexistent in that period. None of which applied to foreigners (which included simple non-residents in many area), including the aforementioned merchants, who had no recourse. It was pretty much open season on them anywhere outside the major cities and trade routes.

The other thing that's very very important to consider, is that the rules the commoners lived by (the overwhelming bulk of the population) were very VERY different from the rules the nobility lived by. But to address your bullet points:

Warning: Most of my resources are in the form of books, scholarly research, basically non-digital format. I will, unfortunately, be making heavy use of wikipedia for this. I will include a bibliography at the end to get you started.

1. Nobility only for arranged marriages. In fact, a ritualized, sanctioned marriage performed by an official was a relatively late development. In most places, the custom was simply to pledge yourself to each other (it was a good idea to have a witness, but usually people just took the couple's word for it). The church cracked down on the practice later, actually requiring it to be sanctioned by a priest. Within the lower classes, arranged marriages were uncommon, though by custom both families were supposed to agree. How this relates to the first part of this is that they had no actual authority to declare a couple not married, so eloping was stupidly common.
   
   
2. That's odd, because a whole lot of them did! It's good to remember that this all happened a LONG time ago, however, we do have tax and census records available for large swaths of english, french, and italian history. The only profession that appears to be exclusively male is blacksmithing, and the only profession that appears to be exclusively female is weaving. Outside of that, we have plenty of documentation, mostly records of women suing each other over business deals (medieval europeans were shockingly litigious). As far as restricted professions go, apparently nobody told Trota of Salerno that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trota_of_Salerno). Or Christine de Pizan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan).
   
   Women joined and formed both craft and merchant guilds (basically, early unions) with regularity. In england, when the wool trade exploded in the late middle ages, many women became quite wealthy as wool merchants.
   
   
3. Nobody was allowed to divorce anybody. It was a running problem. I seem to recall a certain english king flipping off the pope and founding his own religion over this. Divorce simply didn't exist, there was only annulment, which could only be granted on the grounds that the marriage was illegitimate to begin with. That is, within the full christianized areas. Celtic and Norse society allowed for both temporary marriages, and women could divorce at will. But let's not go down that rabbit hole, just yet.
   
   
4. Okay, so this is a little complicated, but bear with me:
   
   Medieval custom and commonlaw was based on the family unit. By default, the husband became the head of that family unit. When a woman married into a family, her holdings became part of that family unit, and ownership defaulted to the husband (note the aforementioned lack of divorce). In the event of an annulment, the entire marriage was declared void, including any transfer of property, which was then returned to the wife, who then became an independant unmarried adult, identical to a widow. In the event that the husband died (which was absurdly common), the wife (NOT the eldest male child) was then considered head of household, and assumed ownership and responsibility for all the holdings and the behavior of her family (the exact same rights and responsibilities the husband had).
   To better understand this dynamic, take a modern marriage. When people are married, property becomes joint property, and no decisions regarding it may be made without the consent of both parties. Now imagine that there was no such thing as divorce. The dynamic becomes nearly identical to a medieval marriage. The only thing that has changed, functionally, is that the husband is no longer criminally liable for the actions of his wife (actually, a relatively recent development, less than 150 years). It was, effectively, joint property. Misuse of the wife's property was grounds for annulment. If you want to read about a vary famous instance, Elanor of Aquitaine (who I strongly advise picking up a biography or two on) had her marriage annuled.
   
   Grounds for annulment also included: marital rape, adultry, infertility, drunkeness, excessive physical abuse (domestic violence was commonplace and went both ways, all ways really, people just in general beat the hell out of each other, husbands beat wives, wives beat husbands, husbands and wives beat children, everybody beat servants, servants beat each other, really the top of the beatings food chain was the king, who didn't get beaten by anybody, and got to beat everybody. Yay beatings!)
   
   
5. This is pretty much true, but see previous comments on property ownership.
   
   Now, as promised, when you get to northern europe and parts of modern germany, things change completely. Women could divorce at will, for any reason or none, and a wife's property was never considered part of her husbands property. Women could inherit without restriction, and did all the time.
   
   If I may wax a bit wroth for a moment, one of the biggest hurdles to understanding the period is the goddamn fucking !@$%^!#! peice of shit Victorian mother!$%!@ who were VERY invested in revisionist history, and shit all over actual historical scholarship. The second hurdle is fucking hollywood goddamn movies who wouldn't know historically accurate if it bit them on their fat asses. An excellent example of this is the persistient myth of knights being craned onto their horses. This was the direct result of a shitty ass Henry V made in 1944 by Laurence Olivier, where the historical consultant begged him not to put the scene in, but he did it anyway.
   Anywho, /rant off.
   
   On to the resources!
   
   If you can find it, and don't have to pay a fortune for it, 'Women and Gender in Medieval Europe' is a fantastic resource, though quite heavy (both in physical and reading weight).
   
   Another good place to start, and significantly more accessable:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Womens-Lives-Medieval-Europe-Sourcebook/dp/0415466830/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397269083&sr=1-2&keywords=medieval+women
   
   This is a rather basic and trite overview, but not inaccurate, and very accessable:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Women-Middle-Ages-Joseph-Gies/dp/0060923040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397269226&sr=1-1&keywords=women+in+the+middle+ages
   
   Some information on Norther Europe, not women specific, but a great read:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Vikings-History-Robert-Ferguson/dp/0143118013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397269319&sr=8-1&keywords=vikings+ferguson
   
   Aaaaaand here's a light treatment that you can watch while eating popcorn:
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL5CviNAhnk
   
   Feel free to PM me if you want to continue the discussion.