The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

IMO, OSS works because it is open and free. Most OSS projects use each other. If you are building some OSS project then are you not using other OSS projects? Many contributors will not be able to build if it requires/expects money to use other OSS projects.

What does the theory of capitalism have to say about people who do the work but never get the carrot?

No True Scotsman in 3, 2...

> Capitalism may appear to thrive when living in a first-world country, but only does so through exploitation and cutting corners

I think this is a common and really fundamental misunderstanding. It works through signalling demand through pricing, rather than through bureaucrats guessing, giving anyone the chance to take a risk and keep the reward (mostly) if they manage to create value for other people, rather than how much they toe the party line. It definitely doesn't only work "through exploitation and cutting corners". Those things happen everywhere.

Just look at the monumental change in China due to the controlled (too controlled[0]) introduction of capitalism. If you let people create value for each other and get out of their way, you get stupendous results compared to thinking a centralised bureaucracy, slave-owner, monarch, or lord making the decisions.

> No, some abstract 'informed exchange of currency' didn't magically cause things to appear out of thin air

No one would say it did.

> People make things, and they are almost certainly underpaid and overworked. Behind every AI model there are X poorly paid workers around the world that curated the data that it needs to function. Behind every piece of clothing there are Y poorly paid workers in Bangladesh that made it. And behind every rechargeable battery there are Z Congolese kids risking death inside a mine in search for cobalt.

This isn't a capitalism thing. This is a poverty thing. It's lifted unequally globally, but it is lifted. The problem isn't capitalism; the problem is that doing these jobs is currently their best option. Similar or worse conditions were found in Britain under 100 years ago[1]. That's a very short timeframe for capitalism to have lifted the entire world out of poverty; too silly to take seriously as a criticism of an economic process.

> We might try to (and often do) look away, pretend that those are the unfortunate results of corporate blunders that seldom happen, but they're not. Invisible exploitation is what makes the kind of lifestyle that is available in first-world countries possible.

No, not just that. If we replaced those miners with robots we'd still have the lifestyle. Framing everything as exploitation is a dead end.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier

Ok that's actually very insightful, comparing open source to art.

I got triggered (saw what I wanted to see instead of what was there) because I've been involved with so many projects that failed (say 90+%) that my average hourly "wage" probably comes out to $3/hr over my lifetime. While that's a decent wage in many parts of the world, where I live it means struggle and destitution as a starving artist. "Let them eat cake" comes to mind, because I've never had the baseline stability needed to make the contributions in my heart. So I didn't, I just spent all the years of my adult life working towards other people's dreams, and what people see of me today is the shadow left behind of someone who lost dozens of bets in a row with little to show for it.

I'm concerned that AI encroaching on the last viable artistic endeavors like painting, playing music, writing (and now designing software!) could grind us under the heal of the status quo even harder. Yet people make $100+/hr working at FAANG by standing on the achievements of open source while giving almost nothing back.

I don't see a way out of this, so without some kind of human intervention, we have maybe 10 years left before the sky falls. That could be the start of the New Age (heaven on Earth) or it could be the total subjugation of humanity beneath technology (a living hell). Unfortunately the powers that be have chosen the second route, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.

Is there anything we can do to balance the scales? All I can think of is to withhold our labor. But when AI automates that, there truly will be no recourse. The value of labor will fall towards zero and we could be looking at a luddite revolution where people sabotage tech in a misguided attempt to save themselves. When we could have planned for that eventuality and chosen something like UBI instead.

It breaks my heart, but my heart is already broken. I guess that's why I have moved to magical thinking through stuff like meditation in an effort to manifest the world that might have been. An unsatisfiable ego-driven tech can only be defeated by a conscious soul-driven love.

Like how does one contemplate zen as the world burns? That's what this problem of under-compensation hits on for me. It's maybe the central problem of our time, or at least my time. Separating me from the life I had envisioned. For me, more tech has merely resulted in more suffering at the hands of it.

> When I'm choosing an open source tool to use, then I want

BZZT! You just said "I want" in relation to something you get for free.

There are only two valid paths, enjoy stuff for free and expect nothing or pay up and expect whatever you want. Can't have both.