Money is not the way to motivate

(((Ayn Rand is wrong; more money does not lead to better performance in skilled work; autonomy, mastery, and making a contribution matter more.)))

American-style capitalism, particularly as it is instantiated in IP laws (see especially the DMCA), operates on the basic assumption that innovation only happens with the promise of a financial payoff. Never mind that money did not motivate Einstein to work out relativity, or Oppenheimer to develop the bomb. Why is it that we think the people who really do everything for money (if there even are such people) are the people we want making decisions?

In any case, Dan Pink has a really interesting, very short talk (animated by RSA), in which he makes the case that, when you put enough money on the table that work is no longer about money (a point you reach fairly quickly), then the other factors matter more: autonomy, mastery, and contributing to something bigger than yourself. I don't generally go in for the sort of stuff that Pink does, but there's something really interesting about this when I think of it in terms of those of us in academics. Specifically, we get scared and angry about financial insecurity; we do things often for the express purpose of getting more money, but that doesn't mean we do it completely or entirely well; we get frustrated at how undervalued we are by society, when no one expects doctors to work for peanuts, but we're supposed to because we "believe" in what we're doing. But the truth is, we keep doing it. For some of us, it's partly because we have no options. But I think Pink's analysis gets at the heart of the frustration of teachers when people who aren't us start trying to tell us how to do our jobs, as if our jobs are the kind of menial labor where an increase in pay would improve performance, but instead of increasing our pay, they take away our autonomy (teach these things, teach them this way), our mastery (no one *needs* mastery like you have, certainly not your students, and by the way, you're not any good at it and we're not going to pay you either money or respect for extending and maintaining your mastery), and our contributions (we in the humanities are a smaller and smaller and smaller part of even ostensibly "liberal" education, because we are not "practical" in that narrow utilitarian way).

If people want better schools, and I'm betting this applies in some way to K-12 also, stop telling us how to do our jobs. Stop making us feel incompetent or lazy for wanting some control over what we do, especially when you're going to hold us responsible for it. Stop treating education like a factory whose output is functional, healthy, normalized, trained-for-the-workforce-but-also-fully-actualized people. Not only are these contradictory sorts of goals, but people are not factory outputs, not widgets, not burgers, and not the customers who ordered the burgers or buy the widgets. Analogies of liberal education (which is to be distinguished from job training) to manufacturing or service utterly obscure the truly human aspects of the process.

And they only make us hate our jobs more, because it's not what we signed up for. It's not what we spent years in grad school for. And it's not what many of us are still paying off thousands of dollars of debt to have gotten.

Dinosaur Music Execs Whine All the Way to the Bank

(((iTunes, Apple, NBC, Jeff Zucker, Music Downloads, Decrepit Music Industry Business Models, Sour Grapes)))

So, according to Terrence Russell, "[NBC Universal executive Jeff Zucker] claimed that Apple has made millions on its iPod 'off the backs of our content' and that the software maker "'destroyed the music business in terms of pricing.'"

Okay, never mind the millions Universal and other companies make off the backs of someone else's creativity. To say that Apple destroyed music pricing when the price of CDs, in stark contrast to the usual trajectory, has actually gone up since they were introduced, and that somehow in spite of that most musicians make diddly on their music. I wonder where all that money's going? Oh, right: into Zucker's pocket. So, Steve Jobs is picking his pocket. And I'm supposed to shed a tear for him?

No, if there's a problem in the business, it's that it's so hard in the first place for good musicians to make a living. But what else is new? Oh, there might be one other problem, and that's that all IP holders -- whether we're talking about music or drugs -- insist legislating their out-dated business models as a way of dealing with technological and other social and economic innovations, instead of, you know, coming up with new business models (aka, "adapting").

So instead of saying, huh, P2P and digital music in general changes the landscape of the business and we have to figure out new ways to make money, and maybe we need to stop gouging our artists (instead of gouging them harder so that they'll hate The Intarwebz more), they dig in their heels and cry foul when they get blown by.

Boo hoo hoo.

tags technorati : music industry, itunes

How Not to Get It

This would make me think they'd been taking lessons from the Bush administration, if it weren't so characteristic of them, already. Indeed, so much so that the Iraq War looks like it models itself on an Israeli policy. Anyway, looks like the Gaza rockets have finally crossed a line. Or something.

Israeli cabinet ministers on Wednesday voted unanimously to declare the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity” in order to shut off fuel and power to the 1.4m Palestinians in the impoverished enclave if rocket attacks continue.

Since June the territory where 40 per cent of Palestinians live has been ruled exclusively by Hamas and its borders have been open only for humanitarian aid.

So we thought it would be a good idea to make sure the humanitarian workers had more to do, which is sure to stop those rockets, since we're seeing that choking harder has slowed them down so much. Oh, wait,

Timed with the arrival in Israel of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, the move by Ehud Olmert’s administration shows exasperation with continued Palestinian militant rocket fire against the Negev.

Yep, clamping down is clearly working for Israel in the Occupied Territories, just like it always has. Not.

Three dozen young soldiers were wounded last week when rockets struck their base, sparking a public outcry for retaliatory action.

Oh, no! Not soldiers! Only terrorists would fire at soldiers!

Gradual sanctions, imposed by Israel in stages if the rockets do not stop, would allow in only enough fuel to power electrical generators at Gaza hospitals. The borders would be opened only for essential food and medical supplies. Water supplies would continue flowing at present levels, however.

Lawyers also advised the cabinet that any disruption in electricity should be restricted, to avoid violating international law by inflicting collective punishment on the civilian population. More than half the Gazan population is under 15 years old.

Ahhhh, I knew I saw the hand of Alberto Gonzales; at least he's found new work! If less than half the Gazan population were under 15, it would be acceptable to starve them. As it is, it is only possible legally to make them really, really hungry. Even if they did vote for terrorists.

Despite Israeli air strikes and Israeli Defence Forces forays to root out the rocket launchers, which have killed a dozen people in seven years and terrified thousands of citizens in Sderot, in northern Israel, homemade rockets rain down almost daily on Israeli soil.

Almost daily attacks that kill an average of two people a year? Hasn't anyone in Hamas figured out that those are pretty inefficient numbers? Maybe the strategy is to keep the pressure on without, in fact, killing lots of people, but I don't know that you can target those rockets accurately enough to reliably aim not to kill or hurt people.

Tzahi Hanegbi, defence committee chairman, told Israel’s Army Radio there was no need to “pamper” Gazans with fuel and electricity, and that a new incursion into the strip was inevitable.

Yes, fuel and electricity are examples of those modern American luxuries, like private jets. I mean, it's not like they won't have water.

What? You got a problem?

tags technorati : Israel, Palestine, Terrorism, Hamas, Gaza, Politics