[scandox]

> As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love.

As a sentence this just fills me with dread. And it's hard to say why because I know, for example, that a writer making a living from selling their books could be said to be "monetizing what they love" OR engaging in the "Passion Economy".

But if I was to try and get to the heart of it it's simply that I don't want to monetize what I love. I want it to be the one part of my existence not dominated by money. And I don't want an actual passion (awful word really) to form part of an economy.

[arexxbifs]

I agree, and I also think that the sentiment that turning a passion into a job is somehow beneficial because "you will never work a day in your life" is untrue. As soon as your livelihood depends on something, you will at some point either have to make sacrifices and trade-offs, or you will starve. Creative passion can only blossom when you can do everything exactly the way you want without compromise, which is unlikely to happen as soon as someone else's expectations come into the mix.

You can have a better, more rewarding and fulfilling career, sure. But never expect it not to feel like a chore a lot of the time.

[OmarShehata]

I used to agree this, but this leads to what I think is a pernicious belief stated differently: that you can only make "true art" if you're giving it away for free.

This comes up a lot when making indie games. That your work is somehow less pure or you had to compromise on your creative vision because you had to monetize it. As a creator you have to make a ton of tradeoffs all the time anyway, since you have a finite amount of time and resources. What if monetizing it actually allows you to achieve the vision you had in mind? Or it helped you understand what your audience cares about and make something more relatable or moving (or go the other direction, disturbing or meant to role them up etc) Why isn't monetizing just another trade-off? What's so special about it?

The answer to me: culturally monetizing/greed in art has been seen as making art impure and it's a stigma we need to get over.

[gnud]

Nah.

I work a bit as a musician, and I would say I often, but not always, create "true art" when I'm hired for a concert.

But it's not the same art I would have made if I got to call all the shots. That doesn't necessarily make it any less good, and it doesn't make it less "true", but it _does_ make it less _mine_. I'm OK with that tradeoff.

[arexxbifs]

I think the discussion about what constitutes "true art" is separate from this. I'm saying that in the long run, it is unlikely that you can keep passionate about something you depend on for food and shelter. I, too, can think of examples where either monetizing up front or simply happening to create something that made you rich has been combined with true passion.

But, if you're going to spend the rest of your life creating something and expect to keep earning money from it, there will be less passion and more tedium.

> Or it helped you understand what your audience cares about and make something more relatable or moving

I'd say that's not about your passion or vision, then, but rather about creating something others will feel passionate about. It's a big difference.

[mikorym]

I share your sentiment. In some way I think eventually you make some compromise between income and passions.

If the thing you truly love can make a lot of money then I would say one should do that but reflect on how not to start hating it. Even hobbies require discipline, but you don't see them as forced on you.

Career choices to me are more a process of elimination than choosing, especially if you have many things that you are interested in.

[gligorot]

>Career choices to me are more a process of elimination than choosing, especially if you have many things that you are interested in.

I didn't see it this way until now, but when I rewind this is exactly how I came to study CS. Thanks for the insight.

[AmericanChopper]

An economy is just a group of people all making resource allocation decisions. I have no idea why you’d want to exclude passion from the decision making process of the worlds billions of economic actors.

[claudiawerner]

That is the definition of an economy in abstract - it is ignorant of the historical factors which have created this particular global economy, and it is ignorant of the large and small scale social dynamics influencing the economy and influenced by it. It is ignorant of the necessary rights, as they are formed today, to sustain the economy. It is ignorant of commodity fetishism and alienation, and the fact that an economy must reproduce itself daily, hourly.

There are many criticisms of this economy that we currently have, and the creeping monetization of the last vestige of private life in which we don't need to currently sell, those hours after work and before sleep.

"Why exclude this?", as you ask, simply shows you think that there is no space to resist the totality (I would sometimes go as far as to say tolatitarianism) of "the economy". No space is free, because we have given up resisting it.

[jonkho]

Then don’t monetize. No one is coercing anyone to do anything they themselves don’t wish to. Those creators that don’t want to monetize their own labor...can still choose to not monetize. There is no coercion here.

[claudiawerner]

You're correct, but that's not a reason against trying to change the system. There were many economic phenomena through history people have consented to, and not all of them good for society as a whole - sometimes with disastrous consequences.

[AmericanChopper]

All economies are made exclusively of economic actors (which include every single living person) making resource allocation decisions. This is the basis of every conceivable economic system, including no system at all (which would just be the ultimate free market), and socialism (which is just a system where resource allocation decision making is taken away from individuals, and placed in the hands of a central authority). These resource allocation decisions include decisions that have no relation to money, and decision to allocate a finite resource is an economic decision, including decisions to devote time, effort or attention to something. Wanting topic of passion to be excluded from this system defies the laws of nature itself. However, I’ll assume that you’re taking the (ironically ignorant) position that economics is only about money. Even then the idea that “I wouldn’t want to derive value from things that I’m passionate about” or that “I wouldn’t want to provide value to those who produce things I’m passionate about” just completely defies any sense of reason.

[claudiawerner]

>All economies are made exclusively of economic actors (which include every single living person) making resource allocation decisions

All economies are made of people, some of whom do not make resource allocation decisions (because they are unable to or prohibited). I see no reason to start talking in terms of the population of an economy rather than other factors first. Marx, for instance, used property and classes, because he noticed that individuals are born into pre-existing situations, as defined by the class and property structures of the day, and they do not shape the world freely as they see fit. It takes effort to individuate.

> including no system at all (which would just be the ultimate free market)

The "ultimate free market" very clearly has a "system" - it has private property rights, separation of the labourer from the product she makes during the production process, the majority of labour being waged labour, and the general economic goal of capital accumulation. If the free market really meant "no system", but still a reality, then we would have observed it in the most basic societies. Anthropologists have found no evidence of that claim.

>which is just a system where resource allocation decision making is taken away from individuals, and placed in the hands of a central authority

No political philosopher uses this definition; most forms of socialism (theoretically, anyway) are democratic, in which allocation decision making is given to the people, to a higher degree than it is in a capitalist society. Finally, in such a system, individuals have the greatest degree of control over capital, not just labour allocation (through which capital is influenced only directly).

>and decision to allocate a finite resource is an economic decision, including decisions to devote time, effort or attention to something

It is not purely an economic decision, it is also a moral and practical one. Only the economist, strangely, conceives any and all time as a pure "resource" to be allocated around. The view that activity is equal to allocation of finite resources ignores the reasons why people actually perform various activities. Sure, you could subsume every motivation into allocation of finite resources, but the physicist could go further and subsume every interaction into the interactions between atoms. Why should I (or anyone) prefer your level of abstraction rather than saying it is too restricted (e.g. as the physicist would say) or saying it is too wide (e.g. as the sociologist would say)?

>Wanting topic of passion to be excluded from this system defies the laws of nature itself.

Marx noted in the 19th century that economists, like the priests, have a preference for speaking of their ideological view as "natural law", that previous systems were "unnatural", that future possible systems are "unnatural". He realized that this tactic ensures that nobody can question the foundation of the concepts (atomistic individualism, Hobbesian warfare, resource allocation, the origin of money, capital, power, property) since that would be to question "nature" itself.

>just completely defies any sense of reason.

It defies purely economic reason. Today we see many people and hobbyists taking such an "unreasonable" stance, from charity and open source workers to musicians. People, as it turns out, are not rational economic actors (the "resaon" you speak of is a prescriptivism from neoclassical economics), nor do they judge their time as a resource ("time is money" is a mantra that only seems to apply during the business day). There is no evidence that counting time primarity as an economic resource was prevalent in previous societies.

On that note, unless you're monetizing the time you spend posting on HN, you are completely defying any sense of reason. Either that, or you can tell me about your spreadsheet of resource allocation for your day down to the hour by the time you next make a comment, and the calculated opportunity costs associated with each hour.

[AmericanChopper]

> All economies are made of people

Economies are made of economic actors, which includes ALL people as well as other entities like public institutions, companies, charities...

> some of whom do not make resource allocation decisions (because they are unable to or prohibited)

Every single person in the world is an economic actor. Every single person in the world has the ability to make resource allocation decisions, even if they are only using the labor of their own mind. The incarcerated are economic actors, even literal slaves would still be economic actors.

> most forms of socialism (theoretically, anyway) are democratic, in which allocation decision making is given to the people

A theoretical “democratic socialist” country (theoretical because people have voted socialism in, but never in history have they been allowed the privilege of voting it out) would be a country where the people surrender their natural rights to make their own resource allocation decisions (or at least a significant portion of those rights) to the government.

> The "ultimate free market" very clearly has a "system"

It doesn’t at all. It’s just the way humans (and really all animals) behave in absence of governance that prevents them from doing so. Ancient people most certainly had private property, even if it was shared within the tribe or family or whatever other format of social organisation. It would also pay for you to remember that Marx thought familiar or tribal affiliation was a source of evil, as families tend to care for each other, which he considered to be terribly unfair to anybody who didn’t have a family to care for them.

I would very highly recommend that you at least learn some basic economic concepts (what an economy actually is would be a good starting point) before you go around promoting the abolition of private property.

[claudiawerner]

>Economies are made of economic actors, which includes ALL people as well as other entities like public institutions, companies, charities...

But if we're applying hyper-reductionism, as in the case when the economists talk about individual actions and choices, all of those things can be further divided into individual actors. Why stop at the level of "economic actors"? Is there any basis for considering society as "economic actors" rather than individuals? But let's say that we can talk in terms of "economic actors" - how is it any less valid to talk about "class"? After all, the company and the property-owning class are both composed of individuals.

>Every single person in the world has the ability to make resource allocation decisions

Many disabled people (mentally, or maybe even otherwise) do not, and many prisoners are forced to operate in more or less a closed system. If "economic actor" really just means "person", why not say that?

>but never in history have they been allowed the privilege of voting it out

The irony here of course is that socialism is not merely a change in leader, but a qualitative change in the structure of society and the economy. It makes no sense to say that socialism is voted in (or out), since if it is voted out, it follows that there is a system of class and property structure in place. The mistake is to think that socilaism is a set of laws or policies, but nobody informed on socialsim would say that.

>where the people surrender their natural rights to make their own resource allocation decisions to the government.

I am skeptical of the "natural rights" hypothesis, and surrendering to the government (or some other authority) has taken place in every society, from property rights to taxes, even to speech (note the many restrictions on speech in the US, for instance). Why, if I have the natural right to withdraw my labour, do companies and governments engage in union busting, for example? And whose resources are allocated? The prisoner, for instance, has involuntarily surrendered some portion of their resource allocation rights, but not all of them. Laws against hiring a hitman or bribery mean that I have surrendered some of my resource allocation rights. And what use is a right when one cannot take advantage of it? Many people employed today do have resource allocation rights, but they cannot take full advantage of that: they could starve. When I am employed, I do not have full allocation rights of my labour product (instead, they are appropriated at the end of the production cycle to be sold).

I haven't received your plan to monetize HN comments, or your resource allocation timetable for today. You're beginning to make me think you haven't calculated the opportunity costs of posting on HN without pay.

[pbhjpbhj]

Isn't an economy specifically about optimising resource allocation. The more general term being a financial system.

I assume you're being purposefully terse, but just in case ... can you see how one might want to do an activity without considering 'could I charge people [more] to enjoy this with me, could I end this activity with less opportunity cost lost' and instead just be generous with something one loves and free with ones use of time when having fun?

[AmericanChopper]

An economy is any system that involves the production, consumption and trade of goods. It’s simply a way of describing and analysing natural human behaviour. An economy doesn’t have to aspire towards any form of efficiency, it doesn’t have to involve money, or any form of payment. It doesn’t need to be governed, or subject to any form of authority. It is simply what happens when you have people consuming or utilizing anything that was produced by another person. The only way you could exercise a passion without any economic interactions is if you did so entirely by yourself, without the use of any goods or services produced by another person, and without sharing any of the value you may potentially be creating with any other person.