I probably could’ve worded that statement better and you bring up good points when it comes to individuals. Innovation clearly does not require profit motive to occur. The type of innovation you’re talking about does require time to achieve, however. For individuals, this is leisure time, for organizations this is billable time. Regardless of the structure of an economy, the creative pursuits you’ve described can’t occur if people are being worked to death.
One thing I will say about open source software, though, is that a lot of projects don’t exist because of pure altruism. A lot of projects have been corporate funded (sometimes significantly funded) in order to specifically kill closed source competitors. I’m a pragmatist, though, I see open source software as a universal good for humanity regardless of its raison d’etre. Open source software is a form of competition that pushes closed source software vendors to innovate in order to justify their value. I could also argue that a lot of free content on the Internet is only free in the sense that it was produced by people who didn’t have a profit motive and it’s still often subscription or ad supported. YouTube, for example, still makes a lot of money on it.
The main point I was driving at is the choice of economic system doesn’t matter much for personal creative endeavors as long as it allows people time to pursue them. But market competition for profits is absolutely one of the most powerful motivators for product and service innovation for corporations. So if you adopt an economic system that essentially eliminates competition and profits, you kill that motivation to innovate.
I probably could’ve worded that statement better and you bring up good points when it comes to individuals. Innovation clearly does not require profit motive to occur. The type of innovation you’re talking about does require time to achieve, however. For individuals, this is leisure time, for organizations this is billable time. Regardless of the structure of an economy, the creative pursuits you’ve described can’t occur if people are being worked to death.
One thing I will say about open source software, though, is that a lot of projects don’t exist because of pure altruism. A lot of projects have been corporate funded (sometimes significantly funded) in order to specifically kill closed source competitors. I’m a pragmatist, though, I see open source software as a universal good for humanity regardless of its raison d’etre. Open source software is a form of competition that pushes closed source software vendors to innovate in order to justify their value. I could also argue that a lot of free content on the Internet is only free in the sense that it was produced by people who didn’t have a profit motive and it’s still often subscription or ad supported. YouTube, for example, still makes a lot of money on it.
The main point I was driving at is the choice of economic system doesn’t matter much for personal creative endeavors as long as it allows people time to pursue them. But market competition for profits is absolutely one of the most powerful motivators for product and service innovation for corporations. So if you adopt an economic system that essentially eliminates competition and profits, you kill that motivation to innovate.