"Community is easier to market than company because not everyone cares about corporations but almost everyone wants to be a part of a community. I always saw Bitshares as a community not a company. "
Once again it is the part of our brain regulating emotion that pushes us to act. "Community" appeals to the emotional center of our brain. Appealing to people's emotions is very powerful. I always wondered why people believe in religious fairy tales when religious text are always full of such contradictory nonsense. It is probably because religion and church appeals to our sense of community and belonging. People don't go to church to listen to the pastor or read a book that deep down they know doesn't make sense. Rather, they attend church for that sense of community. They attend so they can spend time with family and friends. They do so for social reasons.
The success of Bitshares might depend on how we appeal to people's emotions. How do we encourage and create a sense of community beyond what we currently have?
Marketing Bitshares as a business and focusing on the profit motive works as long as those attracted by such motives make money. They won't stick around to help Bitshares grow. They were simply motivated by personal gain. As that Ted video Bytemaster linked to on another thread points out, "They don't care what you do or how you do it, they care about WHY." The "what" and "how" appeal to our most recently evolved rational side, but for most of us it doesn't push us toward action.
What: Bitshares is like a company. How: Bitshares has "shareholders" "employees" and makes a profit.
Why: Bitshares seeks to bring freedom and justice for humanity through distributed software.
Honestly, I think that people really aren't rational and we aren't always seeking personal gain. Humans have too many biases to be rational and if we really were rational there would be no such thing as religious faith or non profit organizations.
I think that what we call capitalism isn't the only way to organize economic life and self interest isn't the only motivator either. Think of the people that contribute to the linux operative system. They aren't getting paid for their work. Some of them may, like those working for Canonical.(They are behind Ubuntu) Think about how Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia housing all of human knowledge. By the way I donate to them on a yearly basis because I
believe that we should all have access to human knowledge.
Given certain circumstances capitalism may be the best way to organize
scarce resources. After extensive reading I think the collaborative commons will be the best way to organize ourselves going forward because we are moving away from a world of scarcity.
Many have heard or are aware of the Tragedy of the Commons.
However, not many have heard of the
Comedy of the Commons. I highly recommend you read the original paper.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2827&context=fss_papersQuick summarization of the differences between the Tragedy of the Commons and the Comedy of the Commons.
In the tragedy of the commons, each person tries to maximize their own benefit, and the end result is that everyone loses because of overutilization of limited resources. In the comedy of the commons, each person, while getting something for themselves, also (directly or indirectly) contributes back to the common good at the same time.
BitTorrent makes use of the comedy of the commons, since the more people who participate, the better the service gets.
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