What if without money we got bored and had no motivation?

A lot of people would be chasing around money for most of their life, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Not much would matter to them beyond the “artificial” incentives of money and the things they can get for it. Note that this would not be easily distinguished from the situation where the motivations and incentives of money overpowered the motivations of the individual.

Obviously that’s over simplified, but you can probably see my point.

Yeah, I think so. You’re saying that people can and do have their own motivations, but that in order to maintain “power elites” those motivations are either replaced by or wrapped around money as a motivator or at least as a necessity to accomplish other things.

My point is looking at that from the reverse. What if without money we got bored and had no motivation? I’m not saying that it *IS* true, so much as I’m examining what else would be true *IF* that were true…

Without an incentive being provided us, it can be quite difficult to come up with one on your own.

I think that people come up with their own goals and the accompanying incentives quite well on their own. However, these will often conflict to varying degrees, which would probably impede some strategy of one of the elites. Needless to say, such things cannot be allowed to stand in the elite’s sight. So, they come up with incentives for the masses to do what will move the master plan forward.

Obviously that’s over simplified, but you can probably see my point.

Your quote shows the hole in your analysis

Where’s the hole in my analysis? It consisted of open-ended questions. I’ve yet to come to a conclusion as to whether what they’re saying is accurate.

I think what they are trying to say here is that money provides an incentive for behavior. Without an incentive being provided us, it can be quite difficult to come up with one on your own. That much I definitely agree on.

An example from my own life: when I was in art school, I felt really driven to paint all the time. The reason being that I really wanted to excel in art school and be a good artist. At some point, that incentive system broke down for me, and I no longer wanted to excel in art school. And I dropped out. For a long time, I was able to sustain the momentum or the incentive to paint on my own, because I still wanted to be a great artist.

At some point though, that desire too kind of fell away and I lost my incentive to be a great artist, and my painting eventually dropped down to nothing. I think we do often need outside incentives to get us to want to do things - to have there be concrete reasons being handed to us as to why we move forward. The ultimate goal as an artist seems to be to internalize those incentives, so that you’re doing it for the sheer experience of doing it. But getting to that point is more difficult maybe than being a great artist. Anyone can be technical and learn to draw well with the right guidance. But to move forward with no guide - that’s another thing.

That - for me - is what this conversation is about personally. One of many aspects, anyway.