I am cautiously excited about the fediverse, of which mastodon is most prominent example currently. I haven’t been excited about anything happening on the Internet for a while.
Fifty years of neoliberalism has blinded us to the power of what people can achieve for love rather than money. Schoolteachers aren’t in it for the bucks.
Yes, of course, people need and deserve to be paid, but for a lot of people the pay is not the motivation for the work. The pay enables the work.
Wikipedia is a powerful example of the great things that can be achieved by an all-volunteer workforce.
Open source is a powerful example of the great things that can be achieved by a hybrid workforce of some people being paid, and other people working as volunteers. (And then there’s a third group of people who are paid to volunteer, which doesn’t even make sense and yet it happens.)
Mitch's Blog 