Should the development of projects like LessWrong be funded by people working at their cheerful prices?
Nope. There is little hope in optimizing such that people working on most important projects (LW, most startups, etc) are not paying any personal costs in order to do them. Being a hero is not easy, and it feels naive to say something like “what if everyone was cheerful 100% of the time”. Cheerful prices allow certain positive interpersonal interactions to happen rather than not happen, but it doesn’t seem worth it to do for jobs.
I think fair prices are important goals, and even sometimes prices-where-you-feel-you’re-getting-a-great-deal. But I think cheerful prices are probably too high a bar.
Nope. There is little hope in optimizing such that people working on most important projects (LW, most startups, etc) are not paying any personal costs in order to do them. Being a hero is not easy, and it feels naive to say something like “what if everyone was cheerful 100% of the time”. Cheerful prices allow certain positive interpersonal interactions to happen rather than not happen, but it doesn’t seem worth it to do for jobs.
I think fair prices are important goals, and even sometimes prices-where-you-feel-you’re-getting-a-great-deal. But I think cheerful prices are probably too high a bar.