Crowdfunding

I first came across Kickstarter late last year when my old neighbor, Igor, created a cash cow. The more I read, the more enchanted I become, as it appears to break away from the more draconian, Crowdsourcing. To make this seem more complicated than it should be, let us diverge:


Crowdsourcing puts the impetus on all of those people who are going to be competing as labor. The process allows for the division of labor in a non-traditional, but still legal-rational, framework. Management is retained, but labor becomes even less contractual than today's modern at will employment situation.


Imagine you own a business or are management of a business, but you don't enjoy the concept of employees. Crowdsourcing allows management to place traditional labor items they want completed into the public realm. Now here is the fun part! Instead of paying someone a standard salary, management can now allow the worker to compete against other workers directly. But wait there's more! The workers aren't competing for a guaranteed salary. Instead they are working for the hope of winning a contest. Basically, it reduces the labor into a complete Thunderdome-ish commission system. Thus I went Marxist, and  I wasn't the first!


Here is where sites such as Kickstarter come into play, with a term aptly called Crowdfunding. With this system, management is thrown out the window. Here the product of the labor is directly put to the test of the market (which in all honesty that is what the crowd is). Investors purchase pledges, anything akin to tchotchkes on the lower end of the spectrum, to more handsome products on the upper end, including basically whatever the producer wants to give. 


Instead of needling around trying to develop something with pre-determined scopes, in the hopes of winning a $20,000 contest, the worker can put their product directly out to bid. If the attempt is to make a more participatory styled workplace, Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter appear to be the way to go. Everybody is in it to win it, and gets to share the spoils. Of course this assumes you actually can make something worth value in a material society..... Alright, no more time for Marx.


Note on Crowdsourcing links:
Read the Wired.com article for a more realistic account of Crowdsourcing. Read the Wikipedia article if you are lazy.


Sources in order of use:


http://www.kickstarter.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled-espresso-machine
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employment-at-will-definition-30022.html
http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2010/12/excerpts-from-communist-manifesto.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838768,00.html
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm