What if everyone intelligent would go on strike

[Santtu]

..and not say or do anything intelligent unless paid for? These people would just perform to average standard in everything, and they would be like an average person for practically every purpose.

Nobody would participate in the strike by witholding those skills that they are already paid to use. If someone is underpaid, they would underperform while in strike.

When hearing that someone is starting their business in a pyramid scheme, they would withold their criticism, and let the soon-to-be-entrepeneur fail miserably.

When their boss would announce a business plan with fundamental flaw in it, the intelligent person would sell their information to the company, instead of of announcing it in the meeting.

When some of our acquintances would not know how to install their latest software, we would refuse to give advice for free.

Intelligent persons would not use their free time to arrange information in the internet for anyone to use freely.

When a national leader is being voted for, and there's a choise between a popularizing numbnut and a sensible person, they would vote for the numbnut.

In short, intelligent people would stop satisfying their needs for expression (which is why they give their intelligence away) and they would start thinking about the bottom line.

What on earth keeps them from doing that? Why do intelligent people flood the world with their economically valuable "products" that they give for free or for reduced price? WHat could justify such economically idiotic behaviour? It's not all just charity. Is it lack of knowledge? Is it the desire for self-expression? Is it because of the lack of selling skills?

One practical example: I was applying for a job as a computer specialist. I came to know that in that company,(during the last boom 'bout 7-8 years ago) people worked for 12 hours a day, for their 8 hour salary. Oh my oh my why they do so? They were so interested of their job, in an impractical way, that they give huge amounts of their work effort for free!!! What on earth could make a person behave in such impractical way? It was detrimental for my career development, because I did not enter the IT sector at the time. I thought that everyone giving their work for free was fucking nuts. By doing that, they diluted the value of their work. I was surely going to be paid less from my efforts, because the value of unit of work had declined. The said persons would have been employed anyway, even though they all had done just 8 hour work day.

So, bottom line, why don't intelligent people unite and stop giving their intelligence away for free?

Disclaimer: this post includes factual elements, but also elements presented in other than strictly factual purpose. Finding the style of each of the element is left as an exercise to the reader. The author takes no responsibility for failed interpretations. /end disclaimer

[substitute]

I don't mind giving my intelligence away for free, because money isn't the main thing I work for, it isn't the main condition.

Now, I might consider going on strike, not demanding better pay, but demanding less inverse-snobbery. You know, the part where everyone relies on your intelligence, and yet resents you for it, giving you a wide berth because of their distrust of your intelligence, and then attributing your aloofness from the crowd to you being snobbish on account of your higher intelligence. If I were to strike, I'd simply wipe the existence of anyone who called me a snob based purely on the fact that I used a 'big word' or pointed out that someone was wrong, etc., from my reality/acknowledgement, and refuse to do anything with, for or involving them.

[Santtu]

I hate those double standards as well.

[Economica]

Two words: Atlas Shrugged.

The main conflict of the book occurs as the "individuals of the mind" go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of "looters" and "moochers" who bleed them dry. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, and the near-total collapse of civilization triggered by their strike shows them to be correct.

Edit: ... And my standard disclaimer:

Essay about the benefits and hazards of reading Ayn Rand:

(Ayn Rand) used to say to me, "I don't know anything about psychology, Nathaniel." I wish I had taken her more seriously. She was right; she knew next to nothing about psychology. What neither of us understood, however, was how disastrous an omission that is in a philosopher in general and a moralist in particular. The most devastating single omission in her system and the one that causes most of the trouble for her followers is the absence of any real appreciation of human psychology and, more specifically, of developmental psychology, of how human beings evolve and become what they are and of how they can change.

[Blackwater]

anybody can say that they are intelligent so they have to show it in order to prove it and that involves freebies

[Jennifer]

And who is an "average person" again, and who is an "intelligent person"?

Most of the "intelligent people" I know by the apparent definition here stink in areas of life where the "average person" excels.

And what of all the tasks an "intelligent person" doesn't know how to perform, or doesn't CARE to perform?

I think withholding one's talents from society because society doesn't deserve them really sounds more like a lack of understanding on the "intelligent person's" part about how much of their current lifestyle is dependent on the "average person's" knowledge and efforts.

To put it another way, people do not exist in vacuums, especially in a modern technological society where specialization is necessary and no one is self-sufficient any longer.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Jennifer

And who is an "average person" again, and who is an "intelligent person"?

No-one needs to be concerned about the definitions of intelligence in this scenario. I am only concerned about the marketable intelligence which brings value to the system, as decided by the market value of intelligent creations in a free market. A price paid is a proof of marginal increase in utility for the purchaser with the assumption of rational marketplace.

Originally Posted by Jennifer

Most of the "intelligent people" I know by the apparent definition here stink in areas of life where the "average person" excels.

If someone feels that they can get a better price on whatever skills they excel in, I welcome them to do just that.

Originally Posted by Jennifer

And what of all the tasks an "intelligent person" doesn't know how to perform, or doesn't CARE to perform?

Then such skills can't be marketed in an efficient marketplace. The knowledge of such skills might be, tho.

Originally Posted by Jennifer

I think withholding one's talents from society because society doesn't deserve them really sounds more like a lack of understanding on the "intelligent person's" part about how much of their current lifestyle is dependent on the "average person's" knowledge and efforts.

I was talking about the net effect intelligent people give to society, and I was seeing it from an economical perspective. There has been examples where previously freely distributed commodity have got a price tag attached to it, and it has led to better utilization for said commodity, plus profits for the supplier. This proposition of mine does not require (or benefit from) a collapse of the system. You have also not proposed a mechanism which would enable the "average" to capitalize on their possibilities.

I think it's evident why it is so. By the definiton, average are average and hence do not have a leverage against the average, in average

Originally Posted by Jennifer

To put it another way, people do not exist in vacuums, especially in a modern technological society where specialization is necessary and no one is self-sufficient any longer.

Yes, that is exactly why the intelligent would have the bargaining power to get a better price for their efforts. You see, I wouldn't have the intelligent to withhold their contributions in situations where they get a good price for them in return. If some price wouldn't be paid of their contributions, in the absense of free, public good, obviously the skills being marketed wouldn't be that valuable.

What I am telling is that intelligent work, ideas and such would have a higher price sticker on them, and a greater total volume of sales, if the free sources of such intelligent creations would be abolished. This would work as a greater incentive to produce intellegent results, and a greater understanding in how intelligence would be put to use, and where it is required. Such improved system efficiency would improve most everyone's lot in the life.

[still water]

And again, what's considered "intelligent" by some may be considered "drivel" by others.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by still water

And again, what's considered "intelligent" by some may be considered "drivel" by others.

Read point 1 in my response to jen.

I laugh when people try to think an issue away by pointing out difficulties in definition.

[Athenian200]

Well, how do you propose to convince intelligent people to go on strike? Most of them enjoy sharing their knowledge so much that they would feel suffocated if they had to limit themselves to what they were paid to show.