I think there's a need to teach the public about how there are different models of work, like how schools taught me about different religions and cultural practices in social studies.
Oh, Uncle Gary. He wears like what office people wear and goes to an office. He works from 8 am to 6 pm.
Oh, Auntie Ju-Lyn works from home. She puts on "going-out" clothes and goes to her room. Sometimes she works 8 am to 6 pm, then 8 pm to 3 am. Sometimes she sleeps until 11 am. Then she'll feel bad and work until 6 am that night. Then Uncle Gary will scold her and remind her to take care of her health. Okay. Valid. Because she doesn't eat at night either. Then she gets gastric problems. And she doesn't have paid sick leave.
Uncle Gary does all sorts of work that his organisation decides that he should do. Instructions usually come in an email from somebody. But sometimes he has a good idea and asks the people around him, and they agree that he should do it or send it to someone else. They get to decide like how they decided that the organisation (or someone they appointed) should hire him and pay him $X on a certain day every month for the work he does that month. Even if he goes on vacation.
Auntie Ju-Lyn does all kinds of work that she decides she should do. How does she decide? Sometimes a voice goes inside Auntie Ju-Lyn's head and gives her an idea to work on, and she knows it is the thing she has to do because an inarticulable sense of compulsion overwhelms her inertia. Sometimes she reads an email or message with somebody offering to pay her for a job. Then she asks the voices inside her head - is it interesting? If it is, please overwhelm my inertia! And that sometimes happen. But if the voices are silent, she asks her bank account with how much the job is willing to pay - Is it interesting? And if the bank account is empty enough, or the remuneration is impactful enough, it will reply with an echo: interesting... interesting... then she'll listen to it.
If not she'll do the other jobs as instructed by the voices.
Auntie Ju-Lyn may sound like a kook to you. But that's because you don't know enough people like her. And to be honest, people like her all work slightly differently, because the voices in their heads are different ones. And they didn't teach you about people like her in social studies.
Rant over.
Somewhat relevant read: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/02/should-you-work-for-free.html
