Paid duct taping vs unpaid creation - *working value system not found*

The difference between “doing a job” and “doing good work” is one we take very seriously, and I dare say most of the people working in the Edgeryders team, but also those on the platform, in the community are actively searching and or pursuing alternatives to classical jobs.

This is the reason we are now organising an online-summit with multiple topical public listening and discussion sessions on the very topic of “making a living”.

Sometimes that is very hard. Some people have to do their “good work” after their job, for others, the financial reality of the “good work” is not secure, especially during a crisis like this one.

In one of our conversations about the issue of work during Covid19 I shared how my friends and my mother’s self-worth was tied to work even so they know better. Among many understanding and helpful answers was the recommendation to read David Graeber’s book “Bullshit Jobs”.

Bellow you find a snipped from David Graeber’s book “Bullshit Jobs”

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I would like to invite your perspective on this issue in the context of open source and the issue of “making a living”.

  • Have you experienced examples of that?

  • Do you think this is an important issue?

  • How would you like to solve this?

  • How can we find an appropriate value system for value-creating work?

Please post here and I would like to invite you to our online-summit:
Sneak Peek: Covid19 + Resilient Livelihoods: An Online Summit

The conversation we are having here is the start of a listening session during that summit.


This event is part of the NGI Forward project Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, launched by the European Commission in the autumn of 2016. It has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 825652 from 2019-2021. You can learn more about the initiative and our involvement in it at https://ngi.edgeryders.eu


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