I see so many projects, particularly in the open source world, that seem to signal, support, and assume altruism. But then, when it comes to my own experience, I really can't seem to find people that actually believe this stuff. People who actually spend significant amounts of their time building software for free, for everyone to use. Then again, I am quite the hermit hah.

It's as though there's this silent war between large corporate/state and small tribal or community ideologies. In the former, you get paid for your work. In the latter, you do some free work out of kindness, in hopes that someone will repay it down the road (if we're being honest IMHO). This seems like an extreme version of how, on many teams, there are a few people that are really driving results while the rest seem to be coasting. To me, it seems like these altruistic behaviors are a symptom of tribalism within large scale population but I wonder if it'll scale through time as well.

Will we always be tribal?

Will an AI-modified society retain tribalistic ideologies?

Will micro-transactional projects like LN blur the lines of what money is and make it a little less dirty for tribal ideologies?

Hmm.