Well, Kat, it depends on the society. In some societies the pay may be the primary or at least a key objective, in others accomplishing the work may be the main objective, and the pay is simply not a factor. This would certainly be true in a moneyless society, and there have been some of those.

But what about the violence question posed by Amos? "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"? Well, yes, that is generally true in the case of human beings...although...in a case of warfare (launched, one assumes, by the morally incompetent) one may require competent warriors to defend oneself! So there you have a situation arising out of human incompetence which requires further such incompetence, done of course in as competent a manner as possible. :-) Stonewall Jackson was a marvelously competent expert in the organized incompetence that is called "war".

Now for a tiger, violence is a prerequisite to survival, but does that include violence on other tigers? Possibly, when one takes into account territorial requirements and food supply...this leads me to think that a totally nonviolent tiger would be, in fact, incompetent.

It's my belief that human beings are (generally) evolved to a higher level of intelligence (and thus responsibility) than animals, so we ought to be able to find ways of avoiding violence...and we certainly could, if we were all willing to. It's partly just laziness that stands in the way. For instance, we routinely practice violence (by proxy) on untold numbers of domesticated animals merely for the convenience of eating food we have grown accustomed to. There are alternatives, but laziness and habit and profit stand in the way of doing anything substantial to change the situation.

- LH