 
However, I would also like to be optimistic about the possibility for workers to change and to realise the more sane alternative to wage labor, which is completely voluntary work that is not separate from one's personal life and play, and is not forced in any way upon them.
allergic
Volunteering around here might best be thought of as a free learning experience (not to mention a free hosting opportunity) in terms of "working" within an actual web hosting production environment. Along with providing a free reseller account to each user for their duration as a volunteer, the main difference from any sort of "work experience" placement that you might find within a university course (etc.), is that I have absolutely no concern for how much time you actually spend working at all (as the other volunteers will attest to) — so in a way, this action is also an attempt to call into question the straightjacket-like organization of daily space-time that a capitalist environment prefers when contriving to hand out tasks within society.
As Jacques Ellul has said, "Today the human being is dissociated from the essence of life; instead of living time, he is split up and parceled out by it." Against this frenzied act of parceling, this profitable commodification of space and time aimed directly in bad faith at those workers predicted slavish enough in mind to legitimate it — perhaps this "spectacular time" as once articulated by Guy Debord —, I would like to offer you, however relatively powerless in force for now, its opposition in the freedom to control your own time and create your own activities around here. You would basically have the option to come and go as you please, voluntarily, observing the ins and outs of the system for your own benefit (whatever that might be) and lending a hand to clients in the process.
Operations in this sense are not limited to strict support ticket work as I am happy to collaborate openly with any volunteer for any worthwhile purpose whatsoever. For instance, Ryan and Jared have recently been developing a new minimalist support ticketing system which I hope to start using soon; Joe has always been amazingly responsive in the realm of extraneous tasks, in the most recent instance as a patch-work coder for our custom forum; and Karina helps me with design concepts, accounting, sales, and general artifice from time to time. But either way, in terms of decision-making (when it comes to dealing with a real live support request), one of my goals is to create a situation wherein each volunteer can hold his or her own... or play around throughout the service at will and without managerial supervision.
Lastly, to possibly aid in our overall purpose here, I have written a quick manifesto on the subject! Most of this was jotted down some time in early 2006 although parts of it have been revamped as recently as August of 2007.
VOLUNTARIST MANIFESTO!
- Understanding its position as an island in the midst of a capitalist ocean (and desiring to act as a continual point of contestation in light of this crisis), MJZ Web Hosting has chosen to look for volunteers from within its own client-community as a sort of experiment to see if — or to which degree at least — obligatory work as ordained from the traditional capitalist vein can be avoided.
- As capitalist epistemology — in terms of "the sense of entitlement among the rulers" — is of course situated comfortably upon varying tiers of coercion, it is desirable to search for new ways of learning about, working within, and experiencing the world that are not set on adhering to (nor reproducing) the existing sense of indentured entitlement.
- Attempted voluntarist tendencies insofar as they are the "ideological opposite" of the brand of coercion shaped by capital begin to look appealing as immediately useful concepts that might help with pointing us in new and brighter trajectories of voluntary human interaction, where tasks are not forced upon people through the allocation of their life-forces by capital; where their will to contribute to any given project is linked more so to their immediate and spontaneously provisional desire to play with it.
- Selections for new voluntarists are based in ones displayed initiative coupled with ones proclaimed hobbyist interest in webhostio-technocratic matters!
- Since technocracy as a hobby is of course near impossible to achieve in actuality (in pretty much every way, shape and form), we are left to either choose from the "impossible," the "dreamer" or the "liar."
- Volunteers (liars) are provided recompense through an openly agreed upon barter system which rests on the notion of gift exchange and refuses the pathetic careerist roustaboutism of typical salary-based commerce.
- The mutually advantageous gift exchange takes on a natural form: volunteers are provided with absolutely free reseller hosting accounts coupled with very lighthearted and trusting restrictions on their (the accounts') potential growth / size.
- Account capabilities comprise the offered potential for "unlimited" disk and bandwidth allocations inside of what the respective voluntarist personally deems as "responsible usage" on his or her own accord — that is, responsible in terms of living up to ones honest, subjective requirements as far as ones own web development projects are concerned and in terms of not monopolizing server resources (hopefully this is little to ask and will come off as completely agreeable to any individual who isn't carrying some sort of hidden contrary agenda).
- This action, the harboring of volunteers, is a prelude to the end of the boredom that is obligatory work and in fact mocks its "required" form of docility on all fronts! It is one particular living example of the dissolution of such a sophistic requirement. Breaking through the prevailing sophistry that serves to control pro-work attitudes everywhere, it is in praxis its own verified proof of a living contradiction. We are ready right now, where are you?
- The MJZ Web Hosting volunteer
 does not resemble a wage-slave. Instead, she enjoys an experimental and unprecedented amount of freedom in her maneuvers. She is not on a schedule — ever — and may choose to work or not work completely at will and on her own levels of motivation (as opposed to the miserably instilled pseudo-motivation of the shift-worker, who is caught up entirely within a network of time that was never her own).
- Volunteers are not packaged and parceled out into work slots based in profit mechanisms that exist outside of their control, but instead are able to choose when, where, why and how to interact with the hosting system. In terms of causality, the system is rigged so that the absolute caprice of the voluntarist's own will is always the prime mover when it comes to interacting with MJZ Web Hosting in any way whatsoever. In practice, this usually means that voluntarists are giant fucking slackers, something of which is encouraged entirely. In this sense, normalized notions of obligatory work are necessarily refused and the volunteer "works" (collaborates freely might be more accurate here) entirely on his own time and for his own purposes.
- In the support ambience of which we are trying to achieve, there is no locked down time-frame as imposed by any economic abstraction of time. (For a brief moment of clearing, capital as order-giver — as controller of time — is booed off the stage). In theory, the MJZ Web Hosting volunteer does not even require a clock, let alone any commodified concept of time itself for that matter.
- She may wake up at random and work for thirty minutes, then fall back to sleep or wander off into the realm of whichever personal, non-work related activity meets her fancy.
- Henceforth, the freedom and right to be "lazy" (or "without work" — MJZ Web Hosting does not care for the lazy, condescending connotation behind usual conceptions of "laziness" as guarded by a workforce which resents the freedom in those who actively despise and refuse work to the best of their abilities) is one of his many ontological advantages.
- Furthermore, the MJZ Web Hosting volunteer is never caught up within the audacity of a contractual leash or work-order and may come and go as she pleases without ever having to fill out any paper work in order to do so. If she would rather spend her time elsewhere and decides for whichever arbitrary reason that it is time to move on, she is free to quit the volunteer team and her action to leave on a whim will be respected. This not only frees up past notions of control over the body — in terms of the largely unalterable scheduled positioning imposed rigidly by pro-work ideologues everywhere —, but over the mind and imagination of the individual as well. This is perhaps more important, as imagination is no longer forced to act as agent within some duty-bound, ideological allocation of mind, but instead is now able to drift freely, playing with the technical apparatus at will and dreaming up its own, individualized ways to collaborate with and manipulate it.
The search for a new volunteer isn't urgent or anything, but I figured I'd just throw it out there. Also, to be a volunteer, you should have some idea on how to use computers and stuff — knowledge of cPanel and WHM will help of course —, but in no way is any sort of expertise expected. I'm happy to make this a complete learning experience for anyone interested. The amount of "certification" or "skill" that you may or may not possess makes little difference to me. It's not like I'll be policing any sort of work ethic or attempting to allocate it toward purposes of optimizing capital.
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