It would have helped if you asked more specific questions. By “working for” I do mean all kinds of work, like traditional jobs, or freelance jobs, or just helping out somewhere. People are free to choose for which nets they want to work. Contracts, if they exist, are typically very lean and flexible. There are no taxes on work-related incomes! Regulation is minimal, unless non-existent at all. The nets work very crypto-anarcho-libertarian-meritocratic, but many also have a social component, like providing basic incomes or reputation incomes. Self-organization reigns supremely. Net-internal “Democracy” (as in decision making via polls) is kept at a necessary minimum.
The nets in this story are a combination, evolution, and convergence of many ideas and trends, including:
- Decentralized Autonomous Organizations / Corporations
- Decentralization technology like blockchains
- Mesh networks
- Self-organization, especially stigmergy in online platforms like Wikipedia
- Teal / evolutionary organizations as described in the book Reinventing Organizations
- Crypto-UBI approaches: Cryptocurrencies that distribute basic incomes
- Reputation incomes, enabled by systems like my Quantified Prestige system
- Connected to that: Digital Abundance
- Collective Intelligence platforms like Democratic Intelligence and others (see also my latest IEET Post “Solving Problems With Collective Intelligence – Towards an Internet of Thinkers?”)
- Openness, transparency in general
- Digital / online “neo-tribes”
- Also a fair bit of intelligently integrated supportive AI
- Later on, also AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) / strong AI
- Also later on, group-minds connected via technological telepathy and empathy
- An ad-hoc / anarchist mindset in general
The basic idea is that these trends will become stronger and more refined in the 2020s which leads to the emergence of what are simply called nets in the context of Netec 2045. They become so powerful in the 2030s that they effectively wipe out all competing structures during the Netec Revolutions. That’s why people work for the nets. People work for nets, nets work for people. It’s a symbiotic relationship, actually.