"..where can I work with people who care about my intellectual freedom and sanity?"

I love that question, and it is one I am going to really ponder further. The answer to that question sounds appealing to me, even if I don't know what it is!

What follows are some not necessarily connected brainstorming thoughts about said place to work:

- No, I don't know a specific place we can work where people truly care about that (and I wish I did too) - I think that's because survival driven needs (and financial ones) generally tend to overpower the needs/wants of intellectual freedom/sanity for both organizations and individuals.

- The place to work where you can achieve that is probably relative to each individual - I mean, one person might achieve that stability/freedom through farming and another might through writing code. However, for a moment let's suspend that idea and pretend there was one answer that would work for everyone to achieve intellectual freedom and sanity.

- True story - I met someone once who told me that their goal was to pay employees whatever they wanted, with a wide open vacation policy, super flexible working hours, with the best benefits money can buy. The reason for this was that the person wanted to hire people who would devote themselves completely to the problems the organization wanted to solve, and wanted people to reach the point of self-actualization so they could do their very best work - as in fulfilling all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (plus a reasonable number of "wants"). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to work with this person but I have always been intrigued by the idea/theory - one only made possible by access to considerable financial resources.

What are some elements of such a place to work? It makes me wonder if we can use project management's cost/scope/schedule to define them. In other words, freedom from fear of cost, freedom from scope (free to explore any direction), and freedom from schedule?

More thoughts:

- it feels good to know your presence is appreciated (i.e. people want to have you around) but not required - you have a place to "belong" virtually or in person.

- freedom from schedule (free to come and go as you please, no project schedule requirements, completely flexible and unlimited vacation time).

- freedom to work on any type of project, invention, idea, in any area at all.

- freedom from having to worry about paying/taking care of yourself/family? guaranteed stable income at a level commensurate with the expenses relative to the local area?

- what you do has to produce something, eventually, otherwise how does it fund itself?

Umm, how about some sort of combination of a hackerspace with a community-run or collective based organization/business - people come together in a shared workspace whenever they want, they build ANY kind of projects and ideas together without limit - if those are able to generate revenue, a portion of the revenue goes back into the collective/organization and the rest to the individuals who were the source of the revenue? Also, very little restrictions on who can join - technical, non-technical, it doesn't matter - all that is needed are people who want to work on ideas together, a place for them to work with resources for them to work with/share, and time. Kind of like a wide open incubator I guess.

I have always wondered what people could generate working together in a truly open way with complete freedom to explore any and all ideas and freedom from any related fears (i.e. a basic code of conduct).