I thought this piece was very interesting. The ideas in it
made a lot of sense. It just seems natural that if two people have to work
together to produce something, they should both share the product, especially
in the case where neither of the two would have been able to produce the ‘marbles’
alone. This idea seems to be so common-sense that I never really thought about
why it is that so many people act as if that is the case.
The first example of this I was able to think of was the
bank that I work at. At any place of employment, a group of people work
together to produce something – in my case that is banking services for our
customers. Under this line of thinking, my paycheck is my share of the ‘marbles’
that I helped to produce. The bank would not be able to run and make a profit
at all if there was only one person trying to produce the services by themselves;
in the case of most businesses team production is necessary. And since all
members of the team are needed for production, the rewards, or profits, are
shared by means of paychecks and bonuses.
One aspect of the idea of sharing rewards in group
production is the decision of how much of the rewards each team member receives.
It seems to make sense that the team members who did more work should get more
rewards, and those who did less work should get less of the rewards. In the
article, both children had to pull the rope in the exact same way, but if one
of the children had to pull their rope harder or longer than the other, it
would be interesting to see if they were allowed to keep a larger portion of
the marbles. The size of a team member’s paycheck can be related to this idea—I
make less money than the branch manager of my bank, because I don’t put in as
much effort to produce the good as he does.
I really agree with the conclusions offered by this piece. I
think that people have a desire to share the gains when they had to work
together to achieve them. This may be because it feels like the ‘right’ or
moral thing to do. It also, though, may be an individualistically motivated
action too; if you don’t share the rewards with the person or people who helped
make it possible for you to get them, then they have no motivation to help you bring
about the rewards again in the future.
I think you bring up some really interesting points. Especially when you spoke up if the children had to pull on the rope harder or longer if they would share equally. Many times in groups, the work is not split up fairly. The question then becomes: should the person doing more work receive more of the reward? This is one aspect I don't think the article really addressed.
ReplyDeleteLet's contrast your bank work example with what they teach you in intermediate microeconomics on this matter. There, you get paid what the market wage is for the job you're doing given your qualifications and prior experience. If that's true of all employees, then the residual profits (or marbles) accrues to ownership.
ReplyDeleteThat may be a reasonable story for how things work in you bank. I don't know. If you, or other employees get more pay than what you'd get on the market, that would be some sharing of the marbles and it would be closer in accord with Akerlof Gift Exchange model. If that extra pay happens as a performance bonus (because you pulled the right string) then maybe it matches Haidt's example. If the extra pay just comes with the job, I'm less sure it is a good fit with the Haidt article.
We do get a yearly bonus depending on how the bank is doing as a whole, which I think would probably relate to the Haidt's article because we are getting a 'reward' for the rope pulling that we did. I don't know for sure, but I assume that larger bonuses are given to higher-up employees, which could be a reflection of them deserving more because they had to put in more effort to 'pull the rope'. What are the exact differences between Gift Exchange and Haidt's model?
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