Nor is there an incentive need for it...
> However, wouldn't we need to ensure that there are incentives
> for competent persons to become, say, doctors?
I imagine we agree there is no incentive to improve your luck in the genetic lottery...You cann't to that.
That is, by rewarding genes that convey speed or felxibility or reflex or particular cfonceptual capacities and so on...we will not induce people having those genes.
So, the question becomes, what incentive is needed, and appropropriate, to induce people to work rather than sloth -- and to work in areas where they will be more productive rather than less?
If we remunerate effort and sacrifice we have handled the former issue, plainly. If I work harder or longer, I get more income -- and in the right amount too. We don't want to induce people to work so hard they are miserable to try to win immense income that won't be forthcoming -- it can't be, for everyone who does so. Or I don't...at any rate.
Now what about my choice of work? If I do my main work where I am better suited, I will be more productive, which is socially desirable. I will also get more satisfaction of accomplishment, my efforts will be more appreciated, and so on.
If I can ONLY work at a balanced job complex and only earn income for the intensity and duration of my labors -- is it really the case that I have to be bribed materially to orient my work choice toward where I will be more productive -- and appreciated -- or will that occur naturally and in accord, as well, with my own preferences?
Some will say, but doing x is onerous -- if so, doing x would be remunerated more. But when people say that, they rarely are doing so out of having thought about it -- rather it is mere repetition of what is typically claimed.
> I don't think
> a lot of people would be willing to go through the rigors of
> med school if the pay at the end of the rainbow was around
> $40,000--or would Parecon med schools somehow be just as good
> (relative to the ones we already have) at preparing
> prospective doctors without being nearly as taxing?
People would be remunerated for the effort and sacrific of training -- and there is no bill to pay off...but, the details are not nearly as important as the mythology that goes unexamined in this example -- which is the archtype....
You go to high school, then through med school, etc. to become a doctor for thirty five years and retire.
I go straight from High School to a coal mine, for forty five years, and retire.
The common claim is that you need to be remunerated -- let's say -- $400,000 a year for those thirty five years, to redress the tremendous onerousness of the prior ten in training. I need to be remunerating only, let's say, $50,000 per year, for all forty five, because the coal mine is such a relative pleasant place I almost want to go there without pay.
Once it is laid out -- it is so obviously utter inanity -- that one wonders how the example gets replayed infinitely in our society.
The truth , of course, is that if you negotiate with the "doctor" when leaving high school, offering less and less for their future income, and ask when they will switch from their doctor path over to the coal mine, not only does the income have to drop to $50,000, it can can go lower -- with most people who play the game, down to starvation level, before they will switch.
And the same holds for the reverse shift.
And the example is obliterated by the reality...even without chaning all the economy's institution, its underlying logic, and so on.