On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> I flat out don't think
> that it answers this problem to say that people would
> just want to do their best out of a spirit of
> camaraderie and socialist solidarity. Some would.
> And they would resent the hell out the goof-offs --
> even if they were only, say 10% of the population --
> who didn't. It;s hard to believe that people who don't
> get this point have ever worked in a real job or lived
> in a family. This is a constant issue. Back to my
> billables now. I do it for the dough.
Family relations are an interesting example that (to some degree) undermines Justin's argument. According to any rational assessment of incentives and investment, raising children is an awful decision. They're a huge economic liability, they divert time and energy from other creative and potentially productive activities, they require constant psychological and social support. Perhaps in the past, people could say, "I raised them, and in my dotage they'll look after me"; however, I know few people who believe this today (I certainly don't expect it of my kids!). In sum, there are few or no tangible incentives for parents to raise kids.
--And yet we do! Although it may sound like I'm complaining above, I consider being a parent a central and important status in my life. The point is that I'm not doing it for personal gain; incentive or lack of it is irrelevant to my commitment to being a parent. To be a little sappy, I'm doing it out of love and concern for others.
Call me an optimist, but I think it's possible to extend this same pattern of interaction and expectation to other domains of social life. The example of the family clearly shows that people are capable of doing stuff without incentives; it's more or less a social engineering problem to instill in people the same spirit about other facets of social life that they take for granted in their family relations. (There's no bogeyman "human nature" getting in the way of cooperative interactions here; the biggest obstacle is our immersion in a capitalist system that demands incessant calculation of incentives and compensation.)
Miles