[lbo-talk] Thought for the day, from C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite

Arthur Maisel arthurmaisel at gmail.com
Mon Jan 6 09:20:14 PST 2014


The objections near the end of the article are well taken. But the experiment (or maybe merely the description of the experiment) begs a lot of questions: Did the high and low earners know they were in those groups---specifically, that there were others who had it harder or easier? (If they didn't, I think that would tend to undercut the results.) Is having to listen to fewer periods of unpleasant noise in five minutes really a good analogy to earning more money per hour of work? Is what was being tested someone's willingness to undergo unpleasantness or how much unpleasantness they would undergo for a certain reward? Was there a change over the course of the five minutes---say, that low earners listened to more white noise per unit of time toward the end to up their reward? There are also some variables that would seem to add quite a bit of uncertainty to the results, e.g., what if the "pleasant music" was boring to the testee? what if they could take or leave Dove choclates? Whole thing seems kind of a slim reed to support any weighty conclusions.

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:11 AM, andie_nachgeborenen < andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Money can't buy everything it's true
> What it can't buy I can't use
> I want money
> That's what I want
>
>
> ► 2:40► 2:40
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpJvrBt_HwQ
> Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want).
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jan 5, 2014, at 10:29 PM, Eubulides <autoplectic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On Jan 5, 2014, at 7:54 PM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> This is plagerized from Doug on facebook. He might have to put me on
> moderation.
> >>
> >> Charles
> >>
> >> Thought for the day, from C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite:
> >>
> >> "The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at
> >> the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do
> >> with their money; the idea that the successful become filled up with
> >> futility, and that those born successful are poor and little as well
> >> as rich - the idea, in short, of the disconsolateness of the rich -
> >> is, in the main, merely a way by which those who are not rich
> >> reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is directly
> >> gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be
> >> truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's
> >> little whims and fantasies and sicknesses…."
> >
> > ==============
> >
> > [Anyone’s guess as to how this applies to Buffett, Gates, Slim etc.]
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/you-cant-take-it-with-you-but-you-still-want-more.html
> >
> > January 4, 2014
> > You Can’t Take It With You, but You Still Want More
> > By MATT RICHTEL
> >
> > All work and no play may just be a result of “mindless accumulation.”
> >
> > So say scholars behind research, published in the journal Psychological
> Science in June, that shows a deeply rooted instinct to earn more than can
> possibly be consumed, even when this imbalance makes us unhappy.
> >
> > Given how many people struggle to make ends meet, this may seem a
> frivolous problem. Nonetheless, the researchers note that productivity
> rates have risen, which theoretically lets many people be just as
> comfortable as previous generations while working less. Yet they choose not
> to.
> >
> > To explore the powerful lure of material accumulation, the researchers
> constructed an experiment in two phases. In the first phase, subjects sat
> for five minutes in front of a computer wearing a headset, and had the
> choice of listening to pleasant music or to obnoxious-sounding white noise.
> >
> > They were told they could earn pieces of Dove chocolate when they
> listened to the white noise a certain number of times. Some participants
> had to listen fewer times to get each piece of chocolate, making them “high
> earners”; some had to listen more times, making them “low earners.”
> >
> > All were told that there would be a second phase to the experiment, also
> lasting five minutes, in which they could eat the chocolate they earned.
> But they were told they would forfeit any chocolate they couldn’t consume,
> and they were asked how much they expected to be able to eat.
> >
> > On average, people in the high-earner group predicted that they could
> consume 3.75 chocolates.
> >
> > But when it came time to “earn” chocolates, they accumulated well beyond
> their estimate. On average, they listened to enough white noise to earn
> 10.74 chocolates. Then they actually ate less than half of that amount.
> >
> > In other words, they subjected themselves to harsh noise to earn more
> than they could consume, or predicted they could consume.
> >
> > “We introduce the concept of ‘mindless accumulation,’ ” said one of the
> paper’s authors, Christopher Hsee, a professor of behavioral science and
> marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “It’s a
> waste of effort,” he added, “But once people are in action, they can’t
> stop.”
> >
> > The impulse seemed less pronounced, even mixed, with the low earners.
> They earned less chocolate than they predicted they could eat. But the high
> earners and the low earners listened to about the same amount of obnoxious
> noise in the five-minute period, which Dr. Hsee said strongly suggested
> that both groups were driven by the same thing: not by how much they need,
> but by how much work they could withstand.
> >
> > How applicable is this to the real world, where people earn money, not
> chocolate, and can’t predict how long life will last, or whether they will
> need resources to prepare for a calamity? Hard to say, but the study does
> show that even when people know clear boundaries — that they absolutely
> can’t take the candy with them when they go — they still earn more than
> they can possibly use.
> >
> > Michael Norton, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School
> who is familiar with the field, said the study’s implications were
> “enormous” in part because they can enlighten people to an unconscious
> motivation that leads to shortsighted, even unhappy choices.
> >
> > Still, he said, choosing happiness or leisure over earning is
> challenging, in part because accumulation of money — or candy — is easier
> to measure than, say, happiness. “You can count Hershey’s Kisses,” Dr.
> Norton said. Being an involved parent or partner is not so quantifiable.
> “Most of the things that truly make us happy in life are harder to count,”
> he said.
> >
> >
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