Long ago, in my games-master days, we took our team of young tykes to a bigger school for a cricket match.
From the beginning, we were under the hammer and lost three or four quick wickets. One of our middle order, a young lad, had his father watching and it was clear that the game was soon going to be over; everyone was despondent.
I then overheard the father offering to take his mate [the next batsman in after that] and the kid to McDonalds or wherever, if they'd go out and knock up thirty runs. Obviously the man usually delivered because these two kids went in like mini-Bothams and smashed the opposition bowlers all over the ground, with the result that we won the match.
At Monday assembly, the Head sang the praises of the team, in coming back from the jaws of defeat and then asked me to his office to tear strips off me. One of our parents had complained that I'd done nothing to dress down the offending 'briber' and that this was against the spirit etc. etc.
This is an emotive issue, incentives and I reasoned that as the father had spoken only to his own kid and best mate [son of the father's best mate], thus there was no need to have said anything. On the other hand, the Head's view was that it was promoting the wrong values.
Fast forward to a discussion between two bloggers. One said that there should be one wage for all, to be fair to the have-nots. The other blogger asked what if he was a surgeon? As he can no longer earn any more nor less than the basic wage, he might as well do part time shelf-stacking round the corner and safe himself all that hassle in the high stress stress occupation of surgery. Ditto air traffic controllers and other well paid but stressful jobs.
Thus the brain drain is put in place and everything tends to mediocrity.
Incentives. Are they the lifeblood of society?
Incentives. Are they the lifeblood of society?
ReplyDeleteYes.
It's difficult I think. There is a bit of me that says people shouldn't be paid less because they happened to be born less intelligent. If a dustman works hard all day why should he earn less than a surgeon? But I know that is totally unrealistic in the human world.
ReplyDeleteMatthew 20:1-16!
If a dustman works hard all day why should he earn less than a surgeon?
ReplyDeleteBecause no one in their right mind will want to go through the years of study and then take on the associated risks and responsibilities of being a surgeon if they can empty people's bins for the same income.
You get what you pay for in this world. Pay a surgeon a dustman's wage and likely as not, you will get a dustman doing heart surgery.
We are not all equal and our economic worth is not equal. That's life. The trick is to make the best of what skills we have.
Totally agree with you there Longrider.
ReplyDeleteOnly thing I would add is that it's people trying to force their views on everyone like this equality issue are the ones stirring things up and causing the politics of envy.
Intelligence has nothing to do with your ability to make a good living.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't describe Alan Sugar as intelligent. But he's made a lot of money.
What people need is a skill. Whether it be the ability to make something or the ability to spot a good money making opportunity.
People with skills tend to make money. Those who don't, don't. It's not really got much to do with intelligence.
Top post, James, and very much on my mind just now.
ReplyDeleteOur esteemed comrades in the union have negotiated a regrading of the work roles at the Department For Hurt And Awful Nuisances, wherein I simultaneously earn and squander the taxpayer's moolah.
The idea was that poorer-paid workers - particularly manual workers and women, should have the roles and responsibilities reassessed to see if they should be paid more, and the more office-based perhaps paid less.
This is exactly what's happened.
The people who dossed around in school or got pregnant too early and never studied in their evenings have now been raised up to parity with some people at least who did study hard, who kept their legs together before marriage or at least remembered how to count to 28 when they didn't [and were lucky, I must admit].
Some of those who are now in charge of large machines such as vehicles, or who clean public buildings in dodgy neighbourhoods, and who can still go home and forget about it all and never be tested on their in-depth knowledge are now trousering as much as - if not more than - people with thirty-five years' practise and legislative and regulatory experience - people whose pay packets are soon to drop by several thousand quid a year.
We the aggrieved still work and do the job we're paid for, and do it well for the public good (keep the hollow laughter down, please, libertarians) but we all know that busting a gut and putting ourselves out in a sense of corporate loyalty is out of the question as our managers are not interested in helping us reverse this loss.
Fair and well, you might say - dirty jobs are nasty. Indeed they are.
But at the same wage, I'd get smelly and need a shower for the same dosh if I never had to use a calculator or a PC or a law-book or a technical website at work again.
As we work pretty close to the welfare part of the Welfare State, business is picking up with the depression - unlike our feet.
If Mrs. Northwester and I weren't facing a staged £4K cut over two years, I might still be at my desk now. But I need the break, see?
That's incentives.
Oh, and the women? My office is 65% young, married - (or shacked- up and mortgaged) and female and the proportion of that is rising with retirements and promotions out and they are never, ever going to get into the £20k range: not in this job; not in the provinces.
When romance and nature take their course I don't think many will be coming back from maternity leave in a hurry - if at all.
And there's a recruiting ban.
Incentives - it's like the margin in economics and the Asda slogan and the marriage bed - every little helps.
;-)
Incentives are always needed. It is very difficult to get the balance right.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that people who are working should be below the bread line and I don't believe that people who are actively seeking work and have fallen foul of the time should be in that situation either.
I also find pay rises based on percentages a bit immoral too. It means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I have no idea how a better system could be implemented though.
I have a lot of sympathy with NNW comments, those sort of things happen where I work. We are in the latest round of it now. It is sometimes difficult to not feel bitter about it!
Without incentives, there would be no progress. The best you can do is start out everyone with an equal opportunity for success; you CANNOT and SHOULD NOT guarantee everyone an equal result. People are not all equal, in intelligence, physically, or in attitude. It would be nice if they were, but reality dictates otherwise.
ReplyDeleteJust my opinion.
James,
ReplyDeleteTo cast this question in another way - what incentive would be required to motivate the players today? A flat screen TV in their bedrooms? An iPod for each ear?
What happened at your match might be a very good example of man-management, an innate human skill, rather than an illustration of any scientific principle of incentives. The most succinct example I have ever come across of man-management's pitfalls could also be illustrative of why incentives aren't really as important as imagined - Willie Miller once remarked of Eoin Jess that he tried everything with him, 'from the arm round the shoulder to the kick up the backside', when both were at Aberdeen FC.
Just as some people don't respond to management, very many people don't respond to incentives. I was once involved in a household name multi-level marketing business. The upline's great hook was trying to find your incentives - 'What's your dream? Don't you want to be financially independent?', etc. While very good at luring people in, by and of itself it is not good at keeping people involved - the business had a catastrophic attrition rate in terms of the number of people who dropped out. Those involved had all the incentives which an economist would believe would be required to motivate them to do it - but actually doing it still proved too difficult for most.
The reason for this may be that the incentives model does not factor in human differences. The division of labour is nothing but human differences put to work - some people are better at bashing metal than writing computer code; Michelangelo did not write 'Hamlet', and Shakespeare didn't paint 'The Last Judgment'. While hopefully being only mildly facetious, it's absurd to suggest that any number of incentives could make Michelangelo and Shakespeare duplicate each others' achievements. No matter how many incentives you put in front of most people, you'll still not be able to get them to sell for a living. What is cruel is trying to make them do so, an inescapable consequence of an economy skewed to the output of services .
Martin, you are quite right - it isn't always straightforward. We all have different motivations. We do respond to incentives, but not always the obvious ones. Sometimes, when offered incentives, my response has been the inverse of that desired... That's because we are complex beings and those offering the incentives don't always appreciate subtlety or take the time to assess their subject - I object to being overtly incentivised, particularly if I object to what I am being asked to do.
ReplyDeleteYet I still respond to incentives. I really, really want that new K1300GT that BMW released earlier this year, and I'll get it, sooner or later. I'll have to put in some extra days work to do it though... That's one hell of an incentive ;)
Incentives-artificial motivation. What's wrong with that as long as it's not exploitative,harms no one and gets the job done?
ReplyDeleteI've read all of it, lads and lasses and you know my opinion here. Good question, Martin - what do people consider an incentive.
ReplyDeleteMy considered and complimentary comment seems to have wandered.
ReplyDeleteOh well.
Good question. I don't think everyone should be paid the same but I don't think anyone should earn three times as much as someone else either. But then, I'd like a society with no money at all. In my naive moments I imagine that everyone would keep everything going out of the goodness of their hearts!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what world some people live in sometimes: "No one should earn more than 3 times someone else"
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly does this mean? If I choose Fred Goodwin as my 'someone else' can I be paid £2.1m? Or does it mean that no one should get more than 3 times the basic wage (as defined by what you can get on benefits I suppose)?
If the latter are you going to have some sort of fascist tax force that forcibly removes any excess income? Has it ever occurred to you that I am a free man, and can do as I please, and that includes earning as much money as I want to, if someone is prepared to pay me, or my business is successful enough?
That every business that ever existed started in a small way, the brainchild of one person? Why would anyone risk their all, financially, emotionally and even physically, to create a business that might one day employ thousands, if they could not enjoy the fruits of their labours?
I suggest you read Atlas Shrugged asap, because woolly thinking such as this is getting more prevelent these days, and it can only lead to one thing - economic collapse, and a Mad Max style society, where only the physically strong survive.
That will be an infinitely more unequal society than anything possible under democratic free market capitalism.