The Case Against Competition

[Sosa]

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[Erratus]

His bit around 15:00 is something really vital to understanding incentives. We all hear it a lot; there are no incentives in a communist world to do your best. But I think it is important to understand that we just live in a society that primarily uses money as its motivation. Even from children, we do stuff understanding we will get paid for it. If you take away money from the equation, of course we are not going to feel motivated. This is largely environmental and if we were in a society that focused on internal or intangible incentives, we wouldn't need money to motivate. I really think he made some good points there.

I also like what he says on human nature. It was just the other day that I was trying to explain just how versatile human nature is, and that we are so greedy because we live in a society that promotes greed. But the guy thought, as Kohn put it, it is "cool to be cynical". I would be interested in getting access to some of the studies he talked about, just to have them ready to cite. Also, thanks for sharing, very interesting.

[Lanky Wanker]

We all hear it a lot; there are no incentives in a communist world to do your best. But I think it is important to understand that we just live in a society that primarily uses money as its motivation. Even from children, we do stuff understanding we will get paid for it. If you take away money from the equation, of course we are not going to feel motivated. This is largely environmental and if we were in a society that focused on internal or intangible incentives, we wouldn't need money to motivate. I really think he made some good points there.


Precisely. Now I tend to think of anyone who argues "we need money to motivate people" as being a complete idiot. It's such a dead argument that has no value in a debate between two people with any amount of real intelligence. Human nature just ends the conversation for me altogether; anyone who thinks that owning 5 expensive sports/luxury cars and a 7 bedroom house is an innate desire for humans to have, really needs to pick up a book. I said this to someone I was arguing with yesterday on YouTube (...yes, bad idea, I know) and he replied telling me that it's human nature to want the best. It's in human nature to want to survive, as in any animal's nature, and I could understand wanting a lot of food or sex, but what do useless material goods such as electronic gadgets have to do with survival? Our desires outside of survival change with society.