Blog #12 (Part 4 of 5) The concept of rewards: 70
D) The concept of rewards:
If you are a “Big C” conservative you’re probably thinking the writing is about to go all Pinko on you and will advocate that your freedom to be rewarded for your efforts should be taken away. Actually, it’s the exact opposite. I repeat, the exact opposite. The market place should be able to determine people’s incomes, with reasonable limits. The criteria of what is reasonable is, as always, the devil which is in the details.
To explore this, I think a good place to start is asking why people with money believe they have a right to steer the system in the direction they want, as if they have earned special privileges. Let’s face it, being good with money is just a talent in the same way as other’s having a talent for oil painting, playing soccer, or being a great carpenter, physicist or surgeon. But because people who are good with money have been able, over generations, to make money the central control of everything in this world, people somehow believe that being good with money makes those people smarter or more worthy than all others. It’s absolutely absurd. Most of the doctors, teachers, scientists, economist, lawyers, pharmacists, actually almost everyone I know, are very good at what they do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re also good at controlling or building wealth. I’ve known some pretty terrific doctors and lawyers who have been absolutely abysmal when it came to their own finances. But I’d rather have my monetarily-challenged doctor treating some ailment I come down with than a successful day trader. The moneyed-class now does what past warrior kings did, and that is control whole populations, coercing them to participate in an economy designed to make that same moneyed class wealthier.
As to the limits of being rewarded, I see only two limiting factors;
1) not negatively impacting other’s ability to enjoy their lives and, more importantly,
2) not effecting society’s ability to thrive for 10,000 years or more.
How to calculate such things with accuracy isn’t even a branch of science yet. And while all this might seem reasonable and obvious to most, it is an idea hostile to the core beliefs of the uber-rich. And, as I’m sure most people will agree, they are the ones with their hands on the levers of the economy. Is change possible?
When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed ”
— Ayn Rand
I put quotations around the word “progress” because it too must have a new imagining; dovetailing with the concept of inventions, where progress isn’t the growing of a financial economy and human population, but the using of fewer resources while keeping the population stable and people’s lifestyles high using technology and social agreements. This is the form of progress we need if we are to survive long term.
Reward for progress, therefore, must also be different. Anthropologists have shown how in the hunter gather societies that still existed in the 20th century, being famous in a tribe for doing something worthwhile was rewarded mostly with adulation and respect, the tangible rewards for their deeds being minimal.
It is important to note that being seen by others as successful is still a factor in motivating people, although the emphasis of money and the personal freedom it gives separate from your peers certainly has had the effect of conditioning whole populations to believe it’s the financial reward that is more important rather than doing things for the public good.
I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.”
— Mary Douglas
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