I found the experiment in the
article involving the marbles and the children very interesting. The first example that came to mind of
working as a team would be in school projects.
It has been my experience that, in college, the members of the team are
usually all willing to do their fair share of work. It wouldn’t be fair if one person did most of
the work, but shared the grade with their partners. I’m sure this has happened to most people in
a school project at some point, and I personally wasn’t happy sharing a grade
with other members if they didn’t deserve it.
To combat this, some teachers put in a place a peer review system where
you could hold your team mates responsible, and grade them on how much they
participated or helped the team. This
definitely provides more incentive for all members to participate, but for my
projects in high school I don’t think it was ever implemented. Thus, most of the workload fell to the more
responsible students. It’s strange,
because I would think that the peer review system is even less necessary in
college, as most people here are more ambitious and eager to learn than some of
my classmates in high school.
In one of my classes, the project
grade had two parts: one for the project itself, and the other for the peer
review grade. Without this peer review,
there is no way for students to be in control of who shares the wealth after
the project is completed. They are
simply left most of the work but receive the same grade, which could stimulate
feelings of unfairness and resentment towards other students.
This may be projected on to a larger
scale with the economy, to explain why the rich are uncomfortable sharing more
of their wealth. This could come down to
plain greed (which wouldn’t be represented by my school project example), but
they could also be under the impression that they worked much harder to gain
their money, and therefore deserve it.
Do they? If someone is working as
many hours and is just as stressed out but receives a much lower wage, is that
fair?
Going back to my example, it’s
possible students wouldn’t participate because they weren’t comfortable with
the course material, not because they were lazy. I think there is a connection here with low
wage earners who simply don’t have the capacity to be an executive. They may work as hard to do their job, but
they’ll never reach the 1% because of other challenges they face (e.g. where
they grew up, their family situation). The
top earners know this, some decide to share...but a lot do not want to. The article stated that 70% of the children
who believed that they earned their marbles
did not share when asked. I’m not sure
what percentage of adults would be willing to give up their marble, but it’s
very interesting to think about.
One of the issues with student projects is how teams are constituted. (For example, you might consider it in our class.) In school, the instructor determines that some work should be done in groups, but there may be no comparative advantage across group members in doing specific tasks. This, I believe, makes the shirking possibility more likely. Then it is more fairness that determines whether everyone contributes or not. In other teams, a person does his job because nobody else on the team can. Teamwork then becomes necessary for production to occur.
ReplyDeleteI liked your last paragraph. If you and I both are making a contribution, but the sort of thing you do gets remunerated at a much higher wage than the sort of thing I do, will you want to try to equalize the reward or not? I believe on these matters we follow the expression - when in Rome do what the Romans do. If the society as a whole has values that encourage equalizing the payoffs, each individual will embrace that. If, in contrast, society seems to reward the individual only, those are the the views each of us will hold.
Ironically on this, it is efficiency arguments that might hold sway in encouraging a change from one regime to another. Many people note how high marginal income tax rates were on large incomes up through 1980. Those rates were brought down during the Reagan administration, justified via supply-side economics, an expression no longer in vogue, and something called the Laffer curve, also no longer in vogue. But fewer people talk about the pre-conditions in the late 1970s, where the economy was going through a period of stagflation - high inflation coupled with low gdp growth. That was outside previous experience and combatting it required a new approach.
I would also encourage you think of this issue of sharing, when one kid is older than the other. This is like your example, except that the younger one will gain experience as he ages. You can envision two possible ways of managing this - one with sharing, the other not. Which do you think will happen in this case?
I like your point that in some teams, a person will do their job because only they are able to (or possibly because they are simply the best at it). I feel like the groups in school may not be split up fairly in this way, but sometimes maybe one or two people get stuck with most of the work simply because they are better at it. Maybe this isn't fair, but definitely the most efficient. The members with the specialty would want to do the work because they know they will earn the group a better grade.
ReplyDeleteConcerning your question, I think that would depend on the kids. I'm a little confused about whether the two kids are sharing the reward or the workload (I think the reward), but I tried to address both.
If the younger one is ambitious and willing to learn and they older isn't, it would make sense for the older kid to help him gain experience as he ages. At some point they may be equals at what they do, or the younger may begin teaching the older. In this situation, the older may not need to share the reward until the younger is doing his fair share, as the younger is still gaining human capital from the experience.
The other instance is if the younger is less willing to do his share or learn more. In this case, sharing the reward might be more beneficial. I can only see this working if the younger is willing to work more if his reward becomes higher with his level of experience. He would be motivated to learn more by the increases of reward that he would see with gains of experience.
I assumed that the older kid would be more experience than the younger.