INCENTIVE THEORY - people act in their own interest.
Hello Friends,
After reading a different forum on politics, I came up with what I would call an INCENTIVE THEORY.
With the idea behind it being that
1. people always act in their own interest.
2. people usually rationalize it afterwards with some higher moral system.
3. different people might have very different interest
some might dream of a new iphone, but some might want to become a martyr.
4. interests usually depend on one's character & bodily abilities.
a strong person would value freedom, knowing he would do pretty good in an unregulated society.
a weak person would value safety and stability, knowing that otherwise he might perish.
a strong person might prefer open combat, because he has good chances of winning, while a weak person would attempt to get his way by whining an appealing to morals.
5. most people have relatively petty interest, such as keeping their job, not being ostracize by friends, making an extra buck along the way, etc.
Therefore, a politician can easily steer the whole society by shifting the incentives in such a way that a regular person gets shunned by his friends for supporting the other side and gets extra goodies, even if it is just a feeling of moral superiority, for doing the "right" thing.
Also a politician should not expect large amounts of people to act in his interests, if it brings bad consequences for those people personally.
What do you think? Are there some cases when such theory might be wrong?
After reading a different forum on politics, I came up with what I would call an INCENTIVE THEORY.
With the idea behind it being that
1. people always act in their own interest.
2. people usually rationalize it afterwards with some higher moral system.
3. different people might have very different interest
some might dream of a new iphone, but some might want to become a martyr.
4. interests usually depend on one's character & bodily abilities.
a strong person would value freedom, knowing he would do pretty good in an unregulated society.
a weak person would value safety and stability, knowing that otherwise he might perish.
a strong person might prefer open combat, because he has good chances of winning, while a weak person would attempt to get his way by whining an appealing to morals.
5. most people have relatively petty interest, such as keeping their job, not being ostracize by friends, making an extra buck along the way, etc.
Therefore, a politician can easily steer the whole society by shifting the incentives in such a way that a regular person gets shunned by his friends for supporting the other side and gets extra goodies, even if it is just a feeling of moral superiority, for doing the "right" thing.
Also a politician should not expect large amounts of people to act in his interests, if it brings bad consequences for those people personally.
What do you think? Are there some cases when such theory might be wrong?
Comments (35)
It's NOT a joke!
How can I help you if I myself need help? Be reasonable peeps. Self & not-self (other) feels (more) natural, easier on our intutions, compared to other and not-other (self).
That said, I can't rule out über-altruistic nutcases who break the beautiful pattern of selfishness and, thereby, mess up our calculations.
[quote=Oscar Levant]There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.[/quote]
Wisdom Of The Fool
I dunno! Your guess is as good as mine. :smile:
But I think it is pretty easy to get vast numbers of people to behave in almost any way with the right coercion and conditions.
Do you have evidence that pure altruism isn't possible?
The fact that folks have to be told to put the mask on themselves first ( and not the child, or vulnerable adult next to them) demonstrates without question or equivocation, that people do not always act in their own interest, even when it is prudent for themselves, and in the best interests of others that they do. Hence, incentive theory is irretrievably false. Bish, bash, bosh.
This is clearly wrong, unless you jigger with the meaning of "own interest" as @Tom Storm has. People help each other because we like each other. We're built that way. Doesn't mean there aren't other drives that overpower our desire to help others. Sure people can be selfish and look after themselves. That's a natural impulse, but so is affection, friendliness, fellow-feeling, love.
No, but I didn't try to prove it being impossible. I am more stating that the majority of people would act in their self-interests, not necessary all of them. )
So, what percent of people would attempt to help a stranger before helping themselves?
“Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Here’s a rebuttal of self-interest from the mindfulness tradition:
We believe that the view of the self as an economic man, which is the view the social sciences hold, is quite consonant with the unexamined view of our own motivation that we hold as ordinary, nonmindful people. Let us state that view clearly. The self is seen as a territory with boundaries. The goal of the self is to bring inside the boundaries all of the good things while paying out as few goods as possible and conversely to remove to the outside of the boundaries all of the bad things while letting in as little bad as possible. Since goods are scarce, each autonomous self is in competition with other selves to get them. Since cooperation between individuals and whole societies may be needed to get more goods, uneasy and unstable alliances are formed between autonomous selves. Some selves (altruists) and many selves in some roles (parents, teachers) may get (immaterial) goods by helping other selves, but they will become disappointed (even disillusioned) if those other selves do not reciprocate by being properly helped.
What does the mindfulness/awareness tradition or enactive cognitive science have to contribute to this portrait of self-interest? The mindful, open-ended approach to experience reveals that moment by moment this so-called self occurs only in relation to the other. If I want praise, love, fame, or power, there has to be another (even if only a mental one) to praise, love, know about, or submit to me. If I want to obtain things, they have to be things that I don't already have. Even with respect to the desire for pleasure, the pleasure is something to which I am in a relation. Because self is always codependent with other (even at the gross level we are now discussing), the force of self-interest is always other-directed in the very same respect with which it is self-directed. What, then, are people doing who appear so self-interested as opposed to other-interested? Mindfulness/awareness meditators suggest that those people are struggling, in a confused way, to maintain the sense of a separate self by engaging in self-referential relationships with the other. Whether I gain or lose, there can be a sense of I; if there is nothing to be gained or lost, I am groundless. If Hobbes's despot were actually to succeed in obtaining everything in the universe, he would have to find some other preoccupation quickly, or he would be in a woeful state: he would be unable to maintain his sense of himself. Of course, as we have seen with nihilism, one can always turn that groundlessness into a ground; then one can maintain oneself in relation to it by feeling despair.”
( The Embodied Mind)
That's Ego. And yes it is true imo. Since human nature is defined from Death, that's inevitable and totally acceptable for me.
Of course there are people who are totally altruists. But the pure altruist behaves like that for his own benefit - interest at the end! It's Ego too. The real genuine altruist acts like that cause he CAN'T do otherwise! It's his nature and he would be miserable if he didn't! He sucks happiness for himself first, acting like that. And I m talking for the genuine altruists, not the hypocrites that steal with the right hand and "help" with the left!
For me the thing is that people should realize that acting "good" is for our own benefit at the very end. An Egoist thing.We are social creatures by nature if we wanna be helped when we will need it, then it's only logical that we should help others too. So our society's system should be capable to ensure that.
Plus as Nietzsche wrote "the one who gives is the one he gains the most". For me that's a huge truth.
Nietzsche also said there was no such thing as a unitary self.
I m not sure I got exactly the meaning of unitary self here. You mean he didn't believe that there is a real "self" in humans or that people can't act united? Or something else?
What percentage of people would attempt to help a loved one, let’s say their own child, before helping themselves? Why do you think this is? Could it be the formulation of the self as a container walled off from the world is an outdated notion? Maybe what we call the self is the product of relations with an outside that are either pleasing or disturbing based on harmoniousness and compatibility. That’s why we care about some
people and not others, and why we would sacrifice our lives for some people and not others.
Quoting dimosthenis9
He believed the self was a society of competing drives. This multiplicity could be harmonized from time
to time by a dominating drive.
Some people are self-sabotaging, suicidal, and are terrible stewards of their lives and all that is important to them. They don't always do this thinking they're doing right, but many probably know that the next drink, the relationship they're about to embark upon, or the punch they're about to throw probably isn't in their best interest. I've made knowingly stupid decisions and would not have wasted anyone's time trying to justify what I did later as being what I thought was going to do me best.
I agree. But notice you used the word ‘expand’ . The child isnt just a continuation of self as if the self were some sort of fixed content that everything else in the world the person cares about becomes transformed into. The self expands and enriches. Even when we are alone the self is never this fixed thing. It is constantly being born anew through our experiences of the world. What gives our self the sense of continuity from day to day isnt a fixed identity but a relative continuity, a referential consistency. We are never exactly who we were but we are similar to our older self. The point is that we are already familiar with otherness simply by being a self changed by the world in a daily basis. So the gap between our own selves and other persons in our lives isnt as big as it might seem. What we crave isnt protection of self but the ability to value, identify with , relate to others, since our own self is already an other.
Not that I agree with anything Nietzsche wrote. But I m not sure he supported that. He was extremely valuing the individual person and his capability to grow spiritual bigger. Don't know if he would call that "self". But I don't think he believed that people have no individual self at all.
He was trying to urge people to break their individual limits and that progress is a personal matter. Sure he admitted society's role and influence in people. But he was focusing on each person's individual force as to gain that fight with ourselves and not on any dominating force.
Though he didn't consider many people capable of doing that, he was addressing to his "own kind of people",considering the rest as sheep and inferior kind of people.
So it would be more appropriate to say that "people always Try to act in their own interest".
The thing is that it's really tough to understand what our actual interest is. What is exactly what we want and not what we think we want!
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
I'd say you are trying to make the facts fit your theory when they clearly contradict it. Once the self is expanded to include others, you really have stretched the concept of self-interest way past its breaking point. The only question of interest, is the psychological one, why many people like to cling to the bankrupt notion of the inevitability of self-interested behaviour.
I suggest that the answer is that it is an attempt to justify their own selfishness and assuage their feelings of guilt and shame about it. But this is supported by the greed of the rich and powerful, who set out to convince folk of the inevitability of their hegemony and the impossibility of a more cooperative and equitable society.
But the facts are that most people could not survive at all without the vast network of cooperative effort that we call 'the economy'. The fantasy of the separate self can only be maintained because of this global cooperation that puts food on the table, water in the taps, and power in the wires. Humans are social, and language is the supreme facilitator of sociality. A long childhood of total dependence and and a concomitant long social education allow the transmission of culture, which is more adaptable than genetic inheritance, and this has been observed in other apes too. This is why big brains confer an advantage, and language an even bigger advantage; they are social facilitators, much more than individual ones. Recite this three times before bed: "There is nothing rational about self-interest."
Plus, people often act contrary to what they know is better for them. We are not 'logical; in our actions.
So why do you think a baker bakes bread at night? Why a truck driver gets up at 6am to deliver it to the stores? Is it because they care so deeply about the well-being of others? Or maybe because they just want to make money? ;) now think about that.
That is why capitalism work - the system is set up in such a way as to get money you have to do something useful that others will pay you for.
Because we all need our daily bread. Why do you think a baker wants money? I have been a baker, and I can assure you that they do not collect money, but exchange it for all the stuff they need apart from bread. You do not understand money or capitalism - it is in the first instance a social enterprise, It is convenient if while I am making my bread, I make yours too, and while you are spinning your wool, you spin some for me too. Money is a medium of exchange that keeps the score and supposedly ensures that selfish people cannot take advantage of social people. Capitalism is the way some of them still manage to. Do you think Jeff Besos delivers all those parcels himself? No. other people do all the work and he takes a cut from between the cooperative exchange. That's why he is called an entrepreneur - it is a French-derived term that means a 'between-taker'.
Such people are indeed selfish in everything they do, but most people want to do a good job and satisfy other's needs, along with their own. They are grateful to the bus-driver, the shop-assistant the refuse collector, the nurse, the plumber, the road mender, and all the many people met and unmet that help to sustain their lives. They go the extra mile out of their way to make another happy, even if the other is greedy and ungrateful. It's a wonder that anyone can not notice this about other people. Like the people who run this site - they make no money and get far more abuse than praise, but they like to help out to make all our lives a bit better. It's quite normal.
After I started doing WHM breath work and reading Yogic books, I feel happy and totally non-judgemental. :) You should try that, too. Also add some Sowell / Friedman, as you don't seem to understand that people like Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg ( while I'm totally not a fan of those guys ) did a huge and valuable organizing work for which they are rewarded.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm with @Unenlightened on this. You're afraid to engage with people who disagree with you, so you refuse to address directly those who have a less mean-spirited understanding of people than you do. Saying things over and over again doesn't make them true.
I am not afraid, I just didn't see a direct way of engaging with such comments.
Also I never said that acting in a self-interest is mean-spirited, it is just a natural way people are wired.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
:rofl: I'm totally envious of your non-judgmental prowess.
Yes. It's pretty impressive. I think he thinks he's all rational and stuff.
Me neither. :) so why should we even care about him or what he is doing with his money?
Quoting unenlightened
Lucky you! :) I can't have it as often as I like, I want a sixpack, so keto and stuff :))
Made with Velveeta!!!
Fine but who takes care of the children and the ill and the elderly? For how much money?
Does the number of people matter? How about the firefighters who enter burning buildings and the divers who rescued the boys from a cave in Thailand? There are many people who put their lives on the line for others. The instinct to do that is what makes war possible.
If you are a parent what do you want and what are you willing to sacrifice?