I'm not too sure what the prompt is asking me to write about, but I will try my best to write something with substance that connects the three articles.
My own example of team production with gift exchange would be to have some sort of centralized entity that "collects" all the work or product that people produce and divides it up equally among the parties involved. I guess this is just another way to describe socialistic societies, although I don't agree with that form of government. Setting up a neutral centralized entity would be beneficial because it would be able to gather up all the production and distribute it without anyone getting more or less than the person before them. These "gifts" that the people receive would be the product of the collaborative work of the group, and in reality it serves as their own individual salary for the work one individual put in. My example is closely related to the first article How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles by Jonathan Haidt, specifically the first example the author proposes; where two kids pull on the same rope in order to get marbles out of it. My example has elements of that condition because two or more people have to work together in order to increase their wealth (marbles). In my example people have to do their part in order to increase the wealth of the centralized entity to ultimately get equal compensation for their production. In the example in the article, the kids have to do their part in order to get what they want. The only difference is that in my example the centralized entity automatically divides the production/wealth up evenly, and in the article's example one kid gets three marbles and the other gets one marble but the "richer" kid shares one of his marbles to make it even. In theory they are the same once the "richer" kid gives the "poorer" kid one marble because then they have an equal amount, just like my example produces an equal amount through a centralized entity.
I was also a bit confused from the topic of this post at first. However, I came to realize that distributing work amongst individuals for group projects with one common grade could work. Have you experienced the headache of having to pick up someone's slack in a group project and yet he or she is compensated the same as you are? That would be the exact opposite of the marble example given as both kids are pulling separately but getting the same amount of marbles.
ReplyDeleteLet me go away from your example and ask a different sort of question. Do you have younger siblings, or perhaps younger cousins with whom you socialized some. In the play among the group how do the younger kids get treated. Do they get their share of the marbles or are they regarded as under contributors, because they are not as skilled as the older kids?
ReplyDeleteNow let me flip this around and ask how I should treat you here. The post is pretty skimpy, definitely under the 600 words limit. Should I be sharing the marbles with you?
I don't know your situation so I'm going to argue a hypothetical. Suppose you had a tough week with a lot of other stuff going on. Should I cut you some slack here because of that and because you've been a contributor in class much of the time before that?
Now ask the same question from your perspective. What is fair here? What would it take for expectations to be aligned about this?
If you address those questions, you might begin to see what the prompt was about.
In terms of looking at your example on gift-exchange, I see that as a socialist system of production when viewed at from a macro-lense. Looking at it from a micro point of view, as an organizational structure in a business, I think a real-world example of this is a district attorney's office.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am not extremely well-versed on the legal system, the way I understand the district attorney's office to work is that legal cases are provided to the office, where work is collected and distributed to each district attorney to work on individually. This system has presented numerous pros and cons that have been looked at depth as it is a necessary function of legal process, but can lead to numerous inefficiencies and other issues.