Archive for February, 2012
Fixing inequality requires more than finger pointing – push the share-the-spoils button
Which of these three scenarios best fits your workplace or, big picture, the way you figure the NZ economy works?
1) A game to collect marbles where you happily and freely share the spoils because you feel the other player has cooperated in the goal of getting more marbles.
2) The marbles are distributed without having to play a game – finders keepers no matter how unfair the distribution of marbles.
3) A variation on 1. Instead of players cooperatively collecting marbles, it becomes clear to participants that getting the marbles doesn’t involve cooperation. Even though the players do equal amounts of work, some players are unfairly awarded more marbles.
[Hat tip - Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia]
By the way, this is my promised response to the Salvation Army’s report “The Growing Divide” on poverty and crime.
This post has sat around unfinished for a few days now because I couldn’t nail what I wanted to say, which was originally, that the report provided an unsatisfactory villain of the piece: the “economic rationalism” of the last 20-30 years.
Scenarios 2 and 3 above of course look a lot like the game played under the rules of economic rationalism – that is a faith in markets to sort out most of life’s issues without too much attention to fairness.
Scenario 1 is an approximation of economic conduct from the mid 1930s to the 80s.
So I think the Sallies are right to point the finger at economic rationalism when it comes to looking for a guilty party for the jump in income inequality between the 1980s and now.
But there are other things going on as well as The Herald’s Brian Fallow points out.
It can’t be as simple as laying blame for the “the growing divide” solely at the feet of the economic rationalists. Slay the economic rationalists and inequality and poverty will disappear.
I’m not so sure because it overlooks root causes – why did most of the Western World slip from scenario 1 to scenarios 2 and 3 in the 1980s?
Disturbingly the scenarios above were parts of real life psych tests done with children (remember kids are more selfish than adults). The tests indicate that even if we acknowledge that 2 and 3 are unfair, and lead to inequality, it won’t be enough to kick start sharing.
We need a game changer. We need new circumstances.
Jonathan Haidt, the psychology professor who’s my source of the three scenarios, says his parents were from a generation that went through the Great Depression. He was a teen during World War II and then lived under the shadow of the Cold War.
Government control, he said was seen as necessary for the common good in these testing times. Social norms controlled exorbitant pay and insisted on a solid safety net for the less fortunate.
This social compact to collaborate started to bunny hop when we all began to feel the old way was failing, which in some ways it was.
Commenting on scenarios 2 and 3 (and I guess what can be done to end their dominance) Haidt says: “…the ‘share-the-spoils’ button is not pressed by the mere existence of inequality.”
The kids missing out on the marbles mostly didn’t complain and of course, the winners were just fine.
The ‘share-the-spoils’ button, he believes developed around 500,000 years ago as humans started to forage and hunt co-operatively. These “teams” achieved more than individuals.
So, if we are to get rid of inequality we need to fundamentally change the conditions that allow scenarios 2 and 3 to thrive.
This happened in the 1930s after the upheaval of the Depression.
To slot back into scenario 1 we need to find that sense of combined purpose that’ll tap into half a million years of thinking.
Hopefully nothing a big as last century’s shocks.
How “school local” can bridge our real divide – the social one
Our local college is a decile 5 school – a five because it’s a catchment of extremes, neighbourhoods that are either wealthy or poor with not much in-between.
It’s not a bad college, and is on the rise, but mostly the kids from the feeder upper decile primary schools skip it. Around these parts you don’t “school local”.
The kids are bused and ‘trained’ north, south and east to what are obviously judged to be better schools.
You can’t criticise this choice because these parents know what’s best for their children. And the choice can be seen as the safe one, like buying a product with a trusted brand.
But their decisions, however unintentional, are bad for the school, bad for the neighbourhood and bad for NZ society.
It’s probably not going to be bad for the kids – most will be successes in life, though as we shall see, that depends on your definition of success.
Maybe “school local” remains a better choice for everyone concerned: the school, the neighbourhood, society and ultimately the kids.
That’s because the wealthy, by turning their backs on local schools, are widening a social divide that’s in a way much uglier than the wealth divide which seems to get all the attention.
Perhaps it’s because the social gap is seen as a consequence of the wealth gap. Reduce income disparity and all will be okay. I’m not so sure.
This social divide is, I figure, feeding inequality because there’s no empathy or understanding of how the other half lives.
I’m pointing at the occupants of the smarter city suburbs here. The divide belongs to them (umm us, though I don’t live in this type of suburb). We created it and only we have to power to fix it.
We are the ones with the choices – we have the money and the power.
From cradle to the grave, the more privileged among us often unconsciously (but sometimes not) widen this social divide. We trip through pre-school care, primary, college, parties, sport, university, our offices and friendships barely casting a shadow on the other side.
NZ schools were once mixing pots. So was rugby. Now we have flight to “better” schools and football.
An example of where this leads is US Republican millionaire presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ‘what planet’ statement that he was “not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there”.
I can’t find any public statement by a Kiwi with a similar sentiment, but (my white middleclass readers) you wouldn’t have to look very far among your colleagues and friends.
But maybe it’s just ignorance. When the TV3 documentary on poverty screened before the last election, the reaction seemed to be outraged surprise that this was happening in God’s Zone.
These people need to get out more. This response was the social divide revealed.
There’s a hell of a lot of mythology around NZ’s egalitarianism, but there was a time when the myth was more honoured in the observance than in the breach.
Now it’s more honoured in the breach.
We all need to be big and brave about the choices we make.
What are the creativity lessons for organisations from the rugby sevens?
Unbelievably it seems the costumes of Wellington rugby sevens’ fans manage to be more creative and innovative than the previous year.
Personal favourites for 2012:
- The Lego men
- The jami army
- The Monopoly set (post GFC).
So what is it that drives this year-on-year leap in standards of creativity and innovation among fans? Off the top of my head:
- Competition – wanting to stand out in the crowd when everyone else is trying to do the same thing. This is huge.
- Brand – Wellington sevens now have an incredibly strong brand which organisers have nurtured. The punters buy into it.
- Learning – the power of observation. What worked last year (well, what’s remembered); what am I up against this year?
- Time – where do people get the time to do this stuff?
- Fun – big time.
And most of this happens while the fans are sober.
Finally I don’t think it’s about money. The above are more important.
Organisations should look at the Wellington sevens when they consider ways to increase their innovation and creativity.