4 ms·

It makes adults sick doesn't it? Why not children? I wonder what a society without that "drive for success" would look like. My first thought, maybe a little s

by sosuke 11y ago

It makes adults sick doesn't it? Why not children? I wonder what a society without that "drive for success" would look like. My first thought, maybe a little sad, is if everyone else didn't have that drive I might actually succeed.

saint_fiasco 11y ago
Your sad thought is interesting because it suggests that children are being overworked in zero-sum games, ultimately gaining nothing, because all the other children are overworked too.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Similar to Prisoner's dilemma. We each can either over-work our kids or not. If nobody over-works their kids, everyone wins (nobody has an advantage, we create a better, less competitive society). If you over-work your kid and I don't, then my kid loses and your kid wins. If I over-work my kid and you don't, then my kid wins and your kid loses. Therefore, everyone chooses to over-work their kids, and everyone loses (nobody has a relative advantage, yet everyone's over-worked, over-competitive, and stressed to the limit).
  - Sacho 11y ago
    Except this is not a zero-sum game. Some of the waste created by this machine of competitiveness is our constantly improving standard of living. In fact, I'd say that this sentiment(that all your hard work and stress leads to nothing) pretty much exemplifies the middle class. The kids from poor families don't want to stay at the same relative advantage, they want to do better than you so they can lift themselves out of poverty. Perhaps what you're sensing is the pressure from a large poor class trying to improve their living conditions by competing with the middle class. C'est la vie.
    - saint_fiasco 11y ago
      I find it hard to believe that forcing kids into violin lessons because it will help them get into college has any kind of positive externalities. I think that those kind of unproductive signaling games are done more by the middle and upper classes, always running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.

by sosuke 11y ago

saint_fiasco 11y ago

Your sad thought is interesting because it suggests that children are being overworked in zero-sum games, ultimately gaining nothing, because all the other children are overworked too.

ryandrake 11y ago
Similar to Prisoner's dilemma. We each can either over-work our kids or not. If nobody over-works their kids, everyone wins (nobody has an advantage, we create a better, less competitive society). If you over-work your kid and I don't, then my kid loses and your kid wins. If I over-work my kid and you don't, then my kid wins and your kid loses. Therefore, everyone chooses to over-work their kids, and everyone loses (nobody has a relative advantage, yet everyone's over-worked, over-competitive, and stressed to the limit).
- Sacho 11y ago
  Except this is not a zero-sum game. Some of the waste created by this machine of competitiveness is our constantly improving standard of living. In fact, I'd say that this sentiment(that all your hard work and stress leads to nothing) pretty much exemplifies the middle class. The kids from poor families don't want to stay at the same relative advantage, they want to do better than you so they can lift themselves out of poverty. Perhaps what you're sensing is the pressure from a large poor class trying to improve their living conditions by competing with the middle class. C'est la vie.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    I find it hard to believe that forcing kids into violin lessons because it will help them get into college has any kind of positive externalities. I think that those kind of unproductive signaling games are done more by the middle and upper classes, always running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.