5 ms·

What Makes People Do What They Do? (2013)

34 points by DVassallo 7y ago

pieterk 7y ago
Great, the way out of capitalism! Time > money.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  Money is just a representation of time spent on some productive work that the market sees value in. We have money to make trade more granular, and to have fewer exchange rates. Furthermore, this article isn't at all about finding "a way out of Capitalism". It just shows that to a certain degree, people value not being burdened with guilt. Does that mean a society would work without money, and with people just "doing the right thing" so as not to be burdened with the guilt of not having done the right thing? No. History has shown — over and over — that this just does not work.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    History has shown over and over that societies based on money don't work either. They're inherently unstable politically and ecologically and make very poor use of human potential. If your idea of human potential is an iPhone and an app for controlling your washing machine from the sofa, you're going to disagree with this. If your idea of human potential is a peaceful and sustainable culture with the resources to maximise education, personal inventiveness, and creativity; to make consistently game-changing leaps in scientific understanding; and to colonise the solar system, you're not going to be quite as impressed. The idea that there's a trade-off between money and "people doing the right thing" is not convincing. Belonging to a successful culture requires some form of dues-paying. That's not avoidable. The challenge is to make sure that the dues aren't just a tithe to bad-actor opportunists - which is the basis of the current system, especially in the US - but provide unquestionable economy-of-scale opportunities and benefits that are disproportionate to their "cost" - however that cost is realised in practice.
    - mruts 7y ago
      My idea of human potential is giving them the freedom i decide what they value. Incidentally, capitalism does exactly this. Free markets, free minds. All societies fall short of this ideal, but America definately delivers more than anyone else at the moment.
      - d0mine 7y ago
        What "freedom" are you talking about? Most people can't even afford the luxury of knowing basic facts about their world. Like a fish which doesn't know it is in the water, they don't know that they are immersed in the propaganda bubble. How many people do you think control all of the media? Do you think the goals of these 0.00001% are aligned with ours?
      - jarsbe 7y ago
        How does capitalism provide freedom? The American laissez faire system seems to be falling apart at the seams. Power and wealth is becoming more concentrated while seeking to solidify that position through limiting the freedoms of the lower classes. Regular people are burdened with student debt and health care costs all within a back drop of little to no social support. Unions striking for better working conditions have their corporate controlled health insurance stripped away. Banks write balance sheets as they see fit, devaluing your wealth and causing financial crises. The list goes on. Being forced in to wage slavery to survive in this system doesn't sound particularly free.
        mruts 7y ago
        > Being forced in to wage slavery to survive in this system doesn't sound particularly free. That's like saying I was forced into heroin addiction because I felt bad. Let's be real for a second: people have choices, and the concept of being forced to do something or be something simply does not exist. Or, alternatively, you could say that everyone is forced to do everything they do. But either way, it means the same thing.
      - conception 7y ago
        Capitalism and free markets are different things and a few threads here have lumped the two together. Capitalism just means the capitalism is owned privately. Capitalism drives towards monopolies and central control just as much as a totalitarian state does. Enforcing, regulating and supporting free markets is what keeps capitalism in check. And while rare you can have socialist free markets.
  - pieterk 7y ago
    Thanks for replying. Don't get me wrong, money is a great representation of time, I said it's just not equivalent. The article points out what happens if you put a monetary value on it. In this case perverting the relationship between the parents and the caretakers, by removing empathy and introducing economic status into the equation. A way out of capitalism is the realization that physical resources are always worth more than money. How to make that concept scale, I don't know, but it gives me hope to see a daycare center take a small step towards that direction.
aflag 7y ago
If they wanted to completely end tardiness from parents they should fine the teacher when parents are late. The guilt would be overwhelming.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  This was the thinking behind the "whipping boy". Ultimately, I don't think it worked out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_boy
boyadjian 7y ago
Sex is what makes people do what they do.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
karmakaze 7y ago
I had pretty much this exact thing happen to me. I had left one company to go work for a startup. The startup failed. I was contracted to come back to the first company to cover for a former teammate who was going on maternity leave. For insurance they put a sizeable early leave monetary penalty into the contract. I thought just giving my word would be sufficient but I had no plans to leave so didn't matter either way. During the contract I did well on an online programming contest that turned out to be a recruiting tool. I was made a now or never offer I shouldn't refuse but I did explaining that I was committed to my current contract. When discussed, they we're willing to payout the penalty to have me start earlier. At this point I thought hard about my personal ethics on this and it came down to if it was based on trust, I would have stuck it out to the end but since they made it monetary I was playing by their set out rules and had no qualms (well maybe still a little) about going before the end.
- Eyght 7y ago
  In my admittedly limited experience working sales, a personal relationship is incredibly important for customer retention. I guess the same goes for employees.
DVassallo 7y ago
The original study is here: https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine.pdf https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine...
1ark 7y ago
When I read this, I thought it was a bit psychology 101. Monetary punishment has nothing to do with being late to pickup a child. While the punishment of apologizing to a teacher has a direct link to the event. As wrong as taking a child's console/phone/tablet away when they punched someone at school or w/e.
pontifier 7y ago
I took a very interesting class at university simply called "Power". The textbook was "The 48 laws of power" and power seemed to boil down to one thing: Making someone do something they otherwise wouldn't do. Money is a type of distilled power, but it's often better to use non-monetary power to influence behavior if possible.
- HNLurker2 7y ago
  Robert Greene book can be easily skimmed with this 3 hours video(assuming you got the time and attention): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLB4UrCXOq0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLB4UrCXOq0

34 points by DVassallo 7y ago

pieterk 7y ago

Great, the way out of capitalism! Time > money.

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
Money is just a representation of time spent on some productive work that the market sees value in. We have money to make trade more granular, and to have fewer exchange rates. Furthermore, this article isn't at all about finding "a way out of Capitalism". It just shows that to a certain degree, people value not being burdened with guilt. Does that mean a society would work without money, and with people just "doing the right thing" so as not to be burdened with the guilt of not having done the right thing? No. History has shown — over and over — that this just does not work.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  History has shown over and over that societies based on money don't work either. They're inherently unstable politically and ecologically and make very poor use of human potential. If your idea of human potential is an iPhone and an app for controlling your washing machine from the sofa, you're going to disagree with this. If your idea of human potential is a peaceful and sustainable culture with the resources to maximise education, personal inventiveness, and creativity; to make consistently game-changing leaps in scientific understanding; and to colonise the solar system, you're not going to be quite as impressed. The idea that there's a trade-off between money and "people doing the right thing" is not convincing. Belonging to a successful culture requires some form of dues-paying. That's not avoidable. The challenge is to make sure that the dues aren't just a tithe to bad-actor opportunists - which is the basis of the current system, especially in the US - but provide unquestionable economy-of-scale opportunities and benefits that are disproportionate to their "cost" - however that cost is realised in practice.
  - mruts 7y ago
    My idea of human potential is giving them the freedom i decide what they value. Incidentally, capitalism does exactly this. Free markets, free minds. All societies fall short of this ideal, but America definately delivers more than anyone else at the moment.
    - d0mine 7y ago
      What "freedom" are you talking about? Most people can't even afford the luxury of knowing basic facts about their world. Like a fish which doesn't know it is in the water, they don't know that they are immersed in the propaganda bubble. How many people do you think control all of the media? Do you think the goals of these 0.00001% are aligned with ours?
    - jarsbe 7y ago
      How does capitalism provide freedom? The American laissez faire system seems to be falling apart at the seams. Power and wealth is becoming more concentrated while seeking to solidify that position through limiting the freedoms of the lower classes. Regular people are burdened with student debt and health care costs all within a back drop of little to no social support. Unions striking for better working conditions have their corporate controlled health insurance stripped away. Banks write balance sheets as they see fit, devaluing your wealth and causing financial crises. The list goes on. Being forced in to wage slavery to survive in this system doesn't sound particularly free.
      - mruts 7y ago
        > Being forced in to wage slavery to survive in this system doesn't sound particularly free. That's like saying I was forced into heroin addiction because I felt bad. Let's be real for a second: people have choices, and the concept of being forced to do something or be something simply does not exist. Or, alternatively, you could say that everyone is forced to do everything they do. But either way, it means the same thing.
    - conception 7y ago
      Capitalism and free markets are different things and a few threads here have lumped the two together. Capitalism just means the capitalism is owned privately. Capitalism drives towards monopolies and central control just as much as a totalitarian state does. Enforcing, regulating and supporting free markets is what keeps capitalism in check. And while rare you can have socialist free markets.
- pieterk 7y ago
  Thanks for replying. Don't get me wrong, money is a great representation of time, I said it's just not equivalent. The article points out what happens if you put a monetary value on it. In this case perverting the relationship between the parents and the caretakers, by removing empathy and introducing economic status into the equation. A way out of capitalism is the realization that physical resources are always worth more than money. How to make that concept scale, I don't know, but it gives me hope to see a daycare center take a small step towards that direction.

aflag 7y ago

If they wanted to completely end tardiness from parents they should fine the teacher when parents are late. The guilt would be overwhelming.

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
This was the thinking behind the "whipping boy". Ultimately, I don't think it worked out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_boy

boyadjian 7y ago

Sex is what makes people do what they do.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

karmakaze 7y ago

I had pretty much this exact thing happen to me. I had left one company to go work for a startup. The startup failed. I was contracted to come back to the first company to cover for a former teammate who was going on maternity leave. For insurance they put a sizeable early leave monetary penalty into the contract. I thought just giving my word would be sufficient but I had no plans to leave so didn't matter either way. During the contract I did well on an online programming contest that turned out to be a recruiting tool. I was made a now or never offer I shouldn't refuse but I did explaining that I was committed to my current contract. When discussed, they we're willing to payout the penalty to have me start earlier. At this point I thought hard about my personal ethics on this and it came down to if it was based on trust, I would have stuck it out to the end but since they made it monetary I was playing by their set out rules and had no qualms (well maybe still a little) about going before the end.

Eyght 7y ago
In my admittedly limited experience working sales, a personal relationship is incredibly important for customer retention. I guess the same goes for employees.

DVassallo 7y ago

The original study is here: https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine.pdf https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine...

1ark 7y ago

When I read this, I thought it was a bit psychology 101. Monetary punishment has nothing to do with being late to pickup a child. While the punishment of apologizing to a teacher has a direct link to the event. As wrong as taking a child's console/phone/tablet away when they punched someone at school or w/e.

pontifier 7y ago

I took a very interesting class at university simply called "Power". The textbook was "The 48 laws of power" and power seemed to boil down to one thing: Making someone do something they otherwise wouldn't do. Money is a type of distilled power, but it's often better to use non-monetary power to influence behavior if possible.

HNLurker2 7y ago
Robert Greene book can be easily skimmed with this 3 hours video(assuming you got the time and attention): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLB4UrCXOq0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLB4UrCXOq0