One of the most common reactions by those
new to the Resource-Based Economy concept, is to assert that
without the monetary system people will lack the necessary incentive
that drives people to persevere in our current socioeconomic model.
I want to examine the relevant evidence about what truly motivates
human beings.
“Do this and you’ll get that.”
These six words summarize our society’s doctrine for raising children,
teaching students, and managing workers.
The monetary system has engraved this idea into society so deeply,
that an inordinate portion of the population believes
that the monetary incentive is an effective mechanism.
Many claim that if there is no money
humans will just lie around and be lazy.
This is just sad.
First of all, the most powerful contributions to society
came from those who were truly interested in social progress,
not detached monetary gain, such as Einstein, Galileo,
Newton, the Wright Brothers and Tesla.
As stated by sociologist Philip Slater “The idea that everybody wants money
is propaganda circulated by wealth addicts
to make themselves feel better about their addiction.”
[Applause]
In the mid-1990s, a Gallop poll was conducted
which found that over 50% of American adults [94 million]
volunteered time for social causes, at an average of 4.2 hours per week
for 20.5 billion hours per year!
Even with the crippling effect of the monetary system,
human beings still strive to help one another.
The logical deduction from this finding is that a social system
that inherently supports and reinforces acts of reciprocation,
would drastically increase these statistics.
In a Resource-Based Economy, everyone is raised
to his or her highest potential in order to become a contributor
greatly enhancing our social evolution
and raising everyone’s standard of living,
thus changing the incentive mechanism.
Such an environment would allow intrinsic motivation,
liking what you do, to flourish.
The use of rewards, whether it is money, grades
excessive praise or other bribes, to control people’s behaviour,
is a practice that is widely accepted and exercised
but rarely challenged.
Extrinsic motivators, controlling sources that come from outside the individual,
are the preferred way to manipulate people in the classroom,
at home when raising children, in the workplace,
and in society at large, as the dominate work ethic.
Similar to the use of punishment and threat (which I'll discuss after)
to elicit mindless obedience,
offering rewards may provoke temporary compliance.
However, the long-term effectiveness of extrinsic motivation
does not hold up under close scrutiny.
To better understand the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of rewards,
we must first pose a few preliminary questions.
First, for whom or what are rewards effective?
It is easy to see the attractiveness of rewards and punishment
as it requires very little effort for the person, group or institution
seeking a particular behaviour.
Such a disposition ignores the understanding
that the environment affects motivation.
It opts for an approach that precludes working with people
while instead focuses on doing things to people.
Second, for how long are rewards effective,
and for what are rewards effective?
As sociologist Alfie Kohn explains
in an article entitled 'The Risk of Rewards'
“Studies over many years have found that behavior modification programs
are rarely successful at producing lasting changes in attitudes or behavior.
When the rewards stop, people usually return to the way they acted
before the program began.”
He further elaborates “Indeed, extrinsic motivators do not alter
the emotional or cognitive commitments that underlie behavior,
at least not in a desirable direction.
A child promised a treat for learning or acting responsibly,
has been given every reason to stop doing so
when there is no longer a reward to be gained.”
It is simple to understand why.
Rewarding shifts people’s focus from the behaviour to the reward itself.
It is result-oriented rather than process-oriented;
a recipe that ensures disinterest, lowered creativity
and suboptimal efficiency.
So, do rewards motivate people?
Certainly. They motivate people to obtain the rewards.
However, this extrinsic motivation usually comes at the price
of deteriorating interest and excellence at whatever is being done.
Here are a few more central reasons why rewards ultimately fail,
and then I'll wrap up:
1) Rewards Punish
The underlying assumptions about conventional parenting,
teaching and workplace management are that there are two dispositions:
positive reinforcement via rewards and punitive responses.
However, the research clearly demonstrates
that rewards and punishments are not opposites.
As Kohn denotes “They are two sides of the same coin
and it is a coin that does not buy very much.”
2) Rewards Destroy Relationships
Rewards connote, by their very definition
the disruption of cooperative learning,
and they are most destructive when made artificially scarce.
When only a few children in a class are awarded gold stars
everyone is turned into a competitor, an obstacle to others’ success.
The same logic can be applied to classes where students are graded on a bell curve.
Similarly, when collective rewards are offered
a person or group is much more likely to be blamed
as the person responsible for the failure to obtain the reward in question,
thus rupturing relationships.
Distrust and stress tend to flourish in such a system.
3) Rewards Ignore Reasons
A child is 'misbehaving', a worker is performing poor quality work,
a student is unmotivated to learn.
These are many of the situations in which we are inclined to offer rewards
in an attempt to correct what is going wrong.
The problem is that the rewards do nothing to actually address
the true underlying causes about
why the trouble has occurred in the first place.
It is simple to recognize why this approach is used though;
it requires little effort on behalf of the intervener.
The exact same line of reasoning can be applied to punishments.
The implications of all this research is again
that our schools, our workplaces and, in fact, our entire economic system
are predicated on a motivational structure that is backward.
It is a structure that is ineffective at best
and socially crippling at worst.
It is a structure that cannot disconnect from the monetary system.
Instead, it necessitates the monetary incentive’s removal
and is simply another reason for why the monetary system
must be removed holistically.
To rely on outdated, scientifically untenable methods for motivating people
can only produce deleterious results in the long-run,
and as such, is again an unsustainable value.