You're an amazing writer Josh Sir, so is Rob Sir and I learn so much from the posts.
Please correct me if my reasoning below is wrong.
Economics and Game Theory corroborate this post. Suppose person X doesn't want to outperform her peers by earning more money and just wants to earn enough to meet her bare necessities and indulge in only some luxuries. Since wages are decided by supply and demand, if X's peers are upskilling themselves, in the long run, X's real wage would reduce. This is not unlike education/degree inflation.
This is a collective action problem. It'll only stop when enough people come together and change the system.
Its a race we've collectively trapped ourselves in. Even if I don't want to run the race, I'll have to keep running (or atleast keep walking) because of how the economy works.
Hi Ram, thanks so much for saying so. Rob and I both appreciate that.
As for your assessment, I think calling it a collective action problem is spot on. That said, there are plenty of "modifiers" that can make all the difference. For example, as you mentioned, the economic system in place. Cultural norms play a big role, too. So, no surprise that in America, where hard work is economically and culturally valued, we see a race to the bottom.
But even if we changed the economic system and cultural norms, the underlying problem will still exist. Not to get too heady about things, but all of life can be understood from a collective-action perspective: no organism can stop running the race, either with respect to its conspecifics or other organisms, because otherwise it will fall behind in the genetic game and eventually cease to exist. So I think it's really "the game of life" that suffers from this problem, which economics and game theory have helped to formalize.
You're an amazing writer Josh Sir, so is Rob Sir and I learn so much from the posts.
Please correct me if my reasoning below is wrong.
Economics and Game Theory corroborate this post. Suppose person X doesn't want to outperform her peers by earning more money and just wants to earn enough to meet her bare necessities and indulge in only some luxuries. Since wages are decided by supply and demand, if X's peers are upskilling themselves, in the long run, X's real wage would reduce. This is not unlike education/degree inflation.
This is a collective action problem. It'll only stop when enough people come together and change the system.
Its a race we've collectively trapped ourselves in. Even if I don't want to run the race, I'll have to keep running (or atleast keep walking) because of how the economy works.
Hi Ram, thanks so much for saying so. Rob and I both appreciate that.
As for your assessment, I think calling it a collective action problem is spot on. That said, there are plenty of "modifiers" that can make all the difference. For example, as you mentioned, the economic system in place. Cultural norms play a big role, too. So, no surprise that in America, where hard work is economically and culturally valued, we see a race to the bottom.
But even if we changed the economic system and cultural norms, the underlying problem will still exist. Not to get too heady about things, but all of life can be understood from a collective-action perspective: no organism can stop running the race, either with respect to its conspecifics or other organisms, because otherwise it will fall behind in the genetic game and eventually cease to exist. So I think it's really "the game of life" that suffers from this problem, which economics and game theory have helped to formalize.
Thanks for reading and for your comment.