This is, in my opinion, also part of the reason why we have sects, conspiracy theories, etc. Maybe even self help books (and a lot of blogs on HN).
People need a reason to feel important, and if someone comes along and tells them that there is some truth out there that the other suckers refuse to see or accept, it can be a seducing tale.
> People need a reason to feel important, and if someone comes along and tells them that there is some truth out there that the other suckers refuse to see or accept, it can be a seducing tale.
This is why most successful mainstream movies start with the main character waking up one day and suddenly discovering that they're not like everyone else and they have some sort of special destiny.
It's interesting that both Hollywood and Silicon Valley are built on the same sort of masturbatory stories, just with different facades for different audiences.
You make a good point, but remember that it doesn't cover 100% of those "secret knowledge" groups. Some self-help books really are helpful. Some conspiracy theories really are true.
Think about mathematics. That's a truth that many people refuse to see or accept, yet it's plainly visible.
This really resonates with me currently and something I try to remind myself of as much as possible. It's something I've struggled with in my 5 years of being a professional developer. Thanks for sharing!
The salary increase part or just the constant pursuit to be better than your coworkers? I always found development to be less competitive field than others - what are your experiences of the past 5 years?
At least for me, competition has always been fierce especially early on and I paid for it with my health. In later years, I have found that I have acquired the tools (technical and business-oriented) and discipline to hold my own amongst my colleagues and also recognize political patterns in organizations without burning out. That has helped me survive this long without folding my hand early in the game. I love coding, but not as much as my health and well-being.
At first it was the salary, now I find it being on the dev side of things and general company strategy. I'm always wanting to be included on every discussion within the company(30+ employees, I was employee number 6 or 7) if it relates to something I know about. It feels like an obsession. Sorry for the late response.
How are you going to attract the wife you want if you're not better than other men (in some way, shape, or form)? That's always going to be the zero-sum game.
People of all socioeconomic statuses somehow find a way to get married. Ultimately, finding someone to spend the rest of your life with doesn't come down to the simple question of "being better"—the qualifications for a good mate are very specific to every person.
> the qualifications for a good mate are very specific to every person
The set of qualifications is specific to every person, sure, but whatever is in that set for a given woman, you need to be better than the competition at those qualifications.
Unless you're fine with marrying just anyone, the thesis of the blog post doesn't hold for dating; it's not enough to be 'decent' or even 'good'.
Attraction is fairly irrational and subjective, it's also fairly random. Not everybody is everywhere all the time, so there's a "right place, right time" chance aspect to it.
Now, if you're talking about attracting a particular individual you've chosen to pursue, well then things get a bit more difficult.
Presumably the way you might be 'better' if you follow this kind of advice is that you're probably more likely to be happy, well adjusted, and able to give of your time and energy. Lots of women will value that over extra wealth.
All the men I know who view the dating "game" as zero-sum in this way are divorced, on their way to divorce, or on their way to another marriage without having addressed any of the issues that led to their prior divorces (suggesting yet another one is in the cards down the road).
Like Joshua eventually learned, the only way to win this game is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
It's not about being better, it's about doing better.
I have a friend that I've been dating. She tells me all about the other guys she dates. This past weekend for her birthday a friend flew down from another state to hang out with her for the weekend.
This guy is loaded. Way more money than sense. Among the things he got her that weekend was a $200 bottle of champagne that he must've paid $300 for because he got it in a restaurant. She doesn't drink. She had half a cup and they left the bottle on the table when they left.
He does all this for a girl he sees a few times a year. When she told me this story, I went down to the massage place she likes, and got her a $200 gift card for massages. She was very grateful.
I don't take her to expensive restaurants, I take her to the best places in town to eat, which are never really expensive. I take time to try to get to know her and try to work on my issues so that the time we spend together is better.
As a result she spends way more time with me than she does with the others. Where other guys spend money to cover up their perceived inadequacies, I put time and effort into making every moment I spend with her special.
That kind of effort is an order of magnitude more effective at finding and keeping the woman of your dreams. And you don't have to have a ton of money or a huge penis or be six feet tall to do it.
> That kind of effort is an order of magnitude more effective at finding and keeping the woman of your dreams. And you don't have to have a ton of money or a huge penis or be six feet tall to do it.
Not understanding. Have not done what? If you mean finding and keeping her, well, we're still dating after having known each other for several years and some nasty experiences. Our relationship gets a little better every day. I'm satisfied with where we're at right now. I'm not ready to get married and she's not ready to settle down yet.
More to the point, you don't keep a woman by locking her in a cage. You do it by being the first person she calls or texts to tell about her day.
Thanks. It's been rocky at times, jealousy does get in the way from time to time. But it's been an amazing learning experience getting to know her and build a friendship with her. Both of us are only going to evolve and grow over time, both together and apart. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
> As a result she spends way more time with me than she does with the others. Where other guys spend money to cover up their perceived inadequacies, I put time and effort into making every moment I spend with her special.
But she still seems to need to meet rich guys who live in another state despite all the quality time with you? Perhaps you're deluding yourself and she's just spending time between the more interesting guys with you because you're more available.
The availability aspect is interesting. I used to try to play availability games with her. They mostly just got in the way. I much prefer to be generous with my time, and set boundaries rather than be arbitrary.
Her time is very limited too. She has a full-time job that keeps her occupied sometimes during the weekend as well. She doesn't have a lot of available time for dating herself. Despite this, she regularly makes time to come see me.
She shows me the text messages of the "more interesting guys" she also dates. Nasty, ugly, controlling, the lot of them.
The impression I get from her is that she doesn't really understand guy psychology and so doesn't really grasp why it's all a waste of time. But I can be patient. I date other girls too. My dating life isn't as full as hers, but I like to think my 'others' are way better quality than her 'others'.
How old are you? I ask because it sounds like she's using you for something to do while she works on landing some rich, handsome guy she wants, and you are still naive kid. Ask her to stop dating anyone else and see what happens.
By the way, $200 for a bottle of real Champagne in a restaurant while pricey is not anything to crazy. And yeah, some of the best places in town to eat are expensive. Not all, of course but some. So if you were her, would you rather the option to eat at any of the best places or only the ones you could afford? Would you rather drink sparkling wine if you drank or real Champagne? Money and good looks are not everything, but when all else is equal they certainly do matter.
I'm 32. She's mid-twenties. She's a gorgeous girl, I'm not going to hold it against her for exploring her options. If she does decide that a rich, handsome guy is right for her, that's fine by me. I have plenty of options too, and that works both ways.
> By the way, $200 for a bottle of real Champagne in a restaurant while pricey is not anything to crazy.
You're just thinking about the Champagne. He flew down there, took her on a trip to a nearby town, dinners, drinks, and dancing every night. Sure, $300 isn't that much when it's just for the one dinner, but my guess is that he blew well over $5k on this one trip.
That's a lot of money. Worse, it's a lot of time. Were I him, I'd just have hired an escort got on with it. She enjoyed the parts she enjoyed and didn't enjoy the parts she didn't enjoy. To me it's an extravagance that is wholly unnecessary. I would not trade my life for one of that kind of luxury. If I could add the ability to pay for that kind of luxury onto my current life, sure, that would be fine. But the best things in life really are free.
> And yeah, some of the best places in town to eat are expensive.
Depends on where you live. If you're in NYC or LA, where all the talent flocks to, certainly the top restaurants there are great. Generally in a mid-size city like Kansas City or Atlanta, the ethnic restaurants available are amazing the best of those simply blow all but the very top-tier ones away. At my company, we go to Houston's sometime on the CEO's dime. The $30 plates there are decent, but I always come away wishing I'd been able to go to my favorite Korean taco place.
> So if you were her, would you rather the option to eat at any of the best places or only the ones you could afford?
I think she's coming around to my way of looking at things. I took her to a Korean yesterday (different from the taco joint) and this girl, who has been wined and dined by crazy-rich guys, was over the hill about how amazing the food was in this little hole-in-the-wall strip mall joint and how it was some of the best food she's ever had in her life.
I go there twice a month.
Certainly she'd like to have the best of both worlds, but Hugh Grant isn't knocking on her door. I don't have to compete with movie stars, I can just compete with the other guy she dates. And from what I hear from her, you can be rich and handsome and still be an insufferable bore.
If anyone's using anyone, it's her using these guys for spa treatments and dinners.
I wasn't talking about money specifically. I'm just pointing out that dating (with the goal of a monogamous marriage) is a zero-sum game; in order for you to win, all her other suitors must lose. In that game it's highly relevant how you stack up against others, not just objective benchmarks.
In your example, if every man was thoughtful enough to know to get her massages, then the gesture would no longer have any differentiating effect. Similarly for muscle tone, education, penis size, money, or whatever she happens to care about.
Of course, not worrying about how others are doing and focusing on self-improvement is probably the best strategy to becoming better than other people. But to say it's irrelevant how others are doing relative to oneself is just wrong.
I might get down voted to death here. But let me tell you a couple things (you look inexperienced dating-wise):
- She's very unlikely getting that spoiled by other men. Girls say that all the time to pump their value and push you to higher standards.
- Unless she is: 1. texting you 3-5 times a day and 2. having sex with you; she's using you literally for any penny you are spending.
Girls will kill for men they like. They'll spend all their money on him. I had a girl save for a month to pay for a train ticket just to see me. You are very likely being played here.
I don't buy into this kind of cynicism. And it's silly. I enjoy our time spent together, and consider paying for a second meal for the privilege of doing so a bargain. She is certainly the most expensive girl I've ever dated, but she's actually a really cheap date. When we go out, I spend more money on myself than on her.
She used to ask for me to pay for her nails and massages and stuff, I would do it once, then not do it anymore. If I were making more money, I could budget it in, but as it is I just don't have it. I encourage her to get her other guy friends to pay for that stuff for her.
And on the 'using' issue: If I had the kind of money these guys have, and the willingness to use it on dating, I'd regularize it. I'd have accounts at all her beauty spots and have them just send me the bill every month. I would of course talk to her to keep it from getting excessive, (more likely I'd negotiate with the business for better rates) but I would not begrudge a lady for taking advantage of my generosity. That's what it's there for.
You know your problem is that you are completely in the wrong, yet try to make it look like you have it all figured out.
I never say Women or Girls are evil. They are not that cute creatures that you think they are, though. They are completely acting on their own self-interest which is fine and logical.
You'll be in for some surprises/lessons. But that's how we all learn I guess.
> They are completely acting on their own self-interest which is fine and logical.
When did I say she wasn't?
> yet try to make it look like you have it all figured out.
I have the kind of lifestyle that allows me to learn these kinds of lessons very quickly. Beautiful women, and their attendant problems, have come into and out of my life for as long as I can remember, and I've read everything interesting that I could find regarding human attraction / connection, tested the methods, and come to my own conclusions. The lessons / surprises you say I'm 'in for', I've learned over and over again.
There is still room in the world for love and trust and tenderness. You need to be emotionally mature and be willing to be vulnerable. Heartbreaks happen but you move on. If you let yourself get scarred then you'll never find truly honest and open love. That honestness and openness is so important for me to find that I will allow myself to get hurt as many times as it takes.
I do not see myself as playing a game with this girl that one of us will win. I see it as two people exploring life together. It's not a game, there are no points, only experiences to share.
As a woman, I'm not sure if marriage is as simple as a checkbox of wants, needs, desires, and luxuries. A lot of people seem to model these things as a game where there is some sort of fitness function that needs to be maximised and so on, but I'm not sure if that works too well.
In the middle of the 20th century, von Neumann and his ilk predicted nuclear war with absolute certainty. So certain were they in their conviction that they in fact advocated a first-strike policy by the US, but that war never came. The models were adjusted to include repeated games and then people said, that's the reason why we haven't blown up. (see: http://www.scu.edu/business/economics/workingpapers/upload/F... ) But rationally speaking the game of global annihilation was a single game - the person who moved first would have the fewest people die and then there would be no more games, so their analysis doesn't quite hold up. Indeed there have been times where people have tried to destroy the world, but someone, somewhere down the chain of command has said no and prevented that outcome. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov )
Maybe, just maybe, we should accept that while looking at the world through the lens of game theoretic models is useful for a lot of applications - it isn't the be all and end all of human society. There are women out there who do indeed care about those points and want to "better" their rank within the game they play. There are others for whom that game doesn't even exist and they can be just as desirable and amazing as the first group. So at the end, you could very well end up not playing the game and have a shot at a pretty decent life and find some happiness.
> There are others for whom that game doesn't even exist and they can be just as desirable and amazing as the first group.
The fitness function might be completely different from one woman to the next, but I think extremely few are the type to just buy the first car off the lot without some kind of comparison shopping / fitness function maximizing. And at that point, your standing relative to her other suitors indeed becomes more important than your absolute level of achievement.
I am not saying that the model isn't useful - I am saying that it isn't universally applicable. We have so many deep evolutionary drives that we re-program to our ends all the time. Contraception is a great example of this, as are people trying to get over PTSD, eating disorders, and so on.
So, yeah, sure the model explains quite a bit and explains why we find certain things attractive, but it says nothing whatsoever about why certain people marry each other - which is what the question is.
It is zero sum over the entire Earth, but not as zero sum as you think, locally in one country - It's quite possible for any middle class man with a decent job to travel to a less affluent country and marry a very attractive wife they would want.
You have to share the piece of your pie your country has, but nothing is stopping you from grabbing at another country's piece of the pie.
I'm pretty sure the premium-only airlines have all failed because (a) it's hard to start an airline, (b) there are only a few routes where there is enough demand to fill a premium-only plane (which exacerbates all kinds of issues from competition to poor gate/crew utilization to maintenance costs and so on), (c) most of the routes that could theoretically work are capacity-constrained, forcing these startups to use more remote airports (e.g. Eos flew into Stansted rather than Heathrow) which reduces their utility, and (d) did I mention that starting an airline is hard?
As an example, the all-business SAS flight from Houston to Norway was targeted at oil company employees [1]. It couldn't fly 7 days a week because they had to take the plane offline once a week for cleaning/maintenance and there was no other all-business plane to rotate into its place. They stopped the route because the oil price slump reduced travel of oil company employees.
It would seem you would also need to own the airports for a luxury airline to work. That way you establish small airports near crucial business centers, with a similar upscale set of services.
> One unspoken objection to raising the minimum wage is that people, other people, those people, will get paid a little more. Which might make getting ahead a little harder. When we raise the bottom, this thinking goes, it gets harder to move to the top.
What a ridiculous strawman to attack. Author didn't even try to prove that this "unspoken objection" actually exists, he just enjoyed the fantasy of evil man in suits so much.
There are a lot of studies that prove the mentality exists. I forget where I read it, but they did a study where they gave the participant two choices: they get $140 and their neighbor gets $160, or they get $120 and their neighbor gets $100. A significant portion chose the latter option.
I think the word "prove" is very strong when it comes to a psychological study that measures something indirectly. I agree with your parent comment. I doubt the author was even thinking of such studies when they wrote that part of the article.
And they should, the value of the dollar is relative to the total in the economy. I suspect, because the question was even asked, the participants read into the study as a question of economics. I would have done the same thing.
Assuming the two people make up the total economy; $120 out of a total $220 is a greater amount of money than is $140 out of $300.
That seems a little far-fetched. You ask someone about distributing cash between them and their neighbor and of course the participant will assume that what you're talking about is their wealth relative to the sum total wealth of the entire world or the effects of large-scale inflation?
The inflationary nature of money is heavily tied into our subconscious experience of it. If you ask the same question , but about things rather than dollars, people will make the rational choice.
"Would you rather have a yacht if your neighbor has two yachts, or a dingy, and your neighbor doesn't have a boat?" Everyone will answer yachts, because yachts aren't subconsciously inflationary.
"Would you rather have ten books and your neighbor has fifteen, or five books and your neighbor has three?"
"Would you rather own three pairs of shoes and your neighbor owns four, or two pairs of shoes and your neighbor owns one?"
Also, the very fact they're asking the question in a study causes people to answer differently than they would normally -- that's the problem with this sort of 'science' to begin with.
It's always this sort of Gotcha! science. People are used to that. As a result, most people, when they're answering questions in a study are thinking "These are trick questions. I won't be a guinea pig. What is the underlying trick here?"
---
Addendum: The study may also be dealing with a cultural difference in the use of the phrase "your neighbor". In the southern Christian tradition "your neighbor" is a catch-all for people that you are not related to (from Mark 12:31).
You do see the irony in criticizing a study for its imperfection when you yourself rely on nothing more than your personal guesstimate of what "most people" think and a just-so story about the possible influence of an obscure biblical interpretation, right?
I agree with your general point, many of these kinds of psychological studies lack all external validity (they don't measure what they think they measure). It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right."
>>It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right."
It shouldn't. Most people make up their minds first, and then decide what facts and evidence to accept and reject afterwards. And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away.
>"And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away."
Facts can't be 'against' something. That's silly, anthropomorphism. Facts must necessarily be interpreted, they are themselves meaningless until we choose to apply them toward some argument, which must, axiomatically, require some amount of unsubstantiated theorizing.
Have you no sense of the history of the philosophy of science at all?
>"this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right."
The empirical research isn't "wrong", that doesn't even make sense. Data is just data, it stands for nothing but itself, it must be interpreted for one to make a grander statement about reality.
I'm saying your and enraged_camel's interpretation of the data is wrong -- which is no less scientific a position, and no more unsubstantiated. We're both examining the data, which itself has no opinion, and making predictions about what that data represents given a number of imperfect heuristics.
You're creating a false equivalence. Yes, different interpretations of the same data are possible, but that doesn't make all interpretations equally valid. Occam's razor would prefer the simple explanation that a question asks what it purports to ask, rather than that the question must necessarily have been internally translated into another question by the participants to the study.
Right. Also, I read that most people that object minimum wage increase are those that are just a little above it themselves. That exactly explains what Godin talks about here. Those people won't have anyone to feel superior to if they lose their tiny wage differential.
Yeah, right, I am sure they only have society's best interest at heart, after the careful consideration of 'dis-incentivization of minimum wage'....although I'm not sure why you think they have all 'recently worked hard to get above it'. I would think it's more likely these are two distinct classes that don't intersect that much.
I think to there is also an attitude about minimum wage going up that - hey it's great they get raise. But if 75% of the country is getting a raise why am I not getting a raise as well?
Or for some people who worked hard to get up from minimum wage to get to $10/hour. They are now, in a way, demoted back to making minimum wage!
Eh, I work in the service sector and when everyone was bumped to 9/hr I got bumped to 10. It wasn't a 1 to 1 bump but only like 2 people complained. Not sure how financially viable this is for other companies, but we're a median sized grocery chain. At any rate isn't it a little weird that it feels so bad that other people start at a higher rate than I did? Kinda like how some people have rich parents and others don't... Maybe there's a comparison here. Course if prices adjust this is null, but I don't think small min. wage bumps will cause prices to adjust.
That's fair at least you got recognized with a salary increase. Just curious, would you have been a little upset if everybody got bumped up $9 and you didn't get a raise so you stayed there at $9 with everybody?
I agree Seth doesn't make the strongest points for the broader message he's getting at.
That said, I find it a useful because there's still value in his words to be taken. As John Stuart Mill says in On Liberty: "Though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth"[1]
I think that the problem is that people seek pleasure rather than joy in life. We become desensitized to things that are pleasurable but when we feel joy from love, helping someone, expressing ourself a creatively, etc. that kind of happiness never gets old.
I have a friend who lives a very high life style. He gets a new Porshe every few years and recently at a group morning coffee he was talking about getting his wife a new car when the car she has is very nice. When he was done talking about his upcoming car purchase I started a new conversation about our cars being almost 10 and almost 20 years old and how wonderful it was having older things that still provide great service. I think my buddy needs to feel superior to people who don't have as high a life style. The funny thing is that I have way more economic resources than my friend.
I liked Seth's point that in a networked world where things can be shared that we lose the feeling of exclusivity, which I think is a good thing!
I sincerely envy people who're happy working their asses off to buy fancy cars and even houses, as it's a relatively affordable ideal. Those of us whose ideal it is to do what we please with our time are desiring something that seems to be more expensive on average.
It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. --Malcom Muggeridge
Interesting. By more expensive on average, would this mean pursuing personal interests, with the price being the opportunity cost of hours of labor that could have been exchanged for salary?
If so, this resonates with me. I would add that there's another component to this equation that I found personally valuable: challenge. The challenges that I have faced in professional roles (some unpleasant) have often forced me to grow. During long periods spent away from work, I often came to miss that.
I myself am fully in the camp of driving old vehicles and aim to be mindful of minimizing pointless consumption.
HOWEVER, I would argue that your humblebrag about the age of your cars, right after your friend talks proudly about his new Porsches, is the far more odious of the two boasts.
Conspicuous asceticism carries with it projected moral superiority, and it seems clear you are opening judging your friend's buying choices as inferior. It's his money, and his happiness. And I notice you can't help but add a final coda/dig that you are much richer than your friend.
I'm only sensitive to the pitfalls of your mentality because I was raised to handle money in the same way as you, and have to fight the urge to be obnoxiously gleeful about, for example, my low housing costs when conversations about rent come around.
>I myself am fully in the camp of driving old vehicles and aim to be mindful of minimizing pointless consumption.
Of course, you would also have to consider increasing maintenance costs and the lower fuel efficiency (and therefore higher fuel costs) of the older car. The question is how close the upgrade-your-car sweet-spot is to the end of the car's lifespan.
I remember reading about this in Eckhart Tolle's book. We protect our egos by saying we are better than others in one or another. For example, if I can't out earn my neighbor then I can feel better by being more frugal.
I would say it's not pleasure vs joy, but happiness vs meaning. Many things can bring us happiness, including money, possessions, and even "being ahead". But these things don't bring meaning to out lives. The things that you listed that bring us joy actually give our life meaning. We want our lives to be meaningful much more than we want happiness. We ought to optimize our life to make it meaningful. That's the only way we'll feel that we had a good life.
"The funny thing is that I have way more economic resources than my friend."
Good points overall, though I think they would have been strengthened by ommitting this little aside. This sounds like the kind of sentence your friend would have slipped into a post of his.
+1 up vote. Thanks for your comment. That last sentence in my post really does come off sounding egotistic. I need to reread what I write before posting.
It's all good, and hey, I appreciate your willingness to hear feedback like that. It's refreshing! I'm consistently impressed by the HN community in that respect, and I try to follow the example y'all set every day.
Hmm, I get the feeling your friend has less financial resources than you do so he's trying to impress you and communicate to you, you two are equals, while you figured out quite transparently he was trying to impress you, as you know your friend well enough, and so, weren't that impressed.
It's natural for people who have "less" to try to impress friends who have "more", because people are generally friends with people who are similar, and people generally want to stay friends with their friends, so they try to de-emphasise the difference between them. I think that may explain the "boast" about cars.
I put no judgement on the scenario, I'm stating my observations, and of course I don't know if true or not in reality - it's only based on the words you've written.
> They quit a good job, a job they liked, because other people got a raise.
> This is our culture of 'getting ahead' talking.
That's a pretty bold conclusion without any evidence. The concept of a salary is to pay someone in return for work performed. How would Seth feel if I make the same amount of money as him just by sitting at home (obviously an extreme scenario from one aspect)? It would undervalue his contributions, his hard work and dedication, the obstacles he had to overcome, etc. Any reasonable individual would have second thoughts about working at a company that considers a manager as an equal (financially, salary-wise) to a janitor (for example).
It would be safe to say that those two people didn't quit because other employees got a raise. It was probably due to the fact that their contributions didn't hold the same value anymore.
Though in principle I agree with you, it isn't very nice to throw labels around: the janitor might well deal with dangerous waste and earn 10x the call center manager.
>It would be safe to say that those two people didn't quit because other employees got a raise. It was probably due to the fact that their contributions didn't hold the same value anymore.
Their contributions held exactly the same absolute value, which is the entire point of Godin's post. Their decision is completely irrational unless they place a significant value on their relative status within the organisation.
The question is whether Seth's work is undervalued or if your work is overvalued.
If Seth was making $75k, how much you're make is irrelevant to whether that's the number that he was looking for for his skillset.
You could consider the company overvaluing your work a bad signal, but I don't get how that translates to Seth should make even more money than you (Company's made one bad judgement, so should now make two bad judgements?)
EDIT: I understand the sentiment though. It's kind of childish ("why does he get more pasta than me??") but I think most humans are affected with it. I think the feeling is one of wanting to be worth more than others... I have a hard time justifying it on a moral level.
In a business, particularly a small business the amount of money to go around is a fixed pool. Giving raises to low performers means less money for the high performer.
The amount of money dedicated to salaries is not fixed - particularly in regard to owner compensation, capital investment, marketing costs, team composition, training, etc
The scenario I was imagining is when we're both in the same company or same business. Obviously, he shouldn't/wouldn't care how much I make if I'm some random person. The idea is that if you have two employees within the same organization and they both make the same amount of money despite one employee doing less work, it definitely would anger the other employee, wouldn't it?
The point isn't about money. I agree with Seth on that. We shouldn't be chasing money and trying to one-up those around us. But the fact that the work I do as an employee is not viewed in the same regard as someone's else work is slightly jarring.
Seth probably doesn't give a shit if you make as much money as he does by sitting at home. As I understood it, that's the whole point of his article: Enjoy what you have, don't waste your time being jealous of other people.
>It would be safe to say that those two people didn't quit because other employees got a raise. It was probably due to the fact that their contributions didn't hold the same value anymore.
The linked NYT article in the posted article says that the two that quit were two of the "most valued employees", which to me seems like people who were early hires or responsible for some/most the revenue (through tech/sales/whatever). If that's the case, they took the small/early business risks and when a pay off came, they got passed over. I would absolutely consider other opportunities if that happened to me and I was in a key position because it's likely I was under market value to begin with.
If you want to do this kind of thing, all of your early hires have to be on board with the eventual change or you just need to hire everyone at $70k minimum from the ground up. If not, it's reasonable to expect high performers to leave. Mr. Price either didn't know how those two felt or didn't care.
> How would Seth feel if I make the same amount of money as him just by sitting at home (obviously an extreme scenario from one aspect)?
That's the entire point of the article. He's saying your compensation for doing nothing at home should have no effect on how happy he is. It certainly doesn't change the actual buying-power of his income in any noticeable way.
> The concept of a salary is to pay someone in return for work performed.
Not necessarily. Having someone retained for future needs, for example, is worth paying for in some cases. Value isn't limited to work performed.
Pay is, of corse, just the point where the buyer and seller agree. There is no fundamental reason why a janitor position cannot pay the same or more than a manager, if janitors refuse to do the job for any less.
If you work somewhere and everyone else gets a raise because there's a new company-wide minimum wage, but you don't get a raise because you were already compensated above that level and you got there through hard work (or so you think), you might quit, not because you resent the people who got the raises, but because you figure that you'll get a better deal at a place that gives raises to people who work harder.
As to state-wide minimum wages - "the" argument against it is that less people are employed at a higher price of labor and that those priced out of the market are likely to be the ones hurt the most by it, though their numbers might be smaller than the numbers of those employed at the higher wage. (Of course this applies to the company with the $70K minimum wage as well: that company could have used the money it cost to implement this policy to instead hire more people.) There are counter-arguments along the lines of the demand for labor being inelastic and other such, but it's kinda off to not present a sensible argument against a minimum wage while presenting a crazy strawman argument against it, the latter implying with a high likelihood that the author supports a high minimum wage.
But that doesn't make any sense. Ostensibly, you were being paid market rate before. If you were to leave, maybe you'll be able to get a raise at another position, maybe not, but the other employees at your company don't change that.
Okay so now you're in a situation where other people who don't work as hard or as smart as you are getting paid close to you, or the same. That doesn't feel good, but what happens next? Well, if you continue working harder than them, you'll be promoted and get a raise, and they won't. And there, the system re-corrects itself.
Now, I COULD buy the argument that seeing people who you know don't work as hard suddenly make the same money as you would make you yourself get lazy and not try as hard. Because surely they can't fire you for performing the same as the rest. But if that's the type of person you are, maybe the company would be better off without you anyway?
> But that doesn't make any sense. Ostensibly, you were being paid market rate before.
So were those who got a raise, but the company decided to hand out raises as a gift (not as a reward) to lower performers only - of course this discrimination will be frustrating.
I don't know if you can characterize the people who got a raise as a low performers. Some people's market rate may just be below 70k but that doesn't mean they don't work hard. There are plenty of blue collar workers that bust their ass everyday.
But performance has less to do with butt-busting than with choices in what to learn/how to spend your time, don't you think? E.g., I could be working long hours manually moving data around, but if you come in and script that, you're already the higher performer. It's about where you've chosen to direct your effort vs. where I've chosen to direct mine.
If it's frustrating to someone working at that company, why wouldn't they feel frustrated working any other place knowing that those people at their former company are still making relatively more than they should? In fact, it seems as though they would read the news every day and become inconsolably frustrated.
> If it's frustrating to someone working at that company, why wouldn't they feel frustrated working any other place knowing that those people at their former company are still making relatively more than they should?
Because the frustration came from being treated unfairly by the management, which they've cut ties with. Also, they might earn more at their new jobs now as well.
But the problem is that discrimination is a function of perception, and that is 9/10ths of reality.
What the company was trying to do was correct a perceived culture wrong that some people were compensated less because their job was perceived as less important.
The reality is that those "less important" jobs frequently actually keep businesses running smoothly. Only a smoothly running business can afford to invest in strategy, thus smooth operation should be as important as strategy.
That (^) right there is another "perception" and is increasingly the one reasonable people are adopting EXACTLY because of what Seth notes:
"It's possible to create dignity and be successful at the same time."
But the importance of a job isn't what determines the salary of a worker, it mostly a function of supply/demand. A job may be absolutely critical to running a business, but if there's an oversupply of suitable applicants for the position, that is going to naturally drive down the compensation since there will be more applicants available willing to take a lower salary.
Live by the demand curve, die by the demand curve. The company will often have trouble when their model of the demand curve is (obviously) less precise than a worker's, and they are surprised when a worker leaves.
> But that doesn't make any sense. Ostensibly, you were being paid market rate before. If you were to leave, maybe you'll be able to get a raise at another position, maybe not, but the other employees at your company don't change that.
When it comes to money, humans are generally irrational in their decision making, mostly biased towards emotional decision making.
*
This actually happened to me when I was 16 years old. I started working at fastfood job making $4.90/hr, WA state's minimum wage. I was a very strong worker, and was offered a position as a manager a few months later. I politely declined (read: my mother told me I was dumb to sacrifice my education in order make an extra $1.00 or so an hour).
Eventually I was making $5.15 an hour through a series of wage increases due to good reviews. Then the Federal government raised minimum wage to $5.15/hr. I went to the store manager and asked for a raise. My argument was that my wage increases were do to my performance and seniority. Any unproven new-hire would start making the same wage as I do. They did not see it that way, and declined to provide me with a compensation increase.
The feeling was irrational. I still made my wage, and new employees wages didn't come out of my pocket, so it had no impact on me. Still, I felt that my salary should reflect the value I bring to the company.
I ended up putting in my two-weeks about a year later when they promoted an inept person to manager.
Would you ever run a competition where the first prize monetary value is less than the second prize? What kind of incentive would it give the participants? It is not always the absolute value that matters but the relative value of the rewards.
It's not about the minimum wage, that's just one example of how people have a tendency to define their happiness in relation to other people rather than to an absolute measure of how things are going for themselves. The point of the article is to judge yourself independently of other peoples' success, not about whether we should or should not have a high minimum wage.
When we live in a world where prices are set based on how much people can pay, it makes sense to try to get ahead of everyone else. This applies to housing. I can't afford to live where I want because there are a lot of people making way more money than me that are in line ahead of me. Why shouldn't I try to get ahead of them?
I think it's perfectly rational to be upset in the case where coworkers get the paid the same as you or more, yet are in your eyes less productive, competent, or otherwise valuable. Pay signals how much your employer values you, and therefore indirectly your job security. If your hard work goes unrecognized on the balance sheet, it'll probably go unrecognized when times get tight and they need to lay people off.
Wanting to feel valued in one's "community" isn't comparing yourself to others, it's a basic human emotional need.
less people are employed at a higher price of labor and that those priced out of the market are likely to be the ones hurt the most by it
I don't see how that follows. Imagine the minimum wage were doubled, do you think McDonald's would respond by laying off half their staff? What do you think that would do to their business?
Companies hire people because they need the work done, not because they have $X allocated to payroll and it's burning a hole in their pocket. If minimum wage goes up then payroll costs will go up, forcing them to either cut profits or find cost savings elsewhere.
If they raised the minimum wage 10% (not double, let's be realistic), it would raise McDonalds' incentive to eliminate a small percentage of staff.
Look at how supermarkets now have self-checkout. 4 self-checkout stations going with one employee monitoring, and customers don't mind using them. In fact many customers prefer them because they help them get out of the store more quickly. There's no reason to think that McDonalds won't eventually try to eliminate some of the staff that takes orders. It's just a question of when they'll be incentivized enough to try it.
B does not follow from A. Supermarkets did self checkout without any appreciable minimum wage pressures in the US. There is no evidence they won't do them, and no appreciable reason to think there's a floor on the price they can be implemented.
Which leaves us with a minimum wage in many areas which does not actually allow someone to survive, and a growing population who will end up on welfare anyway regardless (who usually are on welfare anyway because oh look Walmart's HR practices).
That may be true for McDonald's, but most employers are small businesses with less than 50 employees whose profit margins are already small. Making it harder for small businesses to succeed hinders economic mobility and increases the wealth gap. If you enact public policy while thinking only of how it will affect the megacorps, then all you'll be left with are megacorps.
>Imagine the minimum wage were doubled, do you think McDonald's would respond by laying off half their staff?
No, but a person will definitely think twice before starting a new McDonald's franchise. A small restaurant owner who had been eyeing a second location will think twice about opening up another restaurant.
The incentives will also shift towards higher automation (not necessarily a good or bad thing in and of itself) of tasks as much as possible instead of hiring humans.
Companies don't work like this: "We have X amount of work to do, no matter what it costs". It's more along the lines of whether a project is a net positive (say through a net present value analysis) and if it isn't, then the whole project is scrapped.
In the end, I think we have to ask ourselves the question: should we as a society tolerate a situation where a big company like McDonald's or Walmart builds their business upon sub-living wages and uses our social assistance programs as a perverse subsidy?
The most likely outcome would be that marginally performing locations would close because they are no longer cost effective to keep open. Everyone at these would lose their jobs. It might not be half but it would certainly be significant.
It's usually about ego. It's not always bad people who have big egos. Sometimes good people have a large ego too.
Consider the person who was told at 5 years old by his parents that he'll never be as good as his classmates. In school, they were told the same - by teachers, bullies, other authority figures that they'll be worthless unless they do something a certain way. Sometimes good people get pressured into this by friends, spouses, in-laws.
Such a kind of person would be eager to prove others wrong. This is the kind of person who chases 'success'.
They'll want to prove they are successful as a form of revenge or a way of impressing the in-laws. Buying expensive cars is the most obvious way. Or suits. Clothes. Houses.
Sometimes there's insecurity and self-doubt. Everyone wants to improve, but the line for improvement is really vague. So they make it relative - compare progress to someone else rather than anchoring it to something solid, like savings.
To many of these people, narrowing the minimum wage bar would be frustrating as it proves that they are hovering on the minimum line.
> Such a kind of person would be eager to prove others wrong.
Honestly, that's really quite rare - and on top of that, you're bordering on trying to say that bullying and putting people down is a good thing.
The people I know who've struggled with bullying, family issues, and similar, tend to want to do well but struggle due to insecurities and mental issues in no small part exacerbated by this treatment throughout the first couple of decades of their life. As a result, things like "holding down a job at the supermarket", or even "turning up every day for volunteering", are achievements for many people who've suffered from these issues, never mind "succeeding" in the way that you define it.
When an archer is shooting for nothing, he has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind or sees two targets —
He is out of his mind!
His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him.
He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting–
And the need to win drains him of power.
From the poet zhuang zhou. I also have friends who have extreme insecurities brought on by bullying and family issues and have a strong drive to succeed, and I can agree that I don't envy having these issues, because as focused as they are, they also mentally suffer with every setback and constantly battle anxieties as they chase their goals.
I remember a study from awhile ago that basically said once a top performer gets above a certain wage threshold, in general they no longer care about the wage itself, but just about being paid more than their peers. I'll try to find it and post it here.
If everyone in the land somehow had their wage adjusted to no less than the author's, I don't think he'd be so blasé about it, finding himself outbid for his current share of the world's finite resources, notably land and housing. I appreciate the sentiment that envy is to be avoided, but it's ridiculous to ignore the relative nature of wealth.
Of course, the mantra that Life is more fun when you don't compare is exactly what well-paid people would want other people to live by. There's an element of self-service in this attitude when you're well-paid yourself.
I don't think the desire to get ahead is always wrong. We still compete against each other in many ways. How would the author feel if instead of being able to afford the nice house 5 minutes from work, he had to buy one 45 minutes away because he was priced out? How do you decide who gets the nice house if not for money?
The $70,000 minimum wage is a bad example, the CEO of this company was in fact a crook that basically throw this out there to distract from charges where he is risking fines and prison for overpaying himself.
I read your comment and felt sad. Why can't good people just do good things? Went to verify and came across this. Ex-wife alleged that he physically abused her.
As I've become more successful, I feel increasingly more like an underachiever.
Fortunately, I resist the urge to compare material wealth. I bought a modest and affordable house for my income level. Going to pay it off in 5 years and hoard the rest of my money under my bed. Don't care if someone else bought a Tesla or went on another international trip. As a joke, I've started to brag about mundane things on facebook. Such as eating a "fancy" Chipotle burrito or taking an "exotic" trip across the bridge.
The article makes a good point but if a person is already in the 'compare' mindset it is often impossible for them to internalize it. One of the oddest things is finding a fact that you don't believe because if you did, it would require you to change your whole belief structure about yourself.
The canonical example is addiction, addicts believe they can quit any time, because if they couldn't quit then they would have to admit they were an addict. And generally admitting that means admitting you aren't in control and that is a scary place to be without any support.
In startups you will often see this if the company is suddenly very successful and people are suddenly "rich" (by their own definition). I've seen two responses to that outcome, sometimes people are grateful that they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and some people develop this internal view that they are somehow "better" than the folks who did not get rich. In the latter case it expresses very oddly, putting down people who are doing better work than they are, but aren't rich. The challenge of admitting that they were just lucky, means they have to understand they are not somehow better than the people who didn't get rich.
At least if you won the lottery its obvious you were just lucky.
This post shows a naive, or intentionally distorted, understanding of animal behavior. Relative social status exists and will be pursued and aggressively defended in every sexual species. If you want that to stop, you better get rid of males and/or females (reader's choice). Barring that, I'd suggest acceptance.
Just to add on, there is evidence that this is attainable. Mindful meditation has been shown to reduce "animal behavior" and increased self regulation on a physical level with measurable changes to the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_mechanisms_of_mindfulne...
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadPeople need a reason to feel important, and if someone comes along and tells them that there is some truth out there that the other suckers refuse to see or accept, it can be a seducing tale.
This is why most successful mainstream movies start with the main character waking up one day and suddenly discovering that they're not like everyone else and they have some sort of special destiny.
It's interesting that both Hollywood and Silicon Valley are built on the same sort of masturbatory stories, just with different facades for different audiences.
Think about mathematics. That's a truth that many people refuse to see or accept, yet it's plainly visible.
Edit: s/a wife/the wife you want/
The set of qualifications is specific to every person, sure, but whatever is in that set for a given woman, you need to be better than the competition at those qualifications.
Unless you're fine with marrying just anyone, the thesis of the blog post doesn't hold for dating; it's not enough to be 'decent' or even 'good'.
Now, if you're talking about attracting a particular individual you've chosen to pursue, well then things get a bit more difficult.
Like Joshua eventually learned, the only way to win this game is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
I have a friend that I've been dating. She tells me all about the other guys she dates. This past weekend for her birthday a friend flew down from another state to hang out with her for the weekend.
This guy is loaded. Way more money than sense. Among the things he got her that weekend was a $200 bottle of champagne that he must've paid $300 for because he got it in a restaurant. She doesn't drink. She had half a cup and they left the bottle on the table when they left.
He does all this for a girl he sees a few times a year. When she told me this story, I went down to the massage place she likes, and got her a $200 gift card for massages. She was very grateful.
I don't take her to expensive restaurants, I take her to the best places in town to eat, which are never really expensive. I take time to try to get to know her and try to work on my issues so that the time we spend together is better.
As a result she spends way more time with me than she does with the others. Where other guys spend money to cover up their perceived inadequacies, I put time and effort into making every moment I spend with her special.
That kind of effort is an order of magnitude more effective at finding and keeping the woman of your dreams. And you don't have to have a ton of money or a huge penis or be six feet tall to do it.
But you explicitly have not done this...
More to the point, you don't keep a woman by locking her in a cage. You do it by being the first person she calls or texts to tell about her day.
But she still seems to need to meet rich guys who live in another state despite all the quality time with you? Perhaps you're deluding yourself and she's just spending time between the more interesting guys with you because you're more available.
The availability aspect is interesting. I used to try to play availability games with her. They mostly just got in the way. I much prefer to be generous with my time, and set boundaries rather than be arbitrary.
Her time is very limited too. She has a full-time job that keeps her occupied sometimes during the weekend as well. She doesn't have a lot of available time for dating herself. Despite this, she regularly makes time to come see me.
She shows me the text messages of the "more interesting guys" she also dates. Nasty, ugly, controlling, the lot of them.
The impression I get from her is that she doesn't really understand guy psychology and so doesn't really grasp why it's all a waste of time. But I can be patient. I date other girls too. My dating life isn't as full as hers, but I like to think my 'others' are way better quality than her 'others'.
By the way, $200 for a bottle of real Champagne in a restaurant while pricey is not anything to crazy. And yeah, some of the best places in town to eat are expensive. Not all, of course but some. So if you were her, would you rather the option to eat at any of the best places or only the ones you could afford? Would you rather drink sparkling wine if you drank or real Champagne? Money and good looks are not everything, but when all else is equal they certainly do matter.
I'm 32. She's mid-twenties. She's a gorgeous girl, I'm not going to hold it against her for exploring her options. If she does decide that a rich, handsome guy is right for her, that's fine by me. I have plenty of options too, and that works both ways.
> By the way, $200 for a bottle of real Champagne in a restaurant while pricey is not anything to crazy.
You're just thinking about the Champagne. He flew down there, took her on a trip to a nearby town, dinners, drinks, and dancing every night. Sure, $300 isn't that much when it's just for the one dinner, but my guess is that he blew well over $5k on this one trip.
That's a lot of money. Worse, it's a lot of time. Were I him, I'd just have hired an escort got on with it. She enjoyed the parts she enjoyed and didn't enjoy the parts she didn't enjoy. To me it's an extravagance that is wholly unnecessary. I would not trade my life for one of that kind of luxury. If I could add the ability to pay for that kind of luxury onto my current life, sure, that would be fine. But the best things in life really are free.
> And yeah, some of the best places in town to eat are expensive.
Depends on where you live. If you're in NYC or LA, where all the talent flocks to, certainly the top restaurants there are great. Generally in a mid-size city like Kansas City or Atlanta, the ethnic restaurants available are amazing the best of those simply blow all but the very top-tier ones away. At my company, we go to Houston's sometime on the CEO's dime. The $30 plates there are decent, but I always come away wishing I'd been able to go to my favorite Korean taco place.
> So if you were her, would you rather the option to eat at any of the best places or only the ones you could afford?
I think she's coming around to my way of looking at things. I took her to a Korean yesterday (different from the taco joint) and this girl, who has been wined and dined by crazy-rich guys, was over the hill about how amazing the food was in this little hole-in-the-wall strip mall joint and how it was some of the best food she's ever had in her life.
I go there twice a month.
Certainly she'd like to have the best of both worlds, but Hugh Grant isn't knocking on her door. I don't have to compete with movie stars, I can just compete with the other guy she dates. And from what I hear from her, you can be rich and handsome and still be an insufferable bore.
If anyone's using anyone, it's her using these guys for spa treatments and dinners.
Run man, run!
In your example, if every man was thoughtful enough to know to get her massages, then the gesture would no longer have any differentiating effect. Similarly for muscle tone, education, penis size, money, or whatever she happens to care about.
Of course, not worrying about how others are doing and focusing on self-improvement is probably the best strategy to becoming better than other people. But to say it's irrelevant how others are doing relative to oneself is just wrong.
- She's very unlikely getting that spoiled by other men. Girls say that all the time to pump their value and push you to higher standards.
- Unless she is: 1. texting you 3-5 times a day and 2. having sex with you; she's using you literally for any penny you are spending.
Girls will kill for men they like. They'll spend all their money on him. I had a girl save for a month to pay for a train ticket just to see me. You are very likely being played here.
She used to ask for me to pay for her nails and massages and stuff, I would do it once, then not do it anymore. If I were making more money, I could budget it in, but as it is I just don't have it. I encourage her to get her other guy friends to pay for that stuff for her.
And on the 'using' issue: If I had the kind of money these guys have, and the willingness to use it on dating, I'd regularize it. I'd have accounts at all her beauty spots and have them just send me the bill every month. I would of course talk to her to keep it from getting excessive, (more likely I'd negotiate with the business for better rates) but I would not begrudge a lady for taking advantage of my generosity. That's what it's there for.
I never say Women or Girls are evil. They are not that cute creatures that you think they are, though. They are completely acting on their own self-interest which is fine and logical.
You'll be in for some surprises/lessons. But that's how we all learn I guess.
When did I say she wasn't?
> yet try to make it look like you have it all figured out.
I have the kind of lifestyle that allows me to learn these kinds of lessons very quickly. Beautiful women, and their attendant problems, have come into and out of my life for as long as I can remember, and I've read everything interesting that I could find regarding human attraction / connection, tested the methods, and come to my own conclusions. The lessons / surprises you say I'm 'in for', I've learned over and over again.
There is still room in the world for love and trust and tenderness. You need to be emotionally mature and be willing to be vulnerable. Heartbreaks happen but you move on. If you let yourself get scarred then you'll never find truly honest and open love. That honestness and openness is so important for me to find that I will allow myself to get hurt as many times as it takes.
I do not see myself as playing a game with this girl that one of us will win. I see it as two people exploring life together. It's not a game, there are no points, only experiences to share.
In the middle of the 20th century, von Neumann and his ilk predicted nuclear war with absolute certainty. So certain were they in their conviction that they in fact advocated a first-strike policy by the US, but that war never came. The models were adjusted to include repeated games and then people said, that's the reason why we haven't blown up. (see: http://www.scu.edu/business/economics/workingpapers/upload/F... ) But rationally speaking the game of global annihilation was a single game - the person who moved first would have the fewest people die and then there would be no more games, so their analysis doesn't quite hold up. Indeed there have been times where people have tried to destroy the world, but someone, somewhere down the chain of command has said no and prevented that outcome. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov )
Maybe, just maybe, we should accept that while looking at the world through the lens of game theoretic models is useful for a lot of applications - it isn't the be all and end all of human society. There are women out there who do indeed care about those points and want to "better" their rank within the game they play. There are others for whom that game doesn't even exist and they can be just as desirable and amazing as the first group. So at the end, you could very well end up not playing the game and have a shot at a pretty decent life and find some happiness.
The fitness function might be completely different from one woman to the next, but I think extremely few are the type to just buy the first car off the lot without some kind of comparison shopping / fitness function maximizing. And at that point, your standing relative to her other suitors indeed becomes more important than your absolute level of achievement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection_in_humans
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating#Assortative...
So, yeah, sure the model explains quite a bit and explains why we find certain things attractive, but it says nothing whatsoever about why certain people marry each other - which is what the question is.
You have to share the piece of your pie your country has, but nothing is stopping you from grabbing at another country's piece of the pie.
Other than that quibble, I enjoyed this post.
[1] http://thepointsguy.com/2015/10/10-unusual-things-sas-737-tr...
Or rather, that's what I strive for, unconscious tendencies be damned. I think it's a lot less stressful than comparing to all the people around you.
What a ridiculous strawman to attack. Author didn't even try to prove that this "unspoken objection" actually exists, he just enjoyed the fantasy of evil man in suits so much.
Assuming the two people make up the total economy; $120 out of a total $220 is a greater amount of money than is $140 out of $300.
"Would you rather have a yacht if your neighbor has two yachts, or a dingy, and your neighbor doesn't have a boat?" Everyone will answer yachts, because yachts aren't subconsciously inflationary.
"Would you rather have ten books and your neighbor has fifteen, or five books and your neighbor has three?"
"Would you rather own three pairs of shoes and your neighbor owns four, or two pairs of shoes and your neighbor owns one?"
Also, the very fact they're asking the question in a study causes people to answer differently than they would normally -- that's the problem with this sort of 'science' to begin with.
It's always this sort of Gotcha! science. People are used to that. As a result, most people, when they're answering questions in a study are thinking "These are trick questions. I won't be a guinea pig. What is the underlying trick here?"
---
Addendum: The study may also be dealing with a cultural difference in the use of the phrase "your neighbor". In the southern Christian tradition "your neighbor" is a catch-all for people that you are not related to (from Mark 12:31).
I agree with your general point, many of these kinds of psychological studies lack all external validity (they don't measure what they think they measure). It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right."
It shouldn't. Most people make up their minds first, and then decide what facts and evidence to accept and reject afterwards. And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away.
Facts can't be 'against' something. That's silly, anthropomorphism. Facts must necessarily be interpreted, they are themselves meaningless until we choose to apply them toward some argument, which must, axiomatically, require some amount of unsubstantiated theorizing.
Have you no sense of the history of the philosophy of science at all?
The empirical research isn't "wrong", that doesn't even make sense. Data is just data, it stands for nothing but itself, it must be interpreted for one to make a grander statement about reality.
I'm saying your and enraged_camel's interpretation of the data is wrong -- which is no less scientific a position, and no more unsubstantiated. We're both examining the data, which itself has no opinion, and making predictions about what that data represents given a number of imperfect heuristics.
That's how science works.
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
2) Still, the author didn't even link these studies in his post.
Or for some people who worked hard to get up from minimum wage to get to $10/hour. They are now, in a way, demoted back to making minimum wage!
Note: pot, kettle, black.
That said, I find it a useful because there's still value in his words to be taken. As John Stuart Mill says in On Liberty: "Though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty#Of_the_liberty_of_t...
I think that the problem is that people seek pleasure rather than joy in life. We become desensitized to things that are pleasurable but when we feel joy from love, helping someone, expressing ourself a creatively, etc. that kind of happiness never gets old.
I have a friend who lives a very high life style. He gets a new Porshe every few years and recently at a group morning coffee he was talking about getting his wife a new car when the car she has is very nice. When he was done talking about his upcoming car purchase I started a new conversation about our cars being almost 10 and almost 20 years old and how wonderful it was having older things that still provide great service. I think my buddy needs to feel superior to people who don't have as high a life style. The funny thing is that I have way more economic resources than my friend.
I liked Seth's point that in a networked world where things can be shared that we lose the feeling of exclusivity, which I think is a good thing!
It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. --Malcom Muggeridge
If so, this resonates with me. I would add that there's another component to this equation that I found personally valuable: challenge. The challenges that I have faced in professional roles (some unpleasant) have often forced me to grow. During long periods spent away from work, I often came to miss that.
For me that does indeed seem to be the most common denominator of 'proper' happiness.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow
HOWEVER, I would argue that your humblebrag about the age of your cars, right after your friend talks proudly about his new Porsches, is the far more odious of the two boasts.
Conspicuous asceticism carries with it projected moral superiority, and it seems clear you are opening judging your friend's buying choices as inferior. It's his money, and his happiness. And I notice you can't help but add a final coda/dig that you are much richer than your friend.
I'm only sensitive to the pitfalls of your mentality because I was raised to handle money in the same way as you, and have to fight the urge to be obnoxiously gleeful about, for example, my low housing costs when conversations about rent come around.
Of course, you would also have to consider increasing maintenance costs and the lower fuel efficiency (and therefore higher fuel costs) of the older car. The question is how close the upgrade-your-car sweet-spot is to the end of the car's lifespan.
Good points overall, though I think they would have been strengthened by ommitting this little aside. This sounds like the kind of sentence your friend would have slipped into a post of his.
It's natural for people who have "less" to try to impress friends who have "more", because people are generally friends with people who are similar, and people generally want to stay friends with their friends, so they try to de-emphasise the difference between them. I think that may explain the "boast" about cars.
I put no judgement on the scenario, I'm stating my observations, and of course I don't know if true or not in reality - it's only based on the words you've written.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen]
> This is our culture of 'getting ahead' talking.
That's a pretty bold conclusion without any evidence. The concept of a salary is to pay someone in return for work performed. How would Seth feel if I make the same amount of money as him just by sitting at home (obviously an extreme scenario from one aspect)? It would undervalue his contributions, his hard work and dedication, the obstacles he had to overcome, etc. Any reasonable individual would have second thoughts about working at a company that considers a manager as an equal (financially, salary-wise) to a janitor (for example).
It would be safe to say that those two people didn't quit because other employees got a raise. It was probably due to the fact that their contributions didn't hold the same value anymore.
Their contributions held exactly the same absolute value, which is the entire point of Godin's post. Their decision is completely irrational unless they place a significant value on their relative status within the organisation.
If Seth was making $75k, how much you're make is irrelevant to whether that's the number that he was looking for for his skillset.
You could consider the company overvaluing your work a bad signal, but I don't get how that translates to Seth should make even more money than you (Company's made one bad judgement, so should now make two bad judgements?)
EDIT: I understand the sentiment though. It's kind of childish ("why does he get more pasta than me??") but I think most humans are affected with it. I think the feeling is one of wanting to be worth more than others... I have a hard time justifying it on a moral level.
That's the entire point.
The point isn't about money. I agree with Seth on that. We shouldn't be chasing money and trying to one-up those around us. But the fact that the work I do as an employee is not viewed in the same regard as someone's else work is slightly jarring.
The linked NYT article in the posted article says that the two that quit were two of the "most valued employees", which to me seems like people who were early hires or responsible for some/most the revenue (through tech/sales/whatever). If that's the case, they took the small/early business risks and when a pay off came, they got passed over. I would absolutely consider other opportunities if that happened to me and I was in a key position because it's likely I was under market value to begin with.
If you want to do this kind of thing, all of your early hires have to be on board with the eventual change or you just need to hire everyone at $70k minimum from the ground up. If not, it's reasonable to expect high performers to leave. Mr. Price either didn't know how those two felt or didn't care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-w...
That's the entire point of the article. He's saying your compensation for doing nothing at home should have no effect on how happy he is. It certainly doesn't change the actual buying-power of his income in any noticeable way.
Not necessarily. Having someone retained for future needs, for example, is worth paying for in some cases. Value isn't limited to work performed.
Pay is, of corse, just the point where the buyer and seller agree. There is no fundamental reason why a janitor position cannot pay the same or more than a manager, if janitors refuse to do the job for any less.
As to state-wide minimum wages - "the" argument against it is that less people are employed at a higher price of labor and that those priced out of the market are likely to be the ones hurt the most by it, though their numbers might be smaller than the numbers of those employed at the higher wage. (Of course this applies to the company with the $70K minimum wage as well: that company could have used the money it cost to implement this policy to instead hire more people.) There are counter-arguments along the lines of the demand for labor being inelastic and other such, but it's kinda off to not present a sensible argument against a minimum wage while presenting a crazy strawman argument against it, the latter implying with a high likelihood that the author supports a high minimum wage.
Okay so now you're in a situation where other people who don't work as hard or as smart as you are getting paid close to you, or the same. That doesn't feel good, but what happens next? Well, if you continue working harder than them, you'll be promoted and get a raise, and they won't. And there, the system re-corrects itself.
Now, I COULD buy the argument that seeing people who you know don't work as hard suddenly make the same money as you would make you yourself get lazy and not try as hard. Because surely they can't fire you for performing the same as the rest. But if that's the type of person you are, maybe the company would be better off without you anyway?
So were those who got a raise, but the company decided to hand out raises as a gift (not as a reward) to lower performers only - of course this discrimination will be frustrating.
Because the frustration came from being treated unfairly by the management, which they've cut ties with. Also, they might earn more at their new jobs now as well.
What the company was trying to do was correct a perceived culture wrong that some people were compensated less because their job was perceived as less important.
The reality is that those "less important" jobs frequently actually keep businesses running smoothly. Only a smoothly running business can afford to invest in strategy, thus smooth operation should be as important as strategy.
That (^) right there is another "perception" and is increasingly the one reasonable people are adopting EXACTLY because of what Seth notes:
"It's possible to create dignity and be successful at the same time."
When it comes to money, humans are generally irrational in their decision making, mostly biased towards emotional decision making.
*
This actually happened to me when I was 16 years old. I started working at fastfood job making $4.90/hr, WA state's minimum wage. I was a very strong worker, and was offered a position as a manager a few months later. I politely declined (read: my mother told me I was dumb to sacrifice my education in order make an extra $1.00 or so an hour).
Eventually I was making $5.15 an hour through a series of wage increases due to good reviews. Then the Federal government raised minimum wage to $5.15/hr. I went to the store manager and asked for a raise. My argument was that my wage increases were do to my performance and seniority. Any unproven new-hire would start making the same wage as I do. They did not see it that way, and declined to provide me with a compensation increase.
The feeling was irrational. I still made my wage, and new employees wages didn't come out of my pocket, so it had no impact on me. Still, I felt that my salary should reflect the value I bring to the company.
I ended up putting in my two-weeks about a year later when they promoted an inept person to manager.
Or not, if the company has no money left for merit raises because they're paying well above market salaries to others.
But if that's the type of person you are, maybe the company would be better off without you anyway?
So you expect employees to perpetually go above and beyond the job requirements without consideration of whether they'll be rewarded for it?
Wanting to feel valued in one's "community" isn't comparing yourself to others, it's a basic human emotional need.
I don't see how that follows. Imagine the minimum wage were doubled, do you think McDonald's would respond by laying off half their staff? What do you think that would do to their business?
Companies hire people because they need the work done, not because they have $X allocated to payroll and it's burning a hole in their pocket. If minimum wage goes up then payroll costs will go up, forcing them to either cut profits or find cost savings elsewhere.
Look at how supermarkets now have self-checkout. 4 self-checkout stations going with one employee monitoring, and customers don't mind using them. In fact many customers prefer them because they help them get out of the store more quickly. There's no reason to think that McDonalds won't eventually try to eliminate some of the staff that takes orders. It's just a question of when they'll be incentivized enough to try it.
Which leaves us with a minimum wage in many areas which does not actually allow someone to survive, and a growing population who will end up on welfare anyway regardless (who usually are on welfare anyway because oh look Walmart's HR practices).
http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/mcdonald-s-canada-introducing...
No, but a person will definitely think twice before starting a new McDonald's franchise. A small restaurant owner who had been eyeing a second location will think twice about opening up another restaurant.
The incentives will also shift towards higher automation (not necessarily a good or bad thing in and of itself) of tasks as much as possible instead of hiring humans.
Companies don't work like this: "We have X amount of work to do, no matter what it costs". It's more along the lines of whether a project is a net positive (say through a net present value analysis) and if it isn't, then the whole project is scrapped.
More likely: they and their competition raise prices.
Consider the person who was told at 5 years old by his parents that he'll never be as good as his classmates. In school, they were told the same - by teachers, bullies, other authority figures that they'll be worthless unless they do something a certain way. Sometimes good people get pressured into this by friends, spouses, in-laws.
Such a kind of person would be eager to prove others wrong. This is the kind of person who chases 'success'.
They'll want to prove they are successful as a form of revenge or a way of impressing the in-laws. Buying expensive cars is the most obvious way. Or suits. Clothes. Houses.
Sometimes there's insecurity and self-doubt. Everyone wants to improve, but the line for improvement is really vague. So they make it relative - compare progress to someone else rather than anchoring it to something solid, like savings.
To many of these people, narrowing the minimum wage bar would be frustrating as it proves that they are hovering on the minimum line.
Honestly, that's really quite rare - and on top of that, you're bordering on trying to say that bullying and putting people down is a good thing.
The people I know who've struggled with bullying, family issues, and similar, tend to want to do well but struggle due to insecurities and mental issues in no small part exacerbated by this treatment throughout the first couple of decades of their life. As a result, things like "holding down a job at the supermarket", or even "turning up every day for volunteering", are achievements for many people who've suffered from these issues, never mind "succeeding" in the way that you define it.
If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind or sees two targets —
He is out of his mind!
His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him.
He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting–
And the need to win drains him of power.
From the poet zhuang zhou. I also have friends who have extreme insecurities brought on by bullying and family issues and have a strong drive to succeed, and I can agree that I don't envy having these issues, because as focused as they are, they also mentally suffer with every setback and constantly battle anxieties as they chase their goals.
Ref: https://www.google.com/search?q=%2470+000+minimum+wage&oq=%2...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/the-video-...
Fortunately, I resist the urge to compare material wealth. I bought a modest and affordable house for my income level. Going to pay it off in 5 years and hoard the rest of my money under my bed. Don't care if someone else bought a Tesla or went on another international trip. As a joke, I've started to brag about mundane things on facebook. Such as eating a "fancy" Chipotle burrito or taking an "exotic" trip across the bridge.
The canonical example is addiction, addicts believe they can quit any time, because if they couldn't quit then they would have to admit they were an addict. And generally admitting that means admitting you aren't in control and that is a scary place to be without any support.
In startups you will often see this if the company is suddenly very successful and people are suddenly "rich" (by their own definition). I've seen two responses to that outcome, sometimes people are grateful that they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and some people develop this internal view that they are somehow "better" than the folks who did not get rich. In the latter case it expresses very oddly, putting down people who are doing better work than they are, but aren't rich. The challenge of admitting that they were just lucky, means they have to understand they are not somehow better than the people who didn't get rich.
At least if you won the lottery its obvious you were just lucky.