A recent scientific study found that a part of the brain allows individuals to refuse situations that would benefit them, when they see them as grossly unfair.
In the article: "Study Spots the Brain's Selfishness 'Off-Switch'" - Yahoo! / HealthDay - one participant is given a set amount of money and instructed to hand over, at their own discretion, a share of the money to a second player.
Participant 2 could either accept the amount offered or refuse the deal altogether, in which case both players receive no money.
For resons of personal gain, when number 1's offer is very low -- for example, $2 out of a total of $20 -- it would still behoove Player 2 to accept the offer, since $2 is better than nothing.
But, under normal circumstances, participants in this position overwhelming refuse such low offers, and instead, forfeit their own self-interest to "punish" The other participant for their selfishness.
Lead researcher Ernst Fehr, (director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich) was reported as saying that this occurs because Humans know that more cohesive groups tend to have better survival prospects and that Humans will punish unfairness, at the cost of themselves, to help sustain cooperation in groups. Humans who suppress their immediate urges end-up on the "winning team," evolutionarily speaking.
So, as a species, we percieve it as a threat to our survival when certain individuals horde and reward themselves lavishly while in-turn penny-pinching others.
Refusing a poor- or non-living wage job is, apparently, Human Nature.
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Comments: 26
To them, that's a small fortune, especially when they earned $40 a week in their own country working just as hard.
Doesn't hold up.
People in the Bahamas? I wasn't talking about them. Why bring oranges into a discussion on apples.
They are a little resentful at always ending up on the short end of the stick from that crowd.
I'm saying that the descendants of the laborers who came and built this country's industries and infrastructures (and thus created the American wealthy), in their weariness of the displacements and disadvantages they continue to suffer so as to protect top administrators from suffering under the vagaries of the industries and commerce commanded are turning disaffectedly and disdainfully from the continued inequity.
I will definitely suggest that many people who work in "big business" have some underdeveloped portions of their brains, as well as some underdeveloped parts of their hearts and souls.
The companies imported laborers who were glad to work for the companies offerings because they were trading up from a mud floored shack with stone fireplace to one with a wooden floor and a cast iron stove in the middle. Better living!
And how about the fact that the Food and Drug Administration was founded to stop food manufacturers from including wood chips, sawdust and dirt in their products in order to increase profits by decreasing expenses?
I'm also thinking about how the whole concept of Worker Unions took root and blossomed in this country. As I recall, That happened because the rich and getting rich were often grossly unfair and abusive in their dealings with their working classes.
Do they still teach that one of Dale Carnegie's primary motivations for building his libraries was to assuage the heavy guilt he bore over his worker abuses?
Oh. And one more thing, let's take a minute to reflect on those rosy-days when the inexpense of child labor enriched the pockets of our well-to-do. That was fun.
As a society, we historically afford the excessive extravagancies of our richer classes by constraining others to live lives of suffering.
To every person of conscience, it becomes morally distasteful.
I think the work ethic in some people in other countries has to be looked at, seriously. Why is there no strong work ethic here? I do disagree that (some) Americans want to come to work and get something for nothing. Perhaps it's because I and my husband own a small business and see it every day. We're not the Man keeping down the "masses" either. We offer a very decent wage for the average worker, and highly reward those who show more initiative and responsibility. However, once you have your decent wage, I can't tell you what to do with it. If you want to save it and get married in Italy, like two of our employees did, I guess you can do that. But if you want to squander your paycheck on cigarettes and partying on the weekend, I guess you can do that too. Just don't come back to work on Monday bitching about how you can't make your car payment.
The single mother that works on the production line which makes plastic housings for RV air-conditioners has just been told that, for the sake of production schedules, she must now work second shifts.
If she wants to keep this $8.00 an hour job that offers some health insurance for her daughter, she will have to hire a babysitter for the evenings. The added expense will have to be offset by finding a part-time job that can be squeezed into the new schedule. This will also further alienate her from her child.
She could look for a new daytime job, but this one had taken two months to find. Besides, by the time she might find a new one, she might also be switched back to days here. (crap-shoot)
On a different but similar note, In the Seventies and Eighties our national culture became increasingly more corporate-paper oriented. As we did that we began to ridicule the labor workers for lacking of enough mental or social acquity to rise out of the labor force and into mangment or ownership.
It makes prospective labor jobs less enticing when you feel you will be ridiculed for taking it. Better to play the tragic darma bum than the witless bufoon.
In the urban and suburban economic realities of 2006, $50k per year ($25/hour) is hardly a high living wage.
And it's not as if hours on a production line are easy. I doubt many $50k office workers would trade their job for $60k hard-labor position. They just wouldn't see it as worth it. It's all about Value Judgments.
Good assessment. And for those of you belaboring Unionized workers, Sorry folks, but if the unions had not formed, our children, literally, would be the ones working in the sweatshops here, not in some third world country. All one has to do is look up "the industrial revolution". Personally, I would rather pay the extra $1500 and know I was banking on America, instead of putting money into the pockets of a foreign company.
Lead researcher Ernst Fehr, (director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich) was reported as saying that this occurs because Humans know that more cohesive groups tend to have better survival
prospects and that Humans will punish unfairness, at the cost of themselves, to help sustain cooperation in groups. Humans who suppress their immediate urges end-up on the "winning team," evolutionarily speaking.
I am one of those who believe humans "progressed" because we cooperate with other not because we compete with each other.
Also, Bill, for your information, I WAS a factory worker, for a long, long time. I did it during college and after. I could do it again. No matter how much I got paid, I did a kick-ass job. Right now, I clean the toilets in my own office building with the same passion. Do you know why? It's because in the past, we've paid people to do it, (they were paid well) but they did a crummy job. If you're going to do a job, do it WELL.
I've, in the past, hired daughters and sons of factory workers. I don't know if it was just the particular ones I hired, but all of them had a horrible work ethic. If they came in, they wanted to socialize or eat or smoke, not do the job. That's if they didn't call in "sick" and decide later in the day to "play". (Yeah, I caught some of them.) So in the end, this could be the current way parents are bringing up kids (not just factory workers), to not have any respect for the job they have to give it 100%.
We've had it too easy in this country. I can see why new immigrants, legal or not, work hard; where they're coming from, America is a goldmine of opportunity. And because we've had it easy, it makes it "easy" for really big business to ship their jobs out of here. That, for sure, is the saddest thing of all.
I wrote a lengthy explanation of my views on illegal immigration, I invite you to have a read.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976811745
Fact: The United States Constitution is No More. Our Constitution was destroyed with Congress passing the federal reserve, with its passage we became a country with No currency only debt. < " I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt" > -Thomas Jefferson-
Preseident Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law and then said;
" ...there is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it"
if you look at any money you will see that it says `Federal Reserve Note' it is not currency authorized by our constitution.
The idea of a central bank (Bank Corporations) is to enslave the people of the country to a debt money system that you continue to collect taxes continuously which pays only the interest. < Bankruptcy of the United States- Congressional Record, March 17, 1993 Vol.33 p.H-1303>
Americans can not work for minimum wage, or jobs others will, because we are in debt for the next 2-3 generations by design. < Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars- Behold A Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper ISBN 0-929385-22-5- Light Technology Publishing> or www.lawfulpath.com
Someone mention fallbacks? We don't have fallbacks, we have families but they are just barely making it also. They have families 20 million of em. Guess what when we don't work we die too, you must be thinking of those rich folk.
Let me ask EVERYONE, how many of you take home $700/wk with free medical?
Senator Bryan Dorgan (North Dakota) writes in his book "Take This Job and Ship It" of how the outsourcing of jobs from America is seriously damaging the country.
He says that job opportunities which the median American traditionally relied upon to actually support themselves and their families are shrinking to quickly and leaving the median class tottering into lives of poverty.
The power to distribute a companies revenues rests solely in the hands of its leaders. It is the choice of these industry leaders to cheap-skate labor so that they may live excessively. They ship jobs off to other labor markets, or higher the cheapest labor possible so that their wives can roll in diamonds, and they can own another mansion, yacht or LexUV.
Please name an effective strategy that is both as powerful, as available and as personally righteous as withholding one's labor. Another strategy that might get the wealthy out of their self-serving self-guarded attitudes.
I am very open to hearing a tune that would be better than the ideological labor boycott we currently are seeing.