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McDowell was right. Now Scientifical proven
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In a move that s likely to piss-off Pat Rabbitte, Fintan O’Toole and lefties everywhere scientists at the life&Brain Research Center University of Bonn have proved Michael McDowell was correct. In there ground breaking paper in the Journal Science . By taking MRI scans of men’s brains as they preformed various task it was note that the Brain was greater stimulated not by earning money by actually earning more money then others. Which can be seen in increased simulation in the “reward centre” of the brain. Thus it can be inferred that the relative size of their pay packet matters in terms of motivation rather then the actually value of the pay packet. In others yes wait for it…. Inequality provides incentives. So if you are thinking to yourself where did I here that before. Well it probably was when you heard a load of lefties spinning a statement by Mr McDowell.
A while ago Michael McDowell said this.
“A dynamic liberal economy like ours,” the Minister said, “demands flexibility and inequality in some respects to function.” It was such inequality “which provides incentives
When he did this the there was up roar. Oh how people complained how people exaggerated just to get a good sound bit. No longer was it a comment about the way incentives push a economy no, now it was McDowell wanting to trod into the ground the poor. Now I wonder what they will say? Something tells me very little. See the thing is science does not have a liberal bias, and doesn’t spin the word inequality with the word poverty to make them mean the same thing when they are very different words it just has facts and data. This experiment shows that inequality lights up people’s reward centres in there brains i.e. inequality provides incentives. That is all it says and indeed that was all McDowell said despite what you would believe reading the reaction to the statement.
Picture from ever yummy IceCream Ireland who are looking for recipe testers I made the mulled wine sorbet last year. Very yummy. Fact.
I remember reading a report about monkeys who were given the option of pushing a button that sent a tiny electrical shock to the part of the brain that is linked to orgasm. The scientists wanted to see what would happen when the monkeys were given free access to this orgasm incentive. After three days of stimulating orgasm through electrical impulse the monkeys finally died of exhaustion. They had wanked themselves to death.
funny, but I was reminded of this by your tale of Michael Mcdowell.
There is a perfectly rational truth in which Michael McDowell said. Nevermind the PC Police jumping on him because he dared utter the word “inequality” without outright condemnation. It makes you wonder what sort of ‘liberal’ state we’re in when any voice that speaks out with a statement that does not promote the current conception of equality is attacked so viciously.
If everybody was equal (as in a Marxist ideal state) there would be utter stagnation. Where would the incentive to work come from if a professional (say a doctor or lawyer) earned the same wage as a cleaner or shop assistant? In fact, the incentive for studying to become a professional in the first instance would disappear if it meant that your hard work studying earned you no more reward than if you took the easy route and got a low skill job.
It’s easy to see then why inequality is an incentive in this case.
I didn’t spend years studying for the good of my health. Nor did the worker who worked overtime voluntarily. Countless people push themselves so as to earn a higher wage and have a higher standard of living, indirectly boosting the economy by providing the brainpower and expertise required for a healthy economy.
“A dynamic liberal economy like ours demands flexibility and inequality in some respects to function.” It was such inequality “which provides incentives”
It’s true.
Anyone who pushes themselves harder to earn more is making themselves less ‘equal’ than those who do not.
Yet you have an issue when Mary Hanafin gives unequal treatment to dyslexics?
Nice try Damien.
He was talking about the inequality of economic sense as in the wages sense not in a opportunity sense.
I don’t recall making any reference to the dyslexic case, Damien. What makes you think I have an issue?
I love the idea of Irish builders “boosting the economy by providing the brainpower and expertise required for a healthy economy.” I suppose that’s why Irish builders have made Ireland a much smarter place over the past 10 years.
I don’t know about you but I have to admit I don’t have the expertise to build a house with anything more complicated than lego. Can’t deny they worked (and no doubt gained further expertise in their field) which did boost the economy. Sure with the slowdown in the building business and the resulting job losses, the economy is slowing down with it.
The builders made Ireland a much wealthier place over the past 10 years.
This experiment shows that inequality lights up people’s reward centres in there brains i.e. inequality provides incentives.
Anyone who pushes themselves harder to earn more is making themselves less ‘equal’ than those who do not.
This is all true, and more, mes petits croque-monsieurs. That inequality drives productivity is a scientific fact.
- Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction.
So: Inequality is therefore good.
*In my best Valley girl accent* Well duh!
Of course, inequality is hardly the only way, or even the best way to motivate people. After all, if this were the case, the better off would be the least motivated.
Hugh ever hear the rule that first person who brings out the nazi’s loses the argument.
It isn’t a rule, Simon, and besides, I’m not arguing with you: I am providing germane historical evidence to support your contention.
There’s only one person here who’s labelled inequality as “good” and I’m not sure where you got that from. Equality/Inequality is far to complicated a phenomenon to be labelled simply as good or bad. There’ll always be somebody better than you and somebody worse off than you, for reasons of biology or luck or whatever else. Your facetious Nazi reference is neither helpful nor relevant. Try using Darwinism if you want some historical evidence.
S. Cleary,
If this:
Isn’t a way of saying inequality is good (since inequality is an incentive, it leads to a healthy economy), then I’m a raving tyrant berating the masses at Nuremburg.
Of what, of the simple fact that material inequality exists, or that material inequality leads to increased productivity within an economy? I can’t see how either would be covered by ‘Darwinism’, but if you want to give me some pointers, knock yourself out.
On the other hand, if your reference to Darwinism here is merely code for ’survival of the fittest’, I’m sure there’s a rich seam of Western European political thought I can mine. No points for guessing where I’d start.
Hugh if you want to bring up Hitler then that makes Stalins collectivization as an example of enforced equality fair game but that just turns an interesting debate on the workings of an economy and what McDowell said and got derided for into a catoonish farce of increasing idiotic references.
By the way Conor forgot to ask were you making a point on what humans want and respond to can be detrimental to them or just that science can be aload of old wank.
McDowell said that a functioning ‘dynamic’ economy demanded ‘flexibility and inequality in some respects’.
You said that this was scientifically proven, but you did so without any reference to an economy in the real world, instead citing a study performed by a ‘neuroeconomics’ institute, monitoring the responses of 38 males. Yet when we talk about economies in the real world sense, we don’t generally talk about pairs of men.
Even if we leave aside concerns about things such as whether or not the 38 males in this experiment were sufficiently representative of the entirety of human historical experience, it is still a jump too far to say that the results demonstrate that McDowell was right.
So I provided a real world example of how ‘flexibility and inequality in some respects’ provides incentives and leads to increased productivity. If you’re not happy with the example, you can always provide another one, instead of grousing about the fact that I brought up Nazi Germany. What’s good enough for Michael McDowell is good enough for me.
All this proves is that inequality is good for egotistical business types. To extrapolate that it is “good for the economy” is a bit of a paradox as it automatically infers it is not good for the people earning less, who are also part of the “economy”.
SIMON, AT LAST WE CAN GET BACK TO THE REAL ISSUE
I was making a semi-serious point as well. You can’t extrapolate from a controlled environment such as a lab-scan on blokes the conclusion that the PDs had even the slightest fucking clue as to what they were talking about. I mean, look at tom Parlon’s post-PD career - hardly a beacon for increasing the intellectual wealth of the country, now, is it?
Wages are set by a number of factors, and in Ireland the people who have the highest wages are those who have a monopoly - namely doctors, consultants, and Bertie Ahern. you bring in 4,000 consultants tomorrow (or 4,000 Bertie Aherns, Oh! sorry! we already have fucking tonnes of them), and see how wages fare out.
With regard to monopolies and wages, I never saw Michael McDowell go anywhere near Ireland’s barristers, for example. I mean, the idea that barristers earn their fees through intelligence and not a monopoly is just ridiculous.
SIMON, AT LAST WE CAN GET BACK TO THE REAL ISSUE
I have to agree with what you said there. But it still not on the issue that is more about competition in my mind. Something i will get back on to later. But the point of the post ( along with abit nay alot of winding up
) was about the particular point McDowell was making with that statement that people are naturally stimulated by inequalities. True the reason that Barristors have the money they have is because of monopoly but the fact that they have so much money incentives people to become barristers. etc. As in your example if 4,000 consultants came in (In fact I think we need a figure close to that to get to EU average anyway Interesting fact we have the most nurses per head in Europe for some reason) would the same push for medicine exist? Do all the people getting 600 points to do medicine do it for the love of the pay packet or the helping people aspect?
The intellectual wealth point is not mine.
It’s true about the 600 points for medicine, although things are changing on that front. Every so often I say to my friends that if Ireland was smart it would have five fully-fuelled 737s sitting in Havana airport, waiting for Castro to die, so we can nab as many doctors, consultants (and boxing coaches) as possible before the yanks get them. and on that, I’m only half-joking.
I would suggest that in the case of Cuban healthcare practices -as opposed to the overall system- it is a question of necessity being the mother of invention. Delegations of doctors from Nordic countries visit Holles Street to learn about their method of managing labour, but the Holles Street method doesn’t arise from plenty of investment and resources getting ploughed into it, but from a lack of it, i.e. the method was developed due of the inadequacy of available facilities in meeting the exceedingly high turnover. Similarly, the Cubans have coped with a crippling embargo (and all the challenges that the embargo creates for healthcare in terms of, among other things, nutrition and procurement of materials) by developing a set of effective practices.
As for Conor’s point: in fact, Ireland already creams off plenty of healthcare professionals trained by the budgets of far poorer countries.
737s at dawn, man, it’s the only way. A lightning raid on Cuba and back with a fuck-load of consultants. We can get Chuck Norris to play Bertie in the movie.
OK, I’m sold. Although we’ll have to keep them all in concentration camps in the Dublin mountains. When I was in Havana a couple of years back, I got talking to this Cuban woman, about 60, who had spent 6 months living in Leixlip with her son. Said that she prefered Cuba with the embargo and everything to living in that ‘cold, lifeless place’.