Comparing the national economy to a machine that dispenses marbles requiring two children to pull on one string is an ok analogy, but not far reaching. In this scenario it requires both to pull a string at the same time for one child to receive one marble, and the other to receive 3. In this experiment most of the times the marbles were eventually divided evenly among both children as the children ended up sharing the marbles between each other. In the national economy some people do receive more 'marbles' than others while doing the same amount of work or even less, but then again some people do not contribute at all to the national 'marble machine' and still receive their share of marbles. Some of the people who do not contribute do have legitimate reasons not to, but others just take advantage of the system and reap the benefits.
Almost every group project that I have worked on has had at least one person who did not participate and earned a good grade for the overall project. The project that I am working on this semester for my Computer Science class has not had this kind of person so far and our team, even though we haven't been as productive as we should have, has not had these kinds of problems. We do have one person on our team that does end up doing a little more work than everyone else, because he volunteered to be the group leader when the project first started. He is in charge of submitting each part of the assignment and making sure it is handed in on time, but is not solely responsible for the content, we all contribute evenly.
On a larger scale I do agree with the authors of the article, that there has not been a national collaborative project since the 1970's and that everyone has just been grabbing as many 'marbles' as they can. Looking at personal experiences of my time on Illinois Student Senate I noticed that there is not much collaboration between the student body and their governing body either. There were several dues that each student was paying and the Student Senate was responsible for allocating it. As a team the Student Senate was not able to come up with a good use for the money, so they ended up spending on the promotion of the Student Senate, and swag items for the students to give out during basketball and football games. This is how the students got their money back from a portion of their dues.
Almost every group project that I have worked on has had at least one person who did not participate and earned a good grade for the overall project. The project that I am working on this semester for my Computer Science class has not had this kind of person so far and our team, even though we haven't been as productive as we should have, has not had these kinds of problems. We do have one person on our team that does end up doing a little more work than everyone else, because he volunteered to be the group leader when the project first started. He is in charge of submitting each part of the assignment and making sure it is handed in on time, but is not solely responsible for the content, we all contribute evenly.
On a larger scale I do agree with the authors of the article, that there has not been a national collaborative project since the 1970's and that everyone has just been grabbing as many 'marbles' as they can. Looking at personal experiences of my time on Illinois Student Senate I noticed that there is not much collaboration between the student body and their governing body either. There were several dues that each student was paying and the Student Senate was responsible for allocating it. As a team the Student Senate was not able to come up with a good use for the money, so they ended up spending on the promotion of the Student Senate, and swag items for the students to give out during basketball and football games. This is how the students got their money back from a portion of their dues.
Recognizing that the second half of the article was about addressing income inequality in the large society, I wish you had tied the first part to the gift exchange model that we talked about in class. The point is that people are willing to give a gift initially or reciprocate when they themselves receive a gift, if they perceive that the recipient has contributed. They are reluctant to give a gift, however, if the potential recipient seems to be a non-contributor. Thus the gift exchange model has implicit in it that everyone is making a contribution.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about the Student Senate. However, I can guess that nobody coaches the people who are on it about what their jobs actually entail. I've seen that sort of thing with campus committees comprised of faculty, who were supposed to represent their own college. While sometimes they did that, often they just shot from the hip about their own preferences and didn't canvas their Dean or other faculty in the college about their opinions. You don't really have representative democracy when that happens. You just have a dysfunctional group, as you indicated.
I have also been part of faculty committee groups where it seemed like everyone in the group just pushed for their own goals and nothing got done. A perfect example comes to mind when I was on the Website Revision Committee over the summer. Overall the group was not super productive, but I did achieve progress in the end when I sat down individually with group members and heard their ideas in a non-group environment.
ReplyDeleteAnd the idea of gift-giving to non-contributing members is seen all the time in my group work projects, when there is not a good way to measure the contribution of group members. This allows people to blend in with the contributing group members and reap the benefits.