What if much or even all of modern advances and wonders happened in spite of capitalism, not because of it?
What if social democracy and political democracy, if a free economy and a free society is ultimately in complete opposition to everything that has come to be associated with capitalism: hyper-individualism and aggressive competition, consumer-citizenship and worker-citizenship, neoliberal exploitation and resource extraction, theft of the commons and destitution of the masses, education and healthcare disparities, high inequality and economic segregation, rigid hierarchies and permanent under class, inherited and concentrated wealth, cronyism and nepotism, plutocratic ruling elite, psychopathic corporate model, corporatism and corporatocracy, oligopolies and monopolies, fascism and inverted totalitarianism, revolving door between big gov and big biz, law and policy determined by big money lobbyists, elections determined by big money donors, etc?
What then?
Income Accelerates Innovation by Reducing Our Fear of Failure
by Scott Santens
Studies have shown that the very existence of food stamps — just knowing they are there as an option in case of failure — increases rates of entrepreneurship. A study of a reform to the French unemployment insurance system that allowed workers to remain eligible for benefits if they started a business found that the reform resulted in more entrepreneurs starting their own businesses. In Canada, a reform was made to their maternity leave policy, where new mothers were guaranteed a job after a year of leave. A study of the results of this policy change showed a 35% increase in entrepreneurship due to women basically asking themselves, “What have I got to lose? If I fail, I’m guaranteed my paycheck back anyway.”
None of this should be surprising. The entire insurance industry exists to reduce risk. When someone is able to insure something, they are more willing to take risks. Would there be as many restaurants if there was no insurance in case of fire? Of course not. The corporation itself exists to reduce personal risk. Entrepreneurship and risk are inextricably linked. Reducing risk aversion is paramount to innovation.
Such market effects have even been observed in universal basic income experiments in Namibia and India where local markets flourished thanks to a tripling of entrepreneurs and the enabling of everyone to be a consumer with a minimum amount of buying power.
@mcuban Interesting. Why? How much have you studied it? Did you know that wherever tried, entrepreneurship jumps? S… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…—
Scott Santens (@scottsantens) February 20, 2017
Children’s Helping Hands
Felix Warneken
Young children are also willing to put some effort into helping. Further studies showed that they continue to help over and over again, even if they have to surmount an array of obstacles to pick up a dropped object or stop playing with an interesting toy. We had to be inventive in creating distracting toys that might lower their tendency to help— flashy devices that lit up and played music; colorful boxes that jingled when you threw a toy cube into them and shot it out the other end. We decided that if we couldn’t sell the scientific community on our results, we could at least go into the toy business.
As noted, the behavior of our little subjects did not seem to be driven by the expectation of praise or material reward. In several studies, the children’s parents weren’t in the room, and thus the helping cannot be explained by their desire to look good in front of Mom. In one study, children who were offered a toy for helping were no more likely to help than those children who weren’t. In fact, material rewards can even have a detrimental effect on helping: During the initial phase of another experiment, half the children received a reward for helping and the other half did not. Subsequently, when the children again had the opportunity to help but now without a reward being offered to those in either group, the children who had been rewarded initially were less likely to help spontaneously than the children from the no-reward group. This perhaps surprising result suggests that children’s helping is intrinsically motivated rather than driven by the expectation of material reward. Apparently, if such rewards are offered, they can change children’s original motivation, causing them to help only because they expect to receive something for it.
The Case Against Rewards and Praise
A Conversation with Alfie Kohn
by Sara-Ellen Amster
Rewards kill creativity. Some twenty studies have shown that people do inferior work when they are expecting to get a reward for doing it, as compared with people doing the same task without any expectation of a reward. That effect is most pronounced when creativity is involved in the task.
Rewards undermine risk-taking. When I have been led to think of the “A” or the sticker or the dollar that I’m going to get, I do as little as I have to, using the most formulaic means at my disposal, to get through the task so I can snag the goody. I don’t play with possibilities. I don’t play hunches that might not pay off. I don’t attend to incidental stimuli that might or might not turn out to be relevant. I just go for the gold. Studies show that people who are rewarded tend to pick the easiest possible task. When the rewards are removed, we tend to prefer more challenging things to do. Everyone has seen students cut corners and ask: “Do we have to know this? Is this going to be on the test?”
But we have not all sat back to reflect on why this happens. It’s not laziness. It’s not human nature. It’s because of rewards. If the question is “Do rewards motivate students? The answer is “Absolutely. They motivate students to get rewards.” And that’s typically at the expense of creativity.
Rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. At least seventy studies have shown that people are less likely to continue working at something once the reward is no longer available, compared with people who were never promised rewards in the first place. The more I reward a child with grades, for example, the less appeal those subjects will have to the child. It is one of the most thoroughly researched findings in social psychology, yet it is virtually unknown among educational psychologists, much less teachers and parents.
Is Shame Necessary?
by Jennifer Jacquet
Kindle Locations 626-640
Some evidence from work on moral licensing disagrees with this assumption that buying green is a good first step. People who buy eco-products can apparently more easily justify subsequent greed, lying, and stealing. A 2009 study showed that participants who were exposed to green products in a computer-simulated grocery store acted more generously in experiments that followed, but that participants who actually purchased green products over conventional ones then behaved more selfishly. 7 A 2013 study confirmed suspicions about slacktivism when research showed that people who undertook token behaviors to present a positive image in front of others— things like signing a petition or wearing a bracelet or “liking” a cause— were less likely to engage with the cause in a meaningful way later than others who made token gestures that were private. 8 This research suggests that linking “green” to conspicuous consumption might be a distraction and lead to less engagement later on. If this is true, we should not be encouraged to engage with our guilt as disenfranchised consumers, capable of making a change only through our purchases, and instead encouraged to engage as citizens. Markets might even undermine norms for more serious environmental behavior. In some cases, as has been noted in Western Australia, eco-labeling fisheries may even be giving fishing interests leverage against establishing marine protected areas, where fishing would be prohibited or more heavily regulated, on the grounds that protection is not needed if the fisheries in those areas are already labeled eco-friendly. 9 The market for green products might sedate our guilt without providing the larger, serious outcomes we really desire.
Strange Contagion
by Lee Daniel Kravetz
Kindle Locations 1157-1169
Grant’s research is at the forefront of work motivation and leadership. Oddly, despite teaching in a school dominated by economists, he’s landed at a surprising place in terms of the one social contagion he grudgingly propagates. “The study of economics pushes people toward a selfish extreme,” he tells me after his class lets out. More to the point, he says, “The scholarship of economics is responsible for spreading a contagion of greed.”
The Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank has discovered many examples of this, Grant says. Consider that professors of economics give less to charity than professors in other fields. Or that students of economics are more likely to practice deception for personal gain. Then there’s the fact that students majoring in economics routinely rate greed as generally good, correct, and moral. In fact, says Grant, simply thinking about economics chips away at one’s sense of compassion for others. Studying economics also makes people become less giving and more cynical. Students who rank high in self-interest might self-select for degrees and careers in economics-related fields, but by learning about economics they wind up catching more extreme beliefs than those they possess when they first register for class. By spending time with like-minded people who believe in and act on the principle of self-interest, students of economics can become convinced that selfishness is widespread and rational. Self-interest becomes the norm. Individual players within the whole unconsciously model and catch behaviors, in turn pushing ethical standards.
Marmalade 
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