You and me

I was alone, strolling down Copacabana beach. Late afternoon, wet from a quick swim. The sun was setting over the city, but one could still feel its warmth. The seasoned beach goers had mostly left, it was the now the runners and strollers’ shift.

I thought to myself, ‘this is paradise, what a perfect evening, what a perfect place’. Far from it. 

I had a safe key tied inside my pocket. The young lady running had a key pinned to her shoulder strap. The couple leaving the beach clutched their bag, despite the police cherry-picker watchtower, a municipal guard on the beach and armed patrol across the road. This is paradise, except for the feeling, that at best, someone is going to run off with your stuff. It was noticeable in the metro too, backpacks were not on backs, handbags we snugly under armpits. What a way to live.

This got me thinking. Crime is out of necessity, I suspect, it’s not just a sport. I probably would too, if survival depended on it. So ‘necessity’ is ruining paradise.

My first reaction was to blame it on capitalism. Dog eat dog. Wouldn’t it be nice, if through distribution of wealth, one could do away with this ‘need’? It didn’t take too many strides to realise that this isn’t sustainable. I’m by no means a political / socio-economic scholar, but I suspect we’ve seen the downfall of a few such communities in recent time. There is no incentive for anyone to continue to create the wealth to be distributed. I’m sorry to say, but in general man seems to tend towards the lowest enthalpy possible.

A few more strides later, I gave up to the fact that a ‘free-market’ / capitalist type system is perhaps the best of all evils. However, I have always felt there is a certain unsustainability about this too. It feels wrong, especially in the way the western world as incarnated it. The recent financial crisis hints at this.

It has taken a tour around Sicily, a transatlantic flight, and a stroll in Rio for me to think about what is wrong with the way we in the west approach life. I’ve already touched on it. I think it’s the ‘incentive’. A distributed wealth system doesn’t work, not because you’re distributing wealth, but because it eliminates the incentive. In my opinion, western world capitalism doesn’t work because it has the wrong incentive; ‘me’.

Now I’m going to sounds like some marijuana smoking, tree hugging, kibbutzing, hey-shoo-wow hippy. What the hell, here goes, I think we should turn things around. Capitalism can work if the interest and incentive was more about ‘you’.

If you have made it this far, you probably think, ‘so what, this isn’t new’. Which is what I was told when discussing my theory on religion with a theology student. She said, ‘that’s normal, a gazillion other people have already had that theory’. It is wonderful being uninformed, you get to live little moments of satisfaction when it comes right in your head, albeit short lived, normally until you tell someone.

So, how about this ‘you’ thing. In today’s system it is each man looking out for his own back. Do what is necessary to get ahead (including crime, in some instances). It is a vicious circle of heightened performance and counter-performance. One against many is tiring, and can only be harmful to a community. Instead of doing something for your own benefit, how about doing it for the communities benefit? How about doing what you do to the best of your talents so that those without your talents are able to benefit. If you’re a brilliant businessman, reap that huge profit, take what you need, and sow the rest of it for the benefit of others. If you’re unemployed, and all you have is time, give some time towards a community, who knows where it will lead. This is obviously simplistic, and I’m not proposing that the system be put on its head, but I think the motivation for our actions is all important. in changing the motivation the outcome will automatically be transformed.

So where’s the incentive? The incentive is simple. The incentive should not be to earn enough to buy a palace so you have to put up an electric fence and then earn even more to pay for the bullet proofing of your car. You get the idea. 

Surely the incentive should be being able to leave your belongings on the beach to go and swim? The incentive should be not to have to observe who is standing near the cash machine. Ironically thinking ‘you’ is actually in one’s self-interest. The reward is a better quality of your of life and the satisfaction of contributing to the good of the community.

We are lucky, we have the benefit of knowing what it is like to live in the system going slightly wrong. We have a flavour of how paradise can be ruined. There will always be haves and have-nots, but the resentment is bred within the society when this arises because of the wrong incentive. When you exploit someone to get ahead, they tend to not like it. Given the demographics of countries like India, Brazil and China, the world cannot afford to have the socio-economic instability that will erupt if the incentive continues to be ‘me’. Is this not incentive enough?