The Incentive Myth

Pretty Lady, it must be said, is not an economist, except perhaps the household kind. She does not understand 'credit default swaps' or 'hedge funds' or 'asset leveraging.' She is, however, very good at generating a balanced, nutritious meal for under $3/person; she can juggle the bills so as to avoid late fees, interest rate increases and service interruptions, even during long periods of enforced unemployment; she knows exactly where and in what order to invest sudden unexpected infusions of cash, so as to maximize interest and long-term savings. In other words, she's an artist.

However. She must speak out upon one issue that she hears repeatedly during discussions of "Whither Capitalism?" That issue is the one of "Incentive."

People must have Incentive, she hears, to do things. They must have Incentive to invest, to build, to invent, to labor; without this Incentive, they will all become welfare drones. This Incentive, she hears, primarily includes the God-given right to pursue amounts of personal wealth so obscene as to allow the Incentee to say a big, resounding F.U. to Everybody Else. If we remove this Incentive--in the form of salary caps, progressive income taxes, or regulation of industry practices--the world will simply Fall Apart, and we will all go back to living in caves.

Well, Pretty Lady always knew she was a freak, but that's never particularly been the reason she works for a living.

No, Pretty Lady's bizarre, arcane incentives for doing the thing she does include, but are not limited to:

1) Paying for housing, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, and art supplies.

2) Creating beautiful things.

3) Helping people feel better when they are in some sort of pain or discomfort.

4) Connecting with interesting people, for the purposes of friendship and engrossing conversation.

5) Exploring speculations in the area of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, economics, technology, social science, architecture, fashion design, education, gardening, cooking, physics, mathematics, metaphysics, and all sorts of other fun things, just because.

Making millions of dollars simply in order to HAVE millions of dollars has never appeared on her list. Moreover, she doesn't know too many other people whose top priority is becoming obscenely wealthy, either; they're all too busy living full lives as engaged, creative citizens.

Perhaps all of Pretty Lady's friends are freaks, too.

But she does have it on excellent authority that in Denmark, people work for a living. Despite the fact that the economic system of Denmark provides education, healthcare, housing and basic human dignity to every one of its citizens, at the expense of massive wealth accumulations by the Elite Few, everybody gets up and goes to work anyway. They do good jobs, too.

What shall we make of this?

Well, Pretty Lady is starting to wonder if perhaps she isn't such a freak, after all. It certainly seems to her that many people, perhaps even the majority, share her priorities in life. That there exist, in nature, plentiful numbers of citizens who would go about inventing, building, designing, growing, nurturing, experimenting, and creating, even if the option of becoming a billionaire by manipulating abstract numerical phenomenae was off the table.

In fact, she is starting to wonder if the impulse to manipulate abstract financial phenomenae in order to accumulate disproportionate personal wealth isn't...just...a bit....abnormal. Perhaps even pathological.

At the very least, she is certain that she doesn't want someone whose priorities are thus established to have a greater-than-average share in community decision-making processes. For people who want to make a lot of money without doing any concrete benefit to others tend not to take other people into much consideration. Ergo...well, voilá.