Is work ethic genetic or cultural?

[Pointedstick]

I was reading yet another piece today about a basic income/citizen's dividend proposal: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6674.html

Reading it, it occurs to me that the one central, fundamental issue concerns where work ethic comes from. Interestingly, those on the left who propose this seem more likely to see work ethic as genetic, and on the right it's seen as cultural. Usually the two factions have opposite views of where human traits originate.


If work ethic is cultural--bred into people through the need to work hard--then removing that need would be catastrophic for the culture. It would be self-suicide; eventually whole generations would be raised with no work ethic and there wouldn't be enough resources to sustain the productivity and the payments. Society would collapse into poverty and barbarism, or undergo an incredibly painful process of re-socializing people to work.

But on the other hand, what if work ethic is genetic? If so, then even without the need to earn money for survival, people would naturally gravitate to meaningful, productive activity on their own. A basic income/citizen's dividend is not only humane, but should enable a titanic improvement in quality of life. People would be freed to express their unique human potentials.

Or maybe it's a mix: genetic for some, but acculturated for others. In this case, we can expect inequality to increase: some become hyper-productive and generate the social surplus, while others sit around masturbating, smoking pot, and watching daytime TV. But at least they would be relatively pacified, I guess?


A variant of this debate has already played out regarding welfare over the past 50 years, but the structure of those programs prevent a conclusion from emerging: we do see that some are induced to drop out of the labor force or reduce their work, but the structure of the programs incentivizes this since you lose benefits when your income rises.


Thoughts?

[Maddy]

Definitions first. Does someone who works hard due to necessity have a strong "work ethic?" How about someone who is fortunate enough to make a living at something they love, and who lives for the opportunity to do more of it? Conversely, does someone whose aspiration is to retire as early as possible lack a "work ethic?" I suspect that the reasons why people work vary considerably, and that what we commonly think of as "work ethic" is not easily pinned down. Strangely, though, we seem to have no trouble identifying it when we see it.

[Pointedstick]

I think especially for the purpose of this discussion, "work ethic" must be defined as for whatever reason, being willing to work when you don't need the reward or when the reward accrues to someone else (your community, your grandchildren, etc). Because that's what's at stake: given the means to avoid starvation and homelessness gratis, whether or not people will continue to do work and produce or maintain the economic surplus from which the payments originate.

If 80% of people are being supported by the remaining 20% who are genetically predisposed to produce valuable output by challenging themselves and solving hard problems, that could conceivably work, even though it would be a big weird experiment and income inequality would probably worsen. But if the work ethic of those 20% turns out to be cultural, and it wanes over a generation, then society collapses.

[Mountaineer]

I think especially for the purpose of this discussion, "work ethic" must be defined as for whatever reason, being willing to work when you don't need the reward or when the reward accrues to someone else (your community, your grandchildren, etc). Because that's what's at stake: given the means to avoid starvation and homelessness gratis, whether or not people will continue to do work and produce or maintain the economic surplus from which the payments originate.

If 80% of people are being supported by the remaining 20% who are genetically predisposed to produce valuable output by challenging themselves and solving hard problems, that could conceivably work, even though it would be a big weird experiment and income inequality would probably worsen. But if the work ethic of those 20% turns out to be cultural, and it wanes over a generation, then society collapses.

Not to derail this discussion, but some might wish to read Gustaf Wingren's Luther on Vocation. Prior to Luther's perspective of almost 500 years ago, it was thought that in order to be at the top of the pecking order in God's good graces, one had to be a monk in a monestary, or be a priest. Luther's view was that the way to please God was to love neighbor by doing the best you you could possibly do in your vocation - examples of vocation being husband, wife, father, mother, neighbor, blacksmith, farmer, merchant, etc. The "Protestant work ethic" spread from this teaching to John Calvin, the puritans, and others.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss ... on+wingren

[Maddy]

I'd have to choose Option C (none of the above) and say that it's primarily psychological--and that to the extent cultures or subcultures can be defined as achieving or nonachieving, that's probably a reflection of the psychological or genetic traits that predominate in particular groups. I don't have any research to back that up, but basic Pavlovian theory says that peoples' behavior is pretty predictable: They will do more of what makes them feel good and will avoid doing what is painful. The interesting part, I think, is the enormous variation between people in terms of what they find rewarding or punishing, and how that ties back to genetic and cultural influences.

For example, if you're an artistic sort of person fortunate enough to have a talent for creating works of art that people will buy, the odds say that you'll immerse yourself in your work because everything about it feels good. Ditto for the lawyer, doctor, or engineer whose profession draws upon preexisting talents and interests and that presents new and interesting applications every day. But if the genetic roulette wheel gave you only a limited IQ or a face that nobody wants to look at, chances are that your work experiences have involved a lot of punishment. Flipping burgers and getting yelled at all day by a 19-year-old manager would dull anybody's appetite for work.

I can think of a lot of other interesting examples. Take the kid who becomes a neurotic overachiever because a domineering parent insisted that he always be the best. That kid is probably destined to become a workaholic whether or not he enjoys his work or values his achievement. The "reward," in that case, is that he maintains his tenuous sense of self-esteem and avoids the quintessential punishment of thinking of himself as a failure. Or take an Asperger's-type person who becomes an actuary and buries himself in mathematical equations all day. Maybe that's what he really enjoys, but it's also possible that his obsessive focus on work is a way of finding order in an unpredictable world full of social and cultural complexities that he can't--and never will--understand.

Genetics certainly play a large part in determining how successful a person will be in the work world and, consequently, whether his experience with work will be rewarding or punishing. I think the same can be said for cultural influences in the sense that we learn vicariously from the rewarding and punishing experiences of others within our peer group.

It's an interesting question, anyway.

[Maddy]

PS, your "definitions" post above brought home the fact that the concept of "work ethic" is not easily pinned down. In contrast to the operational definition you've put forward, I tend to think of "work ethic" mostly in terms of the guy who HAS to work whether he wants to or not, who would prefer to be spending his time doing something else, who could probably skate by doing the absolute minimum, but who nonetheless goes out of his way to do a conscientious job. Or the guy who declines to use his accumulated sick leave because he isn't really sick. Or the guy who could qualify for disability benefits but who sucks it up and gets to work every morning because he can't stand the idea of not pulling his own weight.

[ochotona]

I think there is good evidence that work ethic is cultural, and it can be destroyed, or at least harmed for a long time.

My case in point: Eastern Germans are said to not be as industrious as Western Germans. They had decades under Communism, destroying their incentives and work habits. These pattern persist post-Unification.

[WiseOne]

This is indeed an interesting discussion, and one I hope politicians advocating a citizens' dividend are engaging in as well.

One problem with the genetics vs culture argument is that they are not always separable - and the way US society is shaping up, that is increasingly the case. We are no longer a melting pot, but rather a collection of distinct, segregated cultures with different value systems.

But I'm not sure that's relevant, as long as the citizens' dividend provides only just enough money to keep you out of poverty, or maybe only the equivalent of a half-time job at minimum wage. Mainly I think the question is what will happen to people working in lower middle class jobs that are not satisfying or productive and pay at or only just above minimum wage - agree with Maddy here. I don't care what your work ethic is, nobody chooses do those jobs unless they need the money. Think Walmart greeter, telemarketer, cashier, housecleaner, dog walker, night shift security guard, janitor. Many of the jobs, if they're important, will be automated. Or, you'll have to offer more pay to attract people who want a higher standard of living than the dividend provides.

What is most interesting is the effect on people who would like to work on something that pays nothing, or not much - e.g. artist, musician, acting/theater, writer, or entrepreneur with a risky idea. Some of those people will end up doing very well, which might be enough to make up for the tax base lost from the people who will stop coming around to clean your toilet.

[Pointedstick]

In my first week of retirement, I've started contributing a lot to the open-source Linux community. All skilled work, at no pay. I do it because I love it. I've also taken on more of the parenting load, increased my time spent on neglected home improvement projects, and made cheesecake and homemade shrimp dim sum (holy fuck was it good).

Most of the retired people I know do something useful with their time. My mother-in-law makes art, and sells quite a bit of it. Her husband leads spiritual retreats and sings in a church choir. My mother more or less continues her academic job, and my father cooks at a soup kitchen. There seems to be ample evidence that people will turn to these type of activities that either engage their senses of morality and justice, or else reflect their passions and personal expressions.

But as WiseOne points out, almost nobody loves telemarketing or housecleaning. In the case of telemarketing, maybe it's not such a bad thing if that job disappears. Or maybe it will be automated and become even more annoying. And housecleaning will certainly remain important. If the only way to entice people to do jobs like those is to increase the prevailing wage, then the net effect may be strongly inflationary for lower-middle-class-type jobs, eroding the effect of the payment itself over time. Will anyone want to still build houses, I wonder? It's hard, dirty work. Habitat for Humanity shows that there will probably be some supply, if it can be attached to a social justice cause, but will that be enough, especially in a country with terrible housing stock that needs to be town down and re-built nearly every generation?

It almost seems like a prerequisite for this type of society is that we must have already accumulated untold levels of capital at all segments of society and automated most of the crappy jobs out of existence.

[WiseOne]

Exactly, PS. I'd welcome the idea of automating or eliminating as many of those crap jobs as possible, but there would certainly be an impact. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal to make housecleaners more expensive, but it would raise costs of things like maintaining public buildings ==> increased property taxes ==> higher rents etc.

Your first week of retirement - congrats! And, sounds wonderful. How about posting that shrimp dim sum recipe?

[I Shrugged]

My own data point is that I had a very strong work ethic. I was a typical driven entrepreneur. But when I sold my company, I lost a lot of that ethic. I kept thinking I was going to move on to the next thing, but I didn't need the money, so it never happened. I do think there is a genetic component, but it's mostly cultural. Or looking at it from another angle, if the need vanishes, so can the ethic. A lot of people can't handle not having to push against something. Free money will wreck most people IMO.

Ironically it will be dealt with best by the laziest people.

Another possibility is that it will simply cause inflation and everyone will end up back where they were. There is a retirement money concept that rarely gets mentioned because it sounds bad. Nevertheless it's true. Namely, if you want to retire comfortably, it doesn't matter how much you retire with, it matters how much more than others you retire with.

PS, you are still on the rebound. So who knows. You might end up knitting booties.

[curlew]

Related:

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs
-- David Graeber in Evonomics.com

I spent the last 10 years of my career as a computer programmer surfing the net about 80% of the time and that is no exaggeration. Sometimes I did it for weeks on end and the biggest challenge of my week was coming up with some BS to put on my timesheet. I always worried that somebody would question me about it or monitor my internet activity but in all those years, nobody ever did.

One day my boss even asked me what I was working on and I told him outright that I wasn't doing anything but surfing the net. His reply was that, gee we have lots of work to do so I'll get you something to work on. That never happened.

(You might find it funny that my boss had to ask me what I was working on but every week we had a group meeting where we would go around the room and each of us would say what we were working on. The boss would take notes so he could tell his boss what we were working on in case he asked.)

And if you had asked anybody in management they would have told you I was one of the most productive employees they had. It was like Mark Twain said - "once you establish a reputation as an early riser, you can sleep 'til noon".

And this wasn't even the government.

[I Shrugged]

Oh, that's funny! Probably wasn't so much for you though. You sound like Wally from Dilbert there.

[curlew]

Oh, that's funny! Probably wasn't so much for you though. You sound like Wally from Dilbert there.

Funny thing is they laid me off at the end of July when upper management delivered an edict that 90% of software development will be done offshore in India as soon as possible - to reduce software development costs, of course.

If they had asked me, with my 40 years of experience, or any of my co-workers, what they could do to reduce costs we could have given them lots of answers about the inefficiencies in their software development process. Indeed, that's practically all we ever talked about! Unfortunately, that's just not the way companies work. The only questions ever asked were in the form of employee satisfaction surveys from on high. When it comes to filling out one of those surveys you should probably either not respond if you can get away with it or else lie and say everything is great. If you let management know as a group that you hate your jobs the end result is more likely to be that they will look for employees with a better attitude than that anything will change.

[flyingpylon]

There is a retirement money concept that rarely gets mentioned because it sounds bad. Nevertheless it's true. Namely, if you want to retire comfortably, it doesn't matter how much you retire with, it matters how much more than others you retire with.

I agree, and have to admit that this is a motivating factor for me. I don't wish poverty on anyone, but every news article that proclaims "nobody has anything saved for retirement!" (and there a lot of them) at least helps me feel like even if I don't reach my ultimate goal, I'm not doing so bad after all. I would say the same is true before retirement as well.

[Maddy]

One of the things that struck me most when I moved to a small town (actually, quite a ways outside of a small town), was the attitude of the working people, most of whom have fairly menial jobs that I'm sure pay no more than minimum wage. One particular example that stands out in my mind was a 50-something-year-old woman who worked in the housekeeping department for the motel at which I regularly stayed while looking for property here. She and her husband, who worked in the maintenance department, were always so upbeat and pleasant, and always so eager to help. They both remembered my name from stay to stay, and on several occasions brought me eggs and fresh vegetables from their garden. One day, I asked this lady whether she enjoyed her job, and she exclaimed "I love it," while beaming from ear to ear. She conveyed how much she enjoyed meeting new people, how much pride she took in her work, and how well she was treated by the motel's owners. She told me how lucky she felt to have such a good job.

In the six years I've been here, I've heard that same sort of comment over and over from the local people. The unemployment rate exceeds 20% by most counts--and that's after taking account of the fact that most local high school graduates leave shortly after graduation to find work elsewhere.

Those young people who stay would, I'm sure, pose a paradox to many of the writers on this board who don't see much value in low-wage, blue-collar jobs. These people typically go to work at the mill or at one of the local manufacturing plants, or, like the lady I was describing, get jobs as motel housekeepers or Walmart clerks. Typically, they are married by age 18 or 19 and have two or three children by the time they're 24. They are involved in the church and 4H, and make a real event out of going to the drive-in for a hamburger and milkshake. By and large, they are happy, or at least content, with their lives.

There are others, like myself, who come from white-collar backgrounds but who have intentionally opted for a simple, down-to-the-earth existence. When my little farm is not producing, I'm out there looking for any kind of work that I can find, and virtually all of it is minimum-wage work. Like the motel housekeeper, I'm incredibly grateful for whatever opportunities I can find, and I don't seem to have trouble finding meaning in whatever menial thing I'm doing. When you're not under the stress of getting a $56 million deal closed, it's amazing how much richness you can find in normal human interactions, and how much satisfaction you can derive from even a simple job well done.

My perspective on all this is so different from the one that prevails in modern society that I have difficulty even understanding the idea that life would be better if technology eliminated all blue-collar jobs and put all productivity into the hands of the intellectual and technological elite.

[Pointedstick]

My perspective on all this is so different from the one that prevails in modern society that I have difficulty even understanding the idea that life would be better if technology eliminated all blue-collar jobs and put all productivity into the hands of the intellectual and technological elite.

And yet it's already happened. This trend is not new; it began more than 200 years ago with the dawning of the industrial revolution. With this system, it was inevitable that productivity would be centralized among the owners of intellectual, physical, and economic capital. The net result has been to couple social value to purchasing power, and purchasing power to productivity.

TennPaGa mentioned virtue as the guiding principle, rather than productivity. Confucian scholars discussed this 2,000 years ago, realizing that cleverness/productivity was limited to only some, but virtue could be practiced by all.

However, cleverness and productivity yield more practical power. A clever people easily defeat, enslave, or wipe out a virtuous people. So virtuous people need to value cleverness too, which eventually turns them into a socially and economically stratified cleverness-based society. Cleverness is the pandora's box, the apple on the tree of good and evil. Once we have it, we cannot go back, because those who don't will win and become our masters.

My reading of history and philosophy is that a world which has discovered the value of cleverness only permits societies based on virtue when the results of cleverness are so commodified that they are available to all at virtually or actually zero cost. This implies that goods themselves or the purchasing power to acquire them are freely given. Then there is no mad rush for everyone to hone their cleverness or be left behind, and virtue can emerge as the standard of social value.

[Maddy]

It strikes me that the result you describe is far from inevitable. The "clever" maintain power only so long as the masses continue to buy the stuff they produce, and only so long as the ordinary people are willing to tolerate living in a world that reduces them to a cog in a wheel, or that disposes of them entirely. Even the clever may, at some point, find such a world impossible to tolerate.

[Pointedstick]

It strikes me that the result you describe is far from inevitable. The "clever" maintain power only so long as the masses continue to buy the stuff they produce, and only so long as the ordinary people are willing to tolerate living in a world that reduces them to a cog in a wheel, or that disposes of them entirely. Even the clever may, at some point, find such a world impossible to tolerate.

We're both describing the present, not some hypothetical future. "Ordinary people" do indeed seem "willing to tolerate living in a world that reduces them to a cog in a wheel, or that disposes of them entirely." The various "opt-out" movements through the years have all failed miserably. The lure of materialism just seems too strong for most, especially when advanced with a weaponized understanding of human psychology, AKA advertising. Your rural friends and neighbors are all participants in the global material economy, fully dependent on a variety of goods and services purchased from others.

[WiseOne]

Those young people who stay would, I'm sure, pose a paradox to many of the writers on this board who don't see much value in low-wage, blue-collar jobs. These people typically go to work at the mill or at one of the local manufacturing plants, or, like the lady I was describing, get jobs as motel housekeepers or Walmart clerks. Typically, they are married by age 18 or 19 and have two or three children by the time they're 24. They are involved in the church and 4H, and make a real event out of going to the drive-in for a hamburger and milkshake. By and large, they are happy, or at least content, with their lives.

I've occasionally seen what you're describing (people proud of their work, even in menial jobs like housecleaning), but in my experience it's rare. Mostly what I see are people with glazed eyes and thinly disguised sneers who obviously can't wait to clock off at the end of their shifts and go steal hubcaps or whatever it is they like to do with their time. Sadly, I see a lot of that in the low-level administrative staff at my university medical center, which are supposedly several steps above working at motels or Walmart. I must say your town sounds idyllic, from this viewpoint. And, your story certainly supports a cultural aspect to work ethic - no surprise there.

More to the point: would the woman you encountered at that hotel have taken that job if she had the equivalent salary from a citizens' dividend?

[Pointedstick]

More to the point: would the woman you encountered at that hotel have taken that job if she had the equivalent salary from a citizens' dividend?

Most importantly: would she have if per parents had gotten the payments since her birth, resulting in her being totally raised in a citizen's dividend environment? And if the answer is "no", are we comfortable with her job being done by unskilled immigrants, teenagers, prisoners, robots, or just not existing at all?

[Maddy]

It seems to me that the very thing that is proclaimed to offer deliverance from the evils of minimum-wage work--technology, automation, and corporatization--is what's causing that work to be the dispiriting, burdensome thing it is.

I'd submit that in general, the experience of being a low-wage, blue-collar worker is very different for the city-dweller than it is for the resident of a small town. Members of small rural communities tend to identify strongly with what they do for a living, and to think of their work as their unique contribution to a community whose sustenance depends, in a very direct way, upon each member doing his or her part. The sense of interdependence that predominates in a small town is fostered, in large part, by the relative lack of corporatization, automation and technology which together tend to alienate people both from the product of their labor and from the meaning that that attaches to it. Even in a small town, you can see a definite difference in attitude between the clerk at Walmart and a worker performing a similar function in a small, family-owned business.

Would the lady working as a motel housekeeper continue working if she received a guaranteed basic income? Naturally I can only guess at the answer, but I suspect that after a well-deserved vacation, she'd probably be right back there doing her job. Why? Because it's the thing she contributes to the community, because the community's counting on her, and because it's the thing that gives her a sense of achievement, belonging, and meaning.

Not everybody has the intellectual capacity, the creativity, the initiative, or the motivation to successfully manage eight hours each day without some external structure. Hell, a good number of professional retirees can't manage to get themselves out the door to do something productive despite a higher-than-average level of executive functioning and despite an overwhelming sense of boredom.

In another thread on another topic, I expressed how in awe I was of the volunteer fire fighters in our small rural district who not too long ago singlehandedly fought a 2,000-acre forest fire just a few miles from my property. Many of them are not only low-wage, blue-collar workers in their regular jobs, they spend much of their free time doing a dangerous, physically-demanding job that pays nothing. If you suggested to one of these guys that they sit home and collect the equivalent of universal welfare, you just might get hit.

PS asked the hypothetical question whether the lady who works in the housekeeping department would be likely to continue working if she were the product of a family that had always received a universal income. Don't we already know the answer to that question? It seems to me that we've got several generations worth of data that shows very clearly what happens to peoples' initiative, motivation, and self-esteem when families become generational welfare recipients. How's this any different?

[Pointedstick]

PS asked the hypothetical question whether the lady who works in the housekeeping department would be likely to continue working if she were the product of a family that had always received a universal income. Don't we already know the answer to that question? It seems to me that we've got several generations worth of data that shows very clearly what happens to peoples' initiative, motivation, and self-esteem when families become generational welfare recipients. How's this any different?

There's one very important difference: to qualify for welfare, you can't work, or can't make much money at your work. It provides a strong disincentive to be economically productive; UBI/CD doesn't.

I think I see what you're saying though. A UBI/CD might be better than welfare for the urban underclass, but could devastate small towns even worse by targeting the wrong problem: we think they have a money problem, and they do, but in potentially solving that, it could greatly exacerbate their meaning problem.

[Maddy]

Well, let me pose a question. Who is it, REALLY, who wants to be relieved from the burden of work? For all I can tell, it's coming mainly from the young, elitist, college-educated, technologically-oriented crowd. It's these people that seem to be drawn to the vision of a fully-automated future and the prospect of never having to work. To me, it's an obvious example of shitting where you sleep; it's these very people and their obsession with technology that have turned the work world into something that is repugnant even to them.

[WiseOne]

i think maddys point about the corporatization of work is a direct hit on the nose. if you work at anywhere from the bottom to the middle of a large corporation their lack of interest in you is explicit in every aspect of your job. the best jobs in that environment have the ability to counter it to a small degree when they luck into putting together a team of good workers who pull together, but that is rare, and even when they do the cut and paste management directives ( written by lawyers to protect the bottom line) repeatedly remind you that you are a valueless and replaceable cog in a heartless machine..
unfortunately that is an inescapable reality of big business, small business the owner can personally know their employees and make hands on decisions about how things should be handled.. the big company cant, there is no way to fill a company with enough competent people that can make those kind of personal judgment calls correctly.. if they want to be profitable they must "cut and paste" and apply those directives consistently in order to succeed.

Yes, I think we may have hit on the key issue: when you are an anonymous cog in a big wheel, with no obvious personal impact and having to suffer endless humiliating and pointless impositions (like "face time", dress codes, etc), then you're the person who will happily quit the first chance you get. The Money Mustache forums are full of "F-U" stories along these lines.

If that's true, then it applies across social and wealth lines. The main difference between lower and upper classes is that for low-income people, a citizen's dividend could potentially replace 100% of their work-derived income. For higher income people, that's not so much the case, so they'll be more likely to have an incentive to keep working. But, they may choose a lower-income but more fulfilling position. And corporate culture will need to change, in order to keep employees from heading for the exit. Both of those things could end up being desirable outcomes - but for sure, a citizen's dividend will change the economic landscape drastically. I say let Switzerland be the guinea pig.

Also as a practical matter, we couldn't have it here in the US without getting rid of birthright citizenship.