The capitalistic experiment, so far
Bookworm on Jun 18 2008 at 3:19 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Time for an update on the shift from communism to capitalism in my house. Since Sunday, when I put the plan into effect, the kids have tidied the whole house, folded (and put away) eight baskets of laundry, organized all the DVDs, cleaned out both the large and the small pantries, and read several hundred pages (about 200 for the boy, who is not a reader; about 500 for the girl; who is). They haven’t fought, they haven’t tattled, and interruptions have been kept to a minimum. My cost so far: $90.00. Had they been in camp for these three days, my cost would have been $360.00, and my house would have been as messy as before.
Current analysis: Capitalism is working. With money as the fulcrum, we are all having our needs met and achieving a harmonious co-existence.
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11 Responses to “The capitalistic experiment, so far”
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Book,
You are brilliant. I do think the old way was better–I never once back-talked my dad or disrespected my mother, and neither did my kids disrespect me or my wife. But without the proverbial rod, what’s a parent to do? You are well-postioned financially and morally to put this solution into place, and your kids will profit in all kinds of ways. Though I made sure my hand was far from invisible to my kids, and still got good results, you have shown that Adam Smith’s invisible hand and analysis of the profit motive rule like laws of nature. I wouldn’t be surprised years from now to hear of your kids writing knowing and appreciative memoirs of their upbringing.
Now teach them Liberalism: take back half of what they earned and send it to the IRS.
>>…take back half of what they earned and send it to the IRS.>>
Would you settle for an untouchable savings account???
Have to be very careful about the message, though.
Around my house, when young, part of the deal was that you made your bed, picked up after yourself, and fucntioned as ordered when ordered. Whatever you messed up you cleaned up, and when asked to help out in a general clean-up the correct answer was: “okay!”
Once past the age of about seven or eight, mowing the lawn (which took about five hours on a riding mower, plus some attention from an edger and a smaller mower) was part of the deal too.
And you didn’t have any expectation of being rewarded for doing what you were supposed to do. (My father’s view was: There is nothing special about doing what you are supposed to do: you are supposed to do it.)
Something unusual, or out of the ordinary - fine; there could be an incentive involved. But certainly not for routine tasks.
You’re the parents: you have the right to have some expectations without it requiring a pay-off.
This is, of course, a terribly old-fashioned view of personal responsibility, and the inculcation thereof.
Tiresias, I agree with you in theory — and that’s how I was raised. In fact, though, without a stick, it’s very difficult to make things happen. And while I can bully my kids into doing the job, it’s an enormous effort, the job is not done well, and they fight constantly.
By the way, Obama would like to disarm America. He expects us to stand as the world’s moral arbiter, without any stick to back us up. Maybe his daughters are sweet, malleable things — and I’m sure there are sweet malleable nations out there — but if they’re rambunctious and oppositional, like my kids, his disarmament will turn America into a completely ineffectual target for the bad guys.
If I might make a suggestion, Bookworm. Start a savings account for them, and deposit their earnings into each. Then let them withdraw, let sit, whatever. It would be a great tool for you to also teach them about finances.
We’re ahead of you — half their summer earnings go to their 529 accounts!
The most interesting thing in your reply was: “without a stick…”
No stick? What happened to the stick? It’s there on the end of your arm, is it not?
Not where I live, T. If the school hears that you use corporal punishment on your children, they’ll call in Child Protective Services (this has happened to two people that I know). Older kids report their parents to CPS (which has happened to one person I know, whose daughter was mad at her for not letting her go out on a date). The only stick in my neck of the woods is CPS. As for my kids, taking away privileges has never worked well. They live a privileged life. The only thing that would actually take away the privileges is to strip the house bare — which I’ve tried and it still didn’t work!
In my attempt to help you with this little experiment on behavioral conditioning and capitalism, I would just like to say that it might be wise to extend the period of payment vs work into a salary type system of payment.
What behavioral conditioning has shown is that if you do not keep up the rate of incentives and positive reinforcements, the conditioned behavior starts to go away. What we want should be good habits, which are long term and more or less self-policed.
I believe the immediate rewarding of good behavior in the short term is nice, as an incentive, but in the long term you might want to extend the gratification period they have to wait for. A salary of X per week or X per month based upon amount of work tallied and done, that can be independently checked by both worker’s records and parent’s records, teaches a bit more than just if you do this, you’ll get a reward.
The problem with setting aside the reward for long periods of time is that people often forget and/or they lose their motivation without constant encouragement or a sign that they are actually going to get what they think they are going to get.
But the benefit is that no longer will your children be in the habit of expecting immediate reward for their work. Instead, they will either have to suck up the boring times or they will learn to acquire a internal love of hard work done well, otherwise they wouldn’t usually have the motivation to continue on working without being paid until date X.
The disciplinarian households that teach the same habits, except they do it by promising punishment if the work is not done, will inevitably achieve similar ends, but slightly different per person. Some people don’t react too well to only negative incentives. For example, slaves try very hard not to work as hard as they can, for they don’t want the quota to be increased and be punished for doing less work than their best. Punishment as the only reward for getting things done inevitably creates the behavior on the part of the workers of shirking or at least making sure that they don’t do more work than they need to. Capitalism, meaning positive rewards, will motivate workers to excel at their best.
On outward appearances, there is no difference, since the habits are more or less the same. You get things done on time and per demands. The disciplinarian would perhaps be able to create more punctual and attentive workers, while the capitalistic system might give you more clever negotiators and more brilliant workers.
Now if you combine the two, then essentially what you get is the US military. The infantry branches at least.
I have a lot of big tasks in the house that have been bedeviling me, mostly in the form of closets that badly need organizing. There are also the usual things of dirty kitchens, clean (but full) dishwashers, and stacks of clean, unfolded laundry. I told the kids that, on a daily basis, I will assign them a task with a good salary. Not a piddling 50 cents or $1 per task, but $5 to $20 per child, depending on the task’s magnitude.
As a practical suggestion, you might stay with this plan for 3 out of 7 days per week, and then say that anything more they do will only pay 50% to 25% of its natural value to you, the parent.
Observing whether they actually are willing to work over time, especially if they have already gotten what they wanted economically speaking, will be a good sign of whether they have settled into good habits or not. Then again, good habits takes years to create. Since bad habits takes years to break, it’s not such a bad deal.