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From Randy Olson: Is Money the ONLY Way to Talk?

By jjacquet on October 24, 2007.

So much of environmentalism these days has come down to people asking, "How can we change the public's behavior?" When this topic crops up, there is always a group of hard core cynics who say, "The ONLY way you'll ever get anyone to change their behavior is if there's a profit incentive." Ugh. I hate listening to that.

Here's an op-ed today in the NY Times that plays like music to my ears. In literal terms it's about baseball, but more generally, it's about everything, as indicated by the last paragraph of the piece.

The more society embraces the idea that nobody will do anything right unless it pays, the more true it will become that nobody does anything right unless it pays. And this is no way to run a ballclub, a school system, or a country.

It is a sad, boring state for anyone to have so totally abandoned the idea of "persuasion" to the point of thinking the only way to accomplish anything is to pay people. They're the kind of parents who pay their kids for every good grade they get.

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Communicating

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I share your frustration.

It seems to me the role of money in our culture is like an iceberg. Some folks only notice the tip of the economic iceberg when it collides with their daily lives. Some folks see a glimpse of the rest of the iceberg but seem to be intimidated by what they see. So we get those "Let's not go there!" reactions.

It seems to me that we need to start "going there". If we want to ensure that our children and grandchildren can live halfway decent lives, we really ought to begin by coming to grips with the operation of the culture we have now.

Thanks for this reminder. Cheers