Capitalist Candy

A class of twenty seven students is very hungry. Fortunately, there is a special machine in the classroom which can address their food needs. This special machine makes M&Ms out of essays, dispensing a maximum of 2700 every day. To get M&Ms for their growling stomachs, students write essays and turn them in for M&Ms. A grade-A essay nets three M&Ms, a grade-B essay two, and a grade-C essay one. The class is mostly happy with their M&M machine, but after a while young Karl notices something... Some of his classmates are consistently getting more M&Ms than others. What's more, not all of these classmates are good writers! He observes his seemingly more privileged classmates to find out their secret. Sam is always loaded with M&Ms, so Karl decides to watch him closely. Sam writes a grade-C essay. Instead of feeding it to the machine though, he goes to the teacher and gives her two of his M&Ms. In return, the teacher proofreads the essay and turns it into an grade-A+ paper. Sam takes the new paper and turns converts it to ten M&Ms. Karl is amazed. He tells nineteen of his classmates (who don't get a lot of M&Ms) about it, and they establish that from now on all essays should be proofread by the teacher before being turned in to the machine. The next day, the twenty excited students walk up to the teacher with essays in hand - but there's a problem. The teacher is already proofreading the essays of the seven other students in the class! In fact, those seven students have reserved her proofreading skills for the next five days using their M&Ms. Karl starts to think very hard...

He thinks so hard that he develops a worldview which profoundly shapes political and economic thought as time passes. Eventually, after the deadliest war that was never fought, it seems to lose influence, but we know better than that. Marxism today is applied differently, but its ideas are still relevant. In a world where the gap between the rich and the poor grows wider exponentially, a shadow of a doubt begins to form in our minds. Eventually, a question must be answered: does wealth naturally concentrate in the hands of the few in capitalist societies? Is there a darker side to Smith's Invisible Hand? Marx produced an extreme and somewhat generalized model of society - there are certainly more than just two social classes in the modern world, and their interactions are probably too complex to be predicted or described in one overarching theory. Yet clearly we have come across economic times which reflect Marxist predictions to a certain degree. Will a spectre once more haunt the world?

Ender's Enemy

A week or so ago, while catching up on reading blogs that I subscribe to, I came across an interesting post from NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich. As a whole, his blog embraces a light-hearted and humorous approach to topics in science and technology, though he doesn't adhere to any strict guidelines. This post, however, raised a serious subject towards the end: that of the very nature of human innovation. Citing Wired editor Kevin Kelly, business scholar Peter Drucker, and science fiction writer William Gibson, Krulwich advances the idea that communication and technology have pushed human interactions with each other (and with their environment) further from the physical and closer to the theoretical -that is, thoughts over actions, brains over brawn. He quotes William Gibson, who writes about our communication technologies becoming increasingly similar in structure to the complex wiring of a mind, the connections growing finer and finer even as they stretch across greater distances.

Krulwich chooses to joke about this observation in his post, but he does so knowing that there are serious and rich trains of thought waiting to depart from this idea's station. The concept of an overarching "hive mind" is no stranger to human thoughts. In fact, it has been present in science fiction literature and media for quite a long time, a classic example being Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, featuring the "buggers," who are led by the queen's hive mind. For more, see this entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the phenomenon. If you skim through the list just linked, you'll notice something odd: almost every single one of the dozens of examples are antagonists in the settings they appear in. Here is the disturbing aspect of the notion which Krulwich touched on so lightly: the idea of a hive mind, of a real and active collective conscious, scares us. It challenges our individuality, removes to a certain extent our ability to empathize with any "person" acting under a "hive mind", and thus cements the role of a sentient collective conscious as that of a foreigner or alien (literally).

Examples can reach beyond sci-fi stories. In American history, we see this narrative in play during periods of rampant anti-communist fervor. What made the typical "communist" so inferior to the average (capitalist, Jesus-lovin') Joe? The most relevant difference to us, looking the competitive lens, is the lack of economic freedom. A participant in a communist system surrenders to the state their freedom to compete, instead performing the functions which are allocated to them by the state in the interests of the system as a whole. This removes a key aspect of all competition: self-interest.

The book that gave birth to so many young and imaginative geeks (as well as politically-charged critiques).

A Time For Honesty

Today we're going to talk about mistakes made when competitiveness collides with situations where competition doesn't belong. These situations illustrate the limitations of writing with a competitive lens focused only on the positive aspects of competition. In the end, they also illustrate our own limitations as humans, creatures of thought and emotion.

Over the weekend, I headed down to the Palmer House in downtown Chicago with a bunch of my classmates to participate in Model United Nations, run by University of Chicago students. In theory, each committee hosted by MUNUC should work together towards a common goal: writing a resolution. However, many delegations who participate focus to at least some degree on winning an award at the end of the conference. When taken to the extreme, this creates problems. Delegates might hold the speaking floor purely for the purpose of gaining attention, not caring whether they are making substantive arguments. Sponsoring the "winning" resolution becomes more important than the quality of the resolution itself. Competition supersedes cooperation. In contexts like this, it becomes a force of regression, driving all those involved not towards progress, but strife. As those who should be allies become enemies, the path forward is forsaken.

Most MUNUC participants don't exhibit behavior like this; there's a bigger picture to see. Simulations of international conferences are obviously not the only situations that require a suppression of competitive spirit. When approaching one's relationships with others, remaining clearheaded is essential. Allowing friendship to become a game to be won or lost will inevitably lead to the end of that game. All of us, especially the hardheaded writer of this post, are guilty of playing this game with the closest of our friends at one point or another.