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There Must Be An Alternative

About two decades ago, the citizens of Switzerland faced a momentous policy decision: where in the country should toxic waste sites should be located. There was to be a national referendum on the issue. The populace was well informed, and the issue really mattered. Two enterprising social scientists saw a golden opportunity (Frey and Oberholzer-Gee, 1997). They went from house to house in several regions of the country asking people whether they would be willing to have a toxic waste dump in their community. Strikingly, fully 50% of respondents said yes. The researchers followed up with those who said yes to ascertain whether people realized that a toxic waste dump might be dangerous, and that it might decrease the value of their property. The results were clear: people were not happy to host the dump, and they fully realized that there might be both health and economic consequences. Nonetheless, it had to go somewhere, and their community was as good a place as any. All citizens had civic responsibilities, and if their number was called, so be it. At some houses, the researchers asked the question differently. They asked people whether, if the government paid them X Swiss francs a year (with X varied from one group of respondents to another), they would be willing to have a dump located in their community. At the highest value of X offered, an amount equal to six weeks worth of an average Swiss person’s salary, about 25% said yes. Offers of more compensation changed the view of only one person. Somehow, the offer of compensation made the prospect of a toxic waste dump less tolerable than it was when no compensation was offered. What could account for this strange, apparently irrational phenomenon? Consider: the people offered no compensation had only one reason to say yes—public duty. In contrast, the citizens offered compensation had the same public duty, plus money. Surely two reasons to say yes are stronger than one. To explain this peculiar result, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997) suggested that sometimes motives that one might expect to be complementary might actually compete. For the uncompensated respondents, the question was, “what are my responsibilities as a citizen?” For the compensated respondents, there were two questions. The first question was, “should I answer this as a citizen or as a self-interested individual?” The offer of compensation provided the implicit answer that self-interest should govern the decision. Then they approached the second question: “how much is health and safety worth to me?” And their answer to that question was obviously “a lot more than they’re willing to pay me.” For me, this simple study captures vividly what Kasser, Cohn, Kanner, and Ryan (2007) argue in their important paper. Corporate capitalism is not psychologically inert. It does not simply take people as they are and cater to their varied goals and desires. It promotes some goals and desires and minimizes others. It encourages values like materialism, individualism, and competition that compete with and crowd out other values that may better serve both societies and individuals. Indeed, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee even coined the term “motivational crowding out” to explain their result. Just how significant a phenomenon is crowding out? As Frey and Oberholzer-Gee, and I think Kasser et al. understand it, crowding out, though significant, is a context dependent phenomenon. In a particular circumstance, self-interested, individualistic, materialistic values can “crowd out” civic virtue. But civic virtue, or social and moral concern, remains a part of human beings. Their expression is just suppressed. Said another way, fundamental characteristics of human nature are not being destroyed, or even altered. They are just not given full opportunity for expression. I do not want to minimize the significance of this phenomenon if it is true. If people are not given the opportunity to express important values and pursue important goals, there are likely to be profound psychological consequences. That said I want to suggest a gloomier possibility. It is at least possible that when various non-capitalist values are suppressed, they eventually shrivel up and die. It is possible, in other words, that capitalism remakes people into different creatures—creatures who are suited to live in a world completely dominated by market institutions.