The current favor economy achieves at least some of its power from our ever enfeebled immunities to shame. When everyone is forced to become a brand, everyone requires relentless promotion. So you tweet the accomplishments of distasteful colleagues because if you don’t, they might not tweet yours, and somehow, despite your resistance, you’ve been sold on the notion that you ought to take measure of yourself in terms of 140-character assessments made by people you only vaguely know.
December 22, 2013
In a game of favor exchanging, "players did not perform favors because of what happened in the past, but because of what they anticipated would happen in the future."
"It is entirely possible for an individual to perform a favor without having received any favors in the past... as long as the individual was not supposed to have received any favors in the past."
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8 comments:
Seems like that article was about favors in the private sector and the unequal power to give and receive such favors, usually based on wealth.
Of course, being the NYT, it assiduously avoided mention of the power to grant and receive favors conferred to so-called public servants by the ceaseless expansion of government, and the self-interest, unfairness and inequality that represents.
Now EDH, it's the 'corporations,' fault. Wall Street fat-cats and tycoons and all these game-players.
You big greedy profiteer.
It's broken and it can't be fixed again!
Where shall meaning be found!
There's mountains of neurological and sociological evidence proving that we're loving, nurturing, morally capable human beings.
Come back tp the bosom of the Gray Lady. Come suckle on her genderless, postmodern communitarian, feminist, activist, environmentalist, Left Of Center teat.
MODO's there. Paul Krugman, too.
Come do arts and crafts on the play rug, and collect your benefits. Come sing songs and read novels and do your ethics workbook.
Come get your warm milk while Big Daddy Government will stand firmly behind, casting a long shadow.
OK. That sounds like basic civilization. Call it bringing a small offering with you which acknowledges the other person has the importance for you to think about them.
The hairy part is over giving which sends a message that you are the greater one in the relationship.
But one way or the other it gets the attention of the donee.
Copybook Heading: It used to be taught that people who do charitable works and expect to get temporal credit for such acts have accrued no credit in heaven. They have already received their reward.
Of course, if you do not believe in heaven, then getting credit on earth is all there is.
We are not a brand. We are a commodity. Human lives lack intrinsic value, from conception to death. While this is related to economics, it is not exclusively, nor principally, a product of it. It begins with the normalization of elective abortion of an unwanted Barack, Ginia, or Nancy. It is an outcome of a progressive morality which degrades individual human lives.
Please refer to the philosophy of Don Corelone in "The Godfather" as to doing favors in advance.
The article says that we now have "a money culture, which has made the excesses of even the ’80s seem comparatively quaint . . . ." I thought the Reagan Era was the Age of Greed. Is the NYT telling us that the Obama Era is even more greedy and opportunistic? I think my head will explode.
Congress. That's why it doesn't work.
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