Henry Smith – 21/09/2018
Abstract –
It has been a longstanding aspect of society’s structure than individuals are paid different amounts for the work that they do. A farmer, a soldier and a doctor – over centuries if not millennia – have been paid differing amounts for their work. A challenge to this system had not been done until the industrialisation of Western society. In recent centuries however, people have begun to question the notion that a person in one vocation ought to be paid differently to someone in another line of work. The principle of fairness and equity has been evoked by both sides of the debate. The financial crash and worldwide economic downturn brought these concerns into sharper focus at the beginning of this decade, with technological advancements and the looming prospect of widespread automation of the workplace opening up whole new possibilities as to whether or not people need or indeed ought to be paid differing amounts for their work. Those who defend the current system in which an individual in one line of work is paid differently to someone in another line of work often argue that paying people different amounts – differential reward – is necessary in order to attract those who are most able to the most important jobs in society. By necessity, it is argued, a doctor must be paid differently to the farmer or the soldier in order to attract those with the highest ability to the positions of importance. This essay aims to challenge this claim by critiquing some of the principles that underpin it, ultimately positing an alternative system that ceases to use differential reward. This essay does not attempt to provide an exhaustive account of either the current system and its flaws and merits, nor indeed an exhaustive account of the alternative being posited; it instead seeks to challenge lay the groundwork for a debate about a key aspect of society’s structure.
It is argued that it society must use a system of differential reward in order to induce the most able individuals in society to occupy the most important positions in the workforce. This contention rests upon the principle that there is a difference in functional importance between positions in the workforce. This essay will demonstrate that there is no difference in functional importance upon which the necessity of differential monetary reward rests. Then, an alternative form of motivation to monetary reward which is a more efficient motivator shall be outlined and it shall demonstrate that, even if monetary reward is the most efficient way of motivating people, the consequences of the inequality it generates render it less morally acceptable than alternative forms of motivation. These arguments will demonstrate that paying people different amounts to get the most talented to perform the most important roles is unnecessary and ought to be abandoned.
The thesis that differential monetary reward is necessary in society is depicted in ‘Some Principles of Stratification’ by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore. Davis and Moore, both in that essay and other works, emphasise that they are not justifying inequality resulting from differential monetary reward, merely explaining its existence.[1] There are nuances which expand upon the thesis but, it is asserted that differential monetary reward is a necessary consequence of the need to fill jobs of higher functional import with the most capable people.[2] Davis and Moore attempt to define the parameters of functional importance, arguing that positions which contribute to the survivability of society have higher functional importance.[3] All jobs are said to in some way perform a specific ‘function’ – such as ‘producing/extracting resources’, ‘defending society/the people’ or even ‘making people happy’ – from which is derived the broader function of a job; it’s contribution to the survivability of society. The functional importance of a job rests on the function it performs – producing resources vs making people happy for example – and to what level it performs it (how many resources are produced). The contention, that differing functional importance of jobs necessitates attracting the most able people and so requires differential monetary reward, is fundamentally flawed though because all jobs have equal functional import.
As Melvin Tumin correctly points out “…all acts and structures must be judged positively functional in that they constitute essential portions of the status quo…”.[4] In essence, as jobs themselves comprise part of the structure of society – the status quo – the performance of any job contributes to that status quo and therefore contributes to the survival of that society. A refuse collector contributes to the survivability of his society because his is a society in which the role of refuse collector exists; were he to not do his job then the society would not survive as a society without refuse collectors would exist instead. Tumin’s response though can be seen to slightly side-step the issue, where Davis and Moore speak of contributing to the survival of society it may be more accurate to say that a jobs functional importance rests in its contribution to the survival of people in society. Nonetheless, even on these grounds it can be maintained that the functions which jobs perform for society seem intuitively to be equally necessary for the good of that society.
People can readily ascent to the fact that keeping people healthy is as important for the survival of a society as keeping people safe, happy, well-educated and so on. To accept this and yet contend that certain jobs which perform these equally important functions have themselves, different levels of importance seems highly contradictory – doctors, midwives, cleaners, refuse collectors are all integral to the process of keeping us healthy in society. Their efficacy in their function also seems dependent on one another. Likewise, therapists, entertainers and sportspeople are integral to the happiness of a society (though their role is not limited to this function). Richard Simpson backs this analysis when he correctly points out that a juggler and a proprietor for a bowling alley perform the same function equally; if a job performs an essential function in society – and legal jobs which do not do so are difficult to discern – then the job is as essential as any other job that performs any such function.[5] Any difference between the benefit to society that the juggler and the bowling alley proprietor provide is indeterminable at best, non-existent at worst. It seems highly arbitrary to contend that jobs which perform the same essential functions are of differing levels of import and that functions have different levels of import too.
Davis attempted to respond to this criticism by arguing that, though a specific determinate of functional importance of differing jobs is difficult, rough assessments can be easily made, arguing that countries during wartime make such assessments – during the Second World War certain professions were exempt from conscription in Britain because of the contribution the job made to the country, these included chemical factory workers for example.[6] This though, as George Huaco states, is a mode of society (total warfare) in which there is a specific goal to which that society is oriented – victory in warfare.[7] Outside of such a system goal – where society is not solely aiming at military victory – there seems to be nothing upon which we can base a hierarchy of functional import for jobs and so the notion of differing functional importance of positions is a fallacy.[8] As such, the idea that all functions within society (health, happiness, safety etc.) are of equal import, and that therefore the jobs which perform them are also of equal import, seems more capable of assent than the contrary notion. Therefore, the necessity of differential reward in order to get the most able to perform roles, on the basis of their differing functional importance, can be rejected.
In one way then, the necessity of unequal pay is capable of being rejected. But, even if we grant that positions have different functional importance, there are still further ways in which the notion that inequality as a necessary fact of society can be rejected. This is because alternative forms of motivation can be persuasively postulated, as Tumin notes.[9] One such example would be the “instinct of workmanship” as depicted by Thorsten Veblen.[10] Paying people to do their job can, and does occasionally, have the undesirable consequence of meaning that some people will perform the bare minimum duties required of them in order to receive their pay. Whilst perfectly legal, such a state of affairs is less desirable than one in which a person is constantly seeking to perform the best that they can in their role. In order for money to remain the motivator in the latter, more desirable state, a complex system of pay arrangements would be necessary and people would do ‘easier’ jobs in order to maximise their incomes on this new pay scheme. Instead, what could be adopted is a system in which, rather than money being the motivator for work, a sense of workmanship is the fundamental ethos of society; a desire to perform the duties of your job to the best of your ability.[11] Veblen believes that we all possess this ideal yet the need for money has clouded it.[12] This desire to excel in your work can go along with a notion that all jobs are of equal import and it seems, intuitively, that it would more directly develop productivity, with people seeking to excel at what they do and perform their duties to the highest standard, than any monetary reward system is capable of doing.
It can reasonably be contended that the commodification of a relationship, rendering duties as part of a monetary exchange, worsens the relationship and hinders the performance of those duties. This is exemplified by the scenario depicted by Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner when they discuss parents in Haifa, Israel, who became less prompt in picking up their children after school when a system of fines was introduced.[13] The monetary incentive to collect their children on time was a worse motivator than the social motivators of respect for the staff who were having to stay late to care for their children. What is more, the view of the monetary incentive overrode those very same social motivators. This case study seems to indicate that the motivator promulgated by Tumin and Veblen, as opposed to differential monetary reward schemes, would be better at getting the most able people into the most important jobs. Differential monetary reward cannot therefore be maintained as in any way necessary for that same purpose.
Tumin highlights a further consequence of differential pay which weakens its efficacy as a way of inducing the most able to perform important jobs; the inequality which arises from differential rewards means that society becomes stratified and poorer individuals can be cut off from performing important jobs (either because they are unable to get the required training or because of they are socially excluded).[14] This means that the society becomes “…dysfunctional for the discovery of talents in the next generation.”[15] Davis acknowledged that familial relations do indeed cause material wealth to be assigned irrespective of ability – a person can derive wealth not just from their own skill but also that of their parents and grandparents who share their own wealth with them.[16] Once inequality builds up to significant levels, it becomes barrier for those less wealthy to access the education and opportunities required to adopt the positions of importance in society. The most able would potentially be systematically hindered from taking on the jobs of most important directly because of differential reward. Davis nonetheless maintained that differential monetary reward was still necessary in society as it leads to the most able being in the most important positions – excluding where family circumstance has affected the situation.[17] Regardless of this concession though, Tumin has demonstrated there to be an inherent flaw in the system as depicted by Davis and Moore. Differential monetary reward creates inequality, a necessary consequence of fulfilling the need for able people to perform important positions in society, and then systematically hinders future generations of potentially able people from doing those same important jobs in society. It habitually hinders the fulfilment of the very thing for which it is supposedly necessary. The meritocratic nature of society is supplanted by the quasi-virtue of genealogy, and even if this occurs only to a limited extent, it still fundamentally undermines the purpose for which differential monetary reward is used and the reason for tolerating inequality.
Already then, the thesis that monetary reward is necessary to get the most able people to perform the most important jobs has been demonstrated to be questionable, if not worthy of rejection outright. The final way in which I believe the thesis can be objected to centres upon the impact of differential monetary reward upon society. If it is granted that differential monetary reward (based upon the functional importance of a position in society) is the most efficient way of motivating talented people to perform the duties of that position, then a further claim must be borne out for the inequality which arises to be termed necessary. Namely, it must be demonstrated that the benefits in efficiency which differential monetary reward give (as opposed to an alternative system of motivation) are not outweighed by the detrimental impacts of the inequality in society which is a direct consequence of differential monetary reward. Does the motivating power of money to induce a doctor to do his job well, and all the moral and societal goods bound up in that, outweigh the moral and societal wrong bound up in the fact that some people in that society will be living on the ‘breadline’? The workmanship ideal (as a motivator) would not entail the moral wrongs that differential monetary reward would because people would be equally paid on some form of universal basic income or other such remuneration for their labour. People would not be materially unequal in the same way under such a system as they are currently. A utilitarian or deontological calculus would seem to suggest that, in such a case, differential monetary reward could not be morally sustained as a practice of society – the benefits in motivation do not match up to the goods of equality. To maintain otherwise, one would have to argue that an equal society – less efficiently motivated than the unequal society – is so severely inefficient that the structures of society would break down and in some way lead to more pain and suffering, or more duties unfulfilled, or more vices possessed than would otherwise be the case.
To conclude, the notion of differing functional importance, upon which the necessity for differential monetary reward is said to rest, has been demonstrated to be untenable. On top of this, the notion that money is an efficient and therefore necessary motivator has been shown to be flawed, with money an inferior motivator compared to possible alternatives and it has also been demonstrated in this essay that the ethical consequences of inequality cannot be argued to be outweighed by the efficiencies of money as a motivator. Therefore, the contention that it is necessary to pay people differing amounts to get the most able to perform the most important jobs is at best tenuous, at worst completely worthy of rejection.
[1] Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore, ‘Some principles of stratification’, American Sociological Review 10:2 (1944), 242.
[2] Davis and Moore, ‘Some principles of stratification’, 243.
[3] Ibid, 243-244.
[4] Melvin M. Tumin, ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis’, American Sociological Review 18:4 (1953), 388.
[5] Richard L. Simpson, ‘A modification of the functional theory for social stratification’, Social Forces 35:2 (1956), 132.
[6] Kingsley Davis, ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis: A reply’, American Sociological Review 18:4 (1953), 395.
[7] George A. Huaco, ‘The functionalist theory of stratification: Two decades of controversy’, Inquiry 9 (1966), 232.
[8] Huaco, ‘The functionalist theory of stratification’, 236.
[9] Tumin, ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis’, 391.
[10] Thorsten Veblen, ‘The instinct of workmanship and the irksomeness of labor’, American journal of sociology 4:2 (1898), 190.
[11] Veblen, ‘The instinct of workmanship and the irksomeness of labor’, 196.
[12] Ibid, 189.
[13] Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner, Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, 2nd edition (London, 2006), pp. 15-16.
[14] Tumin, ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis’, 389.
[15] Ibid, 389.
[16] Davis, ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis: A reply’, 394.
[17] Ibid.
Bibliography:
Davis, Kingsley., ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis: Reply’, American Sociological Review 18:4 (1953), 394-397.
Davis, Kingsley and Moore, Wilbert E., ‘Some principles of stratification’, American Sociological Review 10:2 (1944), 242-249.
Huaco, George A., ‘The functionalist theory of stratification: Two decades of controversy’, Inquiry 9 (1966), 215-240.
Levitt, Stephen and Dubner, Steven., Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, 2ndedition (London, 2006).
Tumin, Melvin M., ‘Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis’, American Sociological Review 18:4 (1953), 387-394.
Simpson, Richard L., ‘A modification of the functional theory for social stratification’, Social Forces 35:2 (1956), 132-137.
Veblen, Thorsten., ‘The instinct of workmanship and the irksomeness of labor’, American journal of sociology 4:2 (1898), 187-201.