Encouragement Or Bribe?
Shakodu
The work What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel raised four “classic cases” about the moral limits of markets, causing people to rethink about markets:Can all things be measured by money?Where is the moral limits of markets? Will money lead to “inequality” or “be the most just means and results”？
Do all the circumstances above appear only in the United States? The answer is no. With the initial establishment and gradual improvement of socialist market economic system inland, social economy develops rapidly. At the same time, it is noticeable that market values exist at almost every sphere of our lives. It is mentioned by the author that some parents would like to promise children with material incentives in return of their hardwork in learning.Then the problom arises that if material reward is really the best way to inspire children to learn.Here I would like to introduce the concepts of market incentives and bribes and then talk about the dialectical relationship of them.
Learning is to get knowledge and make ourselves more excellent, the attitude of which is what should be protected. While money incentives tend to lead children to regard learning as a means of obtaining material benefits, in which point of view the full meaning and value of learning is to bring money (or expensive material incentives).when the method of encouragement produces a reaction like this, it turned into bribery. It does not arise children’s fervour to learn , instead, it is more like that parents pay their children to learn with money to achieve their own purposes.At this time,encouragement with money would corrode the attitude which should have been protected as we mentioned above. Then we say that this encouragement is more like a waste of money,which seems to be a invalid measures and is likely to bring a negative effect.
Not only does material encouragement exist in family education, it is also widespread in schools and that’s what we call scholarship system. It can’t be denied that scholarships can provide kids from families of modest income with potential help , but if students are studying drive by high scholarships, it should be said that such a scholarship system tarnished and eroded the meaning of study. If the scholarship system of schools does not inspire students’ pure enthusiasm to learn, it could be called a bribery,by which schools achieve their own purposes(to enhance the rate of enrollment or to enhance fame). Only when students have a correct understanding of learning,the scholarship system can be healthy and effective .
Does pure money encouragement woks well? I think this encouragement can only be a solution of urgent moment, just as the saying goes, \people\it may not be feasible in the long term. When the original non-market encouragement is excluded by the market encouragement, the encouragement turns into bribes and the effect will be reduced to a great extent. Take the encouragement to employees given by business managers of Foxconn for example: why is Foxconn still faced with frequent staff jumping and many other issues even though they announced in public that the company will conduct basic salary adjustment of the staff in the mainland? The answer is that when managers put money encouragement as the only way to motivate employees,the staff will tend to form the
values that money talks. When the employees is spoiled by money, they form a wrong mindset, and then the behavior of encouragement becomes a bribe. Foxconn’s strict militarization of management and the lack of spirit care to the staff , did not raise employee's sense of belonging within the company and identity of the organization, causing employees’ dissatisfaction with the enterprise, which eventually leads to tragedies.
Market values are corroding the spheres of life they should not dominate, pushing out other values we should cherish. In terms of education, we should not take education as a marketed product or a commodity. The meaning of education is to make us acquire the ability to grow into a citizen with more integrated personality. Similarly, in the enterprises, an access to money is not the only motivation of the staff’s improvement of performance, employees are devoted to the enterprise in the case that they recognize the enterprise's corporate cultur and agree with the organization's common vision.
We do not deny the fuction of money,what we are opposed to is that the market will transform the things and attitudes that we cherished into goods purchased by money. It is feasible that we treat money as a way of encouragement, but material encouragement should not goes solely. An combination of material encouragement and spiritual encouragement is perhaps a viable option.