One Upmanship

Here's an interesting commentary about one upmanship ...

The Downside when you one-up others

This inbuilt competitive urge compels us to engage in behaviour that's mutually destructive

TODAY Weekend • November 3, 2007

Charles Tan

It is past midnight and your eyes are heavy with fatigue. You take yet another sip of coffee. "I must finish this," you reason, "or somebody else will beat me to it."

We're all too familiar with the scenario — pushing ourselves to study harder, work longer, get richer. What I find disconcerting is that all too often, the only reason why Jack puts in 11-hour days is that Jill puts in 10.

To be sure, I am a firm advocate of competition, for it usually has a positive effect on society in general. However, a problem arises when competition devolves into a tawdry arms race in which precious resources are employed in negation of each other, with no absolute advancement on either side.

One such example is Singapore's mad scramble for paper qualifications, of which, I too am an unfortunate casualty. While basic education is largely necessary for cognitive development, it would seem that most of us rightly view tertiary education as nothing more than a signal of ability for the consideration of our prospective employers. My dad reminisces how, once upon a time, post-graduate education was something only the elite could achieve — and post-graduate grads were treated like the rock stars of the corporate world. He laments: "Nowadays, they're everywhere! If I threw a rock at random, I'd probably hit someone with an MBA."

Indeed, the proliferation of degree-holders means that many from my generation will find themselves having to tack on certificate after certificate in a desperate bid to stay marginally employable.

American mathematician John Nash's work on microeconomic mechanics and game theory also identifies such a situation as a "prisoner's dilemma" — a natural equilibrium in which the parties involved will be forced to choose the option most detrimental to all. In essence, his work accurately encapsulates Man's morbid desire for mutual destruction. Our inherent need to one-up our colleagues compels us to engage in pernicious backstabbing or otherwise unconstructive activity.

Economic studies confirm that it is not absolute wealth that determines happiness but the relative status of the individual to his peers that matters. These studies also reveal the inconvenient truth — that there exists a capacity for schadenfreude in all of us.

Here's an interesting thought experiment for women: Picture a world in which no one wears stiletto heels versus an alternative universe in which everyone uses them.If we naively assume height to be the main reason for donning heels, then it is fairly obvious that in either scenario, all women would have the same differences in height, relative to each other. Hence, if all women could agree to boycott these ancient torture devices, then there would be no reason to use them.However, given that all the women in this real world are either wearing sneakers or flats, there is a great incentive to wear heels since this will make a woman look relatively taller and more elegant compared to her peers. And so, we come to the hilarious conclusion that the women of this world will be forced to live with their prisoner's dilemma when it comes to high heels.

So, is there a way out of such an uncomfortable equilibrium — be it in the world of high heels or the rat race? Nash proposes that the prisoner's dilemma can be resolved by tweaking the rules to change the equilibrium result. The most commonly proposed solution involves the use of collective action (such as via trade unions or the mafia) to punish defectors. But I would hardly advocate the arbitrary abuse of power in dealing with such problems. Trading a greater evil for a lesser one simply makes no sense at all.As technological advances change the way information is mined and distributed, so will the tenets that underpin present society. The day we are able to learn all the pertinent characteristics of a person by a mere handshake or DNA sample will be the day that educational testing and elaborate courtships lose their relevance to us.

But must we really wait for the advent of such incredible Gattaca-like systems before we can put an end to this foolishness?While I have shamelessly exalted the virtues of greed in my previous articles, I have never forgotten that making money is meaningless if you can't stop to spend it. Hence, it follows that to break free of any arms race, we need to set ambitious but well-defined goals for ourselves rather than chase some evanescent benchmark; forever trying to keep up with the Joneses.It is certainly possible that one day, we will embrace some heightened form of global socialism to achieve optimal equilibrium but given the current state of affairs, it is more probable that the end will come only when there is no one left to fight it.

The writer is currently studying for his MSc in Finance and Economics at the London School of Economics.