“Share-The-Spoils”

The psychological experiment on 3-year old kids is interesting because it shows that whether kids want to share marbles depends on how they get them, even if the allocation of marbles is same. It reveals some rationale of the relationship between efforts and rewards in teamwork. When kids believe that both of the pay efforts to finish the goal, they are more willing to share and balance the rewards. However, when they earn something without efforts and participation of another kid, they are not willing to share. The author also mentions some application of this concept in real world, such as the different scale in taxation. He suggests that governors may want to focus on the fairness in the procedure, rather than its distribution. 

In my personal experience, I think we always evaluate whether it is beneficial or indifferent condition for us to share the spoils. Completing exam review as a group on google doc can be a good example. Even though knowledge is a public good, under such condition, students need to pay efforts and time to gain knowledge in order to gain a better grade. When doing a google doc, there is distribution on everyone's work. Some people might do more and have better understanding of the materials while other people might contribute less in the production. However, after the study guide is finished, everyone "share-the-spoils" no matter how many efforts and time you contribute. In common sense, it is a case that people who participate in the process have rights to share the production. And for people who entirely not contribute to the study guide, other people might be reluctant to share their works with them. I think the nature of whether share the spoils or not in this situation really depends on whether team member pay the minimum efforts or not. I think it is similar to the first case: the kids see the efforts of their partners, which enable them more or less better off.

Another example of "share-the-spoils" will be group projects. Most professors develop the rubrics and grade group projects based on an ideal condition, which everyone contributes at least something valuable and collaborate with team members. I remembered one of my communication class listed "don't talk to me if someone is free rider in your group project, you should try to solve it because it is a communication class" in the rubrics. In most cases, group projects allow people to contribute minimal efforts to share a grade of the whole group. Even though some courses have group member evaluation after projects done, it might change the unfairness in distribution, not the procedure. I think this is also an example of difference in distributive unfairness and procedural fairness. Even though the purpose of group projects is training collaborative skills by teamwork, it will always cause unfairness and sometimes hard to solve.

After reading the article, I also have a question on the author’s critique about taxation on rich people. Even though changing the distribution is not an effective way to prevent unfairness, I suggest that the gap in wealth will be larger in the second generation. As in the experiment, kids don’t want to share something they assign without efforts. For the second generation of very-rich, they might consider less on others’ efforts on the wealth they possess. Even if it is my personal assumptions, I still think the paradox here is interesting and I am willing to know more opinions on the taxation issue.