There are so many misunderstandings here that I don’t know where to start. I also don’t know how deep I want to get into it, since I have answered this question (or questions related to it) four or five times in the past.
First of all, we already have a prestige based system. It’s called—wait for it—money! It seems sad, but most people don’t know what money really is. Money is a metaphor for value. What is value? Well, it is the prestige in which we hold something or someone.
All the money in the world is a metaphor for all the goods and services in the world. You can print more money or take money out of the system, but it’s still the same—it stands for all the goods and services in the world. When there’s more money, it takes more to buy stuff. When there’s less money, it takes less to buy stuff. But it’s silly to say things are worth more or less. They are what they are, an money is a metaphor for how valuable we think the goods or services are.
People who make or provide more of what others want are held in higher esteem. They are more valuable to people They have higher prestige since they do more for us.
There is an exception to this—and that is altruistic people. They do stuff with no exchange of money, although they are very important to people. Money is good at measuring value, but it doesn’t measure some things that are important to people very well (or at all).
Anyway, we created money as a convenience. It helps us measure the value of what we exchange without have to cut a horse in half in order to buy one pig.
The second major point I want to make is about what motivates people. Motivation can be divided up into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. All the systems I see mentioned here—money, ticks, gold stars, etc, are extrinsic motivators. The problem with extrinsic motivators is that they only motivate as long as the motivator is there. Take the money or prestige away, and people stop doing it. I mean, are you going to work in the sewage treatment plant because you love the smell? Most of our world works with extrinsic motivators because rewards available for an activity are the best way to make sure the things we, as a society, want done get done.
Intrinsic motivation comes from inside. You do something simply for the pleasure of doing it. Like on fluther. The only reason why people answer questions here is because they enjoy doing it and they enjoy the interactions arising from it. It’s a way to make friends. It’s a way to find a place in the web of humanity where you can actually feel if you matter or not.
Some people raise their kids to get A’s by paying them for the A. Surprise, surprise. If the payment goes, so do the A’s. Other parents raise their kids to work hard just for the enjoyment of learning. You can never take that away, and such people work hard for enjoyment the rest of their lives (even if they have to do it during their fee time).
Another thing that money may or may not measure is relationships. In the sociological world, they call this social capital. Our relationships can be valuable monetarily as well as in terms of prestige, but they don’t have to be. Social capital gives you access to many benefits, though—connections that allow you to get better jobs, or more services for your neighborhood, etc, etc. Being held in high esteem is an advantage, and it does translate into wealth, although probably not as precisely as direct exchange of goods and services for money.
Anyway, prestige and money are intertwined in ways that can not be easily disentangled, if they can be disentangled at all. They both mean substantially similar things. They are about status—which is a constantly changing target, as the things that other people need change and as our ability to provide what others need (whether widgets, art or friendship) rises and falls.
The real reason we have attempts to change our current methods of establishing prestige is that people without it usually think they should have more. When I graduated from college, it was enormously frustrating because I graduated during a recession and I didn’t have a job. I thought I was very talented, so someone should give me a job. Socialism sounded very nice to me because I thought it would somehow be wise enough to reconcile these inequities. I didn’t understand that, while it gave everyone jobs, it didn’t necessarily give them the right jobs.
As I grew older, I learned more about work and how to get things done (things I had no clue about right out of college), and slowly I gained resources and prestige. People came to know who I was and what I could do, and they sought me out for help. I realize from my perspective now that my opinion of my abilities straight out of college was way out of line.
It wasn’t easy having to live in the YMCA and then in a dump way out in the badlands of Brooklyn, with three or four people in a three room apartment. It wasn’t easy finding a job that, at a time when my friends were making 10K a year, earned me 7K. But I learned a lot, and I was doing political work that I thought was important and would help make the world a better place. I wasn’t just working for myself. I was working for everyone.
My jobs have all been like that. I don’t make as much money as my peers, but I do work that, I hope, helps a much wider group of people than if I was a manager at a bank or something. There are times when I wish I did have a job that paid a lot, because they it is so much easier to show you should have prestige.
I think that we all—no, I know we all want prestige. It’s built into us as tribal animals. I’m fairly sure we think we have less prestige than we deserve. We wonder why that it, and it is easier to point to a system that doesn’t measure it properly than to point to oneself. I’ve done that most of my life. It’s only lately that I’ve come to trust the market. I figure now that if it doesn’t make me any money, then it isn’t worth nearly what I thought it was worth. But then, I’m intrinsically motivated. I believe in what I do. So I do it whether anyone else thinks it’s worthwhile or not. It’s the right thing to do, and that gives me pleasure.
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