Optimising for the common good - aka Stage 6 of Kohlberg’s framework
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 5 mins.
Summary: it’s natural to look after #1, but this natural tendency is often bad for nature (the common good)... and ultimately therefore bad for #1!
Writing from a first world country
There are many different circumstances in the world
This blog is written very much from the lens of someone living safely and securely in a first world country; if someone is living in a situation where their basic needs are not guaranteed, there is a completely different take
Me, myself and… ok other people too!
School is a single player game.
Politics is a team game.
Humanity is an everyone game… AKA the common good / greater good.
Unfortunately, typically you are not taught to look at the world from an ‘everyone view’ :(.
Concentric circles - the world is more and more interconnected, more and more the common good matters the most
For some reason, IMO we are not necessarily taught to always look for the common good at the broadest level
Sometimes we think purely selfishly
Sometimes we try to be selfless and think of others, but even then we may not be thinking beyond one or two layers
Eg. Many parents want to make sure they give their children a better life. This is admirable and can involve a lot of sacrifice and selflessness. Having said this, the optimisation is still for a smaller subset of humanity (in this case, family), not humanity at large
Large egos look after themselves, small egos look after everyone at large ;)!
The world is now positive sum, the world used to be zero sum. So many of our stories are zero sum.
In hunter gatherer times the output of the world was fixed. The amount of food was independent of human input.
So if there were less humans then more of the fixed amount of roaming animals and berries on trees for you!
Now output is dependent on humans. It used to be that 90% of humans were farmers, now 1.3% of Australian workers feed everyone in Australia!
People cannot not see 1st order outcomes (things that directly affect them). Typically people don’t see 2nd order outcomes (things that indirectly affect them).
People cannot not see 1st order outcome… AKA are good at looking after their direct needs... AKA good at playing single player / team player games.
Typically people don’t immediately see or think about 2nd order outcomes… AKA are not good at playing the ‘everyone game’... AKA optimising for the common good.
What is right at a 1st order outcome only level for one sub group is often at odds with what is optimal for the common good (everyone) when you include both 1st and 2nd order outcomes. Best. Sentence. Ever!
Example:
Today there are more types of jobs than there have ever been. By some counts more than 500,000 jobs vs ~400 jobs 200 years ago.
Today there are more things to do than ever before.
There are however more laws (rules) than ever before. So there are actually more things we cannot do than ever before. But these 1st order hindrances allow greater 2nd order superordinate outcomes they stop.
So IMO good laws are ‘positive sum’. I wrote a blog on this called Positive sum principles increase the opportunity set.
If there is a new law, most people see this as bad
“New law 1st order outcome stops me from doing X”
However, often it is the 2nd order outcomes that are positive
“New law allows 2nd order outcomes Y and Z. the 2nd order outcomes are greater in value than X, which is what the 1st order outcome is stopping. Overall this is positive, so I should like the law”
So while there is more we cannot do than ever before there is actually net net more new that we can actually do than ever before!
The common good from a company perspective
The common good is the best overall outcome for the following:
The individual
The team
Management
The company
Humanity
Example 1 - internally: someone is under performing and it’s prior to the end of their probation period, what do you do?
Option A: put the person on a Performance Improvement Plan
Option B: don’t let the person pass their probation
Who is potentially involved:
The person
The person’s team leaders
The above are the people we immediately think of who are within 1-2 concentric circles
The person’s team members
Other employees at the company
The company itself
The company’s clients
The above are people we may not immediately think of. Some are within 1-2 concentric circles, some are beyond this
Performance Improvement Plans and execution are typically very draining for all involved, however this doesn’t mean the outcome isn’t worth it.
When you look at just the person, or just the person and the people involved directly in running the Performance Improvement Plan, you may think it is worth it if you can see the potential
The person just needs more direct feedback and guidance to succeed. Structure will help this
We can get them to a good place. We know they mean well and have good intentions. Short term pain for the person implementing the plan, but potential long term gain for the team
When can the Performance Improvement Process have 2nd order outcomes that outweigh this?
IMO doing the performance improvement process isn’t worth it if it kills the company. You might save one employee but you have a dead company so no one has jobs.
IMO doing the performance improvement process isn’t worth it if it means you lose a star performer. You might save one currently low performer but lose a high performer.
"Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.”
So often the best performers get the biggest problems.
If you are not going to kill the company or lose a high performer then IMO you should try to go through the performance improvement process even if it’s very draining! However it can feel really heartless not to want to go through with a performance improvement process if you are only thinking about ‘the individual’.
Example 2 - externally: what kind of contracts do you want to have with customers?
Let’s say you sell a subscription product on a yearly contract (ie subscription for 12 months).
Some of your customers come to you and say ‘would you consider a 3 year contract at a discounted price vs rolling 1 year contracts?’ What should you do?
IMO the best overall outcome (common good) is that your product is high value and positive sum for the world. As such you need ideally the best signal for if the product is adding value as possible. One articulation of this is that you want to make it as easy as possible for your clients to leave you if they don’t like your product.
So while it might seem like a good thing for the company to lock in 3 years of revenue. While it might seem good for the client to get a discount. Overall (common good) this might make it so the company focuses on doing ‘3 year deals’ instead of ‘making the product great and explaining why it’s great to customers’. Overall on a 10 year ‘humanity view’ the outcome is worse for both the company and it’s customers… although in the short term it might feel like it’s better for both!
+++++++++++++
Extra reading for fun - not counted in the 5 mins
The common good from a non-company perspective
A good way to convince someone to agree with you is to pick a sub-set they are in (eg tribe) where the optimal solution matches what you want. People see this logic making sense… and normally don’t see the bigger picture (common good).
Then if someone doesn’t agree with your logic they are ‘evil’. But your logic makes sense for a subset not the whole set.
Optimising for a subset is… sub optimal. Optimising for the whole set is… happy!
Example - politics
Eg you are doing an entry level role at a bakery. The optimal 1st order outcome is to lift the minimum wage.
Eg you are the owner of a bakery. The optimal 1st order outcome is to not lift the minimum wage.
What is the actual best outcome for the common good? This is complicated. (Stupid example Duncan… I’m trying to pick something in politics that isn’t politicised and this right now is the best I got!)
I’m a Rawlsian who thinks the ‘veil of ignorance’ makes sense.
DA articulation of the veil (I’m sorry if this is not exactly what Rawls says):
The veil of ignorance says that maximising for the 1st order the amount of opportunity for those at the bottom of society leads to 2nd order outcomes that maximise for society as a whole.
Analogy: the economy is a ‘pie’. Capitalists are good at growing the pie, socialists are good at splitting the pie. Rawls says that if you 1st order optimise for the biggest slice of the pie for those at the bottom then those at the bottom are much more likely to reach their potential (ie less impediments) and that as such 2nd order you have the biggest overall pie size. So, overall even those at the top get a bigger amount of absolute pie… even if their relative percentage of pie might be less. As an example, in this way, taxes done well are positive sum.
Ie there is no trade off if done well, everyone wins from optimising (1st order goal) for the max amount of opportunity for those at the bottom of society.
Inequality as a feature or as a bug? Rawls says done well that inequality is a feature not a bug, that the only inequality you allow is that which increases the amount of opportunity for those at the bottom of society.
What to do with minimum wage then? IMO you want to have a living minimum wage (ie opportunity not blocked due to not enough money to live, IMO the US minimum wage is too low) and then you want to have the maximum number of jobs with living wage+ pay. So basically it’s complicated.
IMO political parties communications often don’t try to show the common good, just optimising the for one sub segment of humanity and dividing people :(.
Example - mothers
In general mothers are some of the best people rolling around. IMO my mother has done more to make me into the I am person today than anyone else. Towards me, she is selfless in the extreme.
Mothers were also the main ones doing toilet paper hoarding in early COVID.
Mothers were optimising for ‘their family’. Not for the outcomes of eg all Australians. This was… natural!
Addendum… to make sure I don’t seem dumb: Linking the concentric circles of common good to Kholberg’s moral development framework.
I wrote a blog about credibility. Kholberg was a profession at Harvard. This ‘credibility’ means that if you don’t understand Kholberg’s framework it’s because you don’t get it not because it doesn’t make sense. Haha.
So I’m using this credibility to ‘bolster’ the random thoughts I make here :).
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development - harvard professor
One way of articulating Kholberg's stages is what 'group' / 'subset' are you considering when making a decision?
eg what might be optimal for you individually is worse for the broader group. If you realise this you are then are comfortable to propose a different course of action.
So IMO one rearticulation of the stages is a set of concentric circles:
Where stage 6 is considering everyone.
IMO a Kantian universal ethic is where you say 'if i was to be able to pretend to be everyone in society what is the overall best principle to apply here'. ie the average best principle to optimise wellbeing for all. not what is the best 1st order outcome for you as unfortunately IMO much political voting is :(.
The 'veil of ignorance' was John Rawls' idea for how to structure an economy. IMO this is a ‘stage 6’ approach to thinking about how to structure an economy.