Comments on: Why cash makes you stupid (sometimes)

By: Theodore Hoppe

Theodore Hoppe — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:29:07 +0000

What supports your notion that big rewards, damages performance. For powerful people and little people alike, their job, foremost, is to make money, for themselves. Its less about making money for the company the further down the ladder you go. The people that were pushing through no money down mortgages knew that the people buying the homes would someday not be able to pay for the home. But the incentive was set up to get people into homes not to keep them in it. This is true right up the food chain; the bankers sold the mortgages, they were divided into other securities, and so on with everyone making money. The decisions by GM executives to under fund pension by $20 billion (or the congress raiding the Social Security Fund) had more to do with “passing the buck” than it does with the candle problem (functional fixedness or preutilization).

By: Theodore Hoppe

Theodore Hoppe — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:12:15 +0000

What supports your notion that big rewards, damages performance. For powerful people and little people alike, their job, foremost is to make money, for themselves. Its less about making money for the company the down the latter you go. The people that were pushing through no money down mortgages knew that the people buying the homes would someday not be able to pay for the home. But the incentive was set up to get people into homes not to keep them in it. This is true right up the food chain; the bankers sold the mortgages, they were divided into other securities, and so on with everyone making money. The decisions by GM executives to under fund pension by $20 billion (or the congress raiding the Social Security Fund) had more to do with “passing the buck” than it does with the candle problem (functional fixedness or preutilization)

By: Let’s diss incentives: why potential rewards are killing your creativity « Finite Attention Span

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:39:24 +0000

[...] Taylor writes about why cash makes you stupid sometimes. In sum, research suggests that giving people a financial incentive to solve complex problems [...]

By: Simon Watson

Simon Watson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:55:34 +0000

Harvard published some research on a related topic: http://ow.ly/heDT

By: carl allen

carl allen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:01:24 +0000

Should have actually said it …

Many powerful people in important jobs are testaments to the Peter principle.

When this happens, the first of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (cash) inevitably comes into play.

Thus the conclusion is not that big rewards damage their performance but that they take what they can get before they are pushed out.