Against Infinite Incentives

The most chilling aspect of Max Weber’s analysis of industrialization is the revelation (obvious once noted) that it began with an empirical failure of classical economics. Specifically, when industrialists tried to increase the supply of labor with higher wages, the increased demand — rather than stimulating supply — depressed it. Workers preferred to keep their incomes stable and work less as wages rose. Correcting this design flaw in human nature, required — on Weber’s account — a sort of divine intervention. Specifically, Protestantism tied work, whatever its worldly incentives, to eternal salvation. Which begs the question: To what extent are worldly economics underwritten by infinite, rather than finite, incentives. What do I mean by infinite incentives? Some examples might help.

• The exchange of a finite amount of labor for a finite amount money — the kind Adam Smith and Karl Marx were concerned with — provides a finite incentive.
• The exchange of an indeterminate, possibly ever-increasing amount of labor for an eternal afterlife provides an infinite incentive.
• Conversely, precarity provides an infinite disincentive. When workers would not work more because of higher wages, industrialists tried the reverse — lowering wages — with better effect. Workers were compelled to work, not to fulfill finite material needs, but to avoid the threat of their eternal non-existence.

It is as if capitalism corrected the human drive toward freedom with its pathological form, the desire to be free…