Gift Exchange
After reading three articles, I think all three articles are trying to explain and demonstrate that every people are caring towards each other. But when there is an increase in competition(demand) and decrease in supply, one tends to think in one's shoes and try to satisfy one's own desires. Human being's nature is to protect oneself and earn benefit by caring and helping out others. I found all three articles interesting and I could relate various concepts such as altruism and fairness in articles to my experiences.
Altruism by definition is the unselfish acts to better the well-being of others disregarding the well-being of self. Altruism, gift exchange is voluntary act because people do not expect anything in return but do a favor for others. One of experiences that I could relate to altruism is my experience with TACS team. TACS (Tax Advisors for Champaign Society) is a volunteer team which helps people to report taxes. TACS is the registered student organization with student advisors which voluntarily study tax reporting system and help people to report taxes. Student advisors completed training course and acquired the VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) provided by IRS. I reached out for help to report taxes since I am a foreigner and it is very complicated and hard to get tax returns. They just asked me to submit the form 13614-C and client survey in order for them to get some information about me. When I made a reservation of the date and time of my preference, they give me information of the time and place to meet for consulting about tax returns. In my opinion, their works can be considered as voluntary act and it can be seen as altruism. They do not expect any return or benefit by providing tax report services. They are simply showing an act of kindness to help out people in needs of reporting taxes.
From the first article, it mentioned about share-the-spoils and I could relate this concept to my experience of group project. Currently, I am doing an internship and the recent project was about business consulting for video editing company. Our team is consisted of three trainees and one project manager. Our program manager gives the direction of the project and helps with the work. Three trainees, including me, divided various parts to research and made powerpoint slides that contains information about each part. In the process of making powerpoint slides, we discussed and helped each other out to find relevant and helpful resources to create a high quality slides and informations. Our project manager intermittently checked our works and gave advices to make a better outcome. Even though each of us were busy with exams and assignments, we worked together everyday to successfully finish the project. After the presentation, our project got praised and we could earn an opportunity of work on another project which deals with much bigger company. Because we all worked hard and collaborated to earn a gain, each of us got fair praise and opportunity for a next step.
It is very interesting that I could relate my experiences to various concepts mentioned in the articles and they had interesting examples using children in the experiments. Children are innocent and they don't think the situation deeply. Most children behave according to their nature and they are good examples to observe human's natural reactions. It was enjoyable to find out fairness matters in all settings, even for capuchin monkeys. I wonder who determines what is fair in different situations and settings.
Altruism by definition is the unselfish acts to better the well-being of others disregarding the well-being of self. Altruism, gift exchange is voluntary act because people do not expect anything in return but do a favor for others. One of experiences that I could relate to altruism is my experience with TACS team. TACS (Tax Advisors for Champaign Society) is a volunteer team which helps people to report taxes. TACS is the registered student organization with student advisors which voluntarily study tax reporting system and help people to report taxes. Student advisors completed training course and acquired the VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) provided by IRS. I reached out for help to report taxes since I am a foreigner and it is very complicated and hard to get tax returns. They just asked me to submit the form 13614-C and client survey in order for them to get some information about me. When I made a reservation of the date and time of my preference, they give me information of the time and place to meet for consulting about tax returns. In my opinion, their works can be considered as voluntary act and it can be seen as altruism. They do not expect any return or benefit by providing tax report services. They are simply showing an act of kindness to help out people in needs of reporting taxes.
From the first article, it mentioned about share-the-spoils and I could relate this concept to my experience of group project. Currently, I am doing an internship and the recent project was about business consulting for video editing company. Our team is consisted of three trainees and one project manager. Our program manager gives the direction of the project and helps with the work. Three trainees, including me, divided various parts to research and made powerpoint slides that contains information about each part. In the process of making powerpoint slides, we discussed and helped each other out to find relevant and helpful resources to create a high quality slides and informations. Our project manager intermittently checked our works and gave advices to make a better outcome. Even though each of us were busy with exams and assignments, we worked together everyday to successfully finish the project. After the presentation, our project got praised and we could earn an opportunity of work on another project which deals with much bigger company. Because we all worked hard and collaborated to earn a gain, each of us got fair praise and opportunity for a next step.
It is very interesting that I could relate my experiences to various concepts mentioned in the articles and they had interesting examples using children in the experiments. Children are innocent and they don't think the situation deeply. Most children behave according to their nature and they are good examples to observe human's natural reactions. It was enjoyable to find out fairness matters in all settings, even for capuchin monkeys. I wonder who determines what is fair in different situations and settings.
I needed some more information for understanding your first example. You said you are a foreigner. Are you here on a student visa or are you a permanent resident? (And if there are intermediate categories does one of them describe your situation better?) Then, it would have helped me to quote the rules about earning income in the U.S., depending on visa status. I no longer know what the rules are. I can understand that if you did have a paying job you might have to pay taxes on that, but you didn't supply the background information for me to understand whether that was the case.
ReplyDeleteThen, you attributed the support you got from VITA to altruism, but I wonder if that's actually true. I'd be curious about whether those who helped you were themselves foreign or domestic students. Often, as I understand, students volunteer for an RSO because of the credential earned from doing so. The credential, then, is some form of non-pecuniary compensation. For altruism to be the motive, there would be no compensation of any form. If a member of VITA didn't list that on his or her own resume, then it would be altruism as you said. But how would you know that?
Regarding what is fair - let me give a different angle on it. When people object to the the outcome, they often criticize the fairness of the process that determined the outcome. But if they were asked before the outcome was determined and if at that time they agreed to the process was fair, they'd have much less to object to after the fact. For young kids it might be hard to do this, but for teenagers I think it is possible and a useful approach.
I am here with a student visa and working on campus so I wanted to report taxes. But it was way too complicated for foreigners to report taxes and get overpaid taxes return. So I asked for help to TACS to deal with my taxes.
DeleteTACS members are foreign students who volunteer to help foreign people to report taxes. One of my friend is in TACS and he once said to me that he is doing it just to help others because he struggled to report taxes before. I know that he did it for volunteer and he did not put it on resume!
I could understand more about fairness after reading what you wrote. As I said, kids do not think deeply but if you are grown up, you will be able to think and process deeply. It is interesting to see at a different angle!