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© 2012 Sanjeev Sabhlok's revolutionary blog
Market Competitiveness of Remuneration
In any free market (in this case we are talking of the labour market) we are likely to get what we pay for. The forces of competition invariably drive the price of each commodity down to the point which reflects its true underlying value. Not all people are equally capable; so the best indicator of their value is their price or salary. Private companies are aware that they have to pay a premium for high-quality talent. Similarly, to attract high quality talent, APS remuneration has always been based on ‘market competitiveness’. Even at the senior levels, where it is not always practical to fully match private sector salaries, salaries are broadly comparable with the private sector. Senior public service managers in Australia are paid in the vicinity of Rs 1½ crores per year in equivalent dollars.
Indeed, the Whitlam Government of the early 1970s (in Australia) raised salaries and other work conditions of public servants to a level slightly above what purely competitive analysis would call for, so as to set an example for the community on good working conditions. ‘In some instances, employment conditions improved in advance of community standards, including paid maternity leave, increased annual leave, the extension of annual leave loading, flexible working hours, and changes to workers compensation and long service leave.’[i] Similarly, when pay competitiveness had eroded somewhat in the early 1980s, the Public Service Board reviewed salaries to ensure competitiveness with private sector salaries.
In the meanwhile, the discretion to offer different salaries to different public servants has increased significantly in the APS. In response to economic and technological change and the growth of specialization, the APS is now no longer treated as a single labour market with common employment standards. Each department and agency is empowered to develop its own remuneration policy within broad parameters. This means each department functions like an independent private sector company, attracting the best talent needed for its needs through flexible remuneration.
On the other hand, remuneration policy in India has been dictated like everything else not by common sense but by the ideology of Nehruvian socialism. Since equality is the be-all of the socialist model, the Cornwallis principle was reversed after independence and senior public service salaries were allowed to erode. This was done by fully compensating junior positions for inflation while senior executives were only partially compensated. According to the Fifth Pay Commission (1994–7) this ‘erosion was a consequence of a deliberate policy followed for a long time under the mistaken impression that impoverishment of the higher bureaucracy was an essential ingredient of a socialist pattern of society’.
Second, in India, civil servants are always exhorted to sacrifice for the sake of the country. While it is true that good civil servants are not driven only by money, they do expect to be looked after reasonably well as acknowledgement of their contributions and for the management burden they shoulder. In any event, it is improper for civil servants (or anyone else for that matter) to be asked to sacrifice. Indeed, the concept of sacrifice is anathema to a free society. A free citizen never sacrifices and never asks anyone for a sacrifice. If I were to have the occasion to save the life of a drowning child at the cost of my own, that would not be a sacrifice. Having voluntarily chosen such a course of action, possibly in a split second, I would have gained by setting a clear example of ethical behaviour for my children. What may appear to be altruism on the surface is often enlightened and reasoned selfishness – the ultimate virtue. Enlightened selfishness and so-called altruism merge seamlessly into one.[ii] As a general rule, each of us helps our society most by looking after ourselves and standing on our own feet. A free society is therefore only entitled to make an appeal to the self-interest of others.
[Note: This is an extract from my book, Breaking Free of Nehru]
[i] Public Service and Merit Protection Commission, Serving the Nation: 100 Years of Public Service, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2001, p.175.
[ii] As Charles Darwin noted, ‘Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe [...] an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another’ – in The Descent of Man, published in 1871.
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- The Agility of Modern Public Services #1
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Dear Sanjeev,
Regarding the last point about selfishness, that example is often debated in terms of morality. I think most of the debate is mis-directed. People often make choices that seem to be against their self-interest. Why does a person jump into a river to save a drowning child, even when he knows that he may not save the child and will lose his own life in the process? I think a cost benefit calculation does happen in that split second. It is not about the value of his life vs the value of that child's, or even about the value of setting a great example. He would have indeed set a great example to his children, but that is not what that would have gone through his mind before making that decision.
I think it has to do with the cost of taking that huge risk vs the cost of not taking it. If he jumps in and fails to make it, will his family be left helpless.. If he doesn't jump in and has to see the child drowning, can he live with that guilt? These are the 2 conflicting pulls that will dominate his mind for that one second.
Ayn Rand was wrong when she said that the man should not jump if the drowning person was a stranger to him. She fails to understand empathy. The man would still jump because in a split second he would have put himself in the shoes of the child's parents and felt compelled to act. Empathy is one of the foremost qualities that makes us human. All justice follows from empathy. Without it social co-operation would be tough if not impossible. Who wants to do business with a person who will not even try to make an effort to understand others. For some reason, free marketers have grown to be considered as non-empathetic. People seem to think that they are a kind of technocrats, emphasising efficiency over other humane qualities. That is not what the classical economists said. But that is what people believe they said. This is our greatest failing. Unless this mis-conception is removed, we would keep losing the battle of ideas.
Dear Surya
I'm no expert on Ayn Rand but in all my readings she comes out as MOST empathetic and genuinely caring.
I'm surprised when you cite "Ayn Rand was wrong when she said that the man should not jump if the drowning person was a stranger to him."
I don't recall her making any such argument.
Do you mind citing the relevant Ayn Rand quote. A quick check on the internet was not successful in finding the relevant section. Maybe I'm searching the wrong key words.
Regards
Sanjeev
Dear Sanjeev,
I had remembered reading those lines. But since you asked, I had a doubt if I was mis-attributing. So I made a quick check for the word drowning in her book – "The virtue of selfishness"
And here is the paragraph I am referring to. It appears in the essay titled – "The Ethics of Emergencies".
To illustrate this on the altruists’ favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning
person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when
the danger to one’s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to
attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one’s life no higher than
that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a
stranger to risk his life for one’s sake, remembering that one’s life cannot be as valuable
to him as his own.)
If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is
greater in proportion to the greatness of that person’s value to oneself. If it is the man or
woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one’s own life to save him or her—for
the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.
Conversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes
panicky, gives in to an unjustified, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life
in loneliness and misery—one would not call him “selfish”; one would condemn him
morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the
preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Re member that values are that
which one acts to gain and/or keep, and that one’s own happiness has to be achieved by
one’s own effort. Since one’s own happiness is the moral purpose of one’s life, the man
who fails to achieve it because of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is
morally guilty.
The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not “selflessness” or “sacrifice,” but
integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in
accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into
practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent,
inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.
On reading this paragraph fully I think I should not have blamed her for not being empathetic. She does agree that not saving a drowning man might lead to a rest of life spent in guilt. But she limits that case to one's loved ones. But I believe that it can extend beyond that. Haven't we seen people bravely sacrificing their lives during wars and riots to protect even strangers. A couple of years ago a father of two kids, jumped into Kaveri river to save 2 students from my college. He saved one but he himself drowned in that process. Ayn Rand correctly understands that this has more to do with the integrity of one's soul. But that integrity can expand much beyond what she defines to be the limits. A proper argument would be to say that self-interest is not about satisfaction of one's physical wants. Since God has given us the capacity to empathise, it is also in our self-interest to save a stranger's life even at the cost of our own life. ( Again I am not saying every one should do this. As I earlier argued, there are 2 conflicting costs. Do you want to risk your life and risk abandoning your dear ones? At the same time, do you want to leave that kid to die even when there is a tiny chance that you can save him? It depends on the person concerned to decide which option is more costly )
Thanks, Surya
I’ve got the book Virtue of Selfishness sitting on my table, partially read. I’m generally in agreement with Ayn Rand but I’d take her argument further (as I have in BFN), that if I care a lot for myself, then I care a lot about the society my children live in. And in that society I’d want and expect that unless it is totally foolish to step in to risk one’s life, that strangers would take a modest risk to save me or my children if I am drowning.
Indeed, I was personally saved from drowning on Bondi beach in Sydney in January 1993 by a powerful swimmer who heard my plea for help when I got caught in a rip (I was swimming outside the flags – the foolishness of which I wasn’t aware of at that point in time). The swimmer helped me to shallow waters and went back to the deep end (the big ocean!) for his swim. Just a part of the day’s work for him: some exercise, some rescuing tourists.
I’m not expecting a person who can’t swim to save me when drowning. Likewise I’d expect only a strong and well trained swimmer to risk his life for my sake. I’m currently a modest swimmer, and could perhaps save a stranger inside a swimming pool. That, I believe, becomes my natural obligation as part of my (limited) skill.
In brief, I’m not even making an emotional argument here. I’m referring to what I’d expect to be a “normal” response in society. Indeed, that is the case for the most part. People value not just themselves but their children and the society they live in; indeed the entire humanity. That moral sentiment can only be given expression subject to one’s competence to do a particular thing.
As they say in an airplane, please put the oxygen mask on your face first; then tend to the child. Same thing applies to all such “sacrifice” situations. These are underpinned by empathy and technical competence. I’d be an idiot to try to save someone from a powerful rip in the sea since I’m not capable of even saving myself. That’s when I’d draw a line, and, instead, resort to loudly calling for help.
Overall, except for a small point in relation to “strangers” (on which you are right to draw attention), I think Ayn Rand expected people to DO what they believed in, as part of integrity.
Anyway, this subject is not exhausted. I’ve got to move on. I’m dealing with this in DOF somewhat extensively. Your reference will prove valuable when I get to that point in the next revision of the manuscript.
S