Not surprisingly, if you incentive workers, they become more productive. See this article in Slate about a British farm experiments where field workers’ pay changed based on the amount of fruit they picked.

The sad result is, as author Tim Harford puts, that “workers prioritized money over social ties, abandoning groups of friends to ally themselves with the most productive co-workers who would accept them”. Ah, people…

Maybe in the near future, we’ll be able to determine how much it costs to hang up with loosers?

My guess: a lot, but 1) it’s entertaining nonetheless, 2) who would want to hang up with us otherwise ?

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