IP ADR Dictionary: C is for Capuchin
Today's post is brought to you by the letter "C."
The happy little fellow at left is a Capuchin monkey, many of whom have been trained to work for "money" by researchers. (where's PETA when you need them?)
As Forbes Online reported last year in Primate Economics, these monkeys refuse to work if they observe one of their fellows "earning" an unequal share of the rewards.
What does the Capuchin consider "unequal?" Probably pretty much the same thing we do.
Forbes reports that the Capuchin will more or less happily "work" for a "CEO" monkey until the CEO begins to "earn" five times as much food as the "worker" does.
When that critical inequity is reached, the laborer rebels and refuses to work, leaving both monkeys without "income."
In other words, the capuchin would rather go hungry than participate in a reward system that is radically inequitable.
And it's not just quantifiable inequities that cause the Capuchin to "strike." He will also digs his heels in and refuse to go to the office if he sees a co-worker receiving better quality compensation.
The "money" researchers have trained the Capuchin to work takes the form of pebbles that can be traded for food, such as cucumbers. The Capuchin will happily work for cucumber-trading pebbles unless he sees one of his co-workers receiving more desireable grapes for the same amount of "money."
If this qualitative inequity continues, the cucumber-earner becomes agitated, throws his pebbles out of his cage and eventually refuses to perform any further tasks for the researchers whatsoever.
The obvious take away?
If you want to negotiate the settlement of an IP dispute, you must find a way to "spin" your proposal as fair and reasonable under the circumstances. It's not just about numbers, it's about the reasons for numbers.
In a post-scarcity economy, primates (read: people) are less concerned about absolute rewards (wages, goods, standards of living) than they are about how those rewards compare to their fellows'. As the researchers conclude:
Rewards in a market economy [must be shared]. [The] the essential flaw in systems like communism [however, is that] people are expected to share resources without regard to how much work they do.
We're willing to cooperate. We just need to be assured that the system in which we labor possesses a reasonable degree of reciprocity.
