The rumor called Win-Win
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Recent Movie: The Chronicles of Riddick
Go watch it if you want some brainless, cliche entertainment. I personally thought it was quite mediocre. Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Recent Book : Mr. China
It's one of those book that I started reading it in the book store and HAD to bring it home with me. Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Recent Game : Civilization III
I have just eliminated JAPAN yesterday. Gosh that felt good. Rating: 50 out of 5 for the defeat of JAPAN
Recent Read : Global Climate Change and Peak Oil
More doom and gloom read. Not for the faint-hearted.
No such things called Win-Win :
I personally do not believe in Win-Win situation. That is, I don't believe in physical Win-Win situation. According to the Law of Conservation in the physics world (which makes awful lot of sense, even when applied to economy; especially when appplied to economy), the total amount of energy in an isolated system is always constant. It then follows that if some parts of the isolated system gain in energy, some other parts of the same system must lose energy. Now consider our economy system as a close and isolated energy system (For a scientific and logical explanation of our economy system as a giant energy system, read Energy and Economic Myths), when one or more parties gain in "energy", some other parties must lose it.
If you consider the rumor of Win-Win situation in this system, it becomes very obvious that the concept of Win-Win is a partial truth at best, designed to flatter the false sense of achievement of aspiring capitalists (who are usually not bright or honest enough to see the blatant truth of our world). A Win-Win situation which results in physical gain for both parties must come at a loss of a third party.
Consider this situation: An apple orchard owner has 10 workers. He pays each of them 1 apple per day as wage. A fruit juice factory contacted the orchard owner and propose a Win-Win deal: Instead of paying 10 apples to the workers, sell the 10 apples to the factory. Since the factory can produce 20 bottles of apple juice with 10 apples, it will then sell back 10 bottles to the orchard owner as wage to the workers, and both the factory and orchard will split the profit for the remaining 10 bottles. Of course, the workers must not find out that 1 apple can produce 2 bottles of apple juice. Fat deal for the factory and orchard owner, no? It's fairly obvious in this example who got ripped off in order for the orchard owner and factory to gain. But imagine if you are a poor worker who doesn't know that 1 apple can produce 2 bottle of apple juices, would you prefer a dusty, skinny apple over a bottle of nicely packaged apple juice?
Lesson learnt: In a so-called WIN-WIN deal, the un-informed parties usually get ripped off
Having said that, Win-Win situations are possible if one considers emotional/psychological gain. For example, if Amy has 2 apples, and Cindy has 2 oranges, and they agreed to trade one of the fruits for another. Are there physical gains for both of them? No, both of them have exactly 2 fruits, no more or less than before their exchange. However, there definitely are psychological gains (Different FLAVOR, yeah!). Or in the above example of factories and orchard, if the workers considered nice packaging is more importantly than the actual amount of content, it can also be considered a Win-Win deal (Although by my standard it's more like an exploitation of human weakness.)
As a closing note, let's considered the greatest, most important Win-Win deal ever created in the name of humanity. Around the 1850s, as the devil was sitting in his office worrying about the slow growth of population in hell, mother Earth came to visit him. She confessed that she was greatly disturbed by this black gooey liquid that gets accumulated over the course of billions of years. As they sat there pondering over their problems, the devil, being the more DEVILISH of the two, had a spark of inspiration.
"What if we let the humans discover how to use the black gooey stuff? They will consume it faster than you can blink."
Mother Earth, being more directly involved, asked,
"But will they upset too much of my face, even destroying me?"
Devil pondered for a moment,
"Well, there is the possibility," then grin DEVILISHLY, "But then, given human, they'll probably stuff themselve dead before they even realized it."
"Hrm, a risk worth taking. But what's in it for you?" Mother Earth asked curiously.
"Well, when they start to stuff themselve dead, that's when I'll hit my next millenium quota for Hell's population." Devil rubbed his hand in a DEVILISH manner.
"Deal then. Given the nature of human, I think it's overall a Win-Win deal."
Subsequently, in 1855, James Miller Williams discovered crude oil in North America.
So WHO got exploited in this Win-Win deal?
Recent Movie: The Chronicles of Riddick
Go watch it if you want some brainless, cliche entertainment. I personally thought it was quite mediocre. Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Recent Book : Mr. China
It's one of those book that I started reading it in the book store and HAD to bring it home with me. Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Recent Game : Civilization III
I have just eliminated JAPAN yesterday. Gosh that felt good. Rating: 50 out of 5 for the defeat of JAPAN
Recent Read : Global Climate Change and Peak Oil
More doom and gloom read. Not for the faint-hearted.
No such things called Win-Win :
I personally do not believe in Win-Win situation. That is, I don't believe in physical Win-Win situation. According to the Law of Conservation in the physics world (which makes awful lot of sense, even when applied to economy; especially when appplied to economy), the total amount of energy in an isolated system is always constant. It then follows that if some parts of the isolated system gain in energy, some other parts of the same system must lose energy. Now consider our economy system as a close and isolated energy system (For a scientific and logical explanation of our economy system as a giant energy system, read Energy and Economic Myths), when one or more parties gain in "energy", some other parties must lose it.
If you consider the rumor of Win-Win situation in this system, it becomes very obvious that the concept of Win-Win is a partial truth at best, designed to flatter the false sense of achievement of aspiring capitalists (who are usually not bright or honest enough to see the blatant truth of our world). A Win-Win situation which results in physical gain for both parties must come at a loss of a third party.
Consider this situation: An apple orchard owner has 10 workers. He pays each of them 1 apple per day as wage. A fruit juice factory contacted the orchard owner and propose a Win-Win deal: Instead of paying 10 apples to the workers, sell the 10 apples to the factory. Since the factory can produce 20 bottles of apple juice with 10 apples, it will then sell back 10 bottles to the orchard owner as wage to the workers, and both the factory and orchard will split the profit for the remaining 10 bottles. Of course, the workers must not find out that 1 apple can produce 2 bottles of apple juice. Fat deal for the factory and orchard owner, no? It's fairly obvious in this example who got ripped off in order for the orchard owner and factory to gain. But imagine if you are a poor worker who doesn't know that 1 apple can produce 2 bottle of apple juices, would you prefer a dusty, skinny apple over a bottle of nicely packaged apple juice?
Lesson learnt: In a so-called WIN-WIN deal, the un-informed parties usually get ripped off
Having said that, Win-Win situations are possible if one considers emotional/psychological gain. For example, if Amy has 2 apples, and Cindy has 2 oranges, and they agreed to trade one of the fruits for another. Are there physical gains for both of them? No, both of them have exactly 2 fruits, no more or less than before their exchange. However, there definitely are psychological gains (Different FLAVOR, yeah!). Or in the above example of factories and orchard, if the workers considered nice packaging is more importantly than the actual amount of content, it can also be considered a Win-Win deal (Although by my standard it's more like an exploitation of human weakness.)
As a closing note, let's considered the greatest, most important Win-Win deal ever created in the name of humanity. Around the 1850s, as the devil was sitting in his office worrying about the slow growth of population in hell, mother Earth came to visit him. She confessed that she was greatly disturbed by this black gooey liquid that gets accumulated over the course of billions of years. As they sat there pondering over their problems, the devil, being the more DEVILISH of the two, had a spark of inspiration.
"What if we let the humans discover how to use the black gooey stuff? They will consume it faster than you can blink."
Mother Earth, being more directly involved, asked,
"But will they upset too much of my face, even destroying me?"
Devil pondered for a moment,
"Well, there is the possibility," then grin DEVILISHLY, "But then, given human, they'll probably stuff themselve dead before they even realized it."
"Hrm, a risk worth taking. But what's in it for you?" Mother Earth asked curiously.
"Well, when they start to stuff themselve dead, that's when I'll hit my next millenium quota for Hell's population." Devil rubbed his hand in a DEVILISH manner.
"Deal then. Given the nature of human, I think it's overall a Win-Win deal."
Subsequently, in 1855, James Miller Williams discovered crude oil in North America.
So WHO got exploited in this Win-Win deal?
posted by Zuraffo at 2:30 PM
1 Comments:
[+/-] show/hide comments to this postThis is definitely the most interesting way to look at Win-Win I have ever seen. Win-Win is the school philosophy of my alma mater. I can still vaguely remember listening to my principal explaining Win-Win with respect to the meaning of winning and the importance of the hyphen instead of comma or colon etc. I also remember struggling to stay awake on that extremely boring Monday morning school assembly. After the whole torturous session was over, I left the school hall wondering whether I had the correct definition of the word “win” for the past ten year or so and absolutely puzzled by the importance of the hyphen. (Please don’t ask me about the hyphen, I STILL don’t get it.)
Much later, a new English teacher who just joined the school mentioned talking to school clerk about the school philosophy. She was horrified to realize that the entire class is totally clueless about the school philosophy. She went on to spend the whole fifty minutes to explain why it is important to know the school motto, the school philosophy and the school history in addition to explaining Win-Win. Basically the idea is to try to create a situation that is beneficial to both parties. And one possibility is that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.
Say, the apple juice factory has lots of apple cores left over from the production of the juice. Instead of throwing away the cores, it can sell it back to the apple farm to use as fertilizer. This way, it is a Win-Win situation. Plus the transport company gets paid to send the apple cores back to the apple farm on the return trip. Win-Win-Win? This way there is no loss to the "system"?
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