Slow Down and Relax

My younger sister once told me, “If everyone was like you, this world would have been doomed.” What she meant was that if everyone worked as hard I did, the world would have been a miserable place. Every time I had a debate with my sister, we would not reach an agreement on anything. However, that argument, I had to agree with her.

Recently, I have been reading a book called Korea: The Impossible Country. From the book, one mentality of Koreans stood out, which have helped them achieve fast economic growth: their eager for competition and achievements. Korea has longer working hours than most other countries. Competition is fierce; Even when they are hiking for fun on weekend, they will try to race to the top faster than others. This mentality is actually shared among many east Asian countries, like China and Japan, and it is considered desirable culturally.

Is it really good to work so hard? In my opinion, it is not when society promote it as desirable trait and everyone is doing it. Make no mistake, we do need hard working people, but we don’t need everyone to do that. Problems from too much competition is evident in Korea. For example, to get in to better school, children give up their weekend and try to get other kind of credentials, so that they could differentiate themselves from peers. Same thing happens for job hunters.

Supply and demand, and dynamics of this two variables is studied a lot by economists. Effects of competition can be thought in terms of these two variables. In simplest model, let us say there are 100 jobs available, and 1000 people are competition for it. One get the job does not just depend on himself(or herself). It depends on how well he is comparing to others. So if everyone works harder because it is considered the reason why he doesn’t get the job, the result will not change. It will only put more stress on everyone and cost unnecessary time and money for seeking other credentials. In economics, supply is out number the demand, and individuals are powerless in front of it.

The problem of too much competition will be a more serious problem in next decades in countries like China and Korea. In China and Korean, Middle class and upper class are largely self-made, due to the rapid developments of economics. They are likely to campaign their successes as a consequence of hard working, and pass it down to their children as a wisdom. As the growth rate become stagnant, which will happen inevitably, such stories will be less likely to appear in a society. In such society, competition drains out resources, which might not provide better results. It also suppresses independent thinking and innovations.

We need people who work hard and contribute to the society, but when everyone is doing it, it is inefficient for the society. Maybe, we all need to slow down and look around us, and we might discover that the scene surrounding us is beautiful and worth our time to think about.