Team Production

In my experience, team production undeniably creates an intangible bond amongst those who work for the reward, even if it’s not evenly distributed. As is echoed in the New York Times article, I’ve seen in my experience that there absolutely is an unspoken bond amongst the workers, a bond that prioritizes egalitarianism over materialistic gain. My belief is that this stems from a feeling that comes from achievement, a feeling that one gets when something is earned. While someone can recognize things that they earn themselves, it appears that it comes natural for someone to recognize things earned by others, as long as the struggle is mutual. I’m confident of this because of my experience as a camp counselor. Every day the counselors and I work hard to achieve fundamental tasks, like feeding children and making fires. The heavy effort we all put into this work compared with the little reward we got in return would suggest that everyone should be greedy to earn the as much as they could. In fact, the opposite was true. Our mutual struggle drove us to share what we earned and enjoy it together. For lack of better words, it simply felt right. At camp, we used our little rewards to pool together everything together and throw bonfires, dinners and other group events. In the NYT article, the balls given by the rope-bearing machine were pooled together and shared. This is a theme that I believe goes beyond the stigma of individual materialism and draws at the common principles and values that truly make us human.