718. Why Group Projects Go Wrong — And What That Teaches Us About Running a Country

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today, I want to talk about group projects, which, if you've ever had to do a group project, you know that it can be one of the most frustrating things in the entire world. A lot of times, you're put into a group where nobody's doing an equal amount of work. In fact, it usually ends up being that one person is doing all the work, one or two people

maybe. One person never even shows up at all. The rest of the people are kind of putting in a little bit here and there, or my favorite is when somebody likes to critique the work, but they're not actually the one doing any of the work. But when all is said and done, it doesn't really matter because you all get the same grade,

no matter who did what, which is why this can be so frustrating. And honestly, this is a perfect example of why these kind of group efforts, these communal efforts, if you will, remember that for later, they just don't work. They don't work because nobody is, well, nobody's incentivized to do their own work because why would I be when we're all going to get the same grade? You almost can't blame the person that decides not to do any work.

Because why would they? Right? Why should they have to do work? When the teacher is just going to give them grades or the same grade for whoever does the most work. So this happens all the time in school.

I was about to say only in public school, but I'm sure it happens in some private schools and other areas too. But it always ends up being a disaster. Sometimes you got to wonder if teachers do this to teach you like some broader lesson. A quick story about group project. I was in a group project once where everybody had stayed up.

You know, there were a few people as always doing more work than the others. And then all of a sudden, one person who hadn't done any of the work the whole time, the night before the presentation was due, took over the project while everyone was sleeping, redid all of it, and then submitted it the next day. So it was like a whole disaster. And this is what you run and do with group projects.

It's just a disaster. And again, now their entire grade is tied to this one person who took over last minute. It's just a mess. It's just a mess. And so we know this. So you have to wonder why, why do we still do it?

And what would happen if societies or governments operated this way? What if everything was one big group project where everybody was told that the same outcomes were going to happen no matter who did what work or who did what job and your futures, or outcomes are all tied to the collective? It doesn't work out. And it's not something we have to imagine because this has happened before.

And we have very clear demonstrations in history that show us that just like a disastrous school project, when you do this kind of thing in government and society, it doesn't work either. So let's talk about some of those examples and then we'll get into something that is called the tragedy of the commons. So if you remember, this was, it may have been two years ago now, but we did an episode

on the Jamestown settlement and how that was the perfect example of how these group projects can go wrong. So let's just do a little refresher on that really quick because it's just such a good, such a good example. So when the colonists founded Jamestown settlement, when they came over, everything was communal based.

So everybody put their resources, whether that was money or the food they harvested into one, like pile, and then they divvied it out evenly. So everybody was going to get the same amount of everything, no matter how hard you worked, no matter what you did. So this did not work out great. So before you knew it, there wasn't enough food.

There wasn't enough resources. And so there weren't enough resources, excuse me. And so people were going hungry. People were dying. I mean, when I talk about people are dying, Jamestown colony lost significant amount of people within the first year.

And so this is becoming a problem. And finally, a new governor comes in, he's like, wait, I see what has gone wrong here. No one has a personal stake in succeeding because why would they? Their outcomes aren't tied to their personal output of work. It doesn't matter how much this person is tending to their fields every day or tending to their farms or tending to their crops, whatever it was, because they're all going

to get the same amount anyway. And so nobody was incentivized. We talk about incentives a lot. Nobody was incentivized to work harder, just like that group project. And there was another interesting thing about, well, not just Jamestown colony, but all the earlier colonies.

And that is that there was a lot of indentured servants. So those were people who wanted to come to the new world. And so they essentially traded their freedom to get here. So somebody paid for them to get here and then they promised that they would work for a certain amount of time. Seven years was like a standard, but it wasn't all seven years.

There was different depending on what you worked out with whoever it was who was paying your way. And then the indentured servants would basically work off that debt for again, that certain amount of time. But this made things even more confusing or even more complicated, I should say, because those indentured servants, they have no dog in the fight.

They're not getting anything out of this, right? Yes, somebody paid for them to come over here, but they're not seeing that in the immediate aftermath. They're thinking like, I'm not, you know, I have no personal stake in this. I'm not going to get anything more if I work hard. I just got to keep working so that I can get out of this debt.

So seven years, basically, I'll just do the least amount of work I can for the next seven years. So this is not working. This is a disaster. This new governor comes in and he says, I see what's happened. Here's what we're going to do.

We are going to give everybody their own piece of land. Now, families, all that, like they're going to be in charge of their own little piece of land. We're not going to do this communal thing anymore. It's clearly not working. So what do you think happened?

As soon as they switched this model to where you could work your own property and get to keep the fruits of your labor, things changed. Jamestowns started succeeding. It started flourishing. They're stopped. You know, people stopped dying of hunger.

All of a sudden, as it turned out, if you can have your own work really mean something, if you can see your own effort turning into something, then you were incentivized to do that. And so it's just like that group project because if you've ever noticed, when you have to do your own homework assignment or your own book report or your own paper, you have a, you know, all the responsibility is on you.

If you want to succeed, you have to put in a lot of effort. And so you're probably going to work a little harder than you would if there was a group project where you don't have to because it doesn't matter how hard you work. You're going to get the same grade. So that can be really frustrating. And this is exactly what happened with Jamestown.

All of a sudden, when they had their own individual paper to write, if you want to call it that, they started succeeding because they were allowed to succeed because people are incentivized. And it's not just people are lazy, people are this, people are that it's a people respond to incentives. And so when you have a community that's basically, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're

still going to get fed. Of course, there's going to be many people who don't put in the full effort. It's just the way human beings work. Now, what about instances where you do have to work in groups? I'm not talking about like group projects, but let's say a business. How does a business become successful when you have people working together?

Now, if you were to just have a business, imagine going into a factory or something and they were like, hey, we just want to make sure we need to produce a certain amount of, you know, gadgets, widgets, whatever you want to call them. And so, you know, here's the machinery. There's all these different jobs. Do what you want to do.

I'll come back later. You're probably going to notice that not a lot of work gets done. So that's where specialization and, you know, specific designated roles come in. That's how you can really start to function these, these, these, uh, individuals. So it's still like you have your own individual project, right? So if there was a factory, maybe somebody, let's talk about like Henry Ford.

He did the assembly lines where one person had one job on that assembly line and then the next person had another specialized job on that assembly line. And so you're each doing your own part and your, you know, performance, your pay, your salary is, I guess, another say that is all determined on your own work performance. And maybe it's something even more like use the assembly line because it was easy. But maybe it was, you know, maybe it's something like working at a grocery store where somebody

needs to stock something or you have a butcher and his job is to make sure the meat is cut or you have the baker that makes the bread. And so you're working together. It's kind of the spontaneous order where you're working together, but because everybody has that unique specialization, you're still incentivized to do your own thing while coming together and creating, you know, a grocery store where we all go to get the food that

we need. So the bigger name for this idea is called the tragedy of the commons. And that happens when you have something that belongs to everybody. That's what the word common means. It's for the, you know, they say common good. That means like general, like for everybody.

So it happens when you have something that belongs to everyone, but no, no one is in charge of protecting it. And what I mean by that is there's no specialization involved, right? It's just, it's all left for someone to figure out, right? You have this, this idea that when like a group project is just this one thing everyone's responsible for, when everyone's responsible for it, it's almost like, no one is responsible

for it because you don't have that incentive to really keep it going. So one story people use to explain this is this, this story of cattle so that there was this big like long, long ago, this village where everybody had this shared big grassy field, right? We'll call that the common area, the commons. And everyone could graze their cattle on there, right?

It was great. So one farmer thought, oh, you know what, if I get another cow, I can get more milk. And one cow, what is one cow going to do to the field? There's still going to be enough grass for everybody else. That's great. This decision made made perfect logical sense to him and it was on its own.

That was a great decision. Okay. But then another farmer thought the same thing. And then another farmer and then another farmer and suddenly there are too many cows and the grass disappears and all the cows are suffering because they're hungry and there's not enough to go around.

So each individual farmer, these choices made made sense, right? Yeah, more cows. That's great. And it's just one more cow. You know why? That's not really hurting anything.

But when you look at this together, it destroyed this common resource. And so that's the tragedy. That is that tragedy of the commons we talk about. And that's very similar, again, going back to the group project idea, right? You have this group project and everyone's ideas make sense to them, including the guy that's like, I'm not going to do any work because this girl's doing all the work and

I'm going to get an A of her works good anyway, right? It all ties together. So this is why group projects are not only a bad idea in school, but when you get this kind of communal behavior, it doesn't work. We see this through history, right? James Town was just one of many examples that's actually happened to the pilgrims when they got

here. And the first Thanksgiving was actually kind of a miracle because they had also been suffering and dying and there wasn't enough food to go around. So it's a testament to the power of incentives. It's a testament to the power of this specialization, the spontaneous order. And it's a really important lesson for us to learn.

So maybe next time your teacher gives you a group assignment, you can very politely and nicely point out that there are some problems with this. And maybe it's not the best idea. Let me know how that goes. All right. We'll leave it there.

As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.