The Death of Intrinsic Motivation

David Simon's The Wire is a wide-reaching criticism of modern society and its institutions. Many of the institutional problems experienced by the characters in The Wire represent real problems that exist in the world today. Increasingly, it seems that our law enforcement is not working to protect the public, our political parties are not fighting for the interests of their voters, and our schools are not giving our kids a good education. All of these problems share a common symptom, which has to do with the motivations of people within these institutions. More than ever, these people are motivated by personal gain.

At the heart of American culture, as well as the politics of modern global capitalism, is the idea that hard work will result in good career. People all over the world work for years in broken education systems to get jobs that they don't like, all because they either have no other choice or they believe that a few years later they will have the job that they always wanted. Every job becomes the means to another job, every day of work the means of getting another day of work. It is not surprising that people who go through this system are often disappointed when they retire and realize that they have spent their life doing work that they don't enjoy. What is missing from the system is intrinsic motivation, the idea that a job is worth doing simply for the effect that it has on the world. When one knows that their work has a purpose and a positive impact on the lives of others, it makes their job profoundly more satisfying. If our institutions were run by people with intrinsic motivations, they would be dramatically more effective.

In the police department shown in The Wire, people are driven by extrinsic motivations. The regular policemen simply need a job to pay their bills, and the leadership is motivated by career advancement up the hierarchy of command. More often than not, decisions about who to arrest and which cases to pursue are made in the interests of someone's career rather than the interests of justice. This situation also opens the door to police brutality, because it is not in the interest of police leadership to report it. In fact, it is in their interest to encourage police brutality, because it gets the job done from their perspective. If the police and their leadership were really working “to protect and serve”, they would operate much differently. It is not entirely clear how this could be accomplished, but perhaps a law enforcement institution with a less hierarchical structure would do a better job of promoting the intrinsic motivation of promoting justice.

The politicians depicted in The Wire are also driven by personal gain. Carcetti runs for mayor so he can run for governor in the future. Once he gets into office, he makes decisions based on what's good for his political career, not what's good for Baltimore. He claims to be running for the intrinsic motivations of ending crime and poverty, but he really sees these as tasks to be completed for political gain. The senator auctions off his political support, but using his “silver tongue” he appears to be doing it simply because they are good politicians, working for intrinsic motivations. The result is a corrupt and dysfunctional government that works for the elites of society. The intrinsic motivation of honest politicians is to serve the interests of the public, at the expense of the elites.

The Wire also shows a broken education system, in which schools are run for profit and teachers are forced to constantly teach to the test. School administrators are under pressure from the state, because they can lose their funding if they fail to meet the state's requirements. Teachers are under pressure from the administrators because they can lose their jobs if they stray from the official curriculum. The result is a boring and ineffective education system whose purpose is to maximize an arbitrary and inaccurate measure of knowledge. The intrinsic motivation of teachers is to educate children to solve the problems of the future, but instead extrinsic motivations have turned our schools into indoctrination centers, where the thinking of the past is presented as truths to be memorized and recited.

Restoring intrinsic motivation to its rightful place as the primary motivation for human behavior will require a radical cultural shift. One's status in society should be defined by how much one benefits society, not how much money and prestige one is able to amass for himself. We need more people like McNulty, who investigates police cases outside of his responsibilities, simply because he feels an obligation to pursue justice. The idea of intrinsic motivation seems hard to believe and even laughable to other cops around him, who make comments like “What are you, some kind of Democrat?”. We have become so accustomed to working for our own personal gain, it seems foolish to do otherwise. This taboo is precisely what needs to be changed. Once it becomes clear that people can either work for themselves or for others, it will become socially unacceptable to be motivated by extrinsic rewards. This may be the only way to restore our public and private institutions to their proper roles as promoters of the public good. Until then, we will be trapped in the pointless game of capitalism, like hamsters on treadmills chasing ever-receding pieces of cheese.