I see ｜ Where should we roll it？ An Economic Analysis from Eating Pepper
From the perspective of game theory and information economics, involution and lying flat are two sides of the same problem.
First, from eating Chili peppers
So that’s it | How many peppers are you going to eat? The article "Analysis from the Perspective of Nobel Prize Winners in Economics" (2023-12-04, Surging Business School) tells a story: Zhang San, a new classmate in the class, is bullying the weak and afraid of the hard. Zhang San, who just arrived, doesn’t understand the character of his classmates, but he knows that people’s behavior will expose their personality traits. In particular, Zhang San believes that people who eat Chili peppers usually tend to be tough. The next morning, you and Li Si, who usually don’t eat Chili, eat noodles together, and there is a bowl of chopped millet spicy on the table. It’s a coincidence that Zhang Sany, who is bullying and afraid of bullying, is sitting opposite you two. At this time, both you and Li Si need to make a choice: Do you want to add Xiaomi spicy to your bowl of noodles? How much more?
At that time, the thought experiment we did was: it is meaningless to pretend to be tough and add millet spicy to your bowl because Li Si around you will put more peppers than usual in order to send a strong signal to Zhang San until the amount of peppers makes you unbearable. In this way, it is meaningless for you to eat spicy food. So, the final result-Li Si ate "too much" pepper, and you chose not to eat it.
The reason for this result is that there is a typical information asymmetry problem here. Both you and Li Si know their own personality traits, but for Zhang San, this is his information blind spot. Therefore, eating Chili peppers is not only a consumption behavior that increases utility, but also a signal sending mechanism to release his personality traits to Zhang San, who is at an information disadvantage.
If Wang Wu, a classmate who had breakfast with you this morning, usually eats a little pepper, so he is more spicy than you, then Li Si will have to put more peppers.
If a group of classmates like Li Si who are usually addicted to spicy food come at this time, and everyone has learned that Zhang San’s habit is to stop bullying others after finding someone to bully. It is conceivable that there may be a fierce competition about eating spicy food between Li Si and other students who are fond of spicy food. These always spicy people will also secretly scold in their hearts: "It’s too curly."
If the rice spicy on the dining table is replaced by the less spicy Hangzhou pepper, then Li Si may be forced to eat more peppers. So we can say that they "rolled up" even more in the dimension of the amount of peppers they ate.
If there is an involution, there must be a flat one. At this time, you and those students who can’t eat spicy food will definitely choose to stay out of it, while leisurely eating breakfast with the same taste as usual, while watching those students who can eat spicy food "roll" into a ball. You are the so-called "flat" people.
If we first regard Chili as a degree or diploma, and then regard the diploma as a signal that job seekers send to their employers about their own abilities in the labor market, just like spence, the Nobel Prize winner, it is not difficult to understand why the current education field with strong exam-oriented color is involved in all kinds of jaw-dropping strange phenomena.
Second, where did the "volume" come from?
What people usually call involution refers to a special competitive state. The above logic about signaling is not enough to fully explain the involution. In other words, information asymmetry does not constitute a sufficient condition for "involution". In fact, it does not constitute a necessary condition.
So, what is the root of involution?
The root of involution lies in three interrelated basic characteristics of the competitive pattern: first, resources are highly scarce; Second, the track is single; Third, the system is closed.
Look at the scarcity of resources first.In human society, scarcity and competition are synonymous. The higher the scarcity of a resource, the higher its market value, and the fiercer the competition around it. Conversely, the fierce competition in a certain field must mean that there are very scarce resources in this field.
If Zhang San’s so-called "bullying the weak and being afraid of the hard" is actually harmless, but it is only manifested in the size of Zhang San’s voice in daily life, then people like Li Si will lose more by eating too much Chili, so the "involution" around eating Chili will disappear.
Look at the single track.The essence of single track is that the competition around scarce resources has a single dimension. For example, in the above example, an important assumption is potentially implied: the only way to send a signal to Zhang San is to eat Chili peppers. If there are other channels to send signals, such as the size of biceps brachii, the strength of organizational leadership, the atmosphere during the debate, the style of playing cards and chess, the amount of alcohol, the amount of food, etc., then the competition in the dimension of eating peppers will tend to ease.
The above-mentioned resources are highly scarce and the competition pattern of the track is single, which is often accompanied by another remarkable feature: the system is closed. In fact, the reason why it is called "inner" volume is that the system is closed.
The English for "inner volume" is involve. Directly observing the prefix and root of this word, it is easy to remind us of an old saying: "Dojo is made in the snail shell." The prefix in- of Involve means inward, while the root volv stands for "turning and rolling".
Conversely, if it is an open system, the competition between different individuals will naturally not turn inward, but develop outward. The corresponding English is evolve. Its root is the same as involve, except that the prefix is changed to "e-" which means "outward" or "external". The word means "evolution". It is not difficult to understand that on the blue planet where we live, the evolution of organisms presents increasingly complex and diverse characteristics, and the root cause lies in the fact that the biological system is an open competitive system.
3. Roll inward or outward?
The "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly regards "domestic and international double circulation promoting each other" as the basic feature of the new development pattern, which actually reflects the importance of openness to the economic system. Economic system is a typical competitive system.
Traditional farming civilization, as Mr. Fei Xiaotong said, the whole society is divided into small communities. These small communities are formed on the basis of blood and geography, and the relationship between them is isolated and separated. The traditional society based on this closed small community has not surprisingly caused fierce involution, and the whole society has been trapped in the Malthusian trap for thousands of years. Once the economy turned from closed to open, in just a few decades, China’s economic structure and development level have undergone earth-shaking changes.
A study just completed by our research team is also related to this.
Since the reform and opening up, the traffic conditions in the Yangtze River Delta region have been constantly improving, and the traffic from central cities to Shanghai has naturally become more and more convenient.
An easy-to-ignore problem is that this improvement does not naturally mean good for the cities around Shanghai. The reason is intuitive: the transportation to a megacity like Shanghai is more convenient, which not only facilitates the gathering of various resources locally, but also provides convenience for megacities to siphon local resources and economic opportunities. In the latter case, it is often said that megacities have a "siphon effect" on surrounding cities. The former situation corresponds to the positive "radiation" effect of megacities on the surrounding areas, or plays a "leading role".
Our research finds that for the central cities around Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta region, the improvement of traffic convenience may indeed produce both favorable radiation and unfavorable siphon for the development of these cities. Specifically, before China joined the WTO, the "siphon" effect that Shanghai was unfavorable to the surrounding cities played a slight leading role; After China’s entry into WTO, Shanghai’s positive "radiation" effect on surrounding cities has become very significant.
The law revealed by this study shows that opening to the outside world, a major strategy to make China’s economy break away from the involution track and develop towards a more complex, diverse and advanced economic structure, not only makes China’s economy as a whole gain considerable benefits by participating in the international cycle, but also makes our domestic cycle more efficient.
[The author Li Huiwen is a professor of economics at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, director of the Research Center for Regional and Industrial Development, and a distinguished researcher at the China Development Research Institute of Shanghai Jiaotong University. His research interests are urbanization and economic development, institutional economics, the history of world economy and economic thought, and he has published Modern Comparative Advantage Theory Research and Economics of Great Powers (co-author). ]
