On 7 Feb 98 at 22:46, Ben Compton wrote:
> And, in closing, I thought I'd list a few things where we do make "value"
> judgments through "ranking" performance:
>
> 1- Lovers. Many people rank their lovers. Some lovers satisfy needs and
> desires better than others. Not all lovers are equally good.
>
> 2- Friendship. We each have friends that are congruent with our own likes
> and dislikes. We value some friends more than others. Not everyone is a
> our best friend.
>
> 3- Sports. Some people are better atheletes than others. Not everyone who
> wants to play professional sports is good enough to do it.
Ben, do you have a list of lovers from 1st to last? To be honest I think
this discussion is really muddy, confusing issues about assessing value
with the means for assessing value. That's the problem, ranking as a
METHOD for determining value is not accurate, loses too much information
in the process and a number of other reasons, which is why, for example,
sports players aren't generally paid on the basis of where they RANKED in
statistics.
[Host's Note: OK, we have to draw the line somewhere! OK to discuss
ranking employees, but not lovers! ...Rick]
It seems to me that your mentioning sports figures the way you do suggests
you just aren't separating the issue of determining value (a reasonable
thing to do) from the use of ranking (a method which purports to assess
value, but doesn't/
A ranking system could result in someone hitting .301 getting a million
dollars, and someone hitting .298 getting a much smaller raise, but the
difference is negligible even if we determine value ONLY on the basis of
batting average.
For real baseball fans, you will be aware that the salary mess is a result
of an arbitration process which DOES try to rank players, hence yielding
some very peculiar results where mediocre players are paid WAY above their
actual value to the team.
Robert Bacal, Inst.For Cooperative Communication, rbacal@escape.ca
Visit our Resource Centre for articles on mgmt.,training,communication, and defusing hostility
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