But that is the individual acting in a polite way, due to self interest (they are being paid to be nice). This is not a moral act. The competition angle also fails here. Suppose you have no competition, it does not necessarily follow that you would be discourteous, after all, you would still be getting paid to be nice.
Do you think manners, courtesy and polite behavior come naturally?
As I explained before, I am less concern with a person's feelings and motivation than his actual behavior. My mother MADE me say thank you every time I got a present. She didn't give a rats ass whether I was actually grateful or not. What she cared about was I express gratitude. I didn't like having to write thank you cards, but what I liked or didn't like played little role in promoting good behavior. As time went on, I learned to appreciate not being a selfish, self-absorb shit and expressing gratitude is now part of my nature. More often then not, behaving a certain way, whether you like it or not, makes you feel that way. I never like eating with a fork when I was a kid. I always liked eating with my hands. That does seem to be the natural way to eat. But being forced to use a knife and fork it eventually change my nature and now it seems awkward and boorish to eat with my hands.
Of course they get paid to be nice. So what? The alternative is that they get paid to be rude. I much prefer insincere goodness than sincere badness.
And the fact the you don't think competition promotes, encourages and provides an incentive to make your customer happy belies your agenda It is so blatantly obvious. Sure someone may be polite with no incentive at all. They may ONLY be polite if given an incentive. Some will work a certain job whether they got paid or not. Some will only work a job if they get paid. But chances are you will get more employees wanting to work for you if you pay them. That's my point. We don't know. We can't read minds. We can only evaluate behavior and the fact is when there is competition, when someone can simply go elsewhere to get better service, you will be forced, whether you want to or not, whether it's sincere or insincere, to make your customer happy or you will lose your job and/or business.
If you can think of a better way to big out the best in a person's performance: be it in sports, business, anything really, without competition then tell me what it is.
And again, because we cannot read minds or determine motivations, we can only take behavior at face value. And, to me, good behavior is moral behavior. A system that promotes good behavior is a moral system. Whether you are good because you're just a good guy or because you are afraid to go to jail or go to hell is something I leave to God to determine.
