“Involution” (“Neijuan”) in China and Game Theory
A novel buzzword called “involution” appears in China in recent years has initiated dozens of discussions, leading to a lot of controversies within the society. According to anthropologists, involution refers to a process of inward overelaboration, where population growth did not result in growth in productivity or a more advanced economic model. The buzzword initially came under the spotlight when a few pictures were published on the internet depicting students in Tsinghua University reading books while riding their bikes at night.
“Involution” does not only occur in school, but also in workplace. While the normal working hours should be 8 hours per day and 5 day per week, the “996” work schedule refers to 6 days of working from 9 AM till 9 PM per week, and this is definitely not the worst case. It is important to emphasize that their boss did not explicitly ask them to work overtime, but with limited resources, they have to join the competition and work overtime in order to survive in the brutal workplace and keep their job.
When I was reading this news, I realized that game theory can actually be used to explain the problematic situation because involution is essentially a social situation among multiple competing players who are trying to produce optimal decision-making in a strategic setting.
In a lot of companies, there is only “free overtime”, indicating that people will not get paid for their extra working hours. However, in the opposite, if they do not work overtime, they are more likely to fall behind in the competition and eventually lose their job. The diagram below shows how this system works. In the diagram, “O” stands for “Overtime” and “NO” stands for “Not Overtime”. While working overtime results in no extra payoff (payoff = 0), not working overtime will actually result in a negative payoff (hypothetical payoff = -5 due to the high cost of losing their jobs). In this case, we notice that the dominant strategy will be (O, O), which is working overtime for both Employer 1 and Employer 2.
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Employer 2 | ||
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O | NO | |
| Employer 1 | O | (0, 0) |
(0, -5) |
| NO | (-5, 0) |
(-5, -5) |
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In the actual workplace, there must be lots of more complicated cases. For example, in the diagram below, Employer 1 (Player 1) is the same person as the one in the previous diagram. However, there is a new player (Employer 3) who feels differently about the working hours. We notice that Employer 3 is very indifferent to lose his/her job, but he/she is actually concerning about working overtime because the “996 work schedule” is an extremely unhealthy lifestyle. In this case, the dominant strategy will be (O, NO), and it’s very likely that Employer 3 will be eliminated in this competition.
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Employer 3 | ||
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O |
NO | ||
| Employer 1 |
O |
(0, -3) |
(0, 0) |
| NO | (-5, -3) |
(-5, 0) |
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There are much more different cases when it comes to different people with their own priorities in the reality, but the conclusion will always be that in most cases, only those who are willing to work overtime will eventually be the “winner” due to the fact that there are players in the game who also compete for the resources and are willing to contribute extra input. This can also be explained by the “matching market”, where there are limited resources that cannot be perfectly matched with individuals who want those resources. There has to be a constricted set.
As described in the article, involution is very likely to result in a situation when “a greater input does not yield proportional output”, and it is definitely an “experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless”. This can be derived from the above analysis that it will eventually be a zero-sum game.
Reference:
China’s “Involuted” Generation by the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/chinas-involuted-generation
Game Theory: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gametheory.asp
“Involution”: The anxieties of our time summed up in one word by CGTN: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-04/-Involution-The-anxieties-of-our-time-summed-up-in-one-word-VWNlDOVdjW/index.html