The rat race is a phrase that does a great deal of work for very little argument. It pictures a laboratory rat on a wheel, running furiously and getting nowhere. Applied to people, it paints working life as a pointless sprint for pay, promotion and prestige. Each gain is cancelled by rivals making the same gain. The faster you run, the more firmly you stay in place.
It is a powerful image. Like many powerful images, it persuades by picture rather than by proof. Lily Tomlin supplied its best line, observing that even the winner of the rat race remains a rat. The joke lands. Whether the argument does is another matter.
The critics are not wholly wrong. Some goods are positional. Their value lies in others lacking them, things such as the corner office, the fashionable postcode, the school with the longest waiting list. When everyone strives for these, the supply does not grow. The prize simply passes from one hand to another, and much of the effort spent chasing it is wasted. Fred Hirsch made the point in Social Limits to Growth, and it has force.
Add the human habit of adapting to good fortune. Today's luxury becomes tomorrow's baseline. The pay rise that once seemed generous soon feels merely adequate. Psychologists call it the hedonic treadmill, and it explains why many who run hard report no lasting lift in happiness.
So far the case against the race looks respectable. It is when its critics draw their conclusions that the reasoning starts to wobble.
Adam Smith saw all of this, and saw further. In his Theory of Moral Sentimentshe describes the poor man's son, "whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition." The young man toils for years for wealth and rank, imagining the ease they will bring. He sacrifices real tranquillity for "trinkets of frivolous utility," and often finds at the end that they were not worth the labour.
Smith did not stop there. He called this a deception, but a useful one. It is this deception, he wrote, which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. The striver may end no happier. Society ends vastly richer. Fields are cleared, cities built and sciences advanced, all by people chasing rewards that disappoint them personally.
That is the point the critics miss. They judge the race by its effect on the runner. It should be judged by its effect on everyone else.
The first flaw is the metaphor itself. A rat on a wheel produces nothing. A person in a competitive career produces a great deal. The doctor competing for a consultancy treats patients along the way. The entrepreneur racing a rival delivers cheaper and better goods. The positional prize may be zero-sum. The work done to win it is not.
The second flaw is the missing alternative. Critics seldom say what should replace the race. Where competition has been suppressed, effort has not become more meaningful. It has become more political. Advancement goes to the well-connected rather than the able, and the race continues by other, less productive means. Status-seeking is not a market invention. It is a human constant. Markets merely channel it into serving others.
The third flaw is condescension. To call people rats is to suggest they cannot see what they are doing. Most can. Many choose the long hours knowingly, for the security of their family, the satisfaction of mastery, or the plain pleasure of winning. These are not delusions. They are preferences, and it is not for the onlooker to overrule them.
None of this means every race is worth running. The useful distinction is not between racing and resting. It is between races you choose and scoreboards you merely inherit. A person who works intensely at something they value, for rewards they actually want, is not trapped. They are simply busy. The trap lies in chasing prizes nobody would want if others did not want them too, and in never asking whether the finishing line is one worth crossing.
The sensible response is to run hard where the goal is genuinely your own, and to decline contests that exist only to be won. Society needs the runners. The runners need only to pick their race. As for the rats, they have a better record than their critics allow. They survive everything, breed prolifically and thrive in every city on earth. And the rat always gets the cheese eventually. It’s the people who keep moving the cheese you need to watch.
Madsen Pirie