In a research paper titled “Trophies, Triumphs and Tears,” Harvard sociologist Hilary Levey observed a distinction between how kids and parents view participation trophies. The parents she interviewed often felt that awards for effort devalued awards for achievement, while kids were unlikely to reach that conclusion. It’s not that the children didn’t grasp the difference between participation and placement trophies. But only the adults believed that a scenario in which nobody walked away empty-handed made victory awards less meaningful.

Where along the trail from childhood to adulthood might people encounter this idea that the sweet-ness of triumph is proportional to the devastation of defeat? The answer is: everywhere. The notions that individuals are naturally locked into competition over scarce resources, that contests must have unqualified losers in order to also have genuine winners, that paltry compensation for losers incentivizes all competitors to perform better, and that safety nets of any kind undermine the will to compete — these are corner-stones of capitalist ideology. They manifest all around us in market society. And the participation trophy debate is no exception.

It’s no surprise that the people angriest about participation trophies also tend to cherish the idea that society is naturally unequal, and to disapprove of any collective attempt to “artificially” reduce material disparities. “‘Oh gee, everyone gets a ‘trophy’ isn’t healthy for society,” pronounced right-wing media personality Glenn Beck. “The world doesn’t shape-shift for you, you have to find your way in.” Beck has relied on similar reasoning to disparage welfare programs, saying, “The more you make people comfortable in their poverty, the more you strip them of the reasons of standing up on their own again.” In Beck’s view, the only way to incentivize a young athlete to play hard, or to compel a poor person to make some money, is to ensure that the consequences of losing are as humiliating as possible.