Economy of Opportunity

While I was talking to my colleague today, I realized that perhaps a lot of people don't understand why money isn't the solution to social problems, and will never create anything close to equality of opportunity. Well, at least the money that comes from the current economic conditions, and equality of opportunity, as we seem to define it.

Firstly, let's take a quick look at equal opportunity, because that is an interesting thing consider these days, since people think that they are special and unique. And, in many ways we are, so how is a community meant to provide equal opportunity, knowing that the outcomes are going to vary greatly? And then, even if there is some kind of handicapped for skill level equal opportunity, how does that translate into the economy of supply and demand?

We can send everyone to school, give them the same education, but it is going to benefit some more than others. We can find everyone's unique talent and nurture it to the utmost, but that doesn't mean that anyone wants to consume the output of that talent. It just doesn't economically work.

But money or without, everything we do as a human species is a process of trade of some kind, even if it is an internal trade with ourselves. This is physics really, as energy can't be created or destroyed, only transferred. All movement in this sense is economics, and the universe itself always equals one. It is always completely balanced.

But, we haven't created a universal economics system to govern our interpersonal skills trading. Instead, we have created an imbalanced system, where energy isn't shifted one for one, it inflates. This means that there is an imbalance, and while that creates opportunity for business to take advantage of and people to increase their stake and leverage in the economy, it also means that it is going to be more restrictive on some than others.

Even if we are all (on average) advancing as humankind, this doesn't mean we are advancing at the same rate. It is like that old math problem from school about a car travelling 5 miles an hour faster than another, and the distance between the two after an hour. No matter how fast the other car is going, after an hour, it is still 5 miles behind. After two hours it is 10, and after 100 hours it is 500 miles behind. If the lagging car is going 5 miles an hour itself, it has only travelled half as far. But even if it is going 100 miles an hour, it is still always going to be losing 5% ground, so the gap between car one and two keeps widening.

But, if there is a situation that the front car can increase its speed by taking some of the energy of the car trailing, that gap is going to widen at an increasing rate. And that is where our economy currently is, because it is a for profit economy and players within the economy will engineer their activities and exert their influence in order to keep making profit, which is the energy of the financial economy. The rich get richer, because that is how the system is designed.

But, because of this, the solution isn't redistribution, because all that does is resets the cars on the track, but the same effects will take place over time and that gap will become more pronounced again. And again. And again. That is the way it has been made, which is also why money isn't the solution to social problems, because those social problems are generally created by the for profit economy.

“You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”

But, it is not just our thinking, it is the nature of the beat. The nature of the current economy is driven by profit, not improving social conditions. Trying to get it to solve complex social issues is not going to work, in the same way that making orange juice from apples is not going to get the desired result. No matter what is tried to improve society as a whole through using money, will eventually fail, because the economy is not made to do that. If it was, it would.

The economy is working perfectly.

Yes, I know it is broken as fuck, but it is only broken if you look at it from the standpoint of the outcomes and impacted conditions of humans. As far as an economy goes, it does its job of allowing people to trade goods and services. The problem is, the economy is agnostic in what is traded, meaning that it is not only happy to trade iPhones and cars, it also is happy to trade dangerous chemicals, weapons, and people.

The content of the trade doesn't matter.

In this way, it is like the Hive blockchain, where the content of a particular post doesn't matter in terms of voting ability. A post like this one or one that just says "shitpost", have the same value to the blockchain and the same potential to earn. It is up to us as staked users to decide what each gets. All the Hive blockchain does, is ensures transactions are recorded faithfully.

Supply, and demand.

And the economy that we have now is functioning, but what we are demanding leads to a lot of differing outcomes, where many suffer so that a few can thrive. If we demanded differently, it would affect the supply of goods and services within the economy, and this includes the way the economic algorithms work, the rules of trade. Corruption exists because we allow it to exist, because for whatever reason, we also fear the transparency that will remove it. This gives an opportunity to profit, even if it is at the expense of wellbeing.

And these opportunities lay all through the economy and are built into the economy so that some people have more than others, so that they can make more of the energy of the economy than others. This further drives inequality of opportunity and outcomes, as it increasingly becomes a self-driven system, where those with make the decisions as to where the distribution goes, which they at least to some fraction, will direct their way.

Money begets money.

Do you see the problem with the economy?

It is about money.

What if it was, "wellbeing begets wellbeing"? If the economic juice, the "profit" was wellbeing instead of money, it would mean that this is what would be traded through the supply and trade mechanisms. The most valuable economic transactions would be those that add the highest wellbeing to the bottom line. And, if you think about what the outcome of an economy should be, it should be looking to improve human wellbeing over all else.

But of course again, nature comes into it and as such, an economy of wellbeing isn't going to happen, because we are driven to compete for markers of wealth. We are looking to beat others, to profit at the expense of others, so that we are able to mark our place in the world, garner support, and increase our opportunity.

You see another problem?

We can't have equal opportunity, because the opportunities we value are not only in limited supply, but they are also desirable. This means that opportunity is also a marketplace within the economy, and we are going to compete for it, one way or another. We don't want equal opportunity, in the same way we don't want equal outcome, because we want to feel special, we want to be better than someone, at something. It doesn't have to be anything important, and we don't even need to be that good at it, but we want to get the feeling that we are valuable.

If we aren't adding toward improving society, what value do we hold?

Financial value doesn't care about that question. It is a simple system, easy to understand, and easy to participate in. It is a game that doesn't require social improvement, or even thinking about society or others much at all. It is just about monetary profit.

And as such, will never be able to solve all the problems of humanity.
And is more likely to create more.

Economics is pervasive and permeates through all we do as a species in some way, because it is part of the natural laws of energy transfer. But, how we have applied those laws, manipulated the system, and shifted it to favor some over others.

And that, is very human.

What opportunity?

What an opportunity.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]