It is funny, whenever I mention better or more even distribution, the comments look at the extremes, as if I am saying equal distribution. More even doesn't mean equal. We are all born equal however and by this I mean, we all have the opportunity to use what resources we have available to us the best we can - but even at this stage, inequality steps in, as some people are better at using what they've got than others. The fact of life is that while we are all human and there is a great deal of overlap, we are also all unique and some of the ways we differentiate, matter.
For example, I had no choice of the attributes of my parents which means that the chances of me being a professional basketballer are slim to none. While it isn't impossible, the amount of work I would have to do to differentiate myself enough with a skill that is valuable to a basketball for them to overlook the fact that I am short, would be much greater than someone who could do the same as me and was born with tall genetics. How unfair.
However, due to the diverse nature of our preferences and needs as humans, it means that I do not have to write-off my entire life as valueless because I can't play professional basketball. The marketplace has a high degree of variation and allows for a great many skills to be regarded as valuable. I can't dunk a ball, but I can deliver a technical coach training to key users and I can write 1000 words without breaking a sweat. Someone interested in watching the basketball isn't going to value my skills highly, but if they are sitting in that coaching session or reading an article, they might.
This skill difference means that we are able to have access to the marketplace and compete for resources against each other, even though not performing in the same discipline or domain. Essentially, skills are our personal token that we can trade for the tokens of others directly in a barter system, or indirectly through currency conversion.
There are of course other factors that come into play than just the skill and level of skill, like personality, work ethic, direct and indirect social network availability, location, intelligence, looks, health and other points that get applied to varying degrees across the spectrum of attributes to create a personalized matrix of values. Then there is the willingness to provide that skill, market oneself, resilience to rejection and a host of other factors again. We are essentially SMTs with an endless array of configurations that are also subject to the conditions of others in the marketplace.
While we like to think of ourselves as individuals, the fact is that even who we are as an individual has been shaped by our past, our parents and the culture they and where they have come from also. We can romanticize being self-made, but it is never the truth - there is a network of people who led to us across time and space, and each point has an influence on who we are as well as who we will become. We are products of the marketplaces of our past, genetic, environmental and social.
When I talk about improved distribution through Hive, I am not saying that everyone should get an equal share of the rewards pool, I am talking about that more people can compete for it by contributing their skills and having the marketplace decide. The more participants the better.
One of the core problems with the current economy and why it is doomed, is that the distribution is very poor and there are very few players in the marketplace, out of the population of 7 billion. Because of this, less than a handful of people are worth as much as the poorest 3.5 billion and massive multinational conglomerates can get creative with their accounting practices and pay next to know tax, while the rest, the consumes, carry the costs. Money attracts money and past a certain point, money can generate more value than sweat can - which means that not only will the gap widen between those who work and those who can generate from their holdings, the ones who generate can become increasingly passive in the marketplace while simultaneously increasing their share of the holdings.
Eventually, this system eats itself as with more power in the hands of less, the economy can lose its dynamic and organic attributes and get engineered to widen the gap by gaming the system to increase wealth generation on money, not work. Eventually, all the value is in the hands of the few and the consumers don't have anything to consume with anymore. Generally, this is the point of a revolution.
This time I think that the revolution is likely to work at two levels, one on the traditional where there is social turmoil while economies collapse and people suffer, the other through blockchain and tokenization, which is the infrastructure that will replace what we have known so far. This isn't a fast revolution, it is a replacement process that requires the failure of what was and then the technology will have to evolve to satisfy demands.
Going back to the start, this affects wealth distribution by bringing more participants into the marketplace in more functions than just as consumers. Individuals can use their unique set of skills to add multiple revenue streams and become more competitive as employees also, because more people will have more options to act and move. More players in the game means greater competition and this means that there will be less opportunity to have some with extreme earnings, meaning more spread. There will always be differences however, as there should be.
Currently, most people are no more than consumers in the marketplace as what they generate goes into the pipeline that feeds that very top. The answer isn't taking from the top and giving to the those below, it is redeveloping the economic model to generate a system that is self-sufficient rather than eating itself. The only way to do this is for participants to opt-into a system where they are consumer, creator and investor. The more that do this, the wider the spread of the generative value of "money", but also the more responsibility there is on the individual to create something of value, something the community values.
Part of this is through the way we ourselves consume, as it becomes up to us as to who gets more than another, rather than a centralized point of control that decides this person gets special treatment by the system of that of another. What a lot of people don't seem to consider is that the consumer is the one who actually has the majority of economic power, but we are generally lazy to be creators ourselves and lazy in seeking for what is valuable to is, instead we eat what we are fed out of convenience.
It is easy to reduce a company, just stop demanding what the produce. Once this happens, there is more space in the marketplace for the startups to move in and compete and create alternatives that have some marketplace space to breathe, rather than having to try and go head to head with the conglomerates who are so large, they can affect the policies of the economic system itself. This creates inefficiencies and as such, more participants are required.
From my perspective, one of the largest issues we face in the economy is that we are trying to reduce our participation in order to increase our leisure time, but we are doing it too early, as the system is broken and what this does it remove competitive participants and drives all the value to the narrow few. Change the economic infrastructure and that can change, but it will take time, potentially longer than I will be alive. However, just because I won't necessarily see it, it doesn't mean it isn't worth working toward.
In my opinion, billionaires "shouldn't exist", but it isn't because they have done something wrong, but rather, that there is so much competition and consumers choose so broadly, that it is impossible for one individual to generate that kind of wealth. The problem is, that the economic model we have doesn't create the environment that rewards spread, it rewards retraction and consolidation, automation and control of consumers for passive wealth generation.
Now, this is a very high-level view of many factors and I don't even know what all the details might be at this point, or what the solution will eventually be. But, I do obviously think that whatever it is going to be is going to have to be us as owners and investors, creators and consumers who all participate at multiple levels to create a very dynamic and organic growth and retraction model - birth and death. No one has to think the same as me, which in itself is part of the beauty of the system and indicative of why, equality of result is untenable. Thinking the same is the death of innovation - it supports consolidation and monopolization.
As said, we all have the same opportunity to use what we have the best we can. Two people with the same resources can act very differently, one looks to generate value with what they have, some stay passive and let their potential drain away.
I will never dunk a basketball, but I am not useless. Are any of us?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]