I have had so many interesting conversations today and, it is only lunch time. I like these kinds of days. One was quite a basic conversation where a client said, "How many managers could do the job of their employees?"
Why would anyone want that as if others can do their job, they have no job. The whole idea of a COmpany is that there are a diverse set of skills that COnverge to COoperate and COllaborate toward a COmmon goal, rather than COmpete for resources. If you didn't take the subtle hint, the prefix CO- means together. In this age of mock individualism, people would rather compete than cooperate, even though large projects require more skills than one person can hold.
Skills are funny things as they generally follow the laws of supply and demand and scarcity. If there are a lot of people with a skill, the price willing to be paid for that skill is low, if it is rare, the price is high. Of course, there is also the demand part where the skill needs to be both difficult to obtain and also desired to command a high price.
Demand doesn't necessarily reflect quality of skill though as, people would rather watch stars dance badly than professionals dance brilliantly. This is attentional demand and while the stars might not be great dancers, they are good at productizing themselves and drawing attention to their lives and work. Can anyone be an actor? Yes. Can anyone be a good actor? Yes... but it will take a healthy dose of talent or a great deal of work to be able to make a role believable for the audience. again, there are plenty of bad actors that still get attention though.
So, the skills that make you unique are the ones that can be leveraged for value and, even if there is not one of brilliance, several can come together to provide a suitable profile that offers enough of interest to get demanded. But, if the skillset held is of the top that is commonplace and easily achievable, it is unlikely that all with the skill are going to be able to command a high value for delivery. Some might though, either through first-mover advantage or legitimately being the best among the crop.
Some might also just be very good at drawing attention to themselves, or away from others - a skill in itself. Some are also good at drawing attention to others or products, which makes them influencers as they are able to sway opinion and behavior of a group, even if it doesn't get them much in return at all. At least not directly. Sharing other's work can bring attention to it and the more influence one has, the more value that share will have. Pewdiepie shared the communication of Dlive at a global level, it doesn't matter what he does with the platform much after that.
When it comes to influence, it isn't about knowledge or skill of a traditional deliverable per se, it is about the ability to manipulate opinion. This often comes through other skill channels though as often, someone is very good in one area and leverages it to have a voice in another. Essentially, the ability to influence works like stake with the influencing weight being the social capital and collateral built through activities of all kinds. It is like voting weight and the words of one are not the same in weight as the words of another.
What affects this is often the impression of expertise and while some are good at making the impression, not all necessarily have the real expertise. Doctor Drake Ramoray was not a real doctor on Friends, even if a fan or two were influenced enough to believe he was the real deal. Acting skill is not actual skill in what is portrayed. Pretty obvious, isn't it.
However, when it comes to being influenced, should one person's vote be worth that of another? Should it be "deomocratic"? Unlikely. How many people have the skills necessary to make an informed decision about whether surgery is required for a cancer, which dose volume for treatment, how to fix a gearbox or, what should happen to a country's economy?
That last one is touchy isn't it, because everyone believes they have the knowledge required to make economic decisions for millions of people regardless of their lack of information or their own inabilities to make economy work in their own favor or, in the favor of others they might even care about. Each of us makes decision every day in the belief we are making the right choices even if the physical feedback provided by result does not agree. Decision making skill is likely higher when thought biases and fallacies are also held in the information banks and applied to the decisions. How many people spend a lot of time in decision making theory? Economics?
I know I don't spend anywhere near enough time but in my opinion, these should be skill areas that are ubiquitous among us, core components of our own lives as while there aren't many behavioral economists in the world, we are all affected by the economy of our own behaviors. Are we poor because of the system or, our lack of skill in understanding the system?
I believe that if we all held a great deal of practical economic information, many of our behavioral decisions would change and in time, a greater balance would be found as the system would get less gamable because, everyone can play the game. A professional football team going up against a group of amateurs is only really going to end one way - consistently.
What I like about Steem is that through the processes and interactions, more and more people are learning about the economic mechanisms and taking an interest in their behavior. In time, the system will become more stable as there will be more people who understand how it works. His isn't going to be driven just by Steem though, the entire tokenized economy has the potential to increase the skill range of literally billions of people that will in time, affect every behavior on the supply and demand matrices.
While some skills are valuable because of their scarcity. Others are valuable because of their wide distribution. There are billions of gamers in the world, not many have read a book on behavioral economics. Steem is that book in a living form and, the same people can game upon it, learn and earn value on their behaviors.
We are all economic actors, some have more skill than others. If you want change in the distribution of anything, learn about economy and act accordingly. Stop giving up value by consuming the products of the 0.1% and start creating value that can be consumed. In time, distribution changes.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]