The lack of incentive to do better
There is a problem in the world, as while we know that the current economic profile of highly lopsided wealth for a minority doesn't work, many also don't like the idea of redistribution. Essentially, people want a broader spread of economic opportunity, yet protect the system that stops it, one where money attracts money passively, without having to do anything for it. While those that can manage this are "living the dream" so to speak, the majority who are not will keep falling further and further behind, as the system is such that the more one has, the more one will have in the future.
Yet, we want the outcomes that wealth delivers. While some people will argue that a sustainable life is possible where people live like nomads or off the grid, that in itself is a luxury position, because if everyone was to do it, it would become untenable. Organizing ourselves into cities with supply chains and compounding effects allows us to survive as a species and without it, we would quickly devolve into a violent chaos - which we see from time to time on smaller scales.
Like it or not, the overwhelming majority of us do not actually want to live off-grid to the point that we are self-sufficient. After all, self-sufficiency doesn't come with an internet connection... or shoes... or healthcare. We want the benefits of collaboration and the advantages of choice, yet we also want to make sure that the cost to our species isn't total annihilation.
We want to have nice things, we want to keep advancing technologies, we want to have better lives in general, but there is always a trade off of some kind. It is a challenge because we tend to put our own wealth into the things we value personally, and while we want a cure for cancer, do we really want it badly enough to fund it?
Almost, half a billion dollars since 1993 (28 years) with 20 million going out in 2020 - while the US government generated 10 trillion for covid-19 response and are failing miserably at it. Cancer killed about 600,000 people in 2020 and has done every year plus more, well, for a very long time. Stephen Curry in the NBA earns about 45 million dollars a year from playing alone. What is the total market cap of player salaries of the NBA? What about with endorsements added?
I dunno - but it is a lot more than what goes into Cancer research funding - yet we all want a cure... right?
This is the thing with wealth and money in general. It isn't just a tool to buy things. The smartest mathematicians on earth aren't working for NASA or crunching numbers in the development of clean energy resources - they are working at developing financial instruments to create more wealth for the people who can pay them.
The most important trait of money is that it can be used to incentivize behavior.
The problem isn't the money, it is the behavior we incentivize with it. All of us. I would predict that the majority reading this, spend far more on entertainment activities than investment activities, while hoping that one day, the investments they do make significantly improve their lives. Not just money investments, but time as well.
"I am not going to spend an hour writing a decent post for a dollar - but I will spend three hours binge-watching Netflix every night."
We want a better world and improve personal well-being, but we ourselves can't even put in the effort to look after our own little corner - because... we aren't incentivized enough to do so. We want people to pay for our creativity and skills adequately, even though we aren't willing to pay for the creativity and skills of the things we value, at least not to the degree that they are worth in relation to the worth we give our cravings for being entertained.
How much is the creativity and skill to cure cancer worth?
Don't get me wrong, there are many things that require funding that we want to have in our lives other than a cure for cancer, it is just that we often use the "Cancer cure" as a standard for solving a very large problem, or not solving one. Yet, the wealth distribution is what it is because while we love to pay ludicrous amounts to be entertained, we expect "good things" to be done for cheap, or out of the goodness of the heart. We want charity for these things so that it frees up our money to spend on the things that we really want - the fun stuff.
Is there enough wealth in the world to incentivize the behaviors that we want to see? are we overpaying some activities we like, while underpaying others we need? Probably. And I think that this is one of the greatest problems with the economy we have created, as it is working exactly the way it is meant to work - it incentivizes the activities that draw our attention and wealth, while the wealth ends up in the hands of the few to attract more wealth to it. The global economy is our economy - the dumpster fire it is, represents us as consumers.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Well, this is why we are in the position we are in, because all of us pretty much spend more time, energy and money on being entertained, probably to avoid looking at the pile of dung we have incentivized. We all act on incentives - this is why we get paid to do the things others want of us, than what we actually want to do ourselves. Who the hell is going to pay for amateur performances - without it being porn?
We are living the dream.
We are living the dream where we think that we will still get what we want while not having to take responsibility for our behavior. We are living the dream where we can spend our resources as we please on the things that we desire and all the problem-solving that needs to be done, will be paid for by someone else or better yet, done for free. We are living the dream where the end result is an untenable nightmare.
As I have said before, to improve the conditions of the economy takes a paradigm shift where we take responsibility and become owners once again. This isn't limited to money and things - it also means taking possession of our actions and behaviors and realizing that the world is already ours, we just neglect it through our actions.
This world doesn't run on charity, activity is driven by reward. We can see this on Hive in where people focus their content, the places they will get rewarded. We need to do the same thing in the entire economy except, we should be rewarding the creativity and skills that are put into practice that truly make our lives better and perhaps after some of these problems are solved, we can shift more toward being entertained.
Out of curiosity, in the average month, how much of your disposable income (anything outside of need) is spent on investment and how much is spent on wants? What about your time - how much is spent generating value, how much is spent on leisure? It doesn't have to be completely one-sided, but we tend to bias one far more than the other, and then complain about the distribution of wealth.
Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]
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