Keith are you aware of the Mark Twain short story about Dr. Tarr and Mr. Feather?
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 4:29 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] On retaining inequality Social equality is an ideal which, in reality, never happens. However, gross inequality -- such as we obviously have today -- ultimately leads to one of two consequences: (a) the elite survive while the remainder tend to be extinguished or to wither away; (b) a breakdown in the strategies of the elite and a subsequent take-over by another group. Social equality is an ideal because random genetic inheritance at birth (and cultural conditioning by parents) gives each of us a unique potentiality of individual abilities and, furthermore, a powerful shared proclivity to rank order, as in thousands of other mammalian species. This maintains the quality control of each species. How this usually expresses itself is by means of the female of the species generally choosing the best genetically equipped male in her social circle as her sexual partner and avoiding breeding with the inept males. Anybody who would seek to deny both the fact and the expression of social ranking in the case of the human species would have to try and contradict both the historical record and also the modern genetic findings in evolutionary biology. Considering (a) above, attempts at extinction, or genocides, are frequent enough in past and present history and, nasty though they are to our modern sensitivities, there doesn't appear to be any let-up. However, the withering away of groups or supposed inferiors is a more modern phenomenon, due to population surpluses. Up until recent decades, low ranking parts of populations didn't wither away because they were necessary food growers for the overall economy of the country. Without virtually 100% employment of the masses then the elites themselves could not have survived. This is now changing. Mechanization on the farm or in fishing fleets means that only small numbers of workers are needed to grow or hunt for food. Increasing automation in the factory and increasing competition between major manufacturers is driving down profit margins to zero and thus making mass production of new versions of traditional products increasingly risky. At the same time, increasingly versatile robotic methods of production are bringing about more customization and shorter production runs of more specialized, fashionable products for a smaller elite market able to afford prices too high for the masses. There isn't as yet a sharp dividing line between the two customer markets but the income and inherited wealth gap is growing. The result of this is that the proportion of workers required for value-added production is now much less than 100% of the available adults. It also means that median wages for most jobs in advanced jobs has been declining for about three decades now. Because the cost of raising children is now very much greater than it used to be then it's understandable why families in all the advanced countries are now smaller than replacement size. The masses in all advanced countries are now withering away. The numbers of the elite may also be declining but, of course, they can always recruit enough of the more talented from the general population in order to make up required numbers to keep the economic system going. Considering (b) above, the elite of the last 30 years has been mainly composed of the financial sector, and its attendant top politicians and civil servants, which at present are at the top of the larger business heap (of transnationals right down to freelance businesses). The financial elite, together with a few choice governmental personnel, exercise their wealth and power by means of complex games they play with artificial money (technically called fiat currency) which have been perfected for about a century and which very few others understand in detail even when publicly available. However, there are more than a few signs that the fiat currency system is about to collapse. In governmental and banking hands, two of the major world currencies, the dollar and the euro, are now seesawing about quite erratically, both depreciating against the value of commodities. Both America and the Eurozone simply don't know what to do about their currencies in a fundamental way, never mind how their huge debts are ever going to be repaid. Instead, all they can think of is to print more fiat currency and hope that some sort of future economic growth will reverse the trends of the last 30 years, make the masses prosperous again and thus be able to recoup debts from increased taxation. As for China, the third major leg of the modern economic world, its fiat currency is still tied to the dollar. So whatever fate awaits the dollar also awaits the renminbi. When the fiat currencies collapse then, if the (b) scenario wins over the (a), the governmental-banking elite will have to give way to another. It is unlikely to spring up from the masses of the advanced countries because they are so lamentably educated. They would need three or four generations of cultural development -- such as the present elite has had -- in order to cope with the complex economic and social systems of modern times. But another sub-elite group, whose services have already becoming absolutely essential to the power of the present elite, is waiting in the wings. I write, of course, of the scientific class. So far, the scientific class have been kept very much on tap by the present governmental and banking elite. Their personnel hardly feature at all. They are, however, breaking through very rapidly at transnational business level and even of many smaller businesses. Indeed, increasing numbers of our most powerful corporations are not only saturated with scientists but have often been founded by individual scientists who've developed their research interests into commercial feasibility. My money is on (b). If so, this gives some hope that the masses in the advanced countries won't wither away completely. Once science has more sway in the design of policy then we can have more hope that a far superior education will become available for the masses. Even if equality is never achieved, then new-born children will at least be given vastly more opportunities in their early care, socialization and education. When young adults, they will be much more capable of insisting on sharing the much more interesting and well-paid jobs that the present elite presently exclude them from with all sorts of protective practices. Status differences could be far more modest and much more accessible than they are now. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/10/
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