Income Elite, Revolutions, Science, and Specialization

INCOME INEQUALITY

Differences between the “ruling class” and the “rest of us” have a bad effect on both parties (right wing republicans, moderate conservatives, libertarians, leaning left democrats, moderate democrats, and etc.). Interestingly, the people at the top of unequal societies are less healthy than those at the top of equal societies.

(check out the video we watched for our blog posts here).

WHY HASN’T AMERICA REVOLTED YET?

Revolution is the collective discontent of enough individuals which drives a complete social and monetary upheaval. This will happen naturally the further that the decision making elite pushes us or makes short term decisions that negatively affect us in the long run. It’s impossible to preordain the straw that broke the camel’s back, but are we overdue? What structural factors make America less likely to revolt? Problems like those that Wilkonson presents do not have a stabilizing effect on a populous.

(Check out this TED Talk about conditions of societal collapse)

WHAT DO I ALWAYS WRITE ABOUT ON THIS BLOG?

(How the hell would you know? Check out my first post here.)

YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW, DAMNIT.

So let me brief you. Ideology itself is a constantly morphing attitude towards something we don’t, haven’t, and by Austrian standards, never will fully understand. That doesn't mean you should become a defeatist, just a realist. There are limits and parameters for everything that you do. Don’t assume that means you can’t change/impact the world. It’s just a parsimonious way to self-assume ignorance, irrationality, subjectivity.

YOU ARE NOT IN A DREAM.

It’s important to understand your very real effect on even the most seen members of society. Not only do you change the outcome of, for example, a sports game by making a physical appearance to the game, you can also change an entire sport team’s season change just through making a bunch of facebook statues, twitter post, or any other social media/networking services. An application of this observer principal has been observed in physics (and thus altered):

(check out this video on the measurement problem)

YOU ARE POWERFUL.

You can even change a particle, just by observing it. Even hard sciences are interesting. Don’t believe me?  Joe Rogan is Carl Sagan is Neil deGrasse Tyson is Steven Hawking is you is the most obscure scientist is an entertainer is Richard Wilkinson is everybody. No matter how important the knowledge gained from obscure science is, if there is nobody to boil that information down into something that anybody can understand that knowledge is lost. Can you imagine a society in which only scientist knew about science? Or only bakers knew about bread? These individual differences could end up in knowledge going to waste or being lost. Now imagine a society of only autistic people. This level of specialization would split people apart, not draw them together. This atmosphere is ripe for people to look down on others and thus stress.

(Check out this video demonstrating science skills plus communication skills)

SPECIALIZATION ISN’T EXPANDING OUR SOCIETY IN THE WAY WE THINK.

I can’t believe it took me so long to finally grasp why the economic concept of specialization has been bugging me. The (sometimes) arbitrary lines that we implement represent a cross pollination of skills already! Nobody should argue that a scientist who’s specialized in some particular scientific field hasn’t learned a variety of pre-requisite skills. The most looked up to “pop scientists” are even charismatic (traditionally, the narrow minded are the most specialized and the least understandable). We tend to think the things we do are specialized, but in reality, they are composed of hundreds of sub categories which in turn are composed of thousands more. The last thing that we need is people to be so different that communication breaks down. No matter what your opinion on specialization, no matter how much money your legacy is, no matter which direction your life goes, no matter why you are here reading THIS…

(check out this post from the top)

 WE ARE ALL ON EARTH TOGETHER.

But we appear to not be.

I LOVE YOU

Because you are me.

(check out Psychedelic Trance like this if you haven't yet. Music is great at describing human similarities)