This morning, I was asked a question by a client in a session, as to why with all the intelligent and knowledgeable people in places like Wall Street, how come the economy is such a mess globally. And, while there are many answers to this, I wanted to be able to simply visualize the concepts in a story, so asked him if he fished.
Let's say there is a large lake with 1000 fish in it and ten people who fish the lake. While everyone has their spot, the fish aren't evenly distributed throughout the lake, however, you have a secret spot where 800 of the fish gather. This means that you are always able to get enough fish for yourself, but some of the nine others often go hungry. Do you tell them about your spot?
But, now with the possibility to get more than enough fish for yourself, you are able to go to market and sell to them when they have a shortfall. This way, they don't go hungry and you are able to benefit from your secret spot, your luck. Does this sound okay?
Now, using the gains from selling fish, you are able to build a position of power and have additional resources to influence conditions. By using the power of your fishing business, you could purchase the secret fishing area and ensure that you are the only one who has access to it, thereby ensuring that you are able to continually be able to fish more than enough for yourself, and sell the excess to the hungry. Do you buy?
I don't know if this works in every detail, but for a basic understanding of human nature in terms of resource allocation and law, it was enough for my client to think more on. Because, this is essentially what happens and illustrates that good fortune can turn into ownership and with influence, that luck can be formalized into legislation, so that the luck is no longer luck, it is a built-in systematic process.
This means that the other nine fishers are unable to have access to the resources, which leads to an ever growing wealth gap. And, it also means that over time, it is likely that the nine will fall into a debt cycle to the one, increasingly having to give up their spots and work for the one to pay off the debt.
And this is the current economy.
Yes, there are more complexities than this simple story can cover in a few lines, but in essence, we are seeing how narrow ownership leads to overweighted influence, legislation change for self-interest and growing disparity, with a legal hurdle to protect the position. The only way for the nine to change the dynamic, is by force.
Goodness of the heart doesn't exist. Incentive does.
And the economic incentive is going to drive behavior, which in turn is going to affect economic conditions, as well as impact on the entirety of society in numerous ways. No matter how much some people fish, they are never going to be able to catch enough to feed themselves and they will always be indebted to those who are able to overfish and sell the excess.
In a robust economy this can work when each person has multiple tradeable resources, but in a narrow economy, it doesn't, especially when the most valuable industries in the world, are largely owned by a narrow set of people in fields that average people aren't able to operate, because of legislation - like commercial banking, military, pharmaceuticals, insurance. These industries can employee a lot of people to do the fishing, but who really makes profit?
The gaps keep increasing.
The problem with the economy now is that not enough people have ownership of resources, and it isn't just the fishing spots either, it is also the economic skillsets that go along with it. It wasn't that long ago that economics referred to the direct translation of "household management", where a family had to learn to mange their own finances, which included using their skills to collect resources through both the thick and the thin times - through the summer and the winter.
But, this hasn't been the case for ages, and instead most of us are employees, which comes with a steady salary. This is great for security, but there is a little problem that I haven't ever heard talked about before, which is that reliance on the salary. What I mean is that having a salary ensures that we might be able to make ends meet, but human nature will keep pushing out our needs so we will never have a large lump sum to invest, to buy the best fishing spots. Instead, we will likely only ever have enough to make ends meet, unless we get luck, win the lottery and not have to fish, knowing we can buy all we will ever need.
But, the owned financial systems benefit from this, because it ensures that they have a constant stream of value coming in the form of salary deposits and consumer spending, that gives them the large amounts of value that can invest significantly in ways that increase the width of the stream, capturing more of the lake and more of the fish within, until the lake is completely owned, and everyone else is a renter, and likely in debt.
And, while this is not ideal, what it also hints at is the solution that can reset the system. Instead of the violent uprising of the nine to take over the fishing spot to start again, the nine can opt out of the legal system that denies them access and in the case of the economy, that is the fiat system itself. Redefining value and tokenizing it with a changeable marker, means that if any one individual takes too much of the resources, the rest will opt out of their economy all together, making it all valueless.
However, as you can see, we still have to eat. And what this means is that the physical resources needed for survival need to be distributed widely enough, that firstly, no one can monopolize a single vital commodity and secondly, no one can too heavily influence the system to create legislations that offer them too much protection.
People think those on Wall Street and similar are greedy, but it is only true to the extent that we pretty much all are. I know elderly people who love their family, but keep their best mushroom picking areas a well kept secret that they literally, take to the grave with them. Same with people and their favorite fishing spots, right? They might not be able to legislate it so it is protected for themselves, but if they could, they would.
We're all on the hook.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
