Today's "Statue By The Sea" image features what appears to be a man and his dog searching for something beneath a large rock . I don't really know what the artist is trying to say to us with this work . Maybe it's simply a representation of a man looking for some lost coins or other valuable, lost at an earlier time. On a more abstract level, it might even be a metaphor for mankind's quest to leave no stone unturned as we seek to find our path through life. Who knows, there are probably as many possibilities as there are beholders.!!
For me, the image has somehow aroused thoughts about how one goes about making the illusionary money which apparently lies at the heart of the Steemit economy. That too is a very much a seek and find process. To be fair, I still don't understand how value is created and distributed in this environment at all, but I do know that an awful lot of air time and effort seems to be given to ways in which one might best maximise their individual opportunities. That in turn made me wonder how this environment compares to what goes on in the real world.
I once heard a tale that suggested capitalism had its beginning when somebody decided to put a fence around a piece of land and call it their own. Their neighbours and others in the community must have thought this was ok , because I can tell you an awful lot of fences have been erected since that very first foray into property ownership. One easy observation we could all make about the particular system of wealth creation we've inherited is that there are winners and losers, as well as a lot of in-betweeners. Early adapters and those with hungrier appetites ( call it greed if you will), or perhaps with pure luck on their side, have gone on to acquire and accumulate much more of the land parcels than they ever likely to need. The same is also true for the accumulation of money in the real world. A much cited fact tells us that 10% of the world's population currently own something like 90% of all the planet's wealth. These figures, I believe, pretty much hold true for most individual countries. The flip side of thie figure is that 90% of the global population are then left to fight it out for their meagre share of the remaining 10%.
In the real world of today there are all kinds of complex regulations, both global and national, as well as numerous watchdog organizations who try their best to control the amount of money in play and how its distributed. They have, however, clearly achieved only minimal fairness for their efforts, if the figures in the paragraph above are to be believed.
This planet has of course experimented with many systems of wealth distribution, mainly in order to try and create the illusion that our bounty is being best distributed. The most interesting of these was possibly Socialism, in which a centralised authority was created to dole out the national wealth in a fairer way. The jury is probably still out as to how effective the Socialist efforts were in ever achieving that goal.
Meanwhile, the gap in wealth holdings seems to be ever widening. The rich do seem to be getting richer and the poor are largely getting poorer, despite all of our technological advances. The overall problem is of course further exacerbated by the our ever increasing population.
Despite the obvious and constantly widening gap in wealth holdings that we can easily see via the modern 24/7 media machine (not all of it is false news!!), most actions we see by those in controls of economic levers, still show a tendency to increase the unfairness in wealth distribution, rather than address it. A well known U.S financier of the 19th century, J. P. Morgan, suggested it was appropriate that the highest paid person in any organization should only be paid a multiple of ten times what the lowest person was paid. This apparently seemed a fair thing at the time Mr Morgan was cogitating on the matter. Today, however, we see many industries where CEO's are paid many thousands time more than what the lower echelons are paid. This does seem to be a little out of whack. After all, its fairly easy to work out approximately how much one person might need to live a full and comfortable lifetime. It seems that many of our actions , policies and evolutions are still tending to create large pools of individuals who could never possibly spend all the money they have accumulated, even if they had ten lifetimes! To make matters worse, many countries still show a tendency towards elect governments who see it as their role to create tax breaks and other incentives for the already wealthy. This is generally sold to the masses under the guise of the rich will spend more and thus create more opportunity and growth for the poorer majority. Sadly, there is not a skerrick of evidence to suggest this has ever worked effectively. The gap only continues to widen.
I'm trying hard not to sound like a raving extremist, which I don't think I am. What I've written are simply some of facts as I see them from my own perch. I doubt there is an easy answer to this issue of inequality. If there were I'd like to think we would have seen more serious effort to address some of the short comings in the current system. It does occur to me, though, that if the current restricted wealth creation processes are allowed to continue unabated , then surely it's only going to end in tears. As an example of how that might manifest, you only need to look at the French Revolutions. The French quest for improved freedom, fraternity and equality ultimately led to the annihilation of an entire elite class. I'd hate to think that anything so savage, particularly in this age of weapons saturation, would ever happen again. Hopefully we would surely find a more peaceful solution than those provided by history, if rage against the current system did ever get to breaking point.
Anyway, that probably enough of my uninformed ramblings. The real purpose of this piece was to ponder whether things in the Steemit world are following a similar growth to what I have alluded to above? Will there one day be Steemit billionaires living in closeted Steemit gated communities looking over the Steemit Sea? There are obviously rules at play in here that determine the amount and processes for a new kind of "wealth distribution". The question remains - is that process controlled by a benevolent dictator... or by others with a vested interest? I don't really know or care what the answer is. Its just a question that occurred to me as an extension of my picture post today.
When I first learned about Steemit I was initially attracted by the anarchistic prospect of an alternative economic system. I'm now kind of wondering - are simply repeating what has already gone before. Are people being truly and fairly rewarded for their efforts or is it only the early adapters and greedy who will ultimately succeed? I appreciate what a very complex and difficult thing to put a truly equal system in place, and I shall carry on with my efforts try and learn better how its really done here. In the meantime, I have to observe that greed does seem to have taken a strong hold in here. Not surprising really - remember that 80's film when Michael Douglas made his statement for the age... "Greed is good". Greed, however, is also quite an odd thing. The seven deadly sins, ( of which greed is one) were identified by early philosophers as being the blights which stopped us from ever becoming a utopian society. The fact is, despite our several thousand years of effort trying to civilize ourselves, all of the deadly sins, including greed, remain very much at the heart of us.