Smart people, the ones who are usually thinking about how to fix society's problems, about social structures and govern-cement policies, do not really know how dumb the average person is. And, half the people are dumber than that.
I am not trying to put anyone down, i am trying to point out a common occurrence of high IQ people. High IQ people often think, if i was just a little smarter, could think a little more clearly, then i could easily do X. Not realizing that the average person couldn't even dream of doing X, and often not even the precursor of X.
An example, math people think that calculus is easy, and it's where real math starts.
They have a difficult time grasping why people can't do simple algebra in their heads.
And people who have a hard time doing basic arithmetic must just not want to do it, because you can't be that bad.
Of course, the lower than average person doesn't want to think. Thinking is hard.
They do not want to do math. Math is hard.
So, most of the political forms would work, if only people were smarter. But we are not. And so, we really need to look at all sides of the inputs, instead of ignoring them because it hurts some feelings. "Puts people down", in their words.
The Pareto Principal
The Pareto principal states that 80% of the output is created by 20% of the people.
Like, published research papers: 80% of the papers, are done by 20% of the academians.
This has been found to hold true on almost all measured things.
In a graphical view, it looks like this:
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It isn't that most of the people get most of the work done, it is that a small percentage of the people get most of the work done, and the average person gets some work done, and the bottom percentage produce next to nothing.
These are the facts that we have to deal with. Especially if we are going to create a societal structure that works for everyone.
How this manifests in reality
If you weed your garden, you get 20% more yield.
So, if one Indian farmer pulls all the weeds out of his garden, he gets 20% more than an Indian farmer who doesn't. And this 20% is cumulative over the years. Making the farmer who pulls the weeds much richer. And the poorer farmers get envious. But, we can all say that the poorer farmer could have pulled the weeds.
This happens on all kinds of levels.
The office workers who are working on reports. The average worker spends a great deal of time fixing mistakes. While the one who gets more done, does so because they make few mistakes. And unfortunately, the one who makes few mistakes is usually called on to help fix other mistakes, dragging down the production they could have made alone.
So what do we do?
If you were a really good boss, and actually knew which of your team was doing what. You could fire 80% of your staff, and only take a 20% hit on productivity.
I have seen this happen a few times, but not many. Good bosses are few, and without a lot of motivation and convincing everyone it is all right (that 80% of their coworkers are gone). The ones i have seen are small places that made sure to keep their best machinists, their best people.
But, with corporate policies, everyone is considered to be a cog. And the cogs are all the same. And doing too little or too much can get you reviewed as a bad cog. So, the corporate atmosphere tends to destroy what would best serve them. There are few good bosses in corporate-land.
In order to create a better society, we really need to acknowledge the level each person is at, and what they can do. But, this has to be balanced with allowing each person to live the best life they can, without people getting too far behind. (and i don't know what to do with the emotions/hurt feelings at all)
Like, we do not expect children to be able to bake a cake. And the first times they try, they will often make a big mess, that will take time away from our productivity to clean up after them. (they aren't even proficient at cleaning yet) But, teaching them to bake a cake is very important for their future life. And we do not "put them down" because they are little, uncoordinated and lacking in knowledge.
But, what do we do when we have a low IQ person who has trouble tying their shoes as an adult? How do we help these people efficiently?
What do we do about the gardener who doesn't do the weeding? And then complains that he isn't getting as much (money) as the other guy?
This gets really difficult to balance.
And the society has to be creating more calories than it consumes. So, we cannot give more attention to the bottom 20% then we have available calories to spare.
I hope that we can find better ways to make all of this work.