Pick a number

I am no sociologist. So this may be utter nonsense. The issue of poverty discussed below and the median measure got me thinking on how there could possibly ever be a fair society. I have written before that the world is aligned to certain human attributes around success and failure.

In the good old days, the fittest and the strongest would survive. But what drives us since we left the caves. It may be that the rich appear to have the power but this seems to me an effect and not a cause. Ignoring the lucky (lotteries etc) and those who inherit (which is luck of birth) then what is the attribute that defines the pecking order these days (is it more than one attribute?).

Hard to tell. Its not just intelligence. There are lots of smart people and that is rarely enough in its own right to lead to riches. But lack of intelligence does seem to be a hindrance (there are few dumb rich people). Risk taking? Yep, must be an attribute of the successful, but there are lots of poor risk takers (and dead ones).

But its not important to find what the attribute is. And this is the key point. Whatever the attribute is in any society and at any point in time there will be a spread in the population from those who have none of that (those) attribute(s) to those who have the perfect amount.

There will always be an imbalance, there will always be a pecking order and their will always be inequality.

Seems a bit of a hopeless situation then? Not really. While success is based upon the individual's human attributes we will always have a range of winners and losers. For the good of society we need to ensure that we are able to find a way to narrow the range of the top to bottom. We see the effects of wealth from the richest to the poorest where it gets out of hand and the few have all the money. Off with their heads! And money is the one thing we focus on. The successful have to give to the less successful. This causes tensions and in fact has negative effects as in extreme it removes the motivation to be successful (why bother if nobody else has to).

If money is the effect of a natural range of attributes then surely we should be looking at what these are and how the gap can be lessened. We cannot go on only focusing on the money. Education is bound to be part of this but there is no major link between a good education and an excellent education (again, a bad education is a hindrance).

More thinking must be put into this area. No matter what the attributes are, finding a way to link success and reward to performance (which provide motivation) coupled with opportunity (so anyone can make it) and balanced with a narrow range from top to bottom will go a long way to producing a fairer society. Fairer, but not equal. Equal is impossible and detrimental. We will always need competition.