Civilization
Everyone knows what a civilization is. It is in a nutshell a group of people working together with specialized skills in order to achieve goals. And according to the MirriamWebster.com definition number two of a savagery, it is quite simply, “an uncivilized state.” The term savagery is not used very often because people tend to associate the word savagery with the more negative term “savage.” But for the purpose of this post we are using the idea that savagery is just an uncivilized state. That being said, where does wealth really come from? I think the best way to visualize where wealth comes from is through a thought experiment. Let’s say you are in a land where there appears to be no cities or towns. You are in a forest near a river and you are very concerned. Luckily enough, you find a sharp rock near the river that you are able to combine with some rope and a stick to make a tomahawk-like chopping tool. You use it to chop down some branches and make a shelter for yourself. It was a hard days work, you are tired, so you sleep.
The next day you are extremely hungry and you forage around for anything edible. Taking risks on plants and berries is the least of your concerns. There are other animals in the forest and from the sounds they are dangerous, you don’t know if the next meal is going to be theirs. But after venturing in the forest you come across another person who is carrying a large basket filled with berries and other items. There is a sudden urge in your body and mind to attack this stranger with your axe but you resist and talk instead. It turns out that this person is very kind and has been foraging in the forest for quite some time. You realize that this person named, Jaldra is quite proficient at finding berries and she is willing to share with you. But she doesn’t know how to make an axe and she wants you to make one for her. Eventually she says she wants you to teach her how to do it.
What just happened? Jaldra had her berries and you wanted those berries. You had an axe and she wanted an axe. You both had a supply of something and a demand for something else. Even in this most basic thought experiment it is obvious that it doesn’t take much for people to benefit from trading what they have or know. So let’s take the thought experiment a little further and see what happens.
Besides having a lot of berries, Jaldra has something that is very precious to you. And that is information. Jaldra knows the location of a few other people in the forest. Over time you and Jaldra establish trust and she takes you to a hermit who lives in a cave. The hermit has many things that he collected. One of those items in very interesting to you. It is a bow and quiver of arrows. You want it, but the hermit does not want to part with it easily. So he trades the bow and arrow for an entire bushel of berries and two of your stone axes. It takes you some time to learn how to use your bow proficiently but you eventually become a capable hunter. Jaldra becomes impressed by your skill and instead of being a friend and trading partner, your relationship changes into a more passionate and permanent companionship.
Other people in the forest notice the fire by your camp and they come to share in the food. Not everyone who comes to your camp has the same things to offer. Some people bring food, others bring weapons, and some people bring musical instruments and their talents. Your camp eventually gets larger and more food is required to feed the people who live there. So better hunting techniques are required to catch game. With more people some animals that seemed to dangerous to hunt are now a possibility. You hunt in parties.
As the person who was the most skillful with the bow and arrow, you are given great respect in the camp. Jaldra and the other gatherers always bring you a generous amount of food. And now the younger members of the camp construct your arrows for you so you can rest and have energy for the next hunt.
Let’s take a look at what just happened. Your access to resources increased. In this case it was food and arrows. Even though your resources were not monetary, relative to the other people in the camp, you have become quite wealthy.
But where did the wealth really come from? It came from the trade and sharing between people of different specializations. The more specialized someone is in what they do, the greater variety of products and service they can provide.
So let’s fast forward your hunting party and camp a few hundred years and find out what happened. You had fight off invaders. You eventually had children with Jaldra and died. Your children had to accept responsibilities and were trained by the elders in the camp to be strong. Generations later the camp became a village and technology slowly became more advanced. Bartering for items sometimes occurred using medium of exchange. In this case the villagers used semi-precious gems, animal furs, and sometimes specialized plant extracts used for either healing or spiritual purposes. Things have gone quite well and many of the people of the village experienced increased comfort and survivability.
Your village is then suddenly attacked by a band of men from some other community, probably from across the river. One of your decendents leads the war party to meet the invaders. The two forces seem similarly matched with axes, throwing axes, bow and arrow, and dart based weapons. But the difference is that your descendants used and trained dogs in both hunting prey and for war. So when your decendent went to meet the enemy, his forces were supported by attack dogs. The dogs were used to confuse and distract the enemy while your bowmen were able to take the high ground. As the arrows flew into the air you and the other axe wielding skirmishers assaulted the main forces of your enemy. The battle was exhausting and many fell on both sides, but your decendents came out victorious.
The competitive edge of the attack dogs is what turned the tide of the battle in the favor of your village. We have seen this happen in history time and time again. Different peoples engage in battle and one group has some form of technological or skill-based advantage, and sometimes entire civilizations get conquered or wiped from existence completely. So whoever decided to specialize and train those attack dogs, seriously helped your village. But something happened, one of the enemy soldiers survived the battle, barely.
After much discussion and deliberation between the village elders, the decision was made to torture the enemy soldier for information. That information was the location of the enemy village. A scouting party was sent and it turned out that the enemy village had a large amount of women and children and a good amount of men defending it. But there was not enough of them to repel a direct assault from a concentrated group of your skirmishers and bowmen. And since most of their capable soldiers were killed by your attack dogs and bowmen previously, their defenses were seriously thinned. So your decendents attacked the enemy village, killed most of the men. And assimilated the women and children into your own tribe. The skills and resources of that village were now part of yours. The resources and herbs from the defeated village were taken as plunder and loot and were distributed among the elders and soldiers of the war party. Thus, the wealth of the victorious increased tremendously because of their success in battle. Which was attributed to their previous victory with the attack dogs.
Specialization is power. In the United States more specialization is able to occur each year, because the meat-and-potato duties of society are handled by professionals supported by machines. There used to be a huge percentage of farmers in the USA in the 1800’s, but now farmers with the help of machines are able to create tremendous harvests. Therefore, less people are needed to farm the land. This in turn, forces people to be something other than a farmer. Because not only is farming land more scarce but, in order to be competitive someone needs a lot of technology and resources to farm a great deal of land to have a marketable product. But there are some farmers who are able to sell their goods at local farmer’s markets all around the USA. And those farmers usually have high-quality, specialized crops that are hard to find.
We don’t live in a society of scarcity anymore. In fact this is a system of abundance, and scarcity has to implemented artificially. The most common form of scarcity control in our current civilization is through the use of prices. Scarcity makes prices go up. That means that profits will increase for those who are selling the scare items. It is kind of like a bell curve in school. There is always going to be the few who can afford the scarce item in abundance, the majority who have to exert a considerable amount of energy to acquire the item, and then there are the proverbial losers who are unable to get what they want. It’s nothing personal, it is just how the system works. If everyone could afford everything all the time, then a very dangerous thing would take place. It is worse than obesity, criminal behavior, disease, or war. The most dangerous thing that can happen in a civilization is, contentment.
When a person or group of people become content, they have two choices: They can either choose to stay content, or choose to no longer remain content. Civilizations that are content with their living standards and technological levels are oftentimes prey to civilizations that are hungry for more. How did Dynastic China get weakened by the Britain and the West? We got them hooked on opium. The hungry civilization always looks for whatever “in” it can get in order to open markets and get the movement of trade and goods flowing as rapidly as possible. It’s nothing personal.
So how does wealth creation occur within a society like the USA where people generally get along pretty well? There are two forms of wealth creation: Predatory and Symbiotic. Predatory wealth creation in America is what many of us are seeing in the news. There are financial scams on everything from pre-paid legal, stock market scams, pyramid schemes, identity theft, and countless others. There is predatory lending and fear mongering that makes people want to purchase things they don’t really need. The funny thing is that even though the extraction of this wealth is predatory, the movement of the funds from one person to another has an expanding effect on the monetary system because it makes the system appear to be healthier. And when the system “appears” to be healthier, institutions like the stock market and other monetary indicators say that the economy is growing. So more purchasing and lending takes place, which is a good thing for the economy. Movement is the key.
Symbiotic Wealth Creation is when a good or service is exchanged in a mutually beneficial way. Some examples are when people create and sell software that makes a business more efficient, food sales, education that can lead to greater specialization, and purchases toward security and military superiority which can make people feel comfortable that their purchases and investments in lineage will be long lived.
What is interesting is that no matter how even the playing field is. And no matter how many opportunities there are for all people. Certain personality types and certain families tend to acquire a greater amount of wealth than others. A big factor is the term, “access.” Some families have made connections with other families that span centuries or even millenia. So an introduction for an entrepreneur for one of these people to a possible investor can be much easier than for someone who is fresh off the street. Another thing about access, is that in a world of billions of people, familiarity makes people more comfortable, especially when it comes to money. So people that have that familiarity, will have an advantage in both getting and capitalizing on opportunities.
Personalities are key. Your personality is oftentimes what will determine if you will be a leader or a follower, a boss or a worker drone, an investor or an entrepreneur, a laborer or an analyst. Remember, there is nothing wrong with being a hard worker who gets very little to show for it. In fact, it is a very completely necessary part of civilization to have people who are happy working their knuckles off. I’m noticing it quite often now as I see people from my generation venture deeper and deeper into adulthood.
There is a great deal of compromising going on. I am not judging anyone, but I am observing it. People are starting to realize that they aren’t going to live forever, so they settle down with companions and prepare to reproduce or else just jump right into it. The truth is, getting older is a very scary concept because death is right around the corner. So one method that wealth is both Predatorily and Symbiotically extracted from people is by helping people escape from their fear of death. And the two best methods to help people escape from their underlying fears is through curiosity and awe.
The internet is a great example of a curiosity generator. You have things like YouTube and Facebook which constantly spark people’s interest on some they are slightly curious about. And the fact that other people checked it out makes it seem much more appealing. But remember, all those hits and views translate into something very tangible. And that is web ranking and advertising revenue. The more traffic, the more money the ads generate. It is as simple as that.
Those who actually acquire the wealth are those that either get the advertising revenue from the content, or those that gain virtual internet status by distributing that information. Oftentimes it doesn’t actually matter who is creating the content. The systems that distribute the content are the winners of the wealth. Tremendous amounts of videos and articles are posted for free all over the web. But there is a new class of internet information middlemen and women who seem to find the needles in the haystacks of what can stimulate that curiosity factor. There can also be informal alliances that are formed by people who may not even communicate directly with each other. A website may have a certain fan that promotes articles from it on social media outlets. The website itself gains advertising revenue and increased traffic by the fan. And the fan can gain social status by sharing fresh information to his or her friends. And in time someone like this can become an emerging celebrity on the social media scene. It is a kind of odd relationship but a symbiotic one nonetheless.
Wealth Creation through the use of awe is often implemented by the economic system and the media itself. This is really intriguing because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the newspaper talking about how the economy is doing better, because more people are shopping at restaurants. Or how there is room for concern because less toys are being bought during Christmas. There is a lot more going on here than stock market prices. The idea is to stimulate their own movement. This can be financial movement through the business section of the newspaper, or physical movement by constant bombardment on the nightly news about obesity and the need for people to exercise. Hey, exercise is great, don’t get me wrong. But when I used to play water polo I used to eat a ton of food. I remember the “No Eating in Class” rules and I would completely ignore them and eat multiple course lunches during a class period. When you exercise you get hungry it is a undeniable fact. But when you have a healthy person who eats a lot, they are beneficial to the economy because they are creating jobs in food service, farming, new clothes to fit the ever growing muscles or slimming bodies, there are even jobs created in the people who have to service the waste disposal systems for all the refuse and fecal matter that is created through consumption. The funny thing is that if you are a person who consumes a great deal and is unhealthy, then the medical system benefits by selling you drugs or surgeries. So you are creating wealth no matter what, as long as you do not become content.
Speaking of being content check out this relaxing and inspiring music by Ott. My friend that I made via the internet turned me onto this band and he truly has my thanks for it.
-Tyler