How can we explain that the most powerful person on earth uses a vocabulary similar to that of a five year old? Using simplistic terms like good and bad all the time. Aka, what we use to describe the world to kids who have not yet learned anything more complex than that.
Most smart people struggle to understand why the majority of the electorate doesn't buy their "superior" and "far more rational" facts and insists on voting people who appear to be less fit to rule. Why are so many fellow citizens around us rejecting science, medicine and even democratic institutions ?
Ain't those structures that organized societies put in place to benefit us all ? So are all those angry people rejecting them, shooting themselves in the foot ? Why do some people go so far as to support countries and political systems which are fighting their own country ?
It makes things obvious then. They must be so very stupid and bad while "we" are so smart and nice.
I'm sorry to ruin your superiority fairy-tale but they know exactly what they are doing. And yes, it is working perfectly for them. Yes their actions cause economic harm to society. But it is by design as they indeed try to destroy a "system" that has placed them in the bottom of food chain.
If 10 people are to receive a payment of 100 coins every month, obviously we will initially give 10 coins to each one. But each one of those people has different traits, which make them more or less competitive in this specific game or system (whatever you want to call it).
Add to that the compounding effects of using the economic power you just gained to cement and expand your competitiveness and you can easily understand why there can never be an equal society. So given enough time, some people will rise to 20 coins a month and others will drop to 4.
Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto noticed in 1906 that in Italy, the richest 20% of the people owned 80% of the land. This became known as the Pareto principle and is used widely in business and finance even today.
Out of pure coincidence, also around 1906, American economist Max Otto Lorenz published an essay describing what became known as Lorenz curve. It was a method to visualize the inequality of wealth distribution.
A few years later in 1912, Italian statistician Corrado Gini created the Gini Coefficient to measure inequality within any system that is described by the Lorenz curve. Unfortunately there are no globally accepted measurements of the Gini coefficient.
Yet most research on the topic agrees that inequality is on the rise. For example Branko Milanovic of the World Bank research group writes that: "Income inequality has risen over the past quarter-century instead of falling as expected".
So, to summarize and finally make my point, income inequality is not an "abstract feeling". It has been studied and measured extensively. There are indeed many people who have a poor quality of living and that would be better off if this "poker game" were to start all over.
So Mr John Doe knows very well that your facts and arguments are "correct" and would likely lead our society to have 110 coins per month instead of 100. But this would take you from 20 coins to 22 while they would stay well below 5.
And this is why doctors are suddenly "corrupt", how scientists "fake global warming because they get bribes from corporations" and how "chemtrails are used to control the population". And when you ask them for any validation of the above, there comes "you are a victim of the system", "how do you know better" etc etc.
They are not playing a fair game, right ? You cannot simply change reality only because facts don't suit you, right ? Well actually you can! And they know it. And the more you stick to that fair-game narrative, the more they win.
In 1986, four years after the war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands, the most famous match in football history was played in Mexico City. Argentina was facing England for the quarter-final of the 1986 football world cup. Things were tense!
In that historic game, Diego Maradona scored the two most famous goals in the history of the sport, less than five minutes apart, in front of a crowd of 115.000 people.
The second one was an incredible 55 meters solo run in which Maradona obliterated England's defense and sent his team to the next stage and eventually to the victory of the 1986 world cup. It became known as "the goal of the century".
But we care today about the first one. He scored it illegally using his hand and was also in an illegal offside position. Nevertheless it went down in history as "the hand of God".
Back then there was no "Video Assistant Referee" like there is today. If the referee made a mistake, the game simply carried on. Such mistakes were considered part of the game and were never "corrected" after examination.
So essentially it is not a stretch to say that technically speaking, by the letter (and the spirit) of the law, Maradona should have never been a world champion. But history wrote that from that day on, and for the next 36 years, Diego Maradona would be widely considered to be the best football player of all times.
So Maradona defied the rules of the game and went on to write his name in history. If you were in Maradona's place on that very instance in time and space, would you have used your hand to score that illegal goal ? Would you have taken the chance (like he did) to go down in history ?
Or would you pass the opportunity and "simply" become someone as famous as Johan Cruyff ? Aka, widely regarded among journalists and football fanatics as extremely influential to the sport and member of many best-of lists, but not THE GOAT, not the king of the game, not a world champion ?
We all act this way in life. We all try to get the raise at work, try to get the girl to like us best, try to get the last parking spot before anyone else. Nobody cares about rules, about logic and especially about the collective interest of our society.
So Mr average John Doe has every reason to wish the downfall of our society. From his point of view, he is stuck in a poker game where some fat weirdo smoking a Cuban cigar has absorbed all the money in the table. Who cares if he deserved it or not? It is time to somehow reshuffle the cash or even better, play an entirely new game.
Even if collectively the capacity of the system drops from 100 coins to 80, the resulting reshuffling could get him from 4 coins up to 8. The outcome looks even more appealing if we take into account that his imaginary competitor "Evil Jim" will lose 12 of his 20 coins.
We have created societies, so extremely unequal, that more and more people around us, have a direct interest in their impending collapse. Especially if we also factor in, the daily display of wealth by famous actors, athletes, and so on, it becomes very easy to understand why John Doe has gradually become so fanatically anti-establishment.
You are trying hard to convince people about "stuff" using "facts" against their direct interests. You are trying to get them to accept opinions that if applied, would lower their standard of living and well-being. You are doing this to preserve your own superior living conditions. They are defying your rationale on purpose. They try to change the game, to lower your quality of living in order to improve theirs.
Do you think this will ever change if you simply come up with "better arguments" ?
The interest you have in the improvement of your society is not universal. The game called life is chaotic. You cannot barricade yourself over a simple set of rules, which by a sinister coincidence, end up in you having the 20 coins.
This is not a high school exam where the smartest people win. It is a fight for wealth and income. You are playing the wrong game. The more you stay in play-by-the-rules mentality, the more they are winning.
And as ancient philosophers, Adam Nathaniel Yauch and Tom Cushman, perfectly described it: You Gotta Fight for Your Right To Party.
Αυτό το άρθρο είναι διαθέσιμο επίσης στα ελληνικά: Να γιατί οι έξυπνοι άνθρωποι χάνουν τη μάχη.
