I reread this chapter on the Myth of the Finite Pie, in the book called “Killing Sacred Cows” , which was written by Garrett B. Gunderson. In this book, Gunderson discusses nine “myths” which he feels have “crippled our nation for generations:” One of those Myths is the one of the “Infinite Pie”. This myth is often traced to a 18th Century Philosopher Thomas Malthus, who famously pined that the number of hungry mouths in the world had no limit, but the available food to feed them was limited.
In my mind, I breakdown Mr. Gunderson’s prose to basic concepts which I ponder and examine. This simple incorrect statement by Mr. Malthus is suppose to be the basis of the Myth of the Finite Pie, which is the concept that wealth and resources are limited and you must get yours before someone else gets it, and it’s corollary thought, if someone gets wealthy first, you can only get wealthy by taking it from them.
I enjoyed pondering this thought, because the opposite financial and philosophical theory is the basis of Cryptocurrency at its highest and best use, in my humble opinion and is the highest and best use of the Steemit platform, also my humble opinion.
It is my assertion, which I share with Mr. Gunderson, perhaps as a demonstration of the validity of the theory “That we seek out authors who agree with our personal assertions for validation”, that the pie is actually infinite. In the basic sense I believe Mr. Malthus to be wrong about humanity being incapable of feeding all its hungry mouths by increasing food production, based on my observations that we have developed the ability, but not the will to feed all hungry mouths. And my observation that wealth is not finite, so you don’t have to “...rob Peter to pay Paul” you can actually earn or produce more money or wealth to pay them both.
It is probably hard for some or perhaps many of you to believe this Myth is a foundation of human behavior. This Myth of the Finite Pie is also called a “Scarcity Mindset” by Mr. Gunderson and many other authors. But apparently, according to many Psychologists and Sociologists, many human behaviors are derived from this belief system, which results in un-necessary competition and waste of resources in situations where collaboration would be more productive. Now I don’t feel these principles are universal, as there are definitely some things which are finite, such as time in a day, lions named Mufasa and other unique, unreproducible resources. But truth be told the number of 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch style homes we can build, one half acre lots we can clear, clothes for our bodies, food for our mouths, immunizations for our children cars, watches, phones, etc these are resources we can create almost infinitely based on the amount of land and resources on the earth. And we can create much of these resources more efficiently in a cooperative and collaborative fashion, then if we each create each item ourselves.
Now on to the meat of this post, I share Mr. Gundersons’ belief that wealth isn’t finite, that it is created and in free and open economic systems we can work together to create significant amounts of wealth, which can be distributed widely, albeit unequally due to natural differences in motivation, effort and desire for accumulation. But I believe that capitalism, free market economies and yes Cryptocurrency can be mechanisms for collaborative creation and distribution of wealth. It was this possibility and indeed the very nature of the Steemit system of wealth creation, which attracted me here initially. Now while nothing made by imperfect people is perfect, and most would agree that Steemit is not perfect and in fact is constantly evolving through HardForks into a different entity. We are attempting through distributed proof of stake and stake weighted consensus, to achieve a better system of creating and distributing wealth here. Those of us here hopefully understand that by curating, upvoting and being curated and upvoted in return, we are creating and distributing rewards/wealth in varied proportion to our motivation, effort and stake. The industrious and astute attempt to compensate for their lack of stake with effort, motivation and implementing what they learn on the platform to receive a greater share of rewards to spend or increase their influence and hence their rewards.
This is a complex social and financial experiment, where we each bring to bear our personal talents and the free marketplace of Steemit tells us what our stake and talents are valued at in this market. This is not to be confused with some absolute measure of value, but merely what it is valued at today, in this market with multiple forces at work determining its current stated value.
✍🏼 By written by Shortsegments
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