Amerika

Every society is afflicted by class warfare. As a society grows, its lower classes outbreed the rest, and soon the imbalance is too great to resist, so it turns toward the Leftist politics favored by simpler people: everything is free, everything is permitted, and someone else pays for it and cleans up.

Karl Marx understood this, which is why he said socialism grows out of capitalism. As efficiency increases, so does wealth, and soon the working classes are voting with their wallets, at which point they become enfranchised and quickly vote for something like socialism (subsidies, anarchy, and jannies).

This means that the primary driver of decay in societies is class warfare, which always involves the have-nots waging war against the haves. The haves experience no need to wage class war; their lives are already pretty good. Once the have-nots start threatening their fortunes, libertarianism arises.

For an unorthodox take, let us consider that maybe the categories are wrong.

Right now we have categories for the different social classes, and those are at least attributes that make sense, since they reflect genetic intelligence bands. But what if there was a more fundamental category in terms of how we view people?

It seems to me that the Bell Curve applies to character as well as intelligence. That is, about a fifth of the population are manipulators, a fifth are “contributors” in the sense that will be defined shortly, and the rest are somewhere on the scale between opportunistic coward and well-intentioned sap.

The contributors on the other hand are those who without prompting will make an active choice to give back: production, creativity, and maintenance of good things as proven by time. Every good leader is from this group, as well as the few artists who are not poseurs, and many people doing ordinary jobs well.

A little old lady who gets up every morning to sweep the church steps is a contributor. The plumber who does a good job and stays late sometimes to fix a leak for that little old lady is a contributor. The people playing at the symphonies, leading the military, and innovating in business can be contributors, but are not by category alone; it depends on their actions.

Interestingly, creativity factors in:

Creativity is defined here as the ability to produce ideas or solutions that are both novel and effective using one’s imagination.

This seems a useful definition because it incorporates the two-step test of “novel and effective.” Lots of people can produce novel (new, unusual, contrarian, odd, quirky) content; most of it however is irrelevant. Novel and effective means articulating well, finding solutions, or increasing learning.

A realist recognizes that there are great individual people, not rules or herds/groups. Some individuals are contributors; some are destroyers, and most are just following along on the coattails hoping for a payoff.

It is probably how things were with ancient people. In the mammoth hunt, there were a few who scouted the quarry, lured it to a trap, and flung the killing spears. The rest were there to beat the bushes and hope for a smaller share of the meat in return.

Then back in the cave there were a few fakers. Maybe they were pretending to be injured, pleading poverty, or being hipsters making “art.” The entire cave society survived because of the fifth of its people who were contributors, either hunting or making or inventing spears or other technology.

Those whose role was maintenance, like cleaning the fire pits, stocking firewood, and finally cooking the meat were also contributors, albeit unsung ones. This is the group that produces writers and coders today. Contributors tend to be realists: having meat is more important than anything else.

Their opposite are the individualists. These people believe in the self first before everything else, and they split into two groups: the libertarians who want to be beholden to no one and no thing, and the proto-socialists who want their individualism subsidized.

Realists keep their eyes on the road ahead and the needs of reality. A cave civilization needs food, water, heat, and shelter. The realist spends his time achieving those and has no use for individualism; he knows that reality and the goals of his civilization come first before the individual.

An individualist wants to include everyone. To him, if there is a hunt, everyone must be fed, regardless of their contribution. This way no individual suffers, and if civilization suffers, that is too bad. They want to erase the distinction between contributors and takers.

To pursue this goal, the individualist becomes a big believer in rules. He wants to make the bad act good, even if that results in a failing society that makes the good act apathetic. To that end, he creates a morality of equality that emphasizes how everyone is important if they just follow the rules.

The realist on the other hand recognizes that the goal matters more than the individuals, since without achieving adaptation to reality, the individual is screwed, blued, and tattooed anyway. He keeps focus on the goal, disciplines himself for it, and everyone enjoys the rewards.

To a realist, there can be no set of rules that force the bad to be good. The bad will simply hide their badness and use the rules against the good. There is only the goal, and whether or not it is achieved, which contributors do by their very nature.

As a result, instead of rules, he emphasizes the goal and rewards anyone who actively takes a part in achieving it. Every now and then he rounds up those people and they leave in the night, setting up a new cave which has higher standards. This is how human evolution happens.

The realist rewards the good, smites the bad, and leaves everyone else alone otherwise. Individualists hate this because it creates a hierarchy based on contributors, so they wage class warfare in order to remove anyone smart enough to be able to tell the difference.

Did you wonder why the Left is pathological? Now you know.

In any group of intelligent animals, the fundamental division exists between the contributors and the tagalongs. If you get too many of the latter, your society collapses. Class warfare hides the conflict between contributors and tagalongs behind a question of how to steal the money and redistribute it.

For this reason, it makes sense to avoid class war narratives like “evil rich versus virtuous poor” and instead to recognize the reality: abilities are unequally distributed. If you want everyone to benefit, reward the active competence and discourage parasitism.

Tags: contributors, creativity, maintenance, production