http://www.slate.com...re_class.single.htmlFirst, man does not live by bread alone. Our happiness depends partly on our incomes, but also on the time we spend with our friends, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. So, it's a good exercise in perspective to remember that by and large, the big winners in the income derby have been the small winners in the leisure derby, and vice versa.
...extending from that quote, the thing that mystify me is how as a species we went from a "no income" species to an "income dependent" species.
Even in communism, agriculture-reliant, socialist concept for humanity...it's all about "in" "come" fueling our life.
Where as if you look at animals, early human years, pre-Industrial Revolution years, spiritual tribes...it's more "out" "come" based.
The Native Americans (using the most popular tribal culture to Americans) had a society that was based on the outcome of what disease resistance and advanced invaders they had to deal with.
The average pack animals form packs because their livelihood depended on the outcome of food.
Even in later trade cultures, the outcome of wars were more important. We still see these in many videogames. There is no game to my knowledge where something like Vietnam or the Cold War occurs. In popular media, the only time there was a successful war of truce remain the final ending of the Matrix. Everything else, there was a winner and loser and the outcome of those were crucial to the life of the human species.
Of course some of these are fiction but consider this: How fictional are the world of the top tiers of rich people that it must impact the entire economic destiny of a country? How fictional are the living conditions of ants, bees and spiders that live in a more "in" "come" based world to the average animal?
In all those, humanity have been the sole species that have paradigm shifted several times upon several times that when the internet became a tool for the masses, we who have lived in houses and jobs and legal borders and government, and yet we still shuffle away from those income behaviour modification structures and today things like anarchy, capitalism, corporations, freedom, libertarian freedom etc. continue to be debated.
The only other species that I know to have done that rapid of a change in their life is the theory that a dog used to be a wolf which when compared to the pet lifestyle of today is rapidly different from the domestic dog lifestyle of the past but at least the structures of income such as food/dog treats are fundamentally the same to the domestic dog of today and that of the past.
Humanity doesn't have that. The income structure of the rich and very rich are vastly different. (hence you have the Wall Street problem) The income habits of the well educated hoarder are vastly different from the non-hoarder. (hence you have the bitCoin problem even in virtual worlds.) The income expectations and understanding of the middle class are different from the poor. (hence you have the healthcare justification problem) The income structure and income acquisition of a person who didn't get lucky to be born in one of the richer countries is different from those born in poor or corrupt countries (hence you have the immigrant's American dream and outsourcing as some forms of long distance wage slavery/job destruction paradox.)
The only real outcome for our species today is what and who will get us off this planet and what will happen when we do. Even factoring in technological changes, the average man who's willing to argue for liberty over security unless their employment is in danger is a recent phenomenon. There's just so many things we've taken for granted. PHDs, drugs, voting outside of the winning team when little to no risks are involved, lotteries vs. stock markets, hardware creators vs. coders vs. non-coders classes, the people without the internet being literally the disabled 2.0 when it comes to being able to see the opportunities presented to them. It's a rube goldberg of mysteries especially when we step out of our own history. Where did every other species including people earlier in our time got it wrong/got it right?
