I've made this argument before and to me it seems trivially true but alas...
More or less people have a relatively fixed value scape. A value scape spans the total number of skills that one has that one can put to earning a pay check. It also includes being able to use those skills indirectly to pick winners in their space of expertise (such as an ex. engineer being better at picking companies in the space she once worked due to her expertise and knowledge of the space).
We all tend to have our set of things we do well and don't expand them much through our lives. Now depending on how well we are doing one or another of these things (extracting value from the skill) we can come to earn wealth...which we deploy into providing for ourselves and our families and as well redeploy into either businesses (in the areas in which we have expertise) or just save away for a rainy day.
What should be obvious is that as we gain more and more wealth from having deployed our talents and acquired that value, our tendency to explore areas OUTSIDE our ken goes DOWN.
This is true because as we derive value from our talents we tend to remain satisfied and complacent about exploring areas we do not have expertise in. In fact it costs us literally more energy (in the form of need to learn the new area) in order to explore it and as well make success. So what do we do...we stay in the areas we know..
How ever, if the value we've derived in skill A accrues, our ability to deploy that value across the possible opportunity space of *all known values* is limited. We might build a business or two in that area...and those maybe huge businesses (like M. Bloomberg and his business or B. Gates and his) but outside of those areas we are neophytes that do not deploy capital in effort to build up areas we aren't technically competent. So as more value is extracted, less of it is deployed to other areas. So not only does wealth concentrate but there is concentration of an *ability to deploy wealth* which is far more damaging to the generation of innovation and building new businesses.
This will always be true, no matter the individual or industry...what will vary is how concentrated the effect is. Some individuals have massive talent landscapes and deploy them to extract value across those spaces (by building businesses in each, think of what Elon Musk is doing or what Richard Branson has done) in order to build innovation. Others (mostly institutions like Banks) create cross business funds and hire experts to perform the broad analysis necessary to maximize their ability to invest in innovative businesses in areas but the pre condition of revenue and growth exclude brand new innovations that need funding to be built and tested in the market.
Most people build their wealth in their domain, exceed satisfaction and then sit on a huge wad of dough that is not deployed efficiently and instead continues to grow their wealth. Ways to either slow the growth of massive wealth from forming (tiered taxation with increased earnings IMO should not have an upper limit...the more you make the more the government should take) or the government should build systems to aid those with massive wealth to redeploy that wealth *easily* across non expert domains to help boost innovation. Most conservatives will balk at the first idea but the second is something that should be seriously considered...the tactics by governments in the east like Japan and Korea have seen success setting broad technological initiatives and enabling innovation in those areas...we (in the west in General but in the US in particular) need to mirror those efforts more.
More or less people have a relatively fixed value scape. A value scape spans the total number of skills that one has that one can put to earning a pay check. It also includes being able to use those skills indirectly to pick winners in their space of expertise (such as an ex. engineer being better at picking companies in the space she once worked due to her expertise and knowledge of the space).
We all tend to have our set of things we do well and don't expand them much through our lives. Now depending on how well we are doing one or another of these things (extracting value from the skill) we can come to earn wealth...which we deploy into providing for ourselves and our families and as well redeploy into either businesses (in the areas in which we have expertise) or just save away for a rainy day.
What should be obvious is that as we gain more and more wealth from having deployed our talents and acquired that value, our tendency to explore areas OUTSIDE our ken goes DOWN.
This is true because as we derive value from our talents we tend to remain satisfied and complacent about exploring areas we do not have expertise in. In fact it costs us literally more energy (in the form of need to learn the new area) in order to explore it and as well make success. So what do we do...we stay in the areas we know..
How ever, if the value we've derived in skill A accrues, our ability to deploy that value across the possible opportunity space of *all known values* is limited. We might build a business or two in that area...and those maybe huge businesses (like M. Bloomberg and his business or B. Gates and his) but outside of those areas we are neophytes that do not deploy capital in effort to build up areas we aren't technically competent. So as more value is extracted, less of it is deployed to other areas. So not only does wealth concentrate but there is concentration of an *ability to deploy wealth* which is far more damaging to the generation of innovation and building new businesses.
This will always be true, no matter the individual or industry...what will vary is how concentrated the effect is. Some individuals have massive talent landscapes and deploy them to extract value across those spaces (by building businesses in each, think of what Elon Musk is doing or what Richard Branson has done) in order to build innovation. Others (mostly institutions like Banks) create cross business funds and hire experts to perform the broad analysis necessary to maximize their ability to invest in innovative businesses in areas but the pre condition of revenue and growth exclude brand new innovations that need funding to be built and tested in the market.
Most people build their wealth in their domain, exceed satisfaction and then sit on a huge wad of dough that is not deployed efficiently and instead continues to grow their wealth. Ways to either slow the growth of massive wealth from forming (tiered taxation with increased earnings IMO should not have an upper limit...the more you make the more the government should take) or the government should build systems to aid those with massive wealth to redeploy that wealth *easily* across non expert domains to help boost innovation. Most conservatives will balk at the first idea but the second is something that should be seriously considered...the tactics by governments in the east like Japan and Korea have seen success setting broad technological initiatives and enabling innovation in those areas...we (in the west in General but in the US in particular) need to mirror those efforts more.
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