- Dr. Mezmer
When Aristotle got the internet
Aristotle got the internet the other day, as well as the whole ancient world. The classical Greeks immediately took advantage of this science fiction chicanery, and in what would seem like a fortnite used this portal to use all the knowledge of the world to take command of the world, economically that is. After all, why take over the Celts when even when armed with universal knowledge they have not the wits to make even a decent Celt phone? Better to make and sell them scads of them instead. And so Aristotle, Plato, and the the lot of the academy and the hyper-competitive Greek city states bootstrapped themselves to lord over the world, while the barbarians merely squabbled, mired in poverty and tribal misgovernment. The Greeks became the new one percenters, owning just about everything, and they did so not because they had exclusive ownership of knowledge, which they did not, but because their society was hyper-incentivized to use and expand that knowledge.
The Original 1 percenter
Nowadays, with the internet knowledge is universal and free, and one can learn to fish, build a home, treat a cold, program a computer, or build a nuclear reactor. Its all there, waiting only for incentive. The maddening thing about the current complaints about unequal distribution of wealth or income is that it is a description of the symptom, not the disease. Rather it is the unequal distribution of incentive as mediated by societal, cultural, and governmental norms that is holding us back. Just ask the ancient Greeks, who in their relative poverty, were the true one percenters in the ancient world, attained not just by their possession of knowledge but by the incentive to acquire it, use it, and in their peerless gift to humanity, explain the world.
Or listen to the great economist Milton Friedman for the same perspective