I have been thinking further about the Darwin Limitation concept and it has pointed to another problem. Economics has mostly been a study of the past with a significant amount of weight being given to correlation factors. This is the mathematical matching of two or more events, one being something to do with economics. Some times this process comes up with the correct answer, but not always. Historically, people who graduated from college earned more than those who did not, so it became an economic axiom that going to college would thus make you more wealthy. The problem, was not the going to college that made one wealthy, it was the fact that most "smart" people went to college. Smart people have always been more wealthy than dumb people and that is not going to change. Now the Darwin Limitation.
If the distribution of mental abilities is not going to change very much over the next many years, even in the face of more efforts on education, how will this affect our current economic models? First, I would like to define the economic objective and that is for a national unit, like the USA, to produce as much GNP as possible. Simply, make as big of a pie as possible. From simple math, the way to do that is for all the players to produce wealth at their individual maximum rate. When all added together, this results in the biggest pie. Got it?
This means that, given the Darwin Limitation that we need to start discussing a major change in our thinking about economics. I think that this new model is going to look much like this. We need a way to allow those with lower mental abilities to produce "some" wealth even if it is much less than a person with higher mental abilities. This means that we need more menial jobs for those people and system to provide some kind of supplement. In the past, a graduated income tax provide a partial solution, but I do not feel this will be the correct solution in the future. The other group of people who our system needs to deal with are those who have more mental ability than is required for their job. I am thinking here about people who work for the Post Office and other government agencies. Most of these jobs are entry level jobs that people are milking for a life time. They need to move on to jobs that produce more wealth. This is one area where resources my be available to supplement those who can only do menial jobs. This can be done by lowering the pay for the Post Office and most government employees to encourage them to move on.
Now on the top end. These are people who earn more due to their mental ability and personal motivation and risk taking. If we try to cut too deeply into this group, we could easily kill the goose that layed the Golden Eggs. It is a fact that those at the top will earn much more than those on the bottom and there is nothing that can be done about it that will not, at the same time, reduce the size of the total pie.
If we do not recognize the Darwin Limitation and look backwards for solutions, the result will be the lowering of the quality of life for the average person. Some of the things that I have proposed in the past for slightly different reason were "auctioning off day workers". For a person of low mental ability to earn their supplement, they need to produce what they can.. If this is reading stories to children, a parent should be able to bid for and hire this person to read to their children. The rate the person should have to pay is what ever the high bid is. If some liberal wants to challenge this concept as not being ethical, I would challenge that to get a supplement the person needs to work to the best of their abilities.
I think that the Darwin Limitation is a real thing and needs to be taken seriously.
