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> I don't think there has ever been an age of a greatly efficient and capable society. And… is it possible? In this world, less than 5% are producing the actua

> I don't think there has ever been an age of a greatly efficient and capable society. And… is it possible? In this world, less than 5% are producing the actual products and the rest are working around and producing, basically, paperwork, which may be extremely important (such as Accounting, HR, compliance) but only to other people. Which, in turns, raises requirements in more accounting and HR and OSHA and… Paretto’s corollary law was that 50% of the work was performed by the square root of the company. Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population?

MattGaiser 5y ago
> Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? Sure, if you could organize them and direct them without too much overhead. And if they are perfectly compliant and don't want to do something else.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  That kind of is what we do. But the rest of the population isn't happy just being fed. They want status and luxuries the same as those "IQ120+" or highly productive people, so we have all sorts of politics about inequality and poverty and human rights and what-not. For people that are amply fed without producing much for anyone else.
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    Feeding the poor allows the “iq120+“ to tell their absurd fantasies about superiority in peace
  - smolder 5y ago
    It's not nearly every unproductive person's fault that they're unproductive. There's a lot of useful work to be done and a lot of people capable of doing it who are not currently aligned. It's often a matter of inefficiency in capital allocation, i.e. lack of funding for certain useful work because it's not easy or practical (without intervention, like from the government) to earn a profit doing it. There's also limitations on our ability to coordinate work, regardless of funding. Profitability is a mediocre proxy for the usefulness of work, and so we have only a mediocre ability to allocate labor usefully in our profit driven economy. Some of the best investments of money and labor in terms of profitability are even things I would call counterproductive.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    They don't want status like the smart and productive people, they want status like the rich. Propaganda equating these two groups is a very popular thing for the rich to do with their money. Some would say that's unproductive, others would say it's smart (as long as they're the only smart person doing it, once a bunch of the smart people start playing unproductive games to work the system things get worse for everyone).
- joris_w 5y ago
  ... and if we remove people who fail the IQ120+ test from power. Including economic power, meaning no more inheritance of capital.
afarrell 5y ago
> less than 5% are producing the actual products This is also true in the military, where a tiny fraction are trigger pullers. It is worth picturing what an army with no logistics personnel would look like.
- csomar 5y ago
  I think we already have that (AlQada, ISIS, Haqqani, etc...)
  - afarrell 5y ago
    Aren’t the Haqqani network involved in significant smuggling operations?
  - refurb 5y ago
    You don’t think logistics is a massive part of those organizations? From fund raising, purchasing, transport, etc? I have no doubt the numbers involved dwarf the number doing the actual fighting.
michaelt 5y ago
> Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? If I buy some sneakers, they'll be sewn by a low-paid worker in a poor country, shipped by low-paid sailors, trucked to warehouses by low-paid drivers, picked and packed by low-paid workers, and driven to my door by low-paid drivers. It ain't Facebook programmers on six-figure salaries who are feeding the rest of the population.
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
  I love this.
- cf499 5y ago
  "programmers on six-figure salaries" probably wrote the systems that coordinate and optimise the low-paid tasks you mention.
  - retzkek 5y ago
    And who exactly benefits from those optimizations? Do the delivery drivers get to take a leisurely drive, or are they just expected to make more deliveries "thanks" to their optimized routes?
- csomar 5y ago
  Have you considered that Facebook enables the transfer of power to the US dollar which enables economies like the USA and Europe to buy cheaper from other countries and impose their standards? This is not something that's accessible to most of the countries in the world, whom their main struggle is how to finance their imports. > If I buy some sneakers, they'll be sewn by a low-paid worker in a poor country, shipped by low-paid sailors, trucked to warehouses by low-paid drivers, picked and packed by low-paid workers, and driven to my door by low-paid drivers. We consider this normal, because it has been happening for quite a while and painted in a negative fashion lately (Trumpism/Nationalism) but the reality, if you had an island somewhere, and you where establishing a country, you can't ask all these people to do that without some power-transfer that you hold over these countries/populations.
smolder 5y ago
Whether it's possible depends on what "greatly efficient" means to you, but we could do better. There are numerous ways to improve our tax system, improve education, improve civic participation, reduce corruption and regulatory capture, improve outcomes and overhead of the legal system, incentivise innovation without prohibitive patents, reduce beurocratic overhead...
ninkendo 5y ago
> Paretto’s corollary law was that 50% of the work was performed by the square root of the company. Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? What makes you think the square root of the company neatly aligns with high-IQ people? There are plenty of smart people who use their intelligence to find ways to avoid work, or to get others to do work for them, or to just amass power/influence in an organization by increasing head counts and making busy work, etc etc. Why assume that “smart” equals “having the company’s best interests in mind”?
- jasondigitized 5y ago
  This. You want "Get good sh*t done" people. IQ doesn't mean much if you don't know how to execute things and provide stakeholder value.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? Sure, if you could organize them and direct them without too much overhead. And if they are perfectly compliant and don't want to do something else.

exporectomy 5y ago
That kind of is what we do. But the rest of the population isn't happy just being fed. They want status and luxuries the same as those "IQ120+" or highly productive people, so we have all sorts of politics about inequality and poverty and human rights and what-not. For people that are amply fed without producing much for anyone else.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Feeding the poor allows the “iq120+“ to tell their absurd fantasies about superiority in peace
- smolder 5y ago
  It's not nearly every unproductive person's fault that they're unproductive. There's a lot of useful work to be done and a lot of people capable of doing it who are not currently aligned. It's often a matter of inefficiency in capital allocation, i.e. lack of funding for certain useful work because it's not easy or practical (without intervention, like from the government) to earn a profit doing it. There's also limitations on our ability to coordinate work, regardless of funding. Profitability is a mediocre proxy for the usefulness of work, and so we have only a mediocre ability to allocate labor usefully in our profit driven economy. Some of the best investments of money and labor in terms of profitability are even things I would call counterproductive.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  They don't want status like the smart and productive people, they want status like the rich. Propaganda equating these two groups is a very popular thing for the rich to do with their money. Some would say that's unproductive, others would say it's smart (as long as they're the only smart person doing it, once a bunch of the smart people start playing unproductive games to work the system things get worse for everyone).
joris_w 5y ago
... and if we remove people who fail the IQ120+ test from power. Including economic power, meaning no more inheritance of capital.

afarrell 5y ago

> less than 5% are producing the actual products This is also true in the military, where a tiny fraction are trigger pullers. It is worth picturing what an army with no logistics personnel would look like.

csomar 5y ago
I think we already have that (AlQada, ISIS, Haqqani, etc...)
- afarrell 5y ago
  Aren’t the Haqqani network involved in significant smuggling operations?
- refurb 5y ago
  You don’t think logistics is a massive part of those organizations? From fund raising, purchasing, transport, etc? I have no doubt the numbers involved dwarf the number doing the actual fighting.

michaelt 5y ago

> Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? If I buy some sneakers, they'll be sewn by a low-paid worker in a poor country, shipped by low-paid sailors, trucked to warehouses by low-paid drivers, picked and packed by low-paid workers, and driven to my door by low-paid drivers. It ain't Facebook programmers on six-figure salaries who are feeding the rest of the population.

cto_of_antifa 5y ago
I love this.
cf499 5y ago
"programmers on six-figure salaries" probably wrote the systems that coordinate and optimise the low-paid tasks you mention.
- retzkek 5y ago
  And who exactly benefits from those optimizations? Do the delivery drivers get to take a leisurely drive, or are they just expected to make more deliveries "thanks" to their optimized routes?
csomar 5y ago
Have you considered that Facebook enables the transfer of power to the US dollar which enables economies like the USA and Europe to buy cheaper from other countries and impose their standards? This is not something that's accessible to most of the countries in the world, whom their main struggle is how to finance their imports. > If I buy some sneakers, they'll be sewn by a low-paid worker in a poor country, shipped by low-paid sailors, trucked to warehouses by low-paid drivers, picked and packed by low-paid workers, and driven to my door by low-paid drivers. We consider this normal, because it has been happening for quite a while and painted in a negative fashion lately (Trumpism/Nationalism) but the reality, if you had an island somewhere, and you where establishing a country, you can't ask all these people to do that without some power-transfer that you hold over these countries/populations.

smolder 5y ago

Whether it's possible depends on what "greatly efficient" means to you, but we could do better. There are numerous ways to improve our tax system, improve education, improve civic participation, reduce corruption and regulatory capture, improve outcomes and overhead of the legal system, incentivise innovation without prohibitive patents, reduce beurocratic overhead...

ninkendo 5y ago

> Paretto’s corollary law was that 50% of the work was performed by the square root of the company. Could we just harness the power of the IQ120+ people and feed all the rest of the population? What makes you think the square root of the company neatly aligns with high-IQ people? There are plenty of smart people who use their intelligence to find ways to avoid work, or to get others to do work for them, or to just amass power/influence in an organization by increasing head counts and making busy work, etc etc. Why assume that “smart” equals “having the company’s best interests in mind”?

jasondigitized 5y ago
This. You want "Get good sh*t done" people. IQ doesn't mean much if you don't know how to execute things and provide stakeholder value.