# Reprogramming Economic Performance By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-12-07 Let's say one is a top performer in one's field. One is set for life if one receives intrinsic satisfaction from performing at the top level. However, if one expects a fair economic return from this top performance, one should prepare for long stretches of disappointment. As much as the capitalist mantra is to reward top performance, this is more of a myth than a systemic outcome. Do high performers achieve high levels of compensation? Yes. Given the distribution of high performers, is it at the rate one would expect? No. Despite the common belief that human performance is normally distributed, it is not. Most people perform poorly, but there are also many more high performers than expected. If the capitalist economic system were perfect, there would be many more wealthy individuals based on their performance. Similarly, there would be many more people with an average wealth that bunches around what would be considered poor today. As poor and poverty are defined in relative terms, this more representative human performance system would likely result in fewer people being considered poor. This does not change an individual's struggle with access to goods, services, and rights. It simply puts many more people on the same level, which is the problem. Humans seek status as a means of decision-making and survival. As paradoxically social individuals, we cannot exist, collaborate, and communicate without a hierarchy. Thus, one must find a way to delineate those with and without status quickly. Those with status gain power. Those with power are incentivized to keep it and limit its spread to others. Additionally, this power creates opportunities that others do not have. Thus, fewer people than expected are wealthy. Conversely, those without power are still the king and queen makers. As much as they elevate some, they limit many more as unworthy for various good, but primarily bad, reasons. Hence, there are even more enormous disparities between the haves and have-nots. Few people want to face this reality, and even fewer know what to do about it. Nearly everyone wants to return to the past by putting their heads in the sand or runs towards an incoherent future that threatens the ideals they seek. For the record, technocracy isn't the answer either. A better solution requires significant reprogramming. #### Related Items [[Performance]] [[Economics]] [[Poverty]] [[Wealth]] [[Individuals]] [[Society]] [[Technocrats]]