This is a very new situation.
A few generations ago, the smartest or the dumbest still ended up in the same roles. Sure, some people were more productive or slightly more prosperous but that was probably more based on how much land your parents had.
It's only in the last 100ish years where those differences started to matter and since WW2, they're starting to compound where the "cognitive elite" rarely interact with people outside their normal circles (defined by intelligence or socio-economics, which are often similarly grouped).
For example, think of the 10-20 people you spend most of your time with... other than family, I'd wager they're all in the same/adjacent industries; probably use their mind, not their back in their daily work; and economically are very similar too.
There is a difference between benefiting materially or politically from how society is structured and social respect. There is a difference between paying someone more or less for doing a job and how you treat someone when you interact to them.
Let me put it a different way... why should you respect raw intelligence over a person's height? After all, both simply an accident of birth (genetics and early nutrition). Neither are something one achieves.
I do not respect raw intelligence. I respect personality traits such as hard work, honesty, reliability, affability and bravery. I respect achievement, not potential. To tie someone's worth to inherent traits such as intelligence is, to me, somewhat shallow.
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/06/09/tall-ceos-how-height-... http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing.aspx
And both are advantages because people respect them.
"Neither are something one achieves."
So what's your point? They still have the advantage of the innate respect their traits confer.
A mention of the theory of multiple intelligences belongs here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligenc...
Many of the intelligences are things that have very evidently contributed to our collective heritage of beautiful, rich and diverse culture: "musical–rhythmic, visual–spatial, verbal–linguistic, logical–mathematical, bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic".
The cartoon version of intelligent humanity as Homo Economicus that you invoke is kind of missing the point, IMO.
Robert Sternberg wrote on intelligence, its evolutionary role and his theory of "successful intelligence" is well established nowadays.
Latest definition by AI researchers is summed up as: "Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments"
People keep promoting basic income as the solution to automation instead of focusing on intelligence augmentation. We have a growing population incapable of creating anything worth of value, useless, unnecessary, with no economic value other than the body they have.
We will soon reach a point where their body is the only commodity they have. Not for its labor capacity but for its utility (blood, plasma, organ transfer, clinical trial guinea pigs, surrogates etc.).
When we have a population whose mind is incapble of creating anything of economic value, even slavery wouldn't be economically viable.
Realizing that the poor often turn to crime out of necessity/stupidity and the cost of imprisoning may be higher than simply handing them over the money, I too support basic income. However, don't think for a second that the existential crisis of feeling completely useless can be solved by a basic income to afford necessities, entertainment and wait for low cost living environment to kill them with disease and climate change.
I truly believe one reason people don't work on climate change is they want to use it as an excuse to deal with the poor in the future. After all, there is no moral dilemma when it is a natural disaster as opposed to genocide.
Capitalism is not for the poor. Products are built for people who can afford them. If there was an economic opportunity in serving the poor, everyone would be competing for that market.
Frankly, I'm really conflicted on this subject. On one hand, I fully agree with you and understand human nature is selfish and I often take a nihilistic worldview. On the other hand, we are an intelligent species capable of transcending our nature. I still don't see any use for supporting billions of people who can't produce or contribute anything other than basic human compassion (which is difficult to extend to billions)
With climate change and the flood of future immigrants (immigrating to survive) with little economic value, the growing isolation of individuals from society, the destruction of community and religion, political polarization; I don't know, I feel like it's going to be brutal.
Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and technology, abundance will uplift everybody? Wishful, hopeful thinking?
I appreciate your post and don't want to sound negative or combative, but I do think your argument's presupposition that intelligence always prevails is an interesting topic of discussion. I question the veracity of that assumption, but I don't know if other people commonly do because it appears to be widely held by individuals. In your argument you set forth that the assumptions has been true "since the beginning," because in my observation, it does not always prevail as true. The other interesting thing about it is that it is difficult to understand what exactly such a statement: intelligence always prevails, means, because intelligence is a difficult thing to measure. Is the idiotic sales guy who is really good at schmoozing successful because he is either less, or more intelligent? Perhaps he has better social intelligence. Or, perhaps it's something else: One theory might be that intellectual intelligence acts as a barrier to effective salesmanship. It's not a stretch to imagine that intellectual curiosity or other personal considerations (ethical or emotional) could get in the way of an effective sales guy's social instincts and intuition.
And what can we say about this presupposition in the long run: 'it has always been the case, since the beginning,' as you said, but what does it mean? Since the beginning of society? So does that take us back up our evolutionary tree: many of the species we evolved from surely had complex societies, as well, and can we say that the more intelligent always survived? It does not appear this is necessarily always the case. Evolution does not appear to be exactly an optimization process that takes a linear path. It is a process of natural selection of random gene mutations. So while our particular species of ape had a particular mutation that endowed us with brainpower at the cost of bite force (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/news040322-9.htm...), other species survived with mutations that provided different advantages that did not have the same benefit to intelligence: evolution apparently does not predicate the intelligent and clever will always survive. It may even be true that everything is even evolving to be more intelligent or clever.
Looking at society, I find too much evidence against the idea that the intelligent and clever are always benefiting, as you say. There are just too many examples: Tesla, Grothendieck, Turing, Gaudi, James Watson, Bobby Fischer are some of the most incredibly intelligent and clever individuals of the last century, but all had misfortune due to issues of fitting in with society. How many other bright people do you know that had issues fitting in with society, that never made it to the fame of those individuals? I imagine many, many more bright and clever never reached the point of earning credence as such from society -- it seems if it there are so many of our greatest minds having suffered misfortune post earning social credence, many, many more suffered it prior, and had limited success.
It seems that in our extremely complex and politicized society that the idea that the more intelligent and clever always benefit seems even more of a stretch. Even academia, which an institution created as a meritocracy for intelligence, famously struggles to maintain such status (given, it's much closer to true in the hard sciences).
I appreciate the spirit your post which promotes competition.
When you learn beyond the rules of a system and discover the underlying patterns of the system, you are then able to exploit the system to your benefit. There are those who by chance rise or fall, and then there are those who stack the odds in their favor.
I'm having trouble coming to the conclusion that these people being unsuccessful in the world has a lot to do with them, for example, being too stupid to overcome their sexual orientation, or because they were not clever enough to abandon their moral resolve...
We are not islands unto ourselves, and we did not evolve as islands unto ourselves.
All I'm saying is that it's more complex than "stack the odds in your favour and you'll always succeed," for a number of reasons... we evolved in groups, we live in a complex world, intelligence is a broad and complex subject, and we don't know everything.
I, personally, don't even want to live in a kind of world where we describe people with strong moral principles, or sexual preferences different to mine, as not clever enough to be successful, regardless of their other achievements.
Not during the cultural revolution in China.
This sounds so damned edgy I'm left wondering if you just read Ayn Rand for the first time. Think things over before posting for the whole internet to see!
The more intelligent and clever always benefit, because they know how to use the system to their own purpose. This has been so since the beginning. The less intelligent either end up in a position where their labor can be exploited, or they're left to slow decline or even death, depending on how much society values keeping them alive.
That's any given society, in a nutshell. They may dress it up in value statements, laws, philosophies, religions, and so on, but in the end it comes down to power, and who has enough of it to extract the resources and status he wants.
The difference is that now the "menial" jobs are almost gone, and the higher up jobs are on the chopping block. And so the first to die off will be those without power (as usual). We can come up with all sorts of platitudes about the value of human life, but in the end it always comes down to this. Welcome to the true nature of man.
Of course, nowadays we have middle class folks who can experience the philosophical angst of the less fortunate, and come up with all sorts of rules, decide which words are acceptable or not, and police outward appearances and speech.
You wouldn't think twice in deciding what to call someone who implemented a password policy with a max of 8 characters, or stored the passwords unsalted or even plaintext behind a system that hasn't had a security update in 10 years. But soon you will, because "stupid" is not an acceptable word anymore, nor is any word that compares intelligence or ability. We're all equal, after all, and that person deserves his job and the income it generates by virtue of his being human and equal to every other human. You wouldn't want him to starve now, would you?