{"id":2279,"date":"2018-03-19T20:38:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T12:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/?p=2279"},"modified":"2018-03-19T20:47:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T12:47:21","slug":"the-dangers-of-expecting-equal-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2018\/03\/19\/the-dangers-of-expecting-equal-outcome","title":{"rendered":"The Dangers of Expecting Equal Outcome"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was watching a lecture which discussed the Pareto Principle<\/a><\/strong>, otherwise known as the 80-20 rule – and it does have some depressing implications.<\/p>\n

First is that the goal of “equity” – that is equality of outcome<\/strong> (not to be confused with equality of opportunity<\/strong>) seems to not only be a futile endeavor, but could be dangerous one too. We want to strive for the latter, not the former.<\/p>\n

Pareto Distribution<\/h1>\n

The short of the principle is that 80% of something will be distributed to 20% of the population that’s vying for it. And this phenomenon manifests itself so reliably – that it can practically be considered as a natural\/physical law.<\/p>\n\n

IRL<\/h1>\n

So how does this play out in the real world? All<\/strong> the world’s money will go to 20% of the population. And only 20% of that subset will get 80% of the wealth – and so on… until you get the statistic similar to “1% of the world’s richest have half<\/em> of the world’s money.”<\/p>\n

The sad part is that this seems to apply to practically any<\/em> endeavor. So 20% of aspiring musicians get to be musicians, and 20% of those will be successful. etc. Basically 80% of the attempts at anything will fail and end up with next to nothing – and 20% will get most.<\/p>\n

What’s sadder still, is that this happens regardless<\/em> of [having malevolent] intent – its simply the product of a competence hierarchy. So while you can certainly exacerbate it by having power and abusing it, but like in the case of a free market’s preference in musical icons, it also just happens simply because people will support those who they feel are best at what they do – which is not an unreasonable preference to have.<\/p>\n

Even if we all started truly equal, if you let this play out, the same thing will likely happen: those who are more clever get most – in fact it’s highly likely that ALL resources will ultimately consolidate to one<\/strong> entity if we naturally let it run its course uninterrupted. 1 <\/sup><\/a>The game of Monopoly was given as an example<\/span><\/span>