I am trying to understand the limitations and weaknesses of a system of complex human social hierarchical display based on reputation and accolades instead of the accumulation of wealth. Academia is one such example of a hierarchy based on reputation.
What are the weaknesses of such a system, such as failures to account for human adaptation and growth? Where are factors that are not in line with meritorious achievement and the scientific process? What changes could be made to improve the social system of a reputation based hierarchy?
This post is heavily abstract and conceptually framed in layperson terms. Feel free to rephrase and infer meaning. I am thinking about a distant science fiction future when accrued wealth is no longer an adequate form of human hierarchical display, and the benefits, frustrations, and failures of such a system.
We’ll always see a “wealth” angle, just depends on what people perceive as valuable and difficult to obtain.
I don’t think so when elemental cycles allowances and heat budgets of an O’Neill cylinder come into play. The anonymity of taxing the world through the natural environment is the primary reason why wealth works in such a primitive and barbaric form of hierarchy. If all of the potential pathways for this exploitation are directly managed with balanced accounting, wealth is no longer a sufficient differentiator.
Future societies and cultures will follow the same trends as how we see the past. One constant is increasing complexity and nuance. The lens of time, in future hindsight, will show our inefficiency and primitivism in the present. We will be seen as having all of the tools and most of the fundamental truth needed to progress past our primitive ways, but lack the organization and motivations to create the required change.
A social hierarchy based on collection and withholding the fundamental survival needs of most humans will eventually become repulsive barbarism from the stone age of humanity. Needlessly killing millions of the poor and needy for a contest of no real value to life shows the unevolved wild human animal in true form.