Those who change the world

Those who change the world

It dawned on me at one point in a philosophy class that all those who change the world generally fit into one of four categories, and those four categories neatly fell into a matrix.

Now, the names probably aren't the best (just the best I could come up with), so allow me to elaborate.

The Cardinal Directions
Movements vs Individual Actions

Changes come in two forms: People making a change by getting many other people to make the change with them, or those who have a single action that alters the world significantly in some way. 

Modifiers vs Creators

Actions come in two flavors, those that are new, and those that start something new. Modifiers are those which change something already in existence, and Creators are those which bring in something new that wasn't there before.

On good or bad, on world changers & normal people

A few things I feel should be noted. Being part of any of the world changer groups doesn't necessarily makes the person "good" or "bad." It's merely a label for the type of change they made. As such, I will endeavor to include both good and bad people in my explanations of each quadrant.
 

Further, not everyone will really fit into the four quadrants: some people just don't have much impact on the world. The Quadrants of world changes is more a tool to show what a person needs to do to change the world. It should also be noted that different personality types lend themselves more to different quadrants. Someone who is more introverted would likely be more inclined to be an inventor than a leader; someone who is more idealistic might do better as a teacher than an eliminator, and so forth.

It should also be pointed out that just because someone who changes the world in one way doesn't mean they won't change the world in another. A leader can legislate something out of existance (turning them into an eliminator as well); a teacher can become a leader if their teachings are found to support an organization; an inventor may become a teacher as they help people understand new ways of doing things with whatever they invented. The possibilities go on and on.

The Quadrants

Teachers are those who start movements. Although normal teachers (those in schools) often fall into the category of teachers, not all do. Anyone who takes the role of sharing new ideas with others is a teacher. Some good examples of teachers include Rosa Parks, the confederate veterans who started the KKK, Ghandi, the Beatles, and Julian Assange. Basically all who share information with people that they hadn't previously shared. The strength of a teacher comes from their ability to start movements. They create movements that weren't there to begin with, see what other people have missed and share it with them. 

Inventors are those who bring new things in the world that weren't there before that the world then has to adapt to. Of course inventors such as Edison, huo yao who invented gunpowder, Richard Gatling who created the Gatling gun, and those invented the smart phone and the internet fit into this category. However, there are inventions beyond just the creation of new physical objects. There's also Nakamoto inventing the bitcoin, the Greeks inventing democracy, and the ancient Egyptians inventing the scientific method. There's also the "inventions" of architects such as a bridge which allows travel and trade to happen that could before or someone who sets up a new set of communication lines to a town that didn't have them before. Inventors are any who make something new.

Leaders are those who modify existing movements. Martin Luther King Jr., Leaders of countries, Presidents of companys, and anyone else who can take a group of people or organization already gathered for a cause and modify it in some way. They may make the movement more focused and better to achieve its goals when it wasn't effective before; a leader may also take a group and alter it towards different ends, such as Hitler who took a socialist movement and twisted into a fascist movement.

Eliminators are those who remove things from the world that people once expected. Like any category, they can be both good or bad. For example. Abraham Lincoln with the emancipation proclamation effectively eliminated slavery from America, but on the other hand, there's also the Unabomber who removed a building (and many lives) in Oklahoma City. Both terrorists and soldiers fall into this category, as do assassins and freedom fighters; those who destroy weapon stashes, bridges, leaders, buildings and more to which society must then adapt to the sudden change.

Raise the minimum wage to $1000/sec!

LET'S RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $1000/sec!!!!

Amusingly, I sat down and decided to really analyze it once when someone sarcastically said, "If it's so great to raise the minimum wage to $18 or $22 an hour, why not $30, $40, or $50?" So I really sat down and thought it over... and the picture was a lot less dire than they seemed to think it would be.

Although I'm not necessarily advocating it, here's what it'd look like if we raised the minimum... let's go crazy here... to $1000 dollars per second. On top of that, let's tie that number to inflation, so if inflation goes up, so does the number, so there's no "inflating until it acts just like things do now just with more following zeroes."

Well, first off, Big business will collapse under that strain. Not even they could take that. Sure, a few could hire people for awhile, and there's a few that could make it that are really profitable per man-hour worked (I'm looking at you, Mojang and professional sports!) Now, that said... corporations collapse. No dodging that one. (Side note, this also means no more corporate lobbying, very limited corporate propaganda, etc.) Effectively, there's some rich shareholders, but their start losing money fast if they try to hold on to their power, which they won't because they like their money, which means all stockholders cash out post haste. This results in a completely crashed stock market from which there is no recovery. Those who have money try to flee the country to salvage their finances... but guess what? The airlines aren't able to afford their people and their pilots to their private jets will make out like bandits (enough for those pilots to buy their own planes... keep that in mind, this is where it starts to get fun).

The outflux from the major corporations and their shareholders as they scramble to leave would dump decades worth of wages in a matter of minutes. All of a sudden these pilots can buy their own private jet, and instead of making decent wages, all of a sudden can be self employed with no loans. At first, these pilots are going to really be able to live it up. (There will be lots of other jobs that will get a similar situation.)

And yes... the small mom & pop places with a dozen employees will collapse. Poof, they're gone too.... or are they?
Their employees are gone, yes... but the mom & pop? They're still around. They own the place. It'd be silly for them to try and pay themselves. They do have to shrink the store a bit though. Maybe cut back to a tenth of what it was. But... all of a sudden... they have customers. Why? Because who else are people going to buy from? The corporation that doesn't exist anymore? So, husband and wife, no more employees, are all of a sudden having more customers than they can handle because literally 100% of the population is coming to them instead of Wal-Mart. They can charge hand over fist for their food... until one of their previous employees is sitting there thinking, "Hey, I know all the steps on how to run that... I'm going to start my own food place." Sure, he'll never grow to having employees, but D#$* he gets more bang for his effort than he used too.

And this would be mirrored everywhere. Every business becomes a sole proprietorship without employees. Nobody's becoming billionaires or even millionaires at this point (except for those who are really good at automating everything).. but, everyone gets to work the hours they want, every mom & pop is getting enough customers to keep itself afloat, everyone's their own boss, and how much money you make is purely dependent on your own smarts and dedication.

At this point, laws are no longer being lobbied to benefit the rich and the powerful. In fact, it goes back that instead of being poor compared to the lobbyists and corporate leaders, the wealthiest position is politician.... and the only way to get there now is pleasing the greatest number of people, not kissing up to corporations (there are no corporations to kiss up to anymore, remember?) So all of a sudden, politicians have to work for the people. There goes about half of the glut in the government right there (subsidies to corporations? What corporations?) The economy flip-flops from a top-down system ruled by wall-street and the megacorp but into a bottom-up system ruled by the average person who's pulling his own weight.

This also leads to another thing... so many different intellectual properties are owned by corporations. Whatever doesn't get sold in the wake of the collapse, all of a sudden becomes public domain. GE, BP, and many other companies had been buying up competing technologies and never making them. It's actually been a pretty standard tactic in corporations for some time now... they don't want to have rework their system to handle new ideas, but they don't want someone else disrupting their market. They have the patents to extremely efficient cars, so with them gone, and the patents entering public domain, that means that car enthusiasts can start putting together and building those cars.... oh, and by the way, remember when I mentioned automation? Those factories will still be sitting there. Some of the richer people will buy those factories at bottom dollar. They can't hire employees, but they can automate at least parts of the process. Maybe not the entire process, but enough to be able to sell some larger parts. Then, before dealers, a new business will spring up... those who buy car sections from various sellers, and complete the task of putting it together, then they sell the car to the dealer (See what happened? All of a sudden the "grunt" factory worker is his own business, making respectable income for his work... getting profit from each car made). All of a sudden, you're seeing cars hitting pavement that are getting 80 miles to the gallon without any corporate stupidity blocking it, not to mention high efficiency electric cars that have been previously blocked.

So, to answer... raise minimum wage to $1000/second.... and, surprisingly, the world doesn't look worse in many regards, just different.