{"id":246,"date":"2020-10-13T19:10:18","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=246"},"modified":"2020-10-13T19:10:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:10:18","slug":"mars23","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars23","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 23"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – The greatest thought experiment of all time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n by\u00a0Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought Experiment: What If Everyone Makes Minimum Wage?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing that is so helpful about the new Mars economy described in this book is that it makes many, many things in the economy crystal clear. Stripped down to its essence, many things in the economy are now very easy to understand. First let’s quickly summarize how the new Mars economy works as described in this book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two remarkable features of this new Mars economy that are radically different from economies like the U.S. economy on Earth today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using this model of the economy, there are a number of things that become immediately and transparently obvious about how any economy works. Here are several examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of these ideas may seem foreign if you have been born and raised in an economy like the one seen in the United States. It can be easier to understand the Mars economy if we think about a thought experiment that goes like this: What if everyone in America were to make minimum wage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if everyone in America makes minimum wage?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine that we ran the following advertisement across America: \u201cWould you like to become a player on an NBA team?\u201d How many people would like to be a NBA player? Millions. Millions of people who play basketball would potentially respond to the ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now if we said, \u201cWe are only going to pay you $10 an hour to be in the NBA, because we are going to reduce the salaries of all NBA players to $10 per hour\u201d, what would happen? There would still be millions of people who want to play in the NBA. Why? Because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even for only $10 an hour, there are millions of people who would gladly take a job in the NBA because of all these perks and benefits. These benefits are real \u2013 they have real value and the value is tremendous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if a player came along and said, \u201cI am a great player, but I refuse to play in the NBA for $10 per hour. I deserve $20 million a year for my skills!\u201d That’s fine \u2013 there are thousands of other truly great players who would gladly take his place in the NBA. And now this so-called great player is out on the street, no longer able to play basketball at the highest level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As soon as you understand this truth, and understand that the NBA could pay its players nothing and still have the players, you begin to understand one fault in our current economy. The economy is supposed to be driven by supply and demand. There is tiny demand for NBA players. There are only 30 teams, with a maximum of 15 players on each team [ref<\/a>]. So there are only 450 NBA players in the entire world. This is tiny demand. But there is a supply of millions of people who would gladly take one of those 450 slots in a heartbeat, even if it paid very little. The law of supply and demand dictates that NBA players should get paid minimum wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they create the U.S. Olympic basketball team, they can pay those players nothing, and they would still play. It’s the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you think about it further, you realize that the same thing is true of every high-paying job in the economy. Think about actresses \u2013 there are a million women who want to be an actress in a major motion picture and are qualified to do it. They would gladly do it for $0. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There would be no need to pay actors and actresses anything, and most would still do it because of all of the other perks and benefits. Many simply love the opportunity to act, and to work with other talented actors, directors, producers, etc. If some famous actor refused to act for $10 an hour, that’s fine. There are a million people who would jump at the chance to take the role. Again, it is pure supply and demand. There is no reason to pay an actor anything in a major motion picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Pick any famous actor. There is a train of thought that says, \u201cthis actor is worth $20 million.\u201d But that is a piece of faulty logic that is pushed to the point of brainwashing by the elite. Take the first Star Wars movie as an example. When it appeared in 1977, no one had really ever heard of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, etc. There are tens of thousands of qualified, eager actors who could have been slotted into any of those roles, and the movie would have still been a hit, because of the story and the special effects. If anything, putting a “famous”, $20 million actor in for Harrison Ford or something like that would have hurt the film, not helped it. No one had any pre-conveived notions or memories about Ford when he appeared on screen \u2013 he was a fresh face. This is true of any movie \u2013 there are thousands of actors or actresses who could fill any role, and would do so eagerly and without pay if necessary. It would be possible to logically argue that any given person should be allowed to act in only one major motion picture, because there are so many people who would like to have the opportunity. The demand for actors is tiny, while the supply is gigantic.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s say that, across the whole economy, we paid every single person only one wage, and that is minimum wage. What would change? Nothing really would change, except that prices for everything would drop gigantically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one is spared: The president of the United States, all the politicians and bureaucrats in federal, state and local governments, CEOs and executives, business owners, lawyers, doctors and dentists, actors and actresses and directors, sports stars, team owners\u2026 everyone. If you get a paycheck, you get minimum wage. No exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What would happen to highly paid people like TV\/movie stars, corporate executives, sports stars, radio personalities and so on? Their salaries would go from millions of dollars a year to $20,000 a year. Would it be a catastrophe? No. In all likelihood, absolutely nothing would change. Is Rush Limbaugh going to give up his soapbox if he got paid less? Probably not. He likes the fame and influence his show gives him. He is going nowhere. But even if he did choose to step down, there are thousands of people who are qualified to take his slot and would gladly do it. Are famous TV personalities going to quit? Probably not. They like the fame too. The stars of popular movies? No\u2026 they cannot get into the best restaurants, have adoring fans or get awards unless they appear on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if they do quit, it is not a problem. Johnny Carson left the Tonight Show, and we got Jay Leno, and when he left we got Jimmy Fallon. It was not a catastrophe. Steve Jobs died and what happened? Nothing. Tim Cook replaced him. It worked out great. Tim Cook could die tomorrow and he would be replaced too. There are thousands and thousands of people who would love to have these high powered jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would CEOs making $50 million a year leave? Maybe. But good CEOs love what they are doing building companies and leading thousands of people. If some CEO doesn’t want to do it unless he\/she gets paid $50 million a year, that probably tells us something about him\/her. We probably don’t want him\/her leading a company anyway if they are only in it for the money. If we replace him\/her with someone who actually cares about the job and the company and the employees and the company’s products, we would all be better off. The gigantic 2008 stock market collapse and ensuing recession was caused by greedy, ridiculously payed CEOs and executives. If we had had good, honest, competent people filling the CEO and executive roles in these companies, we would have avoided this catastrophe. You can see the point: Getting rid of people who are motivated by money like this would be a win. The CEOs who step down because they do not want to make minimum wage can go plant potatoes or do some other task like this needed by the Mars task allocation system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you start to think about this new minimum wage reality, you begin to realize something. Most people \u2013 especially the ones who are highly paid today \u2013 would stay in their current jobs. The perks of fame and power would keep them there. So here’s the question: Why isn’t supply and demand governing the pay of CEOs, TV celebrities, sports stars and supermodels, driving their wages down just like everyone else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the fascinating side effect that a purely minimum wage economy would have. It is subtle, but it is something to consider. If all the jobs paid the same, many people would go do things they’ve always wanted to do. For example, some people would love to teach, but they can’t stomach the fact that teachers make such low amounts of money. Now the stigma would be gone — teaching would pay just as much as everything else. A minimum wage economy would give people a lot more freedom in choosing their career paths, and might lead to a lot more job satisfaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is fascinating actually. It shows you how strange the economy has become. If supply and demand were truly regulating wages, the people with the best jobs would get paid the least, and the people with the worst jobs would get paid the most. So why is it the other way around? The only reason the rich get paid any more than the rest of us is because they are in the position to write themselves checks. They are handing money to themselves in ever-increasing amounts. This process is concentrating wealth<\/a> at an ever increasing rate. [ref<\/a>], [ref<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our world would actually work much better if we all got paid minimum wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking the thought experiment to the next level<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s continue this thought experiment one step further. Imagine that we have created a nation where everyone is getting paid the same wage. The nation has settled into this new reality and it is working surprisingly well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now a person stands up and says, “I am more ____ than everyone else, so I deserve more. I deserve a 30,000 square foot house in the nicest location, and I want a private airplane to fly me wherever I need to go, and I want my own private vacation areas so I don’t have to mingle with the riff raff.” The blank could be filled in with almost anything:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the norm today, but under this new reality we would look at such a person in a completely different light. What, exactly, do we do with a person who has become a conceited asshole like this? See Chapter 11<\/a> for more details on assholes in the Mars colony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do we accept a statement like, “I am beautiful and you are not, so I deserve more than you,” or, “I can run fast and you can’t, so I deserve more than you,” or “I can sing and you can’t, so I deserve more than you”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think about the American Declaration of Independence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Can the majority of people have liberty and pursue happiness if the richest 10% of the population makes half the income and owns half the stock market? [ref<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n We all understand that some people work harder than others, and therefore they tend to make more. If person A is willing to work 8 hours a day, and person B is willing to get a second job and work an extra 4 hours more, then person B makes more than person A. That’s not what is happening today, however. Today we have CEOs paying themselves hundreds, even thousands of times more than rank and file workers for no reason other than the fact that the CEOs control the check book (the CEO of Nike makes 4,000 times more than the people who assemble Nike shoes – see Chapter 3<\/a> for details)[ref<\/a>]. It is a pathological concentration of wealth<\/a>. A corporation charges its customers more money in order to pay the CEO millions of dollars, and there is no rational or economic reason for the CEO to receive all of that money. It is theft, plain and simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concentrated wealth<\/a> of this magnitude tends to destroy liberty for the population as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Extreme wealth corrupts the democratic system. Wealth gives a small group of people the power to disrupt the lives of many others. [ref<\/a>], [ref<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\nChapter 23<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n