Meet George Jetson
The future of the Have and Have-Nots
No reasonable person wants to live in a society of haves and have-nots. We would prefer to live in a society that looks like a bell curve, with only a scant few poor people on one end of the curve (let’s make that the left side if you’re looking at it), only a few rich people on the other end (the right side), and that big, fat hump in the middle consisting of everyone else. The middle is an imaginary line that represents the shift from being poorer to being richer. I would bet an apple fritter and a cup of joe that you would prefer to be either on that imaginary line or to the right of it, even all the way to super-rich. Am I correct? Awesome! My psychic abilities remain intact and robust.
If you asked an average person what it looks like for a society of haves and have-not’s, they may say that it would be the inverse of the normal bell curve above. The graph might look like this, where there are a ton of poor people, a ton of rich people, and virtually no one in the middle class. It may look like this:
At the same time, there’s a consensus that wealth in the U.S. is less of an inverted bell curve, but a hockey stick where there are tons of really poor people, fewer middle-class people, then at some point, the count ticks up for a handful of wealthy. That point is subjective to each person. Ask a college student, and being rich starts at the point where their parents are. Ask a bum, and being rich is anyone who doesn’t beg for cash. Ask a millionaire, and being rich is a billionaire. It looks like The Hunger Games with a bunch of poor people in the districts and a few (albeit a sizable chunk) of rich people in the capital, with bad fashion to boot.
The actual wealth distribution in America doesn’t look like any of the above. In fact, it looks like the side of a rocky hill. About 50% of people are poor, roughly 40% are meandering around the lower-middle to middle class area, about 9% are the upper middle class, and then you have that infamous 1%.
That fits into the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule. With that in mind, it fits in pretty much every society and culture across the world. Humans are humans, after all. That healthy bell curve could be used for some distributions, like intelligence or height, but not for income/wealth. That’s because Pareto’s Principle is based on output and production rather than inherent attributes, mostly uncontrolled variables.
Jesus said it, not me
Bad news: there will always be haves and have-nots. When Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you,” he was probably just stating an obvious fact about the nature of humans. And it makes sense. Somebody is going to be the poorest in any batch of people. But his quote is not pointing to a country club with one guy being the poorest of the richest; he’s talking about real poor people, people that are poorer than you or I could ever conceive of being. The term haypenny probably came from a person whose net worth was half a penny, then had the fortune of finding another half penny on the ground, thereby making him a pennyaire, and, in his joy, exclaimed, “Hey… penny!” If you’re like me and have found yourself without a penny to your name, you’ll understand.
Your understanding of have and have-nots usually evokes one of the following images in your head. Let me put my psychic hat on again and list out the things in your mind:
The Hunger Games example above. You had it before I said it, but it’s prominent now.
Some nondescript time in the Middle Ages with fat, lavishly clad royalty and dirty, burlap-clad peasants.
The elite class (Illuminati?) and everyone else.
You’re digging for more examples, aren’t you? Admit it, those three are the top dogs in your mind. That’s OK. That makes you normal. If your primary picture was something different, let me know. No cheating. Don’t go ask AI for something else and put it in the comments to make yourself look like a proper misfit. I’m onto you!
Tech check
Speaking of AI, what happens when we add technology into the mix? It’s one thing to hire the common folk and profit off of their labor; it’s another thing to game a system with computers. Technology has the capability to exacerbate the have and have-not caste state. And here’s the kicker: if someone can make themselves wealthy with technology, they’re utilizing a tool that anyone can use. If some unsavory people want to protect their wealth, they may kick the ladder down so that others can’t climb up (told you there was a kicker!). It may not happen at first, but there will come a time when the haves don’t want competition. They’ll hog the tools and dole out only enough for the have-nots to keep them pacified.
How do I know this? I’ve seen it. So have you! And it was exemplified in a two-hour television special in 1987 involving two TV families that I bet you’re familiar with… The Jetsons and The Flintstones. You may be scratching your head, wondering where I’m going with this. You’ll see. Oh, you WILL see!
The Jetsons, The Flintstones, and the caste system within
The premise of the special is that Elroy Jetson created a time machine, and the Jetsons wanted to take a family vacation to the future, but the time machine failed, and they went to the past, where they met the Flintstones. Then the Flintstones were zapped into the future, displacing the Jetsons. Hilarity ensues only for everything to reset later on. Sounds pretty straightforward on the surface. Remember that phrase… “on the surface.” That’s going to mean a lot more in a moment.
I believe that the Jetsons did not go to the prehistoric era, simply because the Flintstones are not from prehistoric times. Yes, one can point to the technology - phones, TV’s, etc. - and say that those are modern, but it goes deeper than that. The Flintstones had Christmas specials, and in those specials, they celebrated in a modern manner. For instance, Fred dresses up like Santa Claus, the characters sing Christmas songs, there’s a Christmas tree, and Christmas decorations. Need I go on? For humans living in the BC era, specifically Before Christ, they sure do celebrate Christ’s birth, and do so in a 20th-century way. There’s no way around this tidbit. Somehow, the Flintstones are contemporary.
Now, back to the Jetsons. They live in a place called Orbit City in the year 2062. They zip around in flying cars and pneumatic tubes. Fun. But, for a place called Orbit City, they’re not exactly in orbit. After all, their buildings are bulbs on tall poles, grounded to the surface of Earth. To build all the buildings and wonderful tech, they have to use raw materials from somewhere, and the most likely place is the Earth below. I think you know where I’m going with this, but humor me.
Every society larger than a village or regional clan is structured with the rich on top and the poor on the bottom. The poor do the grunt work, and the rich usually profit from it. No matter what economic system, it gravitates to this model. Somewhere, a college kid sheds a tear. Somewhere, an idealist pounds a table with his fist. A flower withers. Boo-hoo.
Who is doing the grunt work for The Jetsons? Sure, in their world, George Jetson is the grunt, but there’s no denying that he, his family, and the rest of the inhabitants of Orbit City live a life of luxury. You thought George Jefferson was movin’ on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky; George Jetson literally lives in such a place, with an AI robot maid, to boot!
The dino dilemma
As for those dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers, a technologically advanced society could genetically engineer animals (à la The Hunger Games and Jurassic Park). Why? Using a large animal like a brontosaurus as an excavator is brilliant - there’s no manufacturing of the excavator by the Flintstones people, no purchasing, the animals reproduce themselves, and if they do the job of an excavator without needing a mechanical excavator, then there’s no reason to recreate/invent an excavator, or any other mechanical device. The surface dwellers (i.e., The Flintstones) are a post-TikTok form of humans. Their brains had been turned to mush and thereby reverted them back to caveman status. It tracks.
What the Jetsons folks need to maintain their lavish space-age lifestyle is a bunch of grunts doing the dirty work. The Flintstones and thier Bedrock bretheren mine materials, which are collected by the Jetsons people, probably via a pneumatic tube. The Jetsons people, in turn, dole out small pieces of harmless technology (e.g., cathode ray tube TVs, telephone wiring, etc.) so that the Flintstones people have ways to communicate and entertain themselves so that they don’t get wise to the whole unbalanced and opaque scenario. This assuages the surface dwellers, side-stepping revolt, and sustaining the mining operations. Yabba-dabba-do!
Getting grounded
Now, put two and two together. The Jetsons visited the Flintstones because Elroy’s time machine malfunctioned. Instead of teleporting them to another time, it simply transported them to the forbidden surface of the earth. Because both societies - The Jetsons and The Flintstones - are blissfully unaware of their disparate existences relative to one another, it’s a comedy. But things are about to get less cartoonish.
Do you know where your technology comes from? Who mines the precious lithium for your batteries? Who digs up the coal that is used to create the electricity that runs those “eco-friendly” all-electric cars? Who assembles that phone in your pocket? If you stepped into a magic portal that zapped you smack-dab into the middle of the operations of any of those industrial facilities in their respective foreign nation, you would get an eyefull of an existence unfathomable to your first-world mind; less yuk-yuk and more yuuuuuuuck!
What have you?
We know that the have and have-nots will exist wherever and whenever. There is no place and no time where that isn’t the case. We’re not idiots. We may be idealists, but not idiots. You can’t change human nature or how the world works. You can acknowledge the disparity and help out here and there, but trying to upend the system is foolhardy. It will always revert, like it or not. You’re not battling with economic systems; you’re battling human nature itself. And human nature always wins out.
I’m no dope. I realize that even at my lowest point, as an American, I still had it significantly better than the vast majority of people at any time and any place. There will always be a higher level of luxury and comfort above you. Just remember, there will always be a lower level of poverty and pain. You’re not a have-not, you only have-not the grim reality of a true have-not. If you’re reading this, you have access to a computer or phone, electricity, and you’ve probably taken a hot shower pretty recently. You’re not a have-not, and you’re not a Flintstone. Go look in the mirror. Meet George Jetson.