Something to Consider

I do not think the bottom half or so of the world by ability has any relevance to economic growth whatsoever. That is not to say that they do not provide value – they trade labor for money, and free up people to do other things. What I mean to say is that what they do is almost entirely accounted for in the money they are paid. It does not have any spillovers to other people, and it is those spillovers which are overwhelmingly responsible for human prosperity.

Imagine if the bottom half and the top half were to cleave in twain. (One must abstract away from the chaos and dislocation such a supernatural event would cause). The top half would be discomfited, and probably a bit poorer; the bottom half would revert to the barbarism of the Goths in Rome, looking at structures they cannot understand nor maintain. If you want to isolate the effect of ability, and replace each missing person with a twin of another in these worlds, the top half would see the almost total elimination of anti-social behavior and an economic boom, while the bottom half would see mass starvation as they breach their Malthusian bonds. With physical labor, a skilled worker can be substituted for with increasing numbers of unskilled workers; with mental labor, no number of people below a threshold could ever substitute. A thousand auto-dealers could not substitute for one von Neumann, nor could a million.

The masses are dragged along by the elites. They are not in any substantial way responsible for progress. Without the brilliant, there is no math, no medicine, no science, no democracy, no liberalism, no fertilizer, no literacy. Without the proletariat, there are no servants, and fewer laborers. In fact, if you believe that automation has more positive externalities than labor, then low wages for labor keep us actively poorer.

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