A person’s Net Value

Bling! And I were out and having lunch. We happened to be sitting near two younger guys that had some interesting opinions about the world, but neither of us thought they had much in the way of substance.

In any case, Bling! And I started discussing politics and other things going on in the world. He and I don’t always see eye-to-eye politically, but that’s not to say that we don’t respect each other’s opinion. I always appreciate the fact that he has an intelligent, alternate point of view.

So while we were talking Bling! Indicates one of the things he thinks about and concerns him is a persons net value to society. So we explored this subject a bit and had some interesting ideas. Keep in mind that these are still fledgling thoughts and we didn’t take the time to work it all out. I’d also like to know if people have ever tried this before and whether or not they came up with a workable model.

What makes a person valuable to society, or the human race? I’m sure people like Al Gore believes he is pivotal to society at large, but is he? How do you quantify that?

One qualification might be whether or not you contribute to society economically. Are you a drain on society or do you promote the economy. As an example: Bling! Is an engineer working on the new Boeing 7E7. He is probably paid fairly well, though I don’t know the specifics. He owns a house, has a couple of toys and is married to Mrs. Bling! (who is self-supporting as far as I know).

It would be quite simple to take the simple approach and say that he makes X money, and spends Y money and arrive at a conclusion of whether or not he contributes financially to society. If that is all you look at, you are missing the bigger picture. Bling! Is contributing to a massive economic project – the 7E7. The 7E7 project is the reason tens of thousands of people are employed for one reason or another. It also will allow for travel, which is one way people conduct business.

Then you have to consider that Bling! Also spends money at the grocery store, buys toys, etc. All of which again contribute in some way to the economy as a whole. It’s not a cut and dried approach.

But if you could factor all this in, you would eventually arrive at a conclusion that what he does either is, or is not productive for society at a financial level.

But that is just one aspect. How about other factors such as morality, or a general pulse of enthusiasm or happiness? How do you measure those factors?

A comedian might rank low on the financial impact scale, yet rank very highly on the enthusiasm scale because he / she makes people happy.

A priest is probably high on the moral scale, and probably also high on the happiness scale, and again low on the financial scale.

One of my good friends is probably financially “neutral” but I’d say ranks fairly high on the happiness scale because he always makes people laugh.

A street bum probably doesn’t contribute to any category as an extreme example.

What I am getting at is that you can break it down to several factors:
1 - Financial contribution
2 - Moral contribution
3 - State of well Being (happiness) contribution
4 - And perhaps one for health contribution

I’m sure we could make more categories if we thought about it, but you’d want to keep things broken down to the basics. Even going with a health contribution may be a sub factor of well being.
But you take these factors, figure them all out and assign weights to them. Then, from there you take the mean score of a person and find out if they are an asset to society or if they are liability.
The bigger question, then, is what do you do with people if they are a liability? What is the next step? This is where things could get really scary.