I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to go through this video/ transcript of a MIT research assistant about research on the impact of network connection on whether societies are meritocratic (people get rewarded in proportion of their contribution) or topocratic (intermediaries get rewarded, not the contributors). [The text on the page is the transcript of the video if you prefer reading].
Basically research shows that the more connected the network is, the more it becomes meritocratic. A very basic model suggests that if everybody is connected to 150 people on average (which is approximately the case on Facebook), the network is meritocratic only on a section of 22,000 people in your close network. The network is still topocratic (enhances the intermediaries’ value) at the size of a country. Now if your number of connections is larger, the size of the society subset which will be meritocratic will increase dramatically and you will receive increasingly more rewards from your contribution.
As the Fourth Revolution expands and the inter-connectivity of our world increases substantially, we can expect our societies to become more and more meritocratic even if it will still take time to avoid intermediaries at a country or at global level. What a better demonstration that the Fourth Revolution will bring tremendous changes to our benefit?
