A Cave That Had to be Lit: Primitive Miseconomics

There is no such thing as a pure hatred towards quantification, but there is a high probability that ideas that lead to, in some form, widespread criticism are standing on a phantom foundation. My mom told me once that a particular idea can spring up in your mind and it might seem right to use it once, but if it works the first time itself, it doesn’t necessarily mean you build more on it. In this vast world of theory, developed over ages, and the countless different ideas, the sky may not always be the limit. Sometimes, what it needs is a cave that has to be lit.

This time, I have a story for my readers, of those curious cavemen that lived long before the first civilizations of mankind. They knew just one thing: uncertainty is death, and certainty is power over death, the first ever sign of seeking a form of control. So, as those curious cavemen ventured across the lands, they killed animals for food and cut trees to fuel their fires. And so, one day, they came across a cave that disclosed to them nothing but a pitch-black void. With experience, the elders of the group held their heads high and their torches, and stepped into the cave one step at a time. It was ultimately concluded that the cave did not have a grizzly bear inside, and was small but spacious enough for all of their tribe to take shelter. But it was dark, so it had to be constantly lit.

To keep the torches from running out, the gatherers of the group brought in extra wood and other resources, and the one who could bring in the most was rewarded with the juiciest piece of meat. Soon enough, that region was seemingly running out of available resources, but the cave was important, as it gave them shelter. So their smartest ones found the use of alternative fuels, and in that, chose to dig inside the earth to mine them. And what a perfect place to dig deeper than the cave itself. The strongest of men went down to mine the magical black-black stone that kept the fire going. The smartest of them did brain magic and found out exactly how much fuel they would require to keep the fire going until a specific number of times the sun would defeat the moon and his star soldiers in the sky. But deep down in the ground, the miners wanted more, as they had bigger rewards waiting for them on the surface. Soon, one of them silently killed the others to steal all of their collections. Above, the hunters killed the biggest of the beasts in the nearby grassland, intended to feed their hardworking strongmen, who were solely responsible for keeping the fire lit.

Everyone still had strong confidence in their tribe the day the miner resurfaced with just a few precious resources, claiming others died with their loot below as the mine caved in. And the hunters claimed too, the disappearance of the mighty meaty beasts in their region as the reason behind their almost empty hands. With the few precious resources, the torch was kept lit, and the cave did glow, until it didn’t. The strongman, who hadn't gotten anything to eat throughout the day, tired, stumbled inside his mine and fell to his death in a trench. His undisclosed loot lost forever. Others above met a similar fate as they sat down to eat the food they hid away from everyone else. When a hungry grizzly bear came searching for food, as it found no other life out in the grassland, and here, in this cave, there wasn’t a burning torch to scare it away. And so it prevailed. A cave that had to be lit now remains dark, with a mighty meaty grizzly bear inside.

There is something beyond the cave, the resources, and the fire. And until and unless that is given enough care and thought, there will be crime, instability, poverty, hunger, corruption, and conflict. Don’t forget the moral in the story.

We can’t achieve anything now by blaming the lack of integrity of the miners, and the hunters and the gatherers. There is also nothing to be achieved by questioning their procedures and individual decisions. By-the-book rationality comes up with the most pleasing definition of self interest, but what it doesn’t include is the social cost of that profit. Until the cave is glowing, we have our certainty, and so we have control, and whatever it takes, that control shall remain in our hands. This analogy is expressed as another dive into the conceptual understanding of miseconomics.

The existence of moral entropy matters most to those who have already been affected by it, while the other section of society, resting in some ball of comfort, completely ignores it. But for how long, when the miner isn’t capable of bringing more magic black-black stones, and the hunters have cleared the land for the mighty meaty grizzly bear to come to you, and there you are, standing with the extinguished illusion of power.

KCP.