Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Issue 570 Specialized Cooperators April 15, 2015

I base this article on an interview with Nara Ravikant, the founder of Angel list and Angle.co.  Specialized Cooperators is a term he used to describe humanity and how we interact with one another.  Now I am going to explain his reasoning.

Why we are specialized cooperators:  Everyone has a skill that we use in everyday life.  We can learn new skills as well, and thus use them to benefit ourselves.  But we cannot know everything.  We are unable to do it all.  But we can trade those skills.  We can use our auto repair skills to help someone in exchange for something else.  In other words we trade what we can do so that we can get paid for it in some way and then in turn the next person does the same thing.  

However, it is possible to stagnant this.  If we are inhibited from inventing newer and better things, then we lose the ability to trade skills as there will be so many people with the same abilities that we become useless.  Computers established new skills in building them, repairing them and programing them.  The internet created new jobs in social media, advertising and more.  People see needs and try to invent things to meet those needs.  And in turn that creates newer skills to be traded.  But technology to is easy to copy.  Look at an organization like ISIS.  They came together in part due to the development of social media.  They figured out how to use the technology, but they do not have the skills to actually make such technology due to education, background and other limitation.  But, Americans and other countries do as they do not have such limits placed on them (to an extent) and can continuously invent and thus generate newer skills to be traded amongst each other and thus perpetuates the cooperation between fellow members of humanity.  In short, we each specialize in something and someone needs that something to fix whatever ails them, and you are there to fix it, or someone is there to fix your problem. 


Conclusion:  Everyone is good at something.  And Mr. Ravikant knows this and thus why he understands we each specialize in certain skills.  By trading skills, we can cooperate and survive.  So let us remember that at the end of the day we all need each other in some way shape or form.

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