Saturday, 5 April 2014

Markovnikov's rule and its possible applications to social economics

Note: I am not an economics student, but I noticed a relation(even if it is not very clear) between Markovnikov's rule (In chemistry) and several real world economic scenarios. The content in this post will not be very scientific, as I do not list figures and most of the definitions are simplified so that it is easy to understand. The purpose of this post is to notify and highlight a possible relationship between Markovnikov's principles and real world economic scenarios, hence it should not be taken scientifically at this point. Only if people decide to take my observation one step further then it will be elevated to a scientific level, but this is entirely up to you.

  The most common way to remember Markovnikov's rule: The rich gets more, the poor gets less.
From this simplified understanding of the application of Markovnikov's rule, we can establish a direct link between this and the rising inequality in countries, a serious issue worldwide. So, why am I using this term instead of merely stating the obvious:The rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer?

The key idea is that there is a strange, but rarely explored link between science concepts and economics. Many of these science concepts clearly show that nature tries to oppose instability or inequality in the system, and these methods are discovered by scientists through experimentation and data analysis. In the real world, economics have similar problems but most of the time, people use different methods, of varying degrees of effectiveness, to try to solve the problems. Should it be time for us to relook our scientific concepts and apply the methods nature uses to restore balance in the system to solve inequality?

(Before looking at the next paragraph, may I request that you discard all negative stereotypes of the different economic classes and look at the scenario objectively. This will ensure that the scenario below will not incite any hatred towards other classes)
Now, let us consider a particular scenario. Imagine that a new deal/opportunity emerges and various groups of people from a country, let us call it country A, tries to benefit from it. A consists of businessmen, workers and farmers, where the businessmen are generally richer than the workers and the farmers(not implying communism here, let us stick to A being a capitalist country). Now, the deal is highly lucrative but who will benefit more from it? If we take a look at real world scenarios, we find that for most of the time, the businessmen would gain more, while the poorer people will gain less. Why is this so? Businessmen from A would not only be able to seize better opportunities due to their high capital, but they have the expertise and highly paid experts to analyse the situation and produce the best outcome by using the most profitable method. On the other hand, the poorer people have less analysis of the situation and are hence unable to derive much from this new opportunity. Even if some of them have the knowledge, but they lack the capital. So, from this scenario, we see the richer people(the businessmen) having the clear advantage. The result, massive increase in incomes for the rich, while small increases in income for the poor.

So, what implications and benefits does such a scenario have on the country's economy.
Benefits: Businessmen become richer, able to create more jobs, more revenue for country's government, improvement of infrastructure and transportational facilities, increased standard of living and quality of life for all citizens.
Implications: High inequality, inflation due to people becoming richer, tension and distrust between classes.
So, this is the scenario that we are in today. We see a paradox here, while more jobs are being created and this increases job security, there is increased distrust between the rich and the poor as there is a decline in social security. Workers need both to be happy(not considering other factors). So, are the citizens of the country happier or more depressed? In fact, they become more depressed because there is a loss of social cohesion and a common national identity. Instead of being brothers or sisters, people of different classes now see each other as conflicting and different groups of people and this clearly reduces the happiness levels of people in society.

So, now we should ask ourselves, does science have a solution to similar scenarios? The answer is yes, but for this, we now turn to Physics concepts on electromagnetic induction. Remember Lenz's law? Let us apply it to this scenario. When there is a change, people will oppose the change, if we follow Lenz's law closely. But in real world scenarios, the conept is a little more abstract, because when people oppose the change, there will still be people who oppose the people who oppose the change. So what do we do now? For this, we now turn to the psychological aspect and ask ouselves what it means to be a compassionate human being. If we see a fierce tug of war between classes, should we stand by and stare at them, or should we move forward to stop? I am sure most of you would be kind enough to stop them and try to resolve the situation through mediation. This mediation, in real world scenarios, is actually charity. If the rich gives to the poor, will the poor be anything but thankful? And if the rich gives willingly, will the rich be unhappy about it? No, and the problem is solved. Do we see this anywhere in nature? Yes, in the global redistribution of heat energy(General circulation model) in Geography. So, in actual fact, charity is the solution to economic inequality social issues in society. It might not solve the problem completely but at least it reduces the problems and overtime, people will develop so much trust in each other that we will no longer feel we are unequal. Once again, inequality may be represented by data, but the true interpretation of inequality is through the eyes of the people.

So, you might be confused and wondering what does Markovnikov's rule have to do with everything written in the above paragraph? Well, Markovnikov's rule is merely the ignition, the idea that allows us to visualise and understand the issue. It is only through understanding that we realise we need to frantically solve the issue due to inequality, and through scientific concepts we apply other methods to solve it. So, without the ignition, would we go ahead to crack our brains to solve it? Absolutely not. So, one thing leads to another.

I hope you have gained a new perspective on how Markovnikov's rule could be possibly applied to social economic understanding. Even though my explanations may be scientifically shallow, but it may just ignite the passion of researchers to study this inequality issue and propose practical, effective solutions to solve inequality and bridge humanity together.

Note: As I am a busy student, I have no time to read or reply your comments. Please do not criticise anyone(including me) on this blog, as the blog is strictly reserved for constructive discussion. If I had unintentionally offended anyone, please accept my sincere apologies and forgive me for my mistake. Once again, thank you for reading my post and have a nice day ahead.


No comments:

Post a Comment