Tom Kando
One of my sociological interests consists of differences between people. Diversity, if you will. People differ in innumerable ways. Some differences are physical, some mental, some are inevitable, some are achieved. Some are due to nature, some to nurture. And then, we often rank people according to a particular variable, for example athletic performance, or wealth. We know who the world champions are in various sports, who the world’s richest people and who the world’s greatest violin players are.
There could be a “Sociology of differentiation and ranking.” This is not necessarily a pretty business. It is also the realm of inequality, racism, winners and losers. And you might wonder whether it makes sense to compare apples and oranges.
The most striking aspect of “differences” and “inequality” is this: For some variables, the “top dog” is only a couple of times “better” or “higher” than the bottom dog. However, in other respects, some individuals outdo others MILLIONS of times.
Consider the magnitude of the top-to-bottom range of any variable. The range can be enormous - or not - depending on what it is that we measure.
People can be compared and ranked on a scale of any attribute - wealth, income, body weight and size, intelligence, strength, how fast you can run, how fast you can put together the rubik cube, etc.. The Guinness Book of World Records lists many world records of facts and achievements.
Consider three kinds of characteristics for which we often compare and rank people: (1) physical characteristics, (2) technology-assisted records, and (3) acquired characteristics. A few examples: 1. Physical characteristics:
● Physical height: According to some sources, a certain Robert Pershing Wadlow in Illinois was, at 8 foot 11
inches (= 2.72 meters) the tallest human ever known. One source also mentions a Jyoti Amge in India whose height was at 2 foot 7 inches (= .79 meter), the shortest person in the world. If we use these two cases. the range for adult height is therefore nearly 2 meters, and the tallest person on earth is not quite three and a half times taller than the shortest person.
(World’s tallest man and shortest woman).
● Running marathons:
This is an example which I like because I have run a bunch of these grueling 26.2 mile races myself: My best time was a 3:00 hour marathon when I was in my fifties. Currently, the world record is 2 hours and 35 seconds (set by the Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum at the 2023 Chicago marathon). So the difference between my best marathon and the best one ever run is only 50%.
● Running the mile:
In 1954, the British Roger Bannister was the first man to ever run a sub-four minute mile. seventy years later, the world record stands at 3.43.13, an improvement of barely 15 seconds.
Notice how limited differences and improvements in athletic performances are. Even if you compare the world’s best with the worst, the differences remain modest. For example, compare Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile with that of an average octogenarian woman who walks a mile in thirty two minutes: That’s only eight times slower.
2. Technology-assisted performance:
Much more spectacular differences are achieved with the help of science and technology. For example:
● Speed: Early man’s top speed was achieved by running, probably well under forty kilometers per hour. To date, the world record for speed is held by the crew of Apollo 10, when they approached nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour on their return from the moon in 1969. So that was about thousand times faster than a prehistoric man could move.
3. Acquired characteristics:
● Wealth:
When it comes to human differences, few variables are as striking as economic disparities. Let’s compare some group differences, using for example countries as our units of analysis:
In terms of per capita annual GDP, micro-states and small western countries are the richest: Monaco’s per capita GDP is $240,000, that of Switzerland is $106,000. Monaco ranks number one in the world, Switzerland number three. The US is not shabby either, with an annual per capita GDP of $85,400, ranked number six.
The poorest country in the world is Burundi, with an annual per capita income of $230, followed by Syria, at $421. Thus One inhabitant of Monaco is richer than thousand Burundians or 570 Syrians. One Swiss is worth 460 Burundians or 252 Syrians. One American is worth 371 Burundians or 203 Syrians. (Countries Ranked by GDP)
But individual differences are much more striking:
Currently, the richest person in the world is the Frenchman Bernard Arnault, worth $233 billion. He is followed by the Canadian Elon Musk with 195 billion and the American Jeff Bezos with $194 billion. (The World’s Billionaires). The opposite end of this continuum is zero of course (or perhaps deep negative worth due to debt). There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who don’t have a pot to piss in.
Now compare such super rich with the average American. In 2022, the median American net worth was $192,700.
(Americans’ net worth). Thus, Arnault, the richest man in the world, is 1.2 million times richer than the average American. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the richest American, are each as rich as 1 million Americans put together.
Keep also in mind that the median American net worth of $192,700 is not evenly distributed. It is highly skewed. The net worth of the vast majority of Americans is far below this number. For example, blacks’ net worth is only 44,100.
Also, the net worth of most of the world’s population is far below the American median. This country is still one of the ten richest ones in the world.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that EACH of the world’s top multi-billionaires’ wealth is many millions of times larger than that of the vast majority of the world’s individuals.
As an approximation of people’s net worth, let me use per capita GDP and double it (this is roughly the ratio in the US). So, going back to the two poorest countries of the world, let’s assume that the net worth of the average Burundian is $460 and that of the average Syrian is $842. This means that the wealth of the richest man on earth, Arnault, is the equivalent of the combined wealth of 500 million Burundians, which is almost half the population of Africa. The wealth of Elon Musk and of Jeff Bezos is each the equivalent of the combined wealth of 230 million Syrians.
Clearly the spread of some human characteristics is vastly greater than that of other ones. Wealth is one such variable, as some individuals are hundreds of millions of times richer than others. There is no limit to monetary growth and maldistribution.
Maybe it makes no sense to compare the variability of bodily achievement, monetary growth, the speed of locomotion, etc. Of course. Different things change/vary at different rates.
One important difference is between arithmetic and geometric growth. The former is linear, growing by a constant difference, whereas geometric growth is exponential, growing by a constant ratio, and therefore gradually growing more rapidly. Monetary growth - as for example when your return on investment is a certain percentage - is an example of this, and it is at the root of at least some of the fabulous fortunes achieved by some of the very rich.
I have tried to play with the idea of “differentiation.” We note differences between individuals and groups, and we rank people accordingly. In some respects, our differences are modest, but in other ways one individual may exceed another millions of times. The sociology of differentiation and ranking is also the sociology of inequality. Diversity is a great thing. Unfortunately, all too often, differences become the basis for ranking and for rewarding.
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