If something is good, surely more must be better. But it is not necessarily so. It is true that when you are alone or don't have any money, then a friend or any amount of money is very valuable.
But the more you have of either, the less valuable any additional friend or money becomes, just as a meal for a hungry people is more important than for someone who is well-fed. What we often don't appreciate is that both too little and too much are extremely damaging, just in very different ways and for very different reasons.
I recently received a Facebook friend request from someone I did not know. Why would a complete stranger want to be my friend? Maybe it was because they liked my last column? A new fan! No, it was because we have the same last name. It turns out he had more than 3,000 friends, many with our last name.
So, when is a few friends not enough, and a large number too many? Facebook now has 1.1 billion members. The 10 percent with the fewest friends have less than 10 friends each; but the 10 percent with the most friends have 500 or more friend — some up to the limit of 5,000.
The typical Facebook participant has between 100 and 190 friends. These include close friends, colleagues, some personally unknown associates and even some family. With some, they have a genuine reciprocal relationship; for others, it's mainly one-way communication. This number is very similar to the 150 people whom social science research has shown that most people can manage in a meaningful way. Facebook is more immediate and personal than email, which in turn was more immediate and personal than the post office. However, to collect 5,000 friends has little if any redeeming social value. What is true for the distribution of friends on Facebook is also true for the distribution of wealth in the United States. For both groups of people the upper 10 percent, and in particular the upper 1 percent, have an excessive number of friends or amounts of money.
The important difference is that the supply of potential Facebook friends is endless, and individuals with a large number of friends are the primary victims of their own excess. In contrast, the supply of wealth is limited. And how wealth gets distributed does make a difference. In this case, the primary victims are the 90 percent of individuals who do not have an equitable share of the wealth.
At the poor end of the distribution a small additional amount of money makes a big difference for the person with little money. At the rich end of the distribution, any additional amount of money does not make any noticeable difference. This fact is neither new nor radical. In classic free-market economic theory it is the "law of diminishing marginal utility." But this well established economic principle seems to have been forgotten by the current economic policies that have allowed the excessive accumulation of wealth by the 1 percent. One way to correct this distribution is to increase the minimum wage to be an effective living wage, including adequate food, shelter and health care. However, the very rich have used their money and influence to block this simple reform. Clearly, their excess has not trickled down as the promised alternative; indeed, just the opposite.
Spend your days with Hayes
Subscribe to our free Stephinitely newsletter
You’re all signed up!
Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
Explore all your optionsThe damage this false argument has caused is great compared to the economic stimulus and improved quality of life that would result from a greater degree of equality. In a democracy, individuals are generally free to behave in self-serving ways as long as it does not harm others. That is why a few people are free to choose to distribute their social energy to accumulate an excessive number of meaningless friends.
Perhaps the question we should reconsider is whether, like Facebook, to permit a few people to accumulate excessive meaningless amounts of the national wealth, when the result is so harmful to the national level of well-being.
Edward Renner has been a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois and at Dalhousie University in Canada. Now retired, he teaches one course, Forums for a Future, as an adjunct professor in the Honors College at the University of South Florida. He wrote this exclusively for the Tampa Bay Times.