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Sharing The Wealth Across Medium Globally

Why you agree with me, even if you didn’t realize you did

Perhaps I am being naive, but I like to think that most of us would be happy to see others prospering. Consider the following question:

If they or their actions don’t hurt people, would you be happy to see somebody else doing well?

I am guessing that we are all happy to say “Yes” to this one, right? Happier people make a happier world. If we are not being contrarian, surely it should be a very simple answer, yes?

Let’s adjust our field to make it a little more interesting. We’ll break it into two questions and add in an element of the unknown! I will number them for convenience.

Q1. If they or their actions don’t hurt people, would you be happy to see somebody you know doing well?

Q2. If they or their actions don’t people, would you be happy to see somebody you don’t know doing well?

I am guessing if we keep Q1 somewhat open (and not focus on a specific childhood nemesis, ok?), the answer is universally a yes. When we make it more granular, and include all childhood nemeses, you are going to say yes for 99.9 percent of them: maybe 1 in every thousand people you have met is a no. Going dictionary definition on this, that is “so small or unimportant or of so little consequence as to warrant little or no attention” — negligible. It follows that the real answer is that you would be happy for them, correct?

What of people you don’t know, as put forward in Q2? Can we rely on the general figures from the Q1 and apply them across here to those you do not know? If you feel that you would begrudge maybe 1 person you know in a thousand their success, would that not be a fair representation of those you don’t know? Indeed, you don’t know that one person in a thousand that you would otherwise begrudge, so why would you begrudge that one person in a thousand — the figure is no longer statistically insignificant, it is reduced to zero for strangers.

Following the logic of really only begrudging a very few people you know for presumably personal reasons, unless you know all 7.7+ billion people, the number of people who you would not be happy to see being successful becomes infinitesimally small. Ultimately, you would be happy to see doing well for themselves. As long as it didn’t inconvenience you, obviously.

Let’s try a different pair of questions now. And think carefully on this one, as a key element changes. Perhaps it is a little too straightforward of a question. Let’s add an element of challenge to what are basically the same questions.

Q3. If they or their actions don’t hurt people, would you be happy to see somebody you like doing well?

Q4. If they or their actions don’t hurt people, would you be happy to see somebody you don’t like doing well?

I hope for everyone’s sake that Q3 is a simple yes, an unquestionable yes. What kind of monster would begrudge the success of their friends?

As for Q4, it is understandable if many people said no. There is a reason you don’t like them, right?

Let’s go full two dimensional in our thinking. Let’s set these two alongside each other to create a conventional two-by-two matrix.

Three of the squares fill themselves — somebody you know and like; somebody that you don’t know but may like (statistically likely to be the case, based on the previous argument); and somebody you know and dislike.

That leaves the impossibility of the somebody you don’t know and dislike. The question is why would you decide that you dislike someone who you don’t know? Arguably, based on previous discussion, you may have an active dislike of up to 0.1% of people you know. But if you don’t know people, can you actually dislike them? What are you disliking them for? Should we not all be glad for the success of all of the rest of the world, beyond those we particularly personally dislike, if it is not of inconvenience to us or others?

Let’s skip the ridiculous guff about celebrities in sports, music, and god help us politics (where we are allowed to dislike / begrudge even the politicians we “like”!). Let’s make it focused.

Let’s not just talk of people, let’s talk of writers. Writers you know or don’t know, writers you like or don’t like. Writers on Medium. Does anyone here begrudge the success of anyone on here? There seems to be (thus far) minimal antagonism, and the majority of the writing and the people doing it cannot be accused of hurting people.

Which is a very long way around getting to my main point (aside that we should be glad for others’ successes). What will it harm folks to expand Medium’s Partner Program to the world beyond the 33 special countries? Will anyone here be grumpy about the matter? It will mean more people willing to get online and pay a membership, not that all the money will leech away from those of us already here — the wealth should be added to. Similarly, one could expect to see our own personal niches expanded as people who have similar interests to us in places like Brazil, India, Indonesia, etc., are able to find us. Who is actually upset by expanding Medium?

I don’t doubt it is difficult, but I also would like to know why it isn’t happening. Currently, Stripe is organized to deal with transactions officially in 47 different countries (up one since last time I posted on this topic), so it isn’t a Stripe thing. Please, Ev Williams, or whoever in Medium Staff at Medium has authority in this, do tell us what is the plan, why things aren’t happening, and what you are going to do about it? We are waiting to hear why our excellent writing friends across the world cannot join in fully yet.

More on this topic in these three articles