Whilst in the shower (where we all do our best thinking, right?) this morning, I was thinking about some of the massive benefits to our society if everything was done in service to humanity rather than some profit motive on the part of someone somewhere. If people everywhere were provided with what they needed to live as a primary goal of society,
- People would be free to be who they are
- If everyone had what they needed, imagine how many crimes would cease or, at best, be considered aberrations
- The concept of “ownership” would change completely and go a long way towards eliminating borders, wars, and scarcity
- People would live longer due to less stress and proper medical care
- The face of Business would change completely as corporations would be groups of pooled resources for the greater good, not warring fiefdoms
- Humanity might actually achieve its potential if we all worked together for the good of the species as a whole
- People would be incentivized to help do things in their community solely because it’s good for the community and needs doing
- REAL innovation would happen because time wouldn’t be wasted on incessant duplication of the same products merely for market share
- Scarcity would become a global stewardship or self-control problem, not a marketing tool, and should happen only in rare cases
- There would no longer be any need for Machiavellian backstabbing, climbing a mythical ladder of prosperity, or “keeping up with the Joneses”.
- The roles of governments, armies, police forces, and corporations would completely change
- Quality of life would improve for everybody, not just the few
Of course, there are many reasons why this won’t ever happen (and those last two bullet points are the strongest reasons). In short, equity and equality greatly reduces or could even eliminate power and control. Those that have power and control will never give it up easily — even if giving up that power and control would actually make their lives personally so much better and more peaceful. They can’t see how losing their power is actually better than the constant fight to maintain it.
The idea of policing and “law enforcement” would change considerably. How many people who are currently or will be police in the future will stay in that career if it’s far less often about having carte blanche to brutalize the citizenry because there would be fewer “crimes” and “criminals” and more about actually keeping the peace in the community and actually helping people with mundane interpersonal bickering that requires mediation and arbitration?
ICE and armies would go away because there would be no need for them since citizenship would be more of an opt-in than a deeply-rooted identity.
And speaking of that point about scarcity, one of the ways that the wealthy acquire power or at least broadcast it to others is by possessing things that very few other people have (or best case, that nobody else has). Again, this is all about power and control and ownership. It all has to do with them having whatever it is they want whenever they want it, and they absolutely cannot abide by the notion of time-share anything.
I so very much want to live in an equitable system like I described but I know it will never happen because it would require a complete attitude shift at a global species level, and those who can’t even conceive of what a society that operates this way might look like will never just “give it a chance” to see if it might really work like people say it would. It’s going to take movements of the citizenry doing it on their own, but there’s not really any space available to setup shop to start a new community or country that can do things their own way.
Anyway, these are the kinds of things I think about in the shower sometimes.
