TribeSteemUp BiWeekly Question -- What would you do for society if you had all the resources you needed?

Introduction

In a lot of ways, this essay is about how I would like to see society change ... and everyday life improve. There is no one thing here that I can really prioritize over another. There is no one "magic bullet." The elements of this vision -- like life itself -- are all interconnected.

For this reason, some of these changes may introduce other problems that we'd need to solve -- but at least they'd be different problems. And creative solutions to might be easier to devise. At least they'd be challenging!

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Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income ---> This is absolutely essential. Problems like homelessness and extreme poverty are an illness any civilized society needs to heal. People have a right to feed themselves and live with dignity. A culture where there are 5 vacant houses for every homeless person -- and with no solution in sight to this obscene fact of life -- is already spiritually bankrupt. It is a shameful indictment of capitalism ... and no one should be proud of this fact ... nor willing to tolerate it one minute longer than necessary.

Instead of decrying the "loss of jobs" to automation, any job that can be mechanized and automated should be mechanized and automated. The perpetuation of rote, mindless, meaningless, soul-sucking "work" just so people can be enslaved into "contributing to society" is as obscene and sadistic as the housing situation I just mentioned.

Work that no one in his right mind would agree to do unless starvation is his only option need to be somehow handled differently. The loss of creative potential and a meaningful quality of life as a basic human right is so enormous we may not even dare (or be ready) to look at it yet. But that doesn't mean it should continue. Not by any means.

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Economic Imbalance

Curbs on Individual and Inherited Wealth ---> No one -- absolutely no one -- needs an annual income of hundreds of millions of dollars to live exceedingly well. As a past acquaintance of mine once said, "At some point, you just can't eat any better" -- and the hoarding of wealth by a few and the unequal distribution of adequate resources to the rest of the planet's people is a sickness and needs to be addressed as such.

At some point we need to stop envying people for what they own and have and stockpile and start honoring them for what they contribute that improves life for everyone. Stop making fancy cars and shiny rocks status symbols and start honoring people for the quality of life measures they concoct, establish and fund.

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Transportation

Revolutionize the transportation system ---> There is no reason at all for every home to have an individual vehicle or two or three parked idle at their home and / or office for hours on end. Some kind of rail system where you could order the kind of vehicle you need when you need it -- have it deliver you to your destination -- and then go do something else for someone else until you needed to call it again would be a far better answer to our energy problem and pollution problems than what we have now.

These vehicles would be like pods in which you could load and carry whatever you need. They would be driverless and run on an automated system -- pretty much eliminating traffic accidents ... and damage ... and deaths. High-speed rail would be available between cities. Drone delivery would eliminate the need for needless shopping trips and resource consumption.

Video conferencing could eliminate the need for a lot of business travel. Working from home would be supported and encouraged eliminating "commuting" as much as possible and vastly reducing the need for acres of commercial office space.

(Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it. -- Ellen Goodman. This is true and it is ridiculous!! )

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The Failed War on Drugs

Legalize drugs ---> Other societies have done this and proved it minimizes and controls what has become an escalating problem. Take the profit motive out of it. Institute educational programs. If they legalized every street drug known to man tomorrow, I wouldn't be lining up to get my supply of ecstasy or crystal meth. Nor would anyone else I know. Criminalizing something doesn't eliminate it. If anything it makes it more attractive -- and profitable. Stop fueling this problem. Use common sense and proven strategies to handle it, for God's sake.

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Prison Reform

Make the prison system a place of genuine rehabilitation ---> not simply a place for warehousing and punishing people convicted of everything from serial murder to possessing too many grams of a plant!! Sweden is even closing its prisons -- due to a lack of people to put in them. There isn't a literal bounty on incarcerating enough people.

The very idea that the private for-profit prison system in this nation has built-in guarantees of a 90%+ "occupancy rate" is something straight out of Kafka. Have we lost our minds -- or just our moral compass? The largest prison population in the world ... and the highest per-capita incarceration rate ... belongs to US!!! WTF is wrong with this picture???

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Energy Production

Unlimited Energy Sources ---> legend has it that Nikola Tesla discovered a way to generate unlimited free energy. He was stymied when J.P. Morgan (who I hope is receiving his just Karma for this) withdrew funding from the project after asking, "If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter?" (I swear some people would ration and sell air to breathe if they could find a way to do it!!)

If this "secret" exists, it needs to be uncovered, developed and put to use by people who don't care about "the meter." If it was discovered once, it can be discovered again. This or something like it needs to become the standard way to generate power. (If I could only choose one thing from this list to "do for society" ... this might be it!! We have got to get off dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear reactors and other totally lunatic ways of killing the planet -- assuming the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster hasn't already managed this for us.)

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Renewable Resources

Renewable Resources ---> this also needs to become the undisputed gold standard when consuming the bounty of nature ... even if it means (gasp!!!) that we have to legalize hemp!!

The moment you can't see a clear path to victory in obtaining an unlimited supply of "more where this came from" -- whatever that is -- you need to find another way to manufacture your product. The human mind is infinitely creative. I'm sure you can come up with one.

Take the emphasis off producing "whatever's new, whatever's cheap, whatever's easy, whatever's disposable" -- and start building things that are either easy to fix or replace-and-recycle ... or that are built to last!!!

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Health Care

Universal Health Care ---> the difference between living and dying should not depend on whether or not you can pay for it. People should not go without basic care until something turns into a crisis because they can't afford to see a doctor. Medicine should not be another privilege only the rich can enjoy.

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Education

Unlimited Free Education ---> the excellence in the education of every inquiring mind who wants to learn is the foundation of our progress as a society. Everything from adult continuing education classes to programs to earn advanced degrees should be open to anyone who can qualify for admittance. (Modern technology even takes the need to commute to class out of the equation. We should take "tuition costs" out of it, too.)

Anyone who can do the work deserves the chance to learn. We need to encourage this. We need to make it easy. We need to make a highly educated society our universal and continuing goal. A mind is not just a terrible thing to waste, it's a terrible thing to monetize the way we have done. But how much more noble it would be to build schools than to build prisons!

While we're at it, being a teacher needs to become a highly regarded "status symbol" occupation -- not a fall-back position when you can't get a job. And maybe we should pay teachers a salary commensurate with their tremendous responsibilities (and maybe also their talent) ... so that their standard of living isn't consistently far below that of someone who can manage to carry a football. (Just a suggestion.)

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