What if … . What would be some consequences for nations that were closer to the goal of a just distribution of human production, a just society, where almost everyone had sufficient food, clothing, housing, education, and health care, freedom from coercion and violence, maximal freedom of thought and behavior consistent with the freedom and rights of others?
Let’s assume 1) That we have changed our economic and political systems so that the cycles of booms and busts have been damped down greatly. We will have a much more stable system. Notice I am not hypothesizing any kind of absolutely stable or static system. Our systems will still evolve. They will change. It is just that we will avoid, or make it much less likely, that there are destructive crashes of the system — at least crashes of those subsystems that provide for the just distribution of the human necessities just described. There will still be innovations, discoveries, inventions, intellectual, informational, artistic creations. There will be a whole economy above and beyond and in addition to those subsystems that assure the production and just distribution of the human necessities. The subsystems that assure the production and just distribution of the human necessities will be the focus of stability and redundancy (back up systems) to minimize the effects of internal or external disturbances to these basic and critical systems. These systems and all other systems must operate within the constraints of the earth’s limited resources and within the constraint of not further degrading the natural world.
Let’s assume 2) That there will be useful and productive employment for anyone who wants it. And we will have designed the production and distribution processes not only to be efficient with respect to goods and services produced, but also in terms of the physical and mental health and well-being of the workers.
Society needs skilled, talented, knowledgeable people in many, many areas and in many levels of accomplishment. Maximum variety will provide maximum benefits in terms of human development and creativity. Intangible things like human services, artistic, scientific, and informational creativity will be valued as well as tangible goods.
So let’s assume 3) That people will be paid to educate themselves in all these areas.
Education will be everyone’s first job. Actually education is already everyone’s first job except we don’t get paid for it now. We can pay students starting in the first grade with 100% of the pay going to the parents and in following years smaller percentages to the parents as the students can be more responsible with their own money. Then later further education will replace unemployment if the system should sometimes or periodically not have jobs for all who want one. People can be paid according to the progress they make. Education will be the default job.
So we have three specific things that could be easily evolved from our present systems: 1)More stability; 2) Zero unemployment; 3) Paid education. As stability increases, as unemployment gets closer to zero, as paid education can be offered to more and more people, these changes will change people’s beliefs and behaviors about the future, they will see more easily that the revolutionary goals are achievable, and the revolution will be speeded up.
In addition imagine 4) That almost everyone has sufficient food, clothing, shelter, health care, that society is much less coercive, and less violent. Now we haven’t proposed any details how these can be accomplished yet, but the increase in productive work that results from 1), 2), and 3) above, will be one means by which we can move toward a just distribution system that satisfies these human needs.
Then, if education is a paying job, and if everybody who wants a paying job can have one, then many, many more people than today will want to work. They will be incentivized to participate in the system and the production of goods and services will be increased. And as the revolution spreads the just distribution goals through larger and larger populations, almost all people will adopt these goals as their own and will thereby be eager to develop themselves through education and work.
Welfare, government handouts, charity will be eliminated or at least reduced greatly. (We may have to keep giving government handouts to the large banks and corporations if we don’t regulate them better and seriously change our money system.) Almost everybody will have a livable wage job. Retirement as we know it today with all its uncertainty, planning, saving, ceasing productive work — will fade away. Older people, and younger people too, will be paid to do productive work consistent with their physical and mental abilities, and if they can do no productive work, their human necessities will be provided as it is (or better than it is) today. We don’t want to waste any human capacities.
If the system is more stable, even as it continues to evolve, if people can see that their basic physical needs — the human necessities — are and will be taken care of, then there will be much less incentive than there is now for people to hoard, be greedy, be trying to get as much as possible now for themselves no matter what happens to others. So even the rich will come to see that the revolution will be good for them too. They won’t have to waste so much of their lives hoarding and gambling with money.
The revolution is a self-reinforcing process.
HOW TO MAKE A REVOLUTION? 