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comp.sys.mac.apps, alt.politics.greens, alt.politics.usa |
Notes about utopiaNotes about this documentAgendas below are listed in order of priority: Although I believe that addressing population concerns should be top priority (especially in the United States), I don't think this can be achieved without a well informed democratic process. Certainly a whole hearted effort into this one area could result in substantial gains, but I believe that neglecting supporting agendas of the media, democracy and business interests would result in devastating effects for future society. It would be like trying to save a sinking ship by simply generating more pumping capacity. Eventually enough pumping capacity could be brought online to equal out further flooding and perhaps even buoy the ship, but this would not get the ship to its destination and could even result in stranding the ship if the pumps consume all the ship's fuel. At which point it would ultimately sink anyway. Establishing a truly informed and active democracy, which has never been achieved in history, should be our first priority. Once this has been accomplished, such a society should be able to handle subsequent problems of its environment, which are mostly posed by over-population. Finally, resolving issues of class structure, corporate corruption, government taxation and bureaucracy can be done with only that amount of urgency which the citizens demand. MediaBrief: Media is the basic sensory mechanism for society. In order for human society to advance into a future which best benefits its citizens, we must have access to media which is free, diverse and insulated from commercial forces. American media has always suffered from profit motive and recent trends show that it is losing diversity at an alarming rate. A very good argument can be made for the position that media is below a threshold for diversity which allows freedom of expression sufficient enough to sustain a democratic society. Solution: The trend to deregulate media in the United States needs to be reversed. Entry barriers into media markets need to be lowered. Public media needs to be restored in order to set a standard for commercial media to follow. Obstacles: Corporations have been extremely successful over the past 30 years in deregulating the markets they operate in. There is a great deal of momentum in this direction and because they control the very thing which is required to address the problem, there is very little hope in doing so. Corporations are very risk averse and therefore would vehemently oppose the lowering of barriers to market entry. Public media funding would need to be restored, but private donations and corporate underwriting are already entrenched as revenue streams for existing "public" media like CPB. EnergyBrief: Energy allows productivity levels which enabled an unprecedented number of people to achieve very high standards of living. It has extended the human lifespan and instilled it with quality. The most advanced nations, having depleted their resources, have developed dependence on foreign sources of non-renewable energy. This dependence is detrimental to society because it prevents it from developing renewable sources of energy and it prevents source nations from sharing the wealth of their resources with their own populations. Solution: Advanced industrialized nations, namely the United States, need to transition to renewable energy sources for electric power generation. Once this sector has been freed from fossil and fissile fuels, an infrastructure which can utilize this energy for transportation and agriculture needs to be undertaken. The technology of thermal depolymerization should be employed to ease transition during both phases while regaining indepence from foreign sources of energy. Obstacles: Present day power structures have become entrenched around the control of fossil fuels, namely petroleum. The world economy is extremely dependent upon petroleum pricing and nations compete politically and wage military campaigns for access to sources of petroleum beyond their borders. Corporations and nations have vast wealth tied to resource rights. The potential of this wealth could significantly diminish with the advent of replacement energy sources while corporations and their investors are expecting it to grow with increasing demand for a shrinking supply. DemocracyBrief: If you accept that people should have equal rights, then society requires a system of governance which looks after those rights for all individuals. Political and economic implementations may differ, but that is the basic tenet of all democratic nations. Organizations like the United Nations attempt to implement this idea on a world scale. Democracy is fragile because it suffers from external as well as internal pressures. Despotic states find democracy threatening because it undermines control over their own populations and democratic ideals are often inconvenient to the very governments founded upon them. So much so that democratic ideals may even be subverted by the very systems which have been established to implement them. Solution: Democracy is not only "for the people" but also "by the people". Governments where citizen participation is high are unlikely to stray far from their intended purpose. It is therefore crucial that everyone participate. Once a democracy has been established, apathy is the biggest threat to its survival. Widespread informed participation needs to be a major national and international agenda. Obstacles: Governments find lower participation levels more comfortable and so fail to act in order to reverse trends of lower voter turnout or less citizen feedback. Apathy is easy and appears less expensive, but people who abstain from participation are quietly casting a vote for oligarchy. Corporate interests directly oppose informed participation because it dilutes their power and limits their freedom to act. Elementary education avoids disseminating democratic principles in the interest of order and obedience. PopulationBrief: For the first time in human development, we are faced with the limits of our environment. In essence, we have reached the walls of our box. This means that the non-zero sum game man has been playing is history. If we continue on our present course, then future generations face greater and greater competition and ultimately will be squeezed even further by a collapsing ecosystem. Solution: Advanced countries show that greater quality of life leads to reduced birth rates. Their populations have approached equilibria and some are even declining. The main explanations for this are education and technology. It is therefore critical that countries with large growth rates be lifted out of their third world status as soon as possible. There are two exceptions to this strategy. Countries like India and China, who have already grossly exceeded their maximum sustainable populations even at their present low levels of quality of life and countries like the United States which despite their seemingly low population densities, have in fact exceeded their maximum sustainable population levels through very high per capita consumption. In these instances, the foremost problems whether it be consumption or population growth need to be addressed first. So, for example, consumption needs to be curbed in the United States while India would focus on fertility rate reduction. Obstacles: Population growth momentum is going to hurl world population levels to new heights despite sharply declining fertility rates in most countries. As a result, humans will have to deal with the problem of aging as a society. Old paradigms of economic growth and social progress will have to change. EnvironmentBrief: Until very recently in human history, people have had the opportunity to move from used habitats to new ones. With the advent of having explored and populated the entire world in the last millennium, there are no new habitats left. Solution: It is therefore important for people to break this cycle of abuse and begin behaving in ways which sustain current habitats indefinitely. This means that we need to find ways of treating our waste and effects upon the environment in ways which will not accumulate over time. This will insure that generations to come will not be struggling with our environmental debt. Recycling and waste reduction programs need to be mandated at the national and international levels. Disposal and recycling costs need to be collected at the beginning of a product's life cycle. Only those resource extraction methods which have little or no impact need to be allowed. Renewable resources such as forest growth and fish populations need to be managed world wide. With the advent of globalization, countries share the world's resources. Regulation escapism needs to be eliminated through tariffs which then lift lagging countries to acceptable standards. Obstacles: Impoverished countries are likely to continue exploiting their resources for profit without regard for long term effects. Costs would go up as products are adjusted for environmental impact. Neither consumers nor corporations would see this as favorable. Globalization efforts which are wildly profitable due to regulation escapism have considerable momentum and political clout. Class StructureBrief: Human society has always been easily classified into strata. In early development, gaps between the top and bottom have been fairly close as small groups struggled for basic needs. As societies grew, developing economies allowed for greater transfer of benefits to fewer people. Technology and power structures allowed for those benefits to accumulate. Continued progress in this area resulted in the gross inequities we are familiar with throughout history. Regardless of how the few accumulated wealth, it always led to exploitation of lower classes. A society cannot be truly democratic without a reasonable distribution of wealth throughout its population. Solution: Large differences between the rich and poor need to be avoided through social policy. Progressive disposable income taxes should be used to minimize accumulation of wealth. Estate or inheritance taxes should be used to avoid propagation of wealth. Lower classes should be boot strapped to the top echelons economically. Obstacles: If history teaches us anything, it is that established elite classes will vehemently oppose such measures. Because wealth begets power, it will be very difficult to dislodge existing dynasties. Once society has become more homogeneous, pressure will continue in order to allow top classes to grow wealth. BusinessBrief: Business interests have diverged from social good and become uncontrollable. The nation, communities and individuals are being treated as resources to be exploited for maximized profit. Solution: Certainly everyone has the right to earn a living, but within ethical and environmental limits. Businesses need to have regulation appropriate for their markets and products. Corporate taxes need to reflect actual community burdens plus a small margin. Individuals within business units need to be accountable under criminal code. Incorporated entities need to be disenfranchised from the political system through the abolition of campaign funding. Obstacles: The status quo is extremely well funded and entrenched in the political system. Business controls public opinion and resulting votes through marketing campaigns. Otherwise, corporate issues receive no public discourse. Business eagerly participates in every level of government. TaxationBrief: Tax policy in the United States has been shaped by generations of powerful special interests and the government's own need for funding. This is destroying the American middle-class and holding back the economy. Ultimately, it is suffocating the democratic process. Solution: Next to law, tax collection is instrumental in creating the society we live in. That is why tax policy needs to be thought of as social policy rather than a simple revenue source. Tax burden should be loaded upon those with the greatest disposable income. Since "all are created equal", estate inheritance taxation should be very extensive to prevent hoarding of wealth which only perpetuates dynasties. Obstacles: Funding of government programs continues to receive focus as the way to affect society. Current tax policy momentum continues to be built by special interest groups with privileged access to power. Moneyed interests will fiercely oppose any policy which would threaten their elite position. BureaucracyBrief: Modern society has become an inexhaustible source of regulation. So much so, that no citizen is able to gain complete knowledge of the legal system. Extensive use of legal counsel is just one example of the systems incomprehensible bulk. Lawyers sap society of efficiency and through their priest class status continue to muddle an already arcane system. Solution: The Constitution aside, all legal code needs to be tagged with an expiration date. Law can be renewed but never granted perpetuity as is currently the norm. New legislation needs to be reviewed for consistency with existing law as well as budget. Budget and law need to be tied together. Legal code that governs personal behavior needs to be concise enough to be presented in its entirety within a high school education. Obstacles: Current power structures aside, the ever growing domain of possibility will make such a solution increasingly harder to implement. Notes about utopiaSimply accepting aspects of society as good and rejecting others as bad promotes the evolution of society. Evolution has no foresight. Although evolution may be good at ensuring survival, it does nothing to guarantee the quality of that existence. There are several problems with allowing society to evolve. The first and foremost is that we are faced with problems which endanger progress in our quality of life. Many of these problems, like our very own population growth, become more acute with time. Hence, if we are to avoid the misery associated with a population which is being reduced back to a sustainable level through attrition, we need to act in accordance with a critical time line. Generating an acceptable society by evolving it, is a method which is incapable of meeting a critical time line for many problems. A vision of utopia is important because it creates a goal for our society. Without one, it would be like driving to an unknown destination and simply asking, "Is this it?" at every point along the way. Knowing the destination, we can plot a course for it. Not every continent, country, state, municipality and citizen will have the same agenda, but it is important for everyone to agree on some set of shared interests. A model of utopia also helps in setting priority for our efforts because we will be able to plan around foreseen obstacles. Utopian visions in modern society have been the exclusive domain of fiction while politicians and policy advisors focus on incremental changes in the short term. Often, objectives change priority or blatantly reverse direction with each election. Instead of growing momentum towards an identifiably desirable goal, we veer course countless times in favor of special interests. It is time that a utopian vision arose outside of Hollywood or literature and that each successive generation of elected officials be held accountable to such a goal. Notes about this documentThis document is a living record of views espoused by electrobotanica. As such, it will change as new information is made available or progress *gasp* has been made in any area. For previous versions, visit the Agenda Archive. Each version details changes made over the previous version at the bottom of the document.
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