
This is a public service announcement.
I have noticed that a couple of quite embarassing infestations have crept up on us, here in Humanity Land.
And I happen to believe that if we start eliminating the problem of one of the infestations it will drastically reduce the scale of the other infestation because I believe the infestations are linked.
Of course I'm talking here about:
Billionaires
Children stuck home all summer without loving attention or access to the beautiful natural world
Look here: we don't need one dang-ol billionaire.
Not a single one.
What good does it do anyone for there to be billionaires on this beautiful marble, this fantastic glob of grassy mud that we share?
No one has earned a billion dollars. There is nothing any person can do, relative to the contributions of others in this world, that justify that kind of malignant hoarding of resources.
It's only possible because of stuff like laws of large numbers and our collective trouble grokking exponentials, and artifacts of "the way our systems work."
The innocents of Humanity should not suffer endlessly for the egregious "flaw" of having (on average) brains that are wired more for finding food and sex and loving and having fun and running and cooking and painting and singing than they are wired for "winning" highly specific and inarguably schizophrenic "real life" game theory scenarios, AKA "making the most money."
"Saving for our retirements" is OBJECTIVELY LESS IMPORTANT than the availability of fresh water for every young little sprout TRYING to experience joyfulness and bonding.
Don't worry; there will always be plenty of pain and suffering to go around. We don't need to be so hell-bent on manufacturing a perpetual geyser of it.
Let's stop waiting for permission to do the things that are unquestionably the right things to do. Money used to be an essential tool.
It still can have a place, but the reality is that there are enough resources on this big, beautiful terrarium for everyone and someone's lack of it should never result in the termination of their access to the resources or their human dignity.
With AI and robots we can actually SEE potential ways that all necessary work can still get done that humans generally don't want to perform.
Yay!
In a post-scarcity world we can be thoughtful in our management of the human population and resources, generally.
Oh oh oh! Listen to the music! Oh oh oh! Listen to the music! Oh oh oh! Listen to the music!
Empty the prisons! Prisons are slavery!
Break the economy! Wage slavery is theft of LIFE, an EGREGIOUS sin!
If you must "go to work" then only go to do something you KNOW benefits mankind. If what you do at work is known by you in your heart to be making things worse for humanity: stop going.
The system is BROKEN. No one is "safe" in this chaotic and perversely incentivized "system."
Just because YOU may not have lost your job (yet) doesn't mean you're going to make it to the end of your retirement comfortably. But even if you could save YOUR ass from the most immediate loss of quality of life, can you honestly picture yourself actually enjoying living "nicely" when sooooooooo many others are suffering? If you can, then we have little else to speak about. If you know it would ravage your heart to see suffering expanding EVEN MORE on this Earth, then what are you possibly trying to preserve by collecting "enough" money for yourself?
Humanity MUST take a leap of faith. We have some very tough times up ahead (Humanity's twenties are gonna knock the socks off humanity's "teen" years in terms of the scale of pain, but we can still mitigate mitigate mitigate.) We need adults at the wheel. People who understand that thoughtfully delayed gratification can open up possibilities to a richer experience for everyone. "I got mine, screw you" was NEVER okay, and it's less so every breath we take.
Quarterly profits can go kick rocks as far as I'm concerned.
How the eff does it make any sense for us to have a system where you lose your health insurance if you stop working???
Little babies generally don't have jobs with bennies. People fighting breast or whatever cancer shouldn't see their access to medical treatment evaporate in a puff of smoke right when they need it most! Why should Person J be able to go to the hospital for a broken collar bone she got doing something stupid like skateboarding down that one ramp at the skate park that she KNEW she shouldn't be attempting while Person B gets to kick rocks and die of high insulin prices when they develop Diabetes from the absolute trash we package up into (admittedly colorful, but also vastly overpriced,) (and underfilled thanks a lot shrinkflation) boxes cramming the shelves in the "middle part" of the grocery store and call "food"?
We found out during the covid lockdowns that: psssst we don't actually all need to be wasting all our waking hours at "work."
Let's stop pretending to work just because we don't want our kids to starve. Put AI fueled robots to work alongside humans doing whatever work is actually valuable for humanity.
When we must leave our families to go "work" let's make it count, and then let's have fun and learn and dance and create with what's left!
I like the way you think! No one deserves to be a billionaire. And we should try to contribute to making some changes, even if it is only our corner of the world, to helping others and to try and make some difference.
I have to admit you are right when it comes to enjoying one's riches and comforts, without caring about people who are poor, who can't afford their medicine, food, shelter, etc. Makes me embarrassed to think that I have been like that. I'll talk with the people who I can go to for insight and encouragement and find out what I can do to contirbute at least something towards improving the situation of the world. Even…
"More matter, less art." I'm a friendly and I'm having a hard time picking out your real talking points.