Ours is a primitive world, made of mandatory fictions and frictions. It can seem complex because no one really knows what's going on.
Reality appears meaningless: humans don't exist to have fun, but just to keep going. Things are grim. To survive, they tended to eliminate rivals who were too different, though now it may be just the opposite.
Most individuals are stuck in a sad equilibrium. Change is impossible without risking everything.
Historically, progress has been slow. Bureaucrats, gangsters, and legislators are very efficient and hardworking: what they do best is to keep things the same.
Solving mankind's current problems will require something improbable: acquiescence from the entrenched interests. Or at least enlightened indifference.
For real change, whether it's quitting a drug habit or creating an economy, the first step has to be relatively easy:
1) Do Nothing!
There's a conspiracy too vast to perceive: the conspiracy of the mainstream.
Our first example is homelessness. Tiny houses and plots of land could be sold for a few thousand dollars, except society wants a degree of homelessness to exist (also unemployment). The homeless themselves implicitly agree with the system.
Birth control is cheap, but only a minority will really use it. Most poverty could be solved with technology, almost like child's play. For two centuries, the industrial revolution has doubled the world's economic potential every thirty years.
There's just one small issue with that: people are evil.
That's a good thing. Self-interest organizes economic behavior. What matters is that people don't act evil too often. This they can achieve best by doing nothing.
Unfortunately, for politicians nothing is not easy at all.
It comes down to human nature, an evolutionary adaptation.
When a person or a group has finally achieved some success against long odds, they want to protect their investment of heartbreaking work.
Others can enjoy the same benefits, but only after they have put in a comparable effort, or preferably a bit more (this explains rising college tuition costs).
It would be easy to make more stuff; instead, poor countries make cheap junk for less poor countries. Products in which they have natural advantages (fruits or rice) are blocked by trade barriers.
The impossible solution: don't make things harder. Waste less effort blocking trade, or deliberately look the other way. Doing nothing can be the hardest thing to do. It could simplify the economy, shorten supply chains, and shrink hidden interests. It would also threaten the status quo like nothing else.
2) More stuff!
Historically, most new solutions were unplanned, leading to periods of creative destruction. They usually involved cheaper technology.
The hardest choice may be deciding which current technologies to abandon. A massive new oil find would create more problems than it would solve. Some under-utilized tools are:
Mass production: economies of scale.
The assembly line is humanity's greatest shortcut. It can win wars and transform continents. Ideally, there would be only one factory in the world, in a place with ample free space and solar energy like the Sahara. More realistically, every existing factory would join a worldwide virtual production network.
Micro-manufacturing and rapid customization.
Computer design and 3-D manufacturing could turn any apartment-sized space into a small factory. If enough such facilities could be linked into a 'Universal Assembler' network, companies and countries could eventually become obsolete. The first step is to form local and extended skill networks with many small workshops. This would require some new and unprecedented paradigm to get groups to cooperate.
Standardization
Things would be easier if the whole world was the same. Well-defined open markets with clear standards like in the USA encourage investment.
Every country builds slightly different roads and houses, using traditional methods. In medicine, law, and infrastructure, competition is only allowed at the local level. Insurance would be cheaper if all companies shared actuarial data, allowing them to compare risks and services worldwide. Health insurance can't even be sold across US state lines. Open source research and design could find simpler ways to solve common problems.
Communism
Free trade can't give the majority of the people some of the things they would like. Every country uses force to transfer property among its subjects. Central Planning could provide a limited long-range vision. Its role would be to define an emerging political consensus. It wouldn't necessarily rely on force, but use irresistible social and economic pressures, the way language and money became standardized. The problem is that it would have to be a temporary solution.
Diversity
You never know where the next big idea will come from. Competing groups can flourish together. However, they should be smart, flexible, and competent groups.
Ecocide
I wrote in my 2007 novel "Infinite Thunder" about the benefits to humans of deliberately wiping out most harmful organisms of all types and sizes. That's of course politically controversial, as it should be. In real life it was done on many Polynesian islands however.
3) Less stuff! - Simplify everything.
There's only one way to give everyone on Earth a tolerable living standard: allow them to buy low-cost versions of life's necessities.
Tiny cars and houses at high densities to accommodate population growth; narrow roads and fewer possessions.
Current regulations protect entrenched monopolies by setting wasteful standards (such as minimum lot sizes), while bureaucracy prevents innovation. Encouraging less consumption would shrink the economy at first, but people are competitive, and the expansion would inevitably resume.
4) Birth Control - Because life sucks.
Humans live in a state of nature. As more resources become available, organisms increase in number until they reach their largest population.
History is a cycle of critical thresholds, shrinking utility, pain perpetuation.
The price for ending poverty would violate ancient instincts, taboos, and religious proscriptions. Primitive cultures can't grasp such notions. To prevent creating more poor people, societies need to encourage less productive or effective citizens to have few offspring.
Some people would pay that price if it meant they could stop working so damn hard. If only that were possible . . . However, high-IQ people should reproduce as much as possible.
5) Virtual Reality - Living in a box.
Who doesn't want to live in luxury?
When technology becomes advanced enough to fool the human senses, society will collapse, to be replaced by an attempt at Heaven on Earth. Ultra high resolution screens, full-motion frameworks and force-feedback outerwear will transform the human condition, perhaps with mild drugs and direct brain stimulation.
A Virtual Reality lifestyle would require less energy and much less land. VR would devastate the transportation and tourism sectors, but a century from now most beaches may be underwater anyway.
People would lose current incentives to work hard. Instead, they could develop their passions while improving simulated environments, a stepping stone for the upcoming merger of human and software consciousness.
6) The Free Market - Property rights and education.
People will only work hard if they can benefit from their efforts. Free trade is the only method proven to raise general wealth. It requires a society with the rule of law and a culture of self-improvement. This requires a middle class with a high life expectancy. Stability is everything.
The market is unfair, but most folks tend to benefit in the long run. Losers may even be required for this system to work. Welfare and 'free' emergency healthcare are more generous in the USA than under communist dictatorships. But the lower middle class may be happier under authoritarian rule.
A law-based civil society has to incorporate existing tribal structures, blood feuds, and insurgencies to get started. Violent lands will eventually be infiltrated by economic forces beyond their control. Capital can flow in strange ways, from microloans to (one day) entire countries being bought and sold.
In the long term, it may be profitable to phase out nation states for a federalized planet under a simple constitution (like the right of anybody to leave any area). People could choose the local laws they want to live under. At least in theory, mind-altering drugs might be available with electronic monitoring in one place, while the next neighborhood over could be a Mormon theocracy.
7) Social Science - It would be nice to have one.
What does society really want? Why do people put up with all this crap? How important is happiness compared to duty?
There was supposed to have been some progress in experimental psychology and econometrics, popularized in books like 'The Tipping Point' (left-wing) and 'Freakonomics' (moderate), but these findings turned out to be hard to replicate.
The answer probably involves status. In the past, only a small minority could have it. To allow everyone a chance at the respect of their peers, humanity may need to become even more fractured. Literally millions of small, synthetic communities that could nourish their own cultures and conflicts.
Which brings us to the most important aspect of a successful technological civilization:
8) Nerd Culture
When a minority of people are allowed and encouraged to pursue knowledge for its own sake, it should become harder to regress. It would be a fundamental shift for any evolving society. The biggest threat would then be a war or ecological collapse.
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Infinite Thunder
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