My Economic Utopia

I feel bad contemplating the idea of doing enjoyable work that does not contribute to the basic areas of American consumption: food, water, housing, energy, transportation, healthcare, household appliances, computers, cell phones, stereos, air conditioning, insurance, banking, public parks. Could I possibly work within these fields and be happy? It's nice to contribute to the improvement of products. It would be good to help design more energy efficient and lower-priced goods. But this task of improvement only makes up a small fraction of an enterprise. The bulk of the work is in producing and servicing the current products. But how exciting can it be to build and sell washing machines? Whose first choice would this be? This type of work is essentially a chore. Thus, it seems that all we can do is 1) minimize the amount of time we spend on chore work, and 2) create conditions of chore work that facilitate socialization with co-workers and (in some instances) customers.

If we all do our share of the chore work, that should leave plenty of creative work for us to do. Those with a talent for teaching can teach, engineers can engineer, designers can design, etc. Things aren't looking so bad anymore, right? It gets even better.

Lastly there's the artistic work. This is the type of work that a small percentage of especially talented individuals are able to earn a living on. Whereas the creative work is something almost all people can earn money from, artistic work is more limited. As is presently the case, only a small percentage will be able to earn money from this type of work. However, all will be able to do artistic work in their free time.

I imagine that in this improved society I'm describing, it would be acceptable for the artists (musicians, painters, athletes, etc) to be exempted from the regular shares of chore work and creative work. They would be totally excepted from the creative work and partially excepted from the chore work. Though they wouldn't do their fair share of chore work, they would spend about 10 percent of their work time on those tasks, which I believe is enough to establish solidarity with the rest of society. We all benefit from this organization because we benefit from excellent music, sports, visual art. A world of mediocre art world certainly be a world of a lower quality of life.

So this is the economic utopia I've come up with. I'd be happy to hear any alternatives or amendments.

Doing Too Much

Sometimes, such as now, I feel as if I'm trying to do too much. I get impatient; I want the world to drastically change now. But I'm thinking that what is really necessary for an optimal rate of progress is that we each do our relatively small part. However, right now, as I'm thinking about this, I'm considering that this approach may not work best. It seems to me that our world needs big noisemakers to bring essential insights to the population's consciousness. Perhaps some changes cannot happen gradually. It seems to me that only by the vehement determination of one or a few individuals can certain fundamental changes be made.

There are alot of systems in the world that can be improved, but it takes a great deal of work to develop an adequately functional superior alternative. And the struggle doesn't end there, the next step is to get human beings to adopt the new method.

So, yes, making systemic changes in the real world is hard work, but the question I started with was that of whether this work is a full time job or something we can each do as we more-or-less go about our normal business. I guess it just depends. However, what's important is to know when to follow which strategy. Not knowing this can get very stressful. You might be putting your all into a project, only to realize that most of your efforts are a waste. Or you might think you have been doing your part for such a long time and that soon enough the big change will come, only to realize that you had not nearly been doing enough. There must be some kind of method for dealing with this with at least a moderate level of accuracy. Maybe I can come up with something.

Utopian Speculations

Let's think of a business. It succeeds by developing a good model and then reproducing the success through franchising. We can follow the same general principle in social innovation. What I am proposing is that we develop a model of living that works. It must, however, be an integrated model that takes into account all of the resources and people we interact with (whether directly or indirectly). This means that we need our own consumption and production network. We will also need a service network, communications network, and more. We need to provide everything we need to live the lives we want. We need the necessary expertise and raw materials for this. Expertise is easy enough to attain, but raw materials? We need to trade for that if we don't already have it. This means we must either trade our own goods, raw materials, land, labor, or money for for these raw materials.

The point is that we build a more transparent society. We should know who contributes what to our lives and what we contribute to others' lives. If we're not aware of this then something hugely important is missing from our consciousness.

But let's get real, we consume alot; so if this keeps up we're gonna have to be really busy producing these goods and services we require. However, I think that our new mode of social organization will eliminate some of the labor common in the mainstream economy. I believe that many of the retail jobs will become disposable. Instead we can tell the manufacturers what we want or just choose it from an online catalog. Ok, so I'm speculating a bunch, but that's only because I want to bring some concreteness into the conversation. Think of these as tentative examples.

So anyway, now is the time to ponder the possibilities and then bring them to concrete fruition. What better time than now, in our internet age, to do this? Forming connections has never been easier. So let's get serious--this, I believe, is the secret ingredient.

Post #50

Sometimes I feel little motivation to do things . . . such as readings for class or paperwork or whatever it may be. One thing is being lazy about going to the laundermat, but another is not feeling motivated to read an assigned article or selection from a book. I deal with this a lot and I know most other students do also. I don't see this as a situation where one must simply bite the bullet and fulfill their obligations. Instead I the instructors commuting a moral wrong by paying so little attention to the emotions of their students. Why force people to read something the don't want to read? Why not work with them to figure out a plan that feeds of of their intrinsic motivation. My hypothesis (which many others share) is that this strategy will result in much more learning.

Next topic: I spend a lot of time trying to effectively network and figuring out how to realistically transform the world. I figure that if I can't even organize a small group of people to seriously investigate the pressing issues we deal with, then the situation is beyond any amount of knowledge I can gain through the academy. And this is why I can't help my mental energy veering from schoolwork to this stuff--this is what really matters.

Still, I want balance in my life. I want to feel motivated to do my readings for school and also additional readings. I enjoy reading good articles and books and know that the knowledge will help me achieve my objectives. I just wish I could put myself in the optimal environment for my academic advancement. I know there are superior environments to the one I'm in right now. I'm doing just about the best I can change my environment for the better; it's just not easy.

So I'm off now to try to make the best of my time. Wish me luck.

The Next Step in the Path to Progress

It should be clear to everyone that a fundamental problem in our society is narrow thinking. Kenneth Boulding called the problem "suboptimization," meaning the phenomenon of figuring out how to most efficiently do something we shouldn't be doing at all. What we need as a response to this tendency is holistic thinking. We need to fully take into consideration the externalities of our endeavors. We need to spend our time figuring out how to fulfill our desires without without burdening anyone. Work doesn't have to be by nature something we dread. Or am I being too Utopian? Do too many boring jobs need to be done regardless of the circumstances? Is biting the bullet inevitable? I don't know, but certainly the economic situation could be much improved. However, human emotion cannot be ignored if we intend to make a substantial gain. We must strive to maximize net per capita happiness, not per capita income. But since the conditions influencing a human's mental state are so complex we must work much more collaboratively and strive toward a fully holistic perspective through these interdisciplinary collaborations.

How much will the world change if we start acting on the basis of these just mentioned principles? It's hard to say, but it's no stretch to believe that out ways of life could drastically change. Perhaps a mass migration might occur in order to better meet our needs. Perhaps organizational structures will be transformed. Perhaps the nation-state system will disintegrate. I cannot predict the future. What I am working toward right now is simply getting these interdisciplinary collaborations together.

But what will these collaborations actually lead to in the short to medium term? I imagine they will lead to new organizational structures and projects to create the conditions that will enable the citizens to play the roles they must play in order to make this vision of substantive social progress a concrete reality. So surely media resources will have to be made available to the people to enable them to vote, shop, and work intelligently. These resources would also have to facilitate the establishment of alternatives to the old ways of doing things. I am confident that people want alternatives; it is largely the lack of a reliable mechanism for creating alternatives that has been keeping us back. But this can all change. And if my comrades and I have our way, it will change very soon.

Frustration

So it's about time for another rant. Since school has ended I've been especially focused on making social progress a reality. I have some fundamentals in mind such as education transformation, the enhancement of public dialogue, ethical consumption, and humanistic workplaces, but it seems so hard to take concrete actions toward the utopia I seek. I don't even know if that utopia is possible. What would it consist of? What would make it so wonderful. So we all have better jobs, are better educated, and are better at addressing collective problems . . . okay, what then? You see, I feel isolated from the people around me. I walk around in New York City and come into visual contact with loads of people, yet have no real interaction with them. In a sense this means that I do not place enough importance on them to even engage in conversation with them. My actions show that I don't give a damn about these people. However, my goal is to make humanity as happy as possible. But I also realistically cannot talk to everyone I see. So how ought I act? Also, what can I do for society? How can I most contribute to it? I don't want to live a fantasy. I'd rather know I'm a failure than falsely believe I'm a success.

I feel as if the core social problem is mental. It's in how humans tend to see the world. It's in their strong tendencies to conform to the pressures pushing them here or there. Those pressures need to be fought. But the evil has to be clearly identified first. What exactly is the enemy?