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.

The Predicament

I yearn to be as productive as possible. I want to contribute the maximum to this world. Yet, I feel so far from achieving this objective. Right now I'm a full time student with much free time that just seems to drudge by. This "free time" is being bombarded constantly by either the arrows of uselessness or the shrapnel bombs of aimlessness. The problem is that hardly anything seems worth doing. What can I do that brings a high level of utility to my fellow human beings?

My mind navigates toward the idea of economic production when reflecting on these issues I'm describing. This is how we "make our living," this is what justifies our existence. Thus, we would want the strongest possible justification of our existence. Yet, so many income producing economic roles seem so insignificant. Yeah, we need people to build houses, but what difference is one less carpenter going to make? One less plumber? One less retail worker? Not much at all. And this is the crux of the dilemma: how can all humans attain real significance when the overwhelming majority of formal economic positions are insignificant in the larger picture? And yet the economic activity of these insignificant workers is essential to human survival. It's like the boring brilliance of water. Now how do we overcome this dilemma?! This is what I need to figure out. But don't hold your breath, I've been working on this at some level for about the past nine years. (But it will be amazing once I finally figure it out, no?)