Elements of Utopia

I haven't written in a while, because I was pondering my mission.  My stated goal is to come up with a better way to live, for the individual and for the world, but so far, all I have done is rant about the insanity of our current civilization (or lack thereof).

The plain truth is, I like ranting.  I believe in the power of the rant.  I think it is important to explain why the world we live in couldn't be better set up for crime, mental illness and poverty than if it were specifically designed that way.

But at some point, I have to present an alternative to crazy, so here it is.

Utopia, 0.1 beta test version:

This is just a list of characteristics I think that an ideal society should have, given our current level of technical, intellectual and moral sophistication.  These ideas have varying likelihoods of ever being adopted, but I believe that any step towards these will mark an improvement in all our lives.

1. Free medical care.  It is a sign of the horrible illness of our culture that this is even an issue.  We can start calling ourselves civilized the day we stop screwing around and just do this.  The list of social ills that are directly related to preventable and treatable mental and physical illness is more than enough for a blog post of it's own.  (which is on the way, if you are wondering)  Really, let's stop mucking about with insurance scams and just do this right.

2. An intentionally mixed economy.  I'm sure I just lost about ninety percent of any audience I may have had, but after looking around at all the countries and economic systems currently available, the places where people seem happiest and healthiest and most satisfied with their system are the ones with an intelligent mix of free markets and public oversight.  Free markets, oversight and social programs have their place, and despite all the whining from the political extremes, they have all been shown to work quite well - each in their place.

3. No mass voting.  This is the one that gets me the most hassle in conversation.  There is a stubborn myth that is very hard to root out, that democracy means each and every person voting.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Democracy means that the people have control of the government, and the last two hundred years have proven the complete inability of mass voting to pull this off.  We can't control the government if we vote for people and not issues.  While some cities and states occasionally allow citizens to vote on certain issues, when was the last time you ever heard of a citizen of any country voting on whether to go to war?  How did the populous vote on the bank bailouts in various countries?  Trick question - they didn't.

The only way I can see of choosing representatives at any level of government without the special interest graft of the current system, is to choose them by lottery, like we do with jury duty.  This keeps the money - and therefore most of the corruption - out of the process.   It also makes the citizens responsible for understanding government, since there's a good chance that they may personally have to make decisions about it.  In public. 

The common argument that I get on this is, "What if a crazy person gets chosen?"  My answer is that currently, since we only have representatives who are self-selected for power-madness; we should ask ourselves how different things would be if a few sane people got chosen.

4.  Less laws.  It is a tenet of our legal system in America, that ignorance of the law in not a valid excuse for violating the law.  We are legally responsible for knowing ALL laws that could POSSIBLY apply to ANY situation we might find ourselves in.  The number of these laws is actually uncountable.  In the US, there are city, county, state and federal laws, and a massive body of regulation that has the power of law, most of which the common man has never heard of.

The overwhelming mass of law, in itself, causes many of the problems it is intended to solve.  With so much law that even specialized lawyers can't possibly know all that is applicable, it becomes possible to pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore.  Or which to prosecute, and which to let slide.  With so many contradictory rules, anything might be simultaneously legal and illegal, depending on who's lawyers have the most time and money to research the law.

5.  An "Endangered Species" list for natural resources.  I've heard many ideas for having the world's resources managed by a central computer, like in some kind of science-fiction B-movie.  I think this is both unnecessarily complex, and ripe for corruption by the people responsible for dealing with the computer.  I prefer a list of resources that have been shown to be scarce or dangerous, much like the endangered species list.  If people want to use corn plastic or farmed trees, it's open season, but if you want to use oil or uranium, you have to have a damn good reason and be able to back it up. 

This isn't that difficult.  We've done it with rare animals, and not only has it not caused the end of the free world, it has worked rather well for the animals.

6. We need to recognize that killing people for political reasons is insane.  The simplest way to have world peace, is to have the people who want to invade other countries, committed to mental health treatment.  They are crazy, and must be stopped.  Treated for their psychopathology if possible, but stopped in any case.  The most embarrassing and terrible events in human history could have been stopped cold by the use of a few straight-jackets.  It really is that simple.  If you find yourself in a room with a world leader who is about to call for an attack on a country that has not invaded his, stop him, and call the police.

7.  Everyone eats, and sleeps indoors.  There is no conceivable reason why we let people get so poor that they have to sleep in doorways and eat out of the garbage.  We should be ashamed of ourselves.  Some of this falls under number 1 above, as the majority of homeless people have some kind of mental illness that needs treatment.  But even aside from that, we expect better treatment for pets than we demand for the poorest of our own fellow citizens.  It just isn't that expensive to provide basic food and shelter to whoever needs it.  If we provide actual food and shelter, rather than money, the corruption fades away to nothing.  Money is the answer to questions like, "How do I get a new Ferrari?"  It is quite often not the answer to important problems, and many important problems will not get solved until we realize this and act on it.

8. End prohibition.  Of all kinds.  Seriously.  For some reason people seem to think that keeping people from getting what they want is both possible and desirable.  It didn't work with alcohol.  It is not even close to working with any other type of drugs.  Why do people think it would work with firearms or pornography or anything else?  Prohibitions invariably create black markets.  I much prefer open markets where we can at least see what's going on.

The only areas where prohibitions come close to working is where the overwhelming mass of the population doesn't want the prohibited item.  You won't get a whole lot of push-back on the prohibition of child porn.  But you won't solve the problem that way either.

Now making it happen is the hard part.

More to come, but that's what I've got for now.  Please add more in the comments.  Or tell me why I'm wrong.  If I have to do this by myself, then it really is pointless.