A path to prosperity

As y'all know, one of my hobbies is thinking about how to make the world a better place. To that end I've ventured a different decision-making system to the current political shitstorm in which everyone hurls their own faeces at each other until something sticks, and I think there's much merit in it. A better decision-making process is by definition a good thing. It's important to realise that the fact we know of better, more cooperative approaches to problem-solving does not automatically mean we know what the specific solutions actually are. The point is that we combine expertise and diversity in a better way than we do presently, but, not being experts ourselves, by definition we won't be able to propose the actual solutions.

To my mind, fixing the decision-making system is of paramount importance because it's the root of the problems. If we keep insisting that the existing processes are fine, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that they are not, we'll just keep shouting at each other to no avail, getting ever more angry and ineffectual. We have to fix how we decide things, or we'll end up deciding nothing - or worse, oscillating between diametrically-opposed positions with no kind of sensible compromise. At best, we'll lurch forward in an unpleasantly dynamic dystopia.

All that being true, this feels a little bit of a cheap cop-out that avoids suggesting any practical answers. It's surely helpful to have a broad end goal (and underlying principles) in mind, if only to illuminate the problems we're trying to solve. So what would my personal utopia look like ? While I'm not ready to venture a fully-fledged design of the Grand Duchy of Rhysyland, as it would obviously be known, let's see if we can make a start.

Let's do this by combining a few different strands of thought here from various social media sources. First, Joe Carter has a very nice post outlining the development of the species and how we evolved to live in conditions different from those we've created for ourselves. Setting aside (valuable) criticisms of evolutionary psychology, I don't think anyone could doubt this basic premise. It's difficult to say exactly what our distant ancestors thought and felt, but that we evolved in radically different conditions than those we now "enjoy" (in a very loose sense, because it's 2020), and therefore different selection pressures were at work, is - I think - undeniable. At the end he concludes with three questions :

• What would you say we need to do differently on a personal and community scale?
• Do you consider yourself a contributor to what will move us forward as a species?
• What can we do better as individuals and as groups to help us get our “sea legs” to successfully navigate the necessities of current developmental place as a species?

Likewise, Nila Jones asks the question (in a private post) :

Imagine it’s 15 years from now. We have made it through the current time, and things are ok. What does our world look like? What does our society look like? What did we do to help get there from here?

One answer comes in this charming Existential Comics, in which an ideal society is posited to be, "pretty much the same, except we tax the rich like 6% more !" I have to admit I have some sympathies for this, I hope not without justification. Materially at least the Western world is still, largely, thriving. Basic sanitation and disease control - the current pandemic notwithstanding - are taken for granted, along with clean, warm shelter, and access to information undreamt of by previous generations. The world is hardly perfect, but it's a catastrophic error to assume it has no value whatsoever.

At the same time, whatever Stephen Pinker might say, a lot of people are clearly very unhappy with their lot in life despite the lowliest commoner now being materially far better off than any of their ancestors. But I suspect measurements run into several problems here : people are not all that good at evaluating their own happiness; they can be justifiably unhappy on behalf of other people's ill treatment if not their own (and worry for the future does not necessarily alleviate present happiness); and you can't really know what someone's experience is really like unless you live it - quantitative measurements are misleading. Material improvements can disguise deep and crippling problems.

Elsewhere, Edward Morbius asks similar questions :

What are the Big Problems? Optionally: who is (or isn’t) successfully addressing them. Individuals, organizations, companies, governments, other. How and/or why not?

He also notes that the answer, "everyone should be cleverer !"(i.e. the problem is just human stupidity) simply does not work. You can't have everyone being equally successful at applying critical thinking to every single area because, he says :

That specifically Does. Not. Scale. It fails two ways:

1. Individuals suffer information overload, trust breakdown, and validation fatigue.
2. Society finds itself with no common foundation of common shared facts and mechanisms. All points of view are asserted to be equally valid, expertise is entirely dismissed. Tribal beliefs are asserted as true (for Us) and invalid (if Them).

There is, I’ll posit, a broad gulf between “verify everything” and “be prepared to question any belief”.

So, we want a better world. How do we get there, accepting that despair is a luxury we cannot afford and that we are not an innately irredeemably stupid species ?

During the Brexit crisis I developed a habit of asking myself, "what is the best, most reasonable way politicians could proceed right now, accepting the poor decisions they've made prior to this point and that the more ideal solutions are simply not possible ?". Let's apply this on a larger scale and sketch a possible, optimistic timeline (not a prediction !) of the next couple of decades. In this way we can trace an outline of the major problems (both resulting from individual poeople and their organisational systems), the decisions that will need to be taken to overcome them, and even a few thoughts as to what it is we as individuals need to do to ensure they're enacted. I'd welcome alternative visions here, especially as I have a strong Anglo-American bias.

(Also, this exercise is itself a partial answer to what we can do as individuals : we can articulate not just what it is we think is wrong with the world, but what improvements we'd like to see. There's no point starting a revolution unless you have some idea of where you want to end up.)

c2020-2025

• America decisively elects Joe Biden as President. Contrary to the more dire predictions, any efforts on Trump's part to contest the result are short-lived and any protests are localised and utterly ineffectual.  (Trump is then found guilty of crimes against common sense and is sent to a stockade, where small children delight in pelting him with tomatoes and constantly jeer at him that he's "not as good as Obama". On release, he inexplicably falls into a pit of plague-infected vipers and dies horribly.)

This relies almost entirely on voters not being brain dead. There's not much we as individuals can do at this stage, except continue campaigning if you're into that sort of thing.

• A better way to avoiding the worst effects of COVID-19 is found that doesn't require such drastic economic hits. Politicians start better supporting alternative approaches to business, e.g. relocation to the suburbs to better support working from home, more home delivery services, a better outreach campaign that actually succeeds in the public almost entirely following the rules, until eventually a vaccine is found and the pandemic declines to a manageable, if still unpleasant, level. The situation isn't good, but it becomes bearable.

Here the responsible parties are largely the political leaders and their scientific advisors. The only thing we as individuals can do is contact them to tell them what we need as well as what they're doing wrong. It's not enough for us to just complain, we need to present alternatives.

• The UK reaches a trade deal with the EU, initially held together mainly by sheer hope despite the prospect of the internal market bill allowing it to break international law. The EU grumbles and puts up with this until Boris Johnson continues sliding in popularity and, seeing a resurgent Labour as a very serious threat, is replaced by a more traditional Tory. Much of the mad Brexiteer cabinet is replaced with people with some degree of competence, significantly helping with crisis management. A less adversarial approach to dealing with the EU is adopted, aligning the UK closer to its neighbouring counties.  (Dominic Cummings is removed from government with much rejoicing and is forever the butt of "Should Have Gone To Specsavers" jokes. Subsequently he dies in an bizarre jousting accident with an optician in Barnard Castle.)

This one is dependent largely on happenstance and individual leaders. It's a plausible occurrence but there's not much any of us can do to make it more probable. 

• Green economic deals become prevalent, generating massive investment in renewable energy sources and creating new jobs. Investment in fossil fuels dwindles to negligible levels. Small-scale testing of geoengineering projects is intensified as a supplementary approach to dealing with climate change, recognising that we need to clean up the mess we've already made as well as halting the ongoing damage.

Another systemic, governmental problem. We can and should try and limit our energy usage but the pandemic has decisively shown that this doesn't get us very far. More important by far is to switch to better energy sources - if you have the luxury of choosing where your energy comes from, do so. Raising awareness of geoengineering schemes (in which I include solutions such as planting trees and high intensity grazing, along with direct carbon capture by more artificial means) is important, but ultimately the solution is technological and economic, to make different energy generation techniques affordable. We have to not merely make fossil fuels unprofitable, perhaps through taxation, but their replacements actually generate profit themselves.

• The success of the BLM movement makes it politically untenable for governments to avoid addressing structural inequalities, both in terms of race and poverty. Societies slowly begin to accept that most suffering is the fault of the oppressors and not the oppressed.

Depends on the ability of protestors to persuade people that what they're campaigning for is in everyone's best interests. Everyone can join in this one - the hard part is that it means talking to people we don't much like talking to. Ideally, we need a much wider movement based around a single unifying principle, as well as (or better yet in addition to) specific causes.

• America begins reform of its system of government, forbidding politicians from appointing judges, removing the electoral college system, etc. Equivalent (but not equal) reforms are needed in Britain but won't happen during this period because the Tories will still be in charge.  

Without this, the system is barely functional. Tackling the root cause of unfairness needs to be a matter of urgency and not something you tinker with when you have the time. I daresay many other countries also need reform, but I don't know enough about them to comment.

c2025-2030

• Widespread distribution of a vaccine brings the pandemic to an effective end, except for local outbreaks here and there. Society returns to something which is not all that different from the old normal but with some significant differences : working from home is now not unusual, working hours are generally slightly shorter but with more of a blur between home and work life. Daily commuting is a thing of the past for most, as is the idea of a regular 9-5 shift, with flexibility of working hours being far greater.

Unlike many of the others, something like this feels like a natural, inevitable progression, and relies only weakly on individuals requesting it. As businesses realise that there's absolutely no need for a 9-5 slog, and that they don't need to buy or maintain expensive office buildings, their use will fade. This won't, however, be uniform by any means.

• Joe Biden does not run for a second term but is replaced by a more progressive candidate. Labour gain power in a coalition of the left in the UK. The UK aligns itself so closely with the EU that it might as well not have left, and talk of eventually rejoining begins to sound less like fantasy. A conscious effort is made towards a more proportional, cooperative political system with stronger, more decentralised system of local government. This is in part assisted by reduced working hours that allow people the time needed to become more active citizens. The system is entirely state funded and donations (of any kind) to political parties become criminalised.

I doubt very much any serious long-term political reforms are going to happen under the prevailing establishments. Any system which says, "Donald Trump should be elected", rather than, say, "Donald Trump should be shat on", is fundamentally broken. Likewise there's something amiss when the UK keeps electing people to office who claim expenses on cleaning their moat. Sweeping electoral reform is needed, not least a system which allows the formation of a less idiotic, more unified left that actually wants to win power and not just shout hopelessly from the sidelines. The difficult part is persuading those currently at an advantage that a new system would be fairer and advantageous to them as well as the opposition.

• A movement against giant corporations gains strength, recognising that monopoly-like control is inherently flawed and anti-capitalist. With a very few exceptions, the largest companies begin to be broken up. Much greater restrictions are placed on corporation size. The number of new billionaires falls sharply. Most essential services are nationalised, though private sector alternatives are allowed and even encouraged for the wealthy.

Excessive wealth inequality begets an absurd concentration of power and influence, which is unfortunately inherently difficult to overcome. But not impossible. There needs to be sufficient demand from the bottom for government to enact the necessary regulations. This means raising awareness of just how much better life would be if money were more equally distributed, rather than going into endless corporate profits built on the backs of underpaid underlings, and how fewer companies means a lack of the competitive aspect of capitalism which is otherwise one of its strengths. As individuals, we can switch our services to smaller companies (and use open-source alternatives wherever possible) and spread the word of better alternatives, but ultimately reducing monopolies of power requires legislation. Sheer resources are just too effective and tempting a means of crushing the opposition.

• More radical economic and social policies (e.g. some form of basic income, wealth taxes, maximum wage, free housing for the homeless) begin to be trialled on large scales, acknowledging that economic inequality does not reflect meritocracy but luck, with simple resources being the major factor that keeps people in their economic conditions. 

Some of these are already in progress on very limited scales. There's already a substantial movement for UBI, but what would really vitalise it would be demonstrations that it's affordable (and potentially requiring a smaller state bureaucracy with far less cheating and corruption) . The left needs to win the ideological argument that subsidising individuals can lead to sustainable self-sufficiency rather than perpetual laziness.

• Fossil fuels begin a steep decline. Electric cars and other road vehicles begin to come of age, with range anxiety a thing of the past. However, fossil fuels are by no means gone, and there's heavy investment in various direct carbon capture technologies and other geoengineering schemes.

As previously, this is mainly a technological-driven change.

• Media empires begin to collapse. The major networks still exist, but individual outlets tend to be self-owned and not part of larger corporations. Much greater restrictions are placed on political opinion pieces. All outlets are required to represent all parts of the political spectrum and are forbidden from outright supporting any party or candidate.

A purely free-market driven approach to the media is, very possibly, one of the worst ideas in the history of civilisation. We're paying people our hard-earned money to sell us lies that make us angry, afraid, and stupid. This. Must. End. We don't necessarily have to regulate what's said, but we do need to prevent the growth of uniform media monopolies. Without a diversity of opinion, we don't have freedom of speech in any meaningful sense of the term - just a bunch of nutters spouting drivel.

c2030-2040

It's harder to speculate what we can actually do to contribute to events this far away, but I shall at least outline what I'd like to see happen.

• Having set ourselves on the road to success, the challenge becomes maintenance. This requires radical constitutional reform that prevents the bullshit politics of the previous decades. The Great Dullening will see politics become ever-more boring, to the point where if anyone says of a politician, "but he's do dull !", passers-by will slap them and scream, "REMEMBER 2020, YOU FUCKWIT !". Most of the practical measures here will be consolidating the changes of the previous era, generating and supporting movements against populism and polarisation.

• Philosophy courses are introduced in all levels of schools. While not everyone can or should try and verify everything at all times, it's considered essential to know how to spot the basic flaws in an argument. People are taught, somehow, to genuinely care if people are lying to them or not. They get very angry if politicians are caught doing telling fibs and are taught not to get involved with things they don't understand. The media include far more international coverage so that different countries can learn from each other.

• Population levels begin an almost unconscious decline. Supplemented with UBI (or equivalent) and much greater automation, living standards are maintained and even improved.

• Rewilding schemes begin to reclaim areas of land formerly used for farming. Lab-grown foods begin to replace the needs for huge tracts of land for cattle, thus precipitating local extinctions of cows and chickens. Eco-tourism becomes the new thing. Consumerism becomes seen as a sign of self-indulgent vanity. Superyachts are repossessed and converted into the foundations of new coral reefs.

• The entire military industrial complex collapses for some reason and is replaced with a series of garden centres and second-hand charity bookshops. Russia falls into the sea and North Korea gives up. Everyone lives happily ever after. End of history.