Building the future

In getting to a future that serves people, what are the steps we need to take from where we are now?

To facilitate us having the tools to understand and create, we need to refocus education on increasing our abilities to research and experiment efficiently, rather than just acquiring knowledge that is not really needed. Knowledge can instead be gained on a just-in-time basis. This allows people to be able to be more adaptable in their thinking, and need less time to refocus their efforts if circumstances change.

Democracy needs to be strengthened so that governments are more responsive to peoples' needs. In particular, the ability of a few to hog the political agenda of nations needs to be eliminated, as that enables those few to hijack governments for their own benefit, usually at the expense of the majority. Voting needs to be compulsory and fully funded by government, so that there is no opportunity to restrict anyone's ability to vote nor have to vote for a restricted set of corrupted candidates who are dependent upon funding from self-interest groups and individuals.

Workplaces need to be much more democratic, preferably using a cooperative model that allows all staff to vote for who is to manage them. Work cells need to be able to optimise their own work practices, as well as ensure their own safety isn't compromised by unrealistic production targets. Wages disparities between the highest and lowest need to be a factor in the single digits, just because the full success of any enterprise is really dependent upon all rather than the false notion of some sort of superhero CEO. They really aren't that good at it.

Given that societies need to be geared towards people largely devoting their time to understanding and creating in their own time, those people may not be developing the skill sets usually devoted to menial but repetitively demanding work. Automation can be brought to bear to do many of these such tasks that support the smooth running of society without putting people at risk.

A lot of manufacturing is geared towards producing expensive resource-hungry articles that are planned to be obsolete in short time-frames, and in ridiculously large numbers of small variations. We have been the subject of a lot of advertising intended to stimulate false addiction to the new rather than continue to use our currently usable devices. This wasteful programming needs to be countered.

If we are to be able to largely focus on what we need to learn, we need a way to be supported in their endeavours. Something like a basic income would enable that. Money is still one of the best ways to enable each of us to have the freedom to change what we want to focus upon fairly easily. In return, some few hours may be required from each of us in return to support the smooth operation of our societies, alongside the increased automation.

Currently, a few are deciding to use a lot of people to support their wildly overscaled agendas, like space tourism or whatever. These tie too many people to their whims because of the need to support themselves. Instead, more people need to be able to indulge their own whims, but at a scale that can support many, many more having that opportunity.

Many people look up to billionaires as some pinnacle of achievement, perhaps because they keep telling us that they are. The thing is, what sort of people with billions look at the suffering, hunger and poverty in the world, know that they could alleviate those conditions for millions or even billions, yet decide that they would rather just keep their money and let those others suffer and die? Are they really the right people to decide what future we should have? No, of course not, because we mean nothing to them.

We need to wrest their power and money from them because they are abusing their privilege with it. They only exist by the belief we invest in them, but they are a fraud, and we should look elsewhere for the inspiration to make a better world, and that place is within ourselves, for that is where we can really get to know what it is that we really need, beyond the glamours and delusions we are constantly fed by those who want to exploit us. The future is ours to make of it, so do we continue let those who wish us ill will rule our lives?

We can change our beliefs, and our support for corrupt systems breaks down. Each of us can start now to support those who truly want fairer systems and the freedom for each of us to learn and create as we are called from within to do.

This has been a rough exposition of the directions we need to take our societies to make them much fairer and less damaging to ourselves and the planet. We have been divided by rhetoric that tends to make us more selfish. However, we should be allowed to have a large amount of choice to do what we want with our lives without having to compete with each other nor fight uphill against powerful selfish interests that don't want fairness or freedom.

In essence, we need to move societies from being based upon money to ones that fulfil human needs and support mass creativity. That means relegating money to a means of freeing up social interaction, rather than the basis of defining human value and effort, which has led to mass exploitation, serious heath issues and avoidable deaths.