Finale
File: c:/ddc/Angel/BestIntentions/Finale.html
Date: Mon Oct 29 22:55:03 2007
Thu Jun 05 12:54:49 2008
Sat Jan 24 15:13:51 2009
Thu Jan 21 20:54:06 2010
(C) OntoOO/ Dennis de Champeaux
There is no shortage of adherents of democracies that beat the drums regarding its superiority against the competition; see for example [Economist]. All the standard advantages are rehashed. However, they ignore the inability of democracies to deal with irrational population increases, economies that rely on plundering of the planet and the disappearance of middle classes that are replaced by majorities that are not self-reliant and depend on government assistance programs.
China's ability to impose a 1-child rule to battle out of control population increases is a key example where democracies have failed: the inability to restrict a right deemed to be fundamental. The reigning banner motto of liberal democracies is 'civil rights', while 'civil obligations' - the equivalent of 'noblesse oblige' as a necessary complement - is absent.
China's 1-child innovation places the democracies in an ideological catch-up mode. The West claims that its economies are superior because its democracies foster innovation. The West still has an economic advantage but its lead is shrinking rapidly. Sure, the defense can be that China is doing only catch-up me-too activities that do not depend on innovation. However, the West is now handicapped by carrying the weight of non-self reliant majorities.
If the (Western) democracies want to live up to their claim to superiority they better start innovating from a global, a-temporal perspective, instead of tinkering with the next entitlement for a dysfunctional population.
Remains the 'detail' how to constrain a population as China did in
1979 without using China's dictatorial power. An example of the
following steps could make a population restriction at least
explainable:
- The world's carrying capacity for life (human and all other species)
is finite
- Humanity needs to leave room for other species, which reduces what
is available for humanity
- Meadows et al [Meadows] claims that 4B is the natural carrying
capacity of the world to feed this population without using
unsustainable resources
- Hence (given the Tragedy of the Commons), all nations must reduce
their population, say, by 40%.
Passing this (or similar) mandate through the membrane of a nation's sovereignty, especially when some nations refuse to participate is certainly challenging. The next step is even harder. Translating such a mandate so that the population inside a democracy accepts the restriction voluntarily is where a democracy can demonstrate its claimed superiority.
Energy companies feeling the squeeze have suddenly agreed that alternative energy, green energy, etc. is part of the future mix. They can even assert in advertisements that there is more than enough for the coming 100 years. How they pull the 100 years out of the hat in the context of still exponential population increases is a mystery. More important is that they reveal a fatal, implicit stance that humanity now has about the planet's resources: these can be accessed and consumed, because future generations must fend for themselves. Sure, humanity in the past deforested, hunted species into extinction, scraped away easy reachable resources, and messed up the planet in too many other ways, but that is not a justification for us now doing the same, amplified with the most advanced tools provided by technology.
Individuals are now often labeled as self-centered, egotists - part of the ME generation. This pales in comparison by current humanity claiming ownership of resources accumulated during the last billion years. And for what purposes - may we ask? To support the population that exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet? And why do we need to do that?
In short, we need a worldwide mandate for sustainable economies. Not the marketing version, but the one where humanity has a zero foot print on the planet. Further foot dragging is criminal - the galactic version.
This topic has more visible variants. Globalization allows large companies to replace employees in the West by the creation of subsidiary companies in low-cost countries. In addition, there is the "traditional" destruction of jobs due to Information Technology, the most recent incarnation of the Industrial Revolution. These two forces also increase the segment of the population that depend on economic assistance and/or the financial transfer volume into that segment.
The decline is still ongoing. Here trends of the fractions of the national income of the bottom 50% for two different nations, the US and The Netherlands. The contributions to the income taxes are shown as well.
| Country | Year | Percent of all income | Percent of all tax paid |
| US | |||
| 1996 | 14% | 4.6% | |
| 2007 | 12% | 3% | |
| The Netherlands | |||
| 1999 | 25% | 8% | |
| 2005 | 23% | 5% |
The bottom 50% in both societies remains slipping in their share of the nation's income and their contribution to the nation's tax revenues.
A solution consists simply of explaining to the citizens that 'survival of the fittest' needs to be restored and that procreation requires a license that will be provided when applicants pass a few simple tests.
This solution may need alternatives to prevent an uprising. We leave the details to our politicians who created the mess we are in now.
Creating taxes left and right to avoid dealing with root causes (declining economic self-sufficiency of the population) needs to be blocked. Allocating tax monies without accountability (public education and healthcare) needs to be curbed.
Consider the following limiting requirement for a tax: it should apply to 2/3 of those who propose the tax. This would invalidate immediately the Bill-Gates-assessment. It would have blocked in retrospect also corporate income taxes, lodging taxes, cigarette taxes, gambling taxes, pet taxes, soda drink taxes, amusement taxes, etc.
When do we agree that this insanity must stop?
The chaos in Pakistan after the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a sad argument in favor of what we advocate here. Oppositions would not be able to impact the political process by assassinations; they would have to come up with more convincing philosophies, ideas, descriptions of the status quo and proposals how to make changes. Instead, her assassination caused international concerns because of the worry that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would fall in the wrong hands.
The press would play a more prominent role with this fix. Instead of investigating whether a candidate inhaled, paid taxes for a nanny, or speculate excessively on private life aspects, they would describe and critique the standpoints and views of the different parties - even play an active role by elucidating topics avoided by everyone.
The society needs to maintain economic self-sufficiency of individuals/ families of large majorities.Such a principle may still require a legal innovation how to enforce it.
Sustainability of a nation's economy is entangled with how humanity deals with the planet's resources. Thus we need something at the level of the United Nations:
The economies of member nations need to be indefinitely sustainable.Enforcement of this principle may require a legal innovation as well.
We can safely ignore here the question how to muster the political will to establish these principles. Early commentary suggests that only a next global calamity will get things moving.
PS It took several billions of years before a preliminary version of consciousness to emerge in a cantankerous species. We propose as humanity's main mission, for now, to spread it in the Universe, through us or by other means. Due to limited resources we have a narrow window to get into the Universe. If we fail, humanity will likely be wiped out and it will take many millions of years before another variant of Earth life, if any, will have another chance, [Gott].
[Economist] Democracy's decline/ Crying for freedom, The Economist, pp 58-60, vol 395, no 8665, 2010 January.
[Gott] Gott, J.R., "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time", Weidenfeld London, 2001.
[Meadows] Meadows, D., J. Randers, & D. Meadows, "Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update", Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2004.
For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the
work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings
will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant
work. ... Thus people would spend their time shining each other
shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts
for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc.
In another scenario, the machines take over from humanity and all bets
are off when that would happen. Yet another author, Vernor Vinge, has
already suggested, way earlier, that humanity is the midwife of another
machine species and will subsequently step aside/ wither away.
Material from the anonymous author have been used by Ray Kurzweil in
"The Singularity is Near" to illustrate what will happen when the
machines take over, and by Bill Joy in "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"
to illustrate the potential danger of slowly creeping advances in
technology on which humanity relies more and more.
All these scenarios depend on two assumptions: