RE: Discussion - Towards the Future: Creating a better World We All Want to Live In
Luke, I remember liking that post when I first read it, and I still do. I get a slight laugh from the realization that it took me ten months to write the follow-up I threatened to, in my original comment on it.
Better late than never.
And so, we come back to Mr. Maslow and his hierarchy-- as personalized to each of our individual situations. And we have to start with striving simply for a world in which people get their basic needs met. Food, shelter, clothing... it's sobering to reflect on the fact that we live in the most affluent economy in the world and yet we have an estimated 550,000+ homeless people in the US as of December 2017.
At the next level of safety, we have 29 million people without health insurance.
I don't say these things as a "socialist" or "hairy liberal;" I point them out more as a reminder that the task can sometimes seem daunting. Which leads back to starting with ourselves; setting an example and "being the change," as per Gandhi's well-known quote.
Of those half a million, I wonder how many want to live outside the system and be houseless. Based on some interactions with workers in that space, it wouldn't surprise me to find that number higher than most people would think.
The health insurance issue is an interesting one. I know many believe it's a human right, but until it can be provided completely by autonomous robots paid for voluntarily by society, I still see it as demanding services of others. That can't fit in the rights category, in my perspective. I guess that just means we'll have to figure out a different way to get everyone the protection they need without using that approach (which often leads to more government and central control). Ultimately, if it could be done efficiently, I think a blockchain token could be used and people might support its value just to contribute voluntarily to make the world a better place. Much like this Steemit experiment. Reminds me of this post: https://steemit.com/economics/@lukestokes/does-the-world-need-a-universal-basic-income-could-steem-power-it
Indeed they might! I know at least 3-4 20-somethings here in our town who are essentially "homeless" in the sense that they carry their entire worldly possessions in their backpack and basically "couch surf" and travel the world. But they are not exactly indigents-- more like deliberate nomads. "Work" consists of a laptop and a wifi connection.
Which segues into your next point and your post... the Steemit experiment; we have several people in the community who are global nomads by choice ( @budgetbucketlist is perhaps the most visible) and perhaps that is part of the new paradigm, too. I remember around 2000-ish (as the Internet started to come of age) thinking of a world in which people could travel through a series of "co-op houses" around the world and just work from their computers. You make an initial "buy in" after which you can show up at any "member" house on the planet and get a place to sleep and a web connection for a nominal fee ($10 a night?), along with a "hub" that could hook you up with local temporary work, should you need it. Each "unit" would be autonomous ("decentralized") while also being part of a central common network.
But I digress... healthcare, and UBI. Your post predates my being here, so hadn't seen it before. UBI is intriguing... people pose the question "how will it be paid for?" Certainly one starting point is the savings realized by NOT having to pay a robot to do the human's work it replaces. But certainly there are some moral/ethical issues there.
Health insurance is a slippery beast, as is socialized medicine. Being Danish by birth, I grew up with it, so my perspective is different... health care (at least for primary services) fits in the same social space as fire and police services. I don't want to have to think about "can I afford to pay the firefighters" when there are flames shooting out of my bedroom window... from a more capitalistic perspective, a healthy workforce costs less money to support so having a system of socialized medicine that's heavily oriented towards prevention is actually an investment in society.
The notion of creating a voluntary based token specifically geared towards health services is intriguing... sounds almost like a "health savings account on the blockchain."
Great thoughts, as always. I like the idea of hostels on the blockchain, fully decentralized. Cool idea.