RE: If You Don't Work, You Don't Eat. Where's My Jet Pack?
I agree with you that technology should be at the service of mankind and not its master.
However you probably won't find many takers for a guaranteed minimum income, because this would mean government interference and taxes. Most crypto enthusisast are anarchists or voluntarists of at least libertarians.
The two former don't want any governments at all and the latter want a government whose only task it is to protect their property interests with the military to the outside and the police inside the country.
Some here are devoted fans of Ayn Rand whose philosophy centered on the idea that selfishness is the only virtue and altruism is the greatest sin.
I used to be a devout left-winger myself, but when large parts of the left turned even more war-mongering than the right as well as totally oblivious to real evidence of deception in western mainstream narratives, I realized for myself that they most certainly can't be trusted.
The way I see it is, that the only chance for a humane future for humanity would be a radical decentralization of power and wealth;
no capitalism, no socialism, no communism but a direct democracy on a very small scale local basis.
These communities would be sovereign entities with a mixed private and public ownership economic system, where everybody -who is able to do so- would have a chance to make a living by participating in the necessary work to keep the community running, and those who are unable to do so would be taken care of by some kind of a solidarity system.
Being able to participate and feeling useful is actually a rather prevalent psychological human need.
Now such a system can only function if there are no power-crazed empire-seekers around who would be supported by many others in their endeavors. And for that a wider -possibly global- change of attitude is needed. Even the view on the natural world might have to change from a Darwinist model to a Kropotkin model of evolution.
The Russian biologist and philosopher Peter Kropotkin(1842 - 1921) believed that evolution didn't work predominantly on competition but far more on cooperation often seen as symbiosis. He called his evolution theory "Mutual Aid".
If this will ever happen, I don't know, there are just so many sociopaths around who always seem to get into positions of power and who are so easily capable to manipulate everybody else to their will.
In my more optimistic moments I've written my sci-fi novel "When Hope Came". It took me quite a while, since my pessimistic moments are far more frequent.
And you have to realize that even a world like that would not be a total utopia. Hope's village for instance has got some rather restrictive rules on sexuality, as well as a practice of exiling both violent rule-breakers as well as simple dissidents. In the story this practice is threatening to blow up into everyone's face.
Well, here is the free e-book, maybe you're interested, most people aren't:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/576437
Thank you for the comments.
I agree, to some degree, with everything you've said. This post was an exploration of how society was sold it's enslavement, where we were lead astray, and how to begin finding value in humanity again.
This was more for myself, to stimulate ideas.
I think that government is probably more dangerous than the mob, not that they can be separated, necessarily. I think that no government should ever be trusted, and if it has to exist, it should be chained down as tightly as possible. I would like to see society decentralized to the level of the individual, an infinite fractionation. This, so that every individual, who wants their rights respected, will find it in their interest to rise to the defense of the rights of anyone else, lest when they need defending, they be abandoned.
I'm not trying to sell socialism here, and I understand the need for people to be challenged and valued, to bring out their best. I'm trying to parse the difference between challenge and that which brings about disillusionment and resignation. It appears that most have given up on realizing their potential, and are embracing being Winston Smith. This is the difference between inspiration and induction of learned helplessness.
If humanity is so corrupt that it cannot be persuaded to find more value in people than in a digital fiction of money, then it is time to make other plans. I would like to find another path than selfishness as a virtue, but I refuse to shrink from the necessity of survival.
I do not think that utopia is possible where humans are concerned, but I would like to see humanity dedicated to something other than oblivion.
Yes I also hope that humanity will one day be dedicated to something else than oblivion.
And I see it like you that too many would-be dissidents are mired in learned helplessness, either passive observers who don't see any chance for change or active participants in the crime of disposing actual facts in the memory hole.
But I don't feel pure individualism will work. I think we are as human beings always both individual and social beings. Unless we are hermits in a mountain cave, we cannot live alone. And most of us urgently need validation from those around us, our community. The individual is appreciated and protected by his or her community. But a community cannot exist without some kind of rules, written or unwritten, even illiterate tribes have sometimes quite strict rules.
For me the highest form of freedom is not the laissez faire freedom, that I can do whatever I want if I don't injure anyone or take his property, -We actually have gotten far more of that than any generation before us and we still feel lacking and unhappy- the highest freedom for me would be when my voice is being heard and I have the chance to participate in the making or even the changing of the rules under which I am supposed to live.