We were once cavemen. We would spend our days hunting mammoth and gathering berries or whatever, and that was that. We banded together with others we could trust so that mammoth hunts would succeed, but our daily life was still this loop: find it, get it, eat it. Repeat. Occasionally fight off an intruding sabre-tooth tiger or bear or giant beaver. There was little time for anything else.
Eventually civilizations rose. Their hallmarks were governing bodies and the ability to grow and store food. Without having to worry about where calories would come from each day, people could spend their time doing other things: organizing group efforts to build structures, developing science to help with that, learning how to build tools and ride camels, etc. Society became more functional because people had more time for activities beyond basic subsistence.
Even today, the next great invention or startup or idea will materialize because someone has the time and freedom for it. We can best elevate society by removing or lowering subsistence barriers as much as possible.
Rampant deregulation flies in the face of this. It allows some who are innately aware of certain things to thrive. Suppose we don't have a guarantee of clean water. Those of us who know how to test it will take some time to do that and then go about our lives, and the rest of us will have lots of gastrointestinal or death issues. All of us will waste a tremendous amount of time either testing the water or suffering from its effects and be unable to do actually productive things.
A significant measure of society is its cumulative productivity. Productivity requires food, health, education, and a low enough baseline stress level to function. Said stress level is often related to the availability of food, health, and education.
Maybe we need to create a food voucher program for everyone, not just the needy. Remove the conditional administration overhead and just give everyone a FedFood card that reloads every month, no questions asked. If you want to buy something fancy and have the money for it? Cool, do that. Isn't that some crazy huge tax though? Math time:
We can make a similar argument for healthcare; this is a well-discussed area.
Betsy DeVos is currently trying to go the opposite route in education to make people like her richer. Instead of undermining one of our basic societal needs, she should just go stick her $1B net worth in stock market and buy a new yacht every year. We can instead spend a fraction of the $600B annual defense budget on federal teacher resource supplements: no more buying crayons for their classrooms out of their own paychecks. Or just give them bigger paychecks.
Clearly these are not carefully thought through end-to-end, but maybe there's something there. As a society, we should find the issues that negatively affect most of our members' ability to lead productive lives, and address them. Repeat.
Eventually civilizations rose. Their hallmarks were governing bodies and the ability to grow and store food. Without having to worry about where calories would come from each day, people could spend their time doing other things: organizing group efforts to build structures, developing science to help with that, learning how to build tools and ride camels, etc. Society became more functional because people had more time for activities beyond basic subsistence.
Even today, the next great invention or startup or idea will materialize because someone has the time and freedom for it. We can best elevate society by removing or lowering subsistence barriers as much as possible.
Rampant deregulation flies in the face of this. It allows some who are innately aware of certain things to thrive. Suppose we don't have a guarantee of clean water. Those of us who know how to test it will take some time to do that and then go about our lives, and the rest of us will have lots of gastrointestinal or death issues. All of us will waste a tremendous amount of time either testing the water or suffering from its effects and be unable to do actually productive things.
A significant measure of society is its cumulative productivity. Productivity requires food, health, education, and a low enough baseline stress level to function. Said stress level is often related to the availability of food, health, and education.
Maybe we need to create a food voucher program for everyone, not just the needy. Remove the conditional administration overhead and just give everyone a FedFood card that reloads every month, no questions asked. If you want to buy something fancy and have the money for it? Cool, do that. Isn't that some crazy huge tax though? Math time:
- The USDA estimates the basic cost to feed an adult is about $50-60 per week.
- Approximately 12-14% of USA households are food insecure
We can make a similar argument for healthcare; this is a well-discussed area.
Betsy DeVos is currently trying to go the opposite route in education to make people like her richer. Instead of undermining one of our basic societal needs, she should just go stick her $1B net worth in stock market and buy a new yacht every year. We can instead spend a fraction of the $600B annual defense budget on federal teacher resource supplements: no more buying crayons for their classrooms out of their own paychecks. Or just give them bigger paychecks.
Clearly these are not carefully thought through end-to-end, but maybe there's something there. As a society, we should find the issues that negatively affect most of our members' ability to lead productive lives, and address them. Repeat.
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