Dystopia vs Utopia
A choice perhaps
Is it just me or is there a lot more dystopian literature out there as compared to utopian?
I did a quick internet search — the list of dystopian literature does appear to be longer than the list of utopian literature. As a species then, is our imagination of the future constrained by some variation of impostor syndrome? Do we believe humanity is not good enough to be here or to continue to be here? Do we believe that we are here by chance, against all odds and even if we manage to survive our own destructive instincts, we will eventually succumb to some catastrophic event orchestrated by a mindless universe (asteroid impact or comet carrying a virus or a mini black hole or a gamma ray burst…) or judged by a mindful one?
So, how real is the threat? What are the chances, of something bad or terrible happening to us? Digging online, turned this up:
The overall probability of a global catastrophic event happening by 2100 is ~20%.
This does not include some risks like global warming and possibly other natural calamities, but for now let us proceed with this number.
Sort of thinking aloud here, depending a lot on fast google searches, and am not an expert on any of these areas … so please feel free to leave comment and feedback.
Now, risk, I understand at its simplest can be considered to be a product of (the probability of something untoward happening) x (expected cost of the loss)
Leaving aside the intangibles that we cannot measure such as the possible loss of the only known (to us) planet with life on it and the only known planet with sentient life, let us look at how much it would cost us.
In international dollar terms, assuming that gross world product would go down to zero following any catastrophic event, the risk is therefore:
Risk = 20% x GWP = 25.56 trillion international dollars (USD 16.05 trillion )
(It is easier to continue with USD since most of the other data uses this)
The question then arises, how much should the world governments be willing to spend to minimize the possibility of such an event occurring or to help humanity get back on it’s feet after such an event, should it be unavoidable. How much should world governments invest in keeping the world safe? How can one come up with such a number?
One way would be to see how to insure a risk of USD 16.06 trillion. I am not sure how to do this so another seat-of-the-pants way of doing it is to calculate how much it would take to have a term insurance for every individual alive on the planet?
The current world population (in 2019) is ~7.7 billion. The median per-capita household income is $2,920 as per a 2013 gallup article. How much insurance cover would be adequate for someone with this much earnings? (This actually turns out to be USD 22.48 trillion — somewhat more than the calculated risk of USD 16.06 trillion)
As per further online suggestions, adequate cover would be 10–20 times the annual income. Given that this is the per-capita earning, we will stick to the lower multiplication factor and go with a cover of 10x annual earnings.
We are then looking at insuring each and every human being on earth for an amount equivalent to USD 29200.
So, how much would this cost? As per this source, a 35 year old man (the median age worldwide in 2018 was 30.6) buying term insurance for 20 years with a death benefit of USD 500K would have to pay approximately USD 430 per annum. Simply applying unitary method and calculating how much this would cost for a cover of USD 29200, we get about USD 25.11 per annum. Now, if we multiply this number by 7.7 billion, we get about USD 193.36 billion. (Would increasing the coverage to 80 years increase this number or decrease it?) While this is as much a seat-of-the-pants, back-of-the-envelope, arbitrary calculation as is possible, we now have an approximate number:
The minimum amount that the world should be willing to pay to keep the world safe, based largely on 2017 number is: USD 193.26 billion per annum.
Let us now take a step back to see some other numbers from 2017 to see how this minimal viable protection cover compared to known expenditures.
The global military spending in 2017 was 1.7 trillion USD. Remember that this for the most part, is money being spent on pointing missiles at each other rather than doing something for defending our world as a whole. In that same year, the global spending on space exploration was 14.6 billion USD. While, the total spending on medtech, worldwide was 28.6 billion USD. Finally, the amount spent on humanitarian assistance (got some numbers from this link) amounted to USD 27.9 billion USD.The report mentions that this “Data consists only of humanitarian assistance directed internationally by donors.”
A quick lookup of the united nations budget shows that the budget was ~50 billion in 2016, about 50% of which was used towards humanitarian and development assistance. I am not sure how this number related to the data above — best case, we can add them, worst case, it is getting counted twice.
While the numbers may not be exceedingly accurate, and not all possible relevant categories may have been considered, it does show us a lay of the land. As a world, we spend about 2% of our entire gross world product on defense, defending against each other. This ranks as one of the biggest threats to our continued existence — likelihood of a catastrophic war is one of the highest at 5%.
By comparison, we spend a pittance on science, medicine and space exploration. We have no global vision to go beyond where we are today. No vision or plan to even survive some calamity. Not to mention zero budget allocated towards this. The idea of building an ark is as unfashionable these days as it was back in the day of Noah.
So, we sit like a bunch of crabs in a bucket, on the shore of the universe, too busy pulling each other down to notice that a universe waits over the rim, left unexplored, till an eventual act of God or (god-forbid) Man, sends us to our oblivion making our worst fears come true.
It is up to us whether we want to live out a dystopian story or an utopian one. It is up to us to at least try.
Note: While this post cross-references multiple sources, the math is mostly back-of-the-envelope based on seat-of-the-pants assumptions. Given that the “research” was done over one evening, all the numbers, sources and assumptions may not be accurate. That being said, this should not detract from your reading pleasure or bias you against the validity of the conjecture:
Our leaders are neither putting enough thought nor enough money into looking ahead to the future with a positive, unified world view with the intent to progress and thrive, as a species, while taking global risks into account.
