A Letter From Your Future Great-Granddaughter
A 4th-grader from 2061 writes to you back here in 2021.
[This is a letter from your future great-granddaughter, writing to you from the year 2061. She has been learning about the history of the early 21st century, and it’s made her think about you, her great grandparent, whom she’s never met.]
January 20, 2061
Dear Great-Grandma,
I feel as if I know you. Grams has told me stories about you. In history class, we are learning all about what was happening back when you were young. It makes me sad to hear about the bad things that happened and the silly things that people believed.
We still cannot travel in time, but at least now I can send you messages. I just want to let you know that I am here, and even though you died before I was born, I love you. I know you did the best you knew how, and that I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t had kids and all that.
I also want to warn you about what’s ahead. I know you were having problems back then. I’m sorry to tell you that things will get worse before they get better, but they do get better. You had a hard life compared to what we have now. You were brave and worked harder than you had to, but I guess you didn’t know any better.
I have to ask, why did you allow so many bad things to happen? I’ve learned that a few people were very rich and that you let these rich people decide things for everybody. And the things they decided kept making them richer. Everyone else struggled to find enough money to pay for things that no one has to pay for now. I can’t believe you had to pay money to go to school. Didn’t the people know that going to school is very important? Didn’t they want everyone to go to school and learn how to be smart and do everything? Why would you make people pay a lot of money to do the thing that everyone needed to do for the world to be OK? That makes no sense.
Grams told me that people back then had to have something called health insurance. If you didn’t have it, you might not get help if you were sick or hurt. And to have this health insurance, you had to work for a big company or the government. Otherwise, you would have to pay a lot of money to buy it. Many people couldn’t afford it. Other people paid so much money to get it that they couldn’t pay for other things, like going to school. I’m sorry Great-Grandma, but that’s crazy.
Our teacher said that the money ended up with rich people called shareholders. The shareholders didn’t actually make anything or do anything to deserve it. They used some of the money to control the government. The government made sure the shareholders always stayed rich. That’s not fair! Why did the people go along with this? Didn’t you know that everything could be different? Didn’t the people know they had the power to change all the rules?
I keep thinking that you must have been tricked into thinking that everything had to be the way that it was. I read that the cities were dirty and noisy and dangerous. There were so many cars everywhere that you could be run over by one and killed — right in the city where the people were. It happened to thousands of people every year. And the cars would crash into each other, too. Our teacher said that more than a million people were killed every year in car crashes. That can’t be right, can it? Could people have been that … that …?
In some places, every person had their own car. You needed one to go everywhere. Everything was designed for cars instead of people. Offices, schools, and stores were built far away from where people lived — too far to walk. Buildings were surrounded by big, black parking lots where the cars would just wait. People would sit alone in their cars for hours every day, wasting time, getting no exercise, and putting poison in the air. The noise from all the cars was so loud that it made people sick and they didn’t even know it was happening.
Grams told me that corporations had to follow a rule called shareholder primacy. (This is the part where I think you were tricked.) The shareholder primacy rule said that nothing was more important than shareholders.
I asked Grams, “What about everyone else? What about the workers and the customers? What about children and people not born yet? What about other creatures, the planet?”
“No,” she said, “Nothing was as important as the shareholders, not even the company itself.”
Gramps says there used to be a law that corporations were people! Huh? And real people were called consumers. The consumers’ job was to buy stuff from corporations. The corporations told stories to make people want things they didn’t need or even know about. The corporations spied on people so they would know everything about them. That way they could make people think and do things that would make the shareholders richer. I never know when Gramps is kidding. Is that how it was?
Grams told me that you were taught in school that people were selfish and that was a good thing. Your teacher said if everyone cared only about themselves, it would be better for everyone. But things got worse and worse instead. People got angry with each other and they argued a lot. They couldn’t agree on what was true. Some blamed the government. But the government just did what the shareholders told them to.
Grams and Gramps said that when you were little everything seemed OK. Later, when everything started getting really bad, you couldn’t understand why. Grams says it’s hard to stop believing what you learn when you’re little. I wonder if I believe things that aren’t true like you did.
Things got so bad that Grams and Gramps and all the people of their generation said that’s enough! They made a new rule that said corporations weren’t really people. Duh! And they made a rule that giving money to politicians was not free speech. Double duh! After that, the government had to do what the people wanted. And the corporations had to follow the rules that people made for them. Once those changes were made, the problems stopped getting worse.
What changed to make things better? Gramps said they changed the shareholder primacy rule to the people & planet primacy rule. That sounds like a small change, but Gramps said it was huge — people had to change their minds. They had to make up a new picture of how the world could be. They had to tell a new story about who they were. And they had to realize it was up to them to make things better. No one was coming to save them. You should be proud of them, Great-Grandma. They are your children.
We still have corporations. In fact, many more than before, but they’re smaller. And the shareholders are mostly the people who work at them. They’re regular people. They get to vote for things like everybody else. Things are really getting better.
I guess that’s about all for now, Great-Grandma. I have to go, but I’ll write again soon.
Love,
