Fixing the World?
How do we start?
To me, the best way to start to examine the world’s problems is with this picture. A train wreck, and one with a young kid looking around basically in shock.
So, how does one fix a train wreck?
One car at a time, right?
But the real question is, how do you stop it from happening in the first place?
You find out why they occur and fix THAT. You prevent the wreck from ever happening, things keep on working and nobody dies.
So, how do we fix the train wreck that is human civilization? Damn big question there, huh? So, what next? We take a close look and figure out where the basic issues are that are causing this train to keep running off the tracks.
You forget the close-in stuff, and step back to look at the bigger picture. What is the first thing that sticks out?
Warfare, yes. No, no, stop. Don’t get into those weeds or you’ll never get out. Keep on looking at that bigger picture. What’s next?
Well a lot of countries right now have issues with the wealthiest folks pushing their influence and literally taking over countries, like, for instance, Russia. And to a lesser extent, the US, believe it or not. Europe also has these issues, though theirs is less obvious.
What else?
Well, to me when I look at these two things alone, and also look around at other situations, what I see is one major item that seems to be at the root of it all.
Greed.
Human greed to obtain things they do not already own, and that greed has one major goal — power.
If you take all the richest, say 5% of the world’s population, (and I’ve no idea how many of those there may be numerically) I’d bet that there’s only one thing they have in common — they’re men. Oh, surely there are women too, they do inherit their parents’ assets, and parents don’t always have male children. But the vast majority are men.
But they aren’t always white. There are numerous countries around this globe with non-white populations, and all of them have rich folks at the top tiers of their society. So, that “white” thing is a local issue in white majority countries, OK?
So, greed. Power. They go hand in hand, and they cause, I believe, 99% of the issues we have in this world. Racism may have other causes, I’ve not delved deep into that, there are other writers here who can eloquently talk about that, but I’d bet that greed and power are also involved there, too.
So, how do we fix that?
Basically? Democracy, and I’ll be blunt and honest here. NOT the kind that the American Democratic Party has in mind, and I’ll bet good money that our Progressives won’t be excited over my idea either.
The first thing to do is to eliminate as many of the empiracist governments as we can. So the real beginnings of democracy need to be at the International level. Russia first, since they’re the most destructive internationally, and I don’t mean with Ukraine. It’s their disinformation systems. They’ve been perfecting those for well over a hundred years. Oh, that war thing with Ukraine is the perfect vehicle to use for that, but if we can’t kill that disinformation thing, and eliminate it as a tool for anyone (like China for instance), we’ll never fix this world. So, make that kind of activity illegal outside of actual warfare — until we outlaw war also. Make it, in essence, an ACT of War. Which in reality, it IS.
At some point, the International community needs to work to eliminate non-democratic forms of government. Monarchies watered down as Britain’s is? Fine, their nobility is purely ceremonial and frankly, most went broke a long time ago. Dictatorships should be both outlawed and made legal reason for the International community to overthrow those governments. Same with oligarchies. The UN should have an entire organization devoted to reorganizing such countries’ governments into democracies and keeping an eye on them for a decade or two to ensure they continue to work and don’t get undermined. The very few remaining monarchies could easily be made over into ceremonial monarchies with a democratic base government in a short time.
A big part of this is controlling world capitalism. Eliminating (financially) the biggest and most powerful of the wealthiest families around the world and preventing them from exceeding a certain threshold of wealth. That should be a solid and unbreakable rule — to put a cap on both individual wealth as well and both familial and corporate wealth. All of those are harmful and anti-competition. Capitalism works best under competitive conditions, which encourages both technical and pricing competition. According to Keynes, it’s that competition that keeps prices lowest in a given market. Corporate power and unfettered growth eliminates competition and as we’ve seen in recent years, makes inflation go up.
Is any of this gonna be easy? Hell, no. Those folks are gonna fight and fight dirty, and they won’t give up.
But frankly, the rest of us by damn outnumber them, and if we can’t use those numbers, well, a lot of that is on us. But we need to get down and if necessary, stop being nice. Power is an aphrodisiac, and it’s addictive. They’ll never give up, but then we can’t either.
There will be literal fights. Violence is a part of human social advancement, and you cannot avoid it, because those who seek to retain power will not hesitate. So, we can’t either.
But we still have to adhere to humanistic and democratic means, we just cannot hold back if force is needed to win.
Because if we lose, you known damn well what’s gonna happen, don’t you?
