TheBulletin.ca Journal of Downtown Toronto
Frank Touby —
How would your life improve if you had enough money to live in modest comfort without holding a job? What if you could go to university or college to study whatever caught your fancy without being concerned whether it could lead to employment in that field?
You could study ancient Greek classics, glass blowing, Hindu mysticism, Turkish civilization…anything that you want, just for the joy of satisfying your curiosity and exercising your intellect. You could sculpt or paint or write or just rollerblade without concern for how to pay for it.
You would have a comfortable home. You would have basic communications facilities to stay in touch with your friends and family and enough money to purchase more if that’s what you desire.
You could sleep when you wish and awaken when you’re refreshed.
Forget about the so-called “Protestant Ethic” that makes you a wage slave. You would only do work that pleased you…or that enabled you to earn more for yourself beyond satisfactory subsistence…or that rewarded you in other ways you desire, such as cleaning up polluted landscapes and waterscapes or building infrastructure.
Is this Utopia? Not really.
Is this doable? Yes.
Will it happen? It indeed might. It ought to happen.
There are economists who believe it’s not only possible and doable but inevitable if we are to survive as a culture or even as a people.
The alternative is likely a murderous tyranny by the super-wealthy against everyone else.
Keep in mind that it’s Philip the Prince of Wales who said: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
Speaking in 1983 at Western University, His Royal Virus lamented that mosquito eradication in Sri Lanka resulted in fewer human deaths.
Like many of the world’s filthy rich, Philip is a eugenicist. One must wonder if the powers behind Monsanto, Bayer, Cargill and similar transnational firms are not also believers in culling the human herd.
Why else are there American-inspired slaughters of people in an unending stream of wars they wage from World War I to Assad’s Syria to constant poking at the Russian bear? The U.S. corporate weapons manufacturers and security contractors reap huge profits and produce culling of human beings.
There is a term for the alternative and it matches a term the eugenicists use: GAIA. For eugenicists it describes the earth as a living, thinking organism that resents the human fleas who pepper its surface.
But in its best meaning, GAIA stands for Guaranteed Annual Income for All. Seem too ridiculous? It isn’t.
No doubt you have noticed that what used to be regular necessary jobs have become insignificant. Cellphones and the Internet have killed many jobs for storekeepers and retail clerks. Delivery of consumer products is starting to be handled by remote drones. Satellite-enabled trucks will soon be able to drive the highways without human intervention. Driverless taxis will be next.
Robotization is already demolishing manufacturing jobs. Even house- and office-cleaners will be next.
The world, especially North America, is running out of work for people to do. Robots are getting smarter by the day. Are they to be the end product of evolution? Is the future of our planet to be vast forests and natural lands thinly occupied by super-rich elites and served by a culled herd of robot-policed human servants? That is the dream of eugenicists.
But is it your dream? Undoubtedly not. You want rewarding work or occupation of your time, good housing, clean water, varied and nutritious food, decent clothing and entertainments. You may want a family. But unlike people in desperately poor nations, you’ll not have many children. It’s nature’s way when things are dire to spark up fertility.
The world is big enough for all of us. The population of the U.S. could fit in the state of Texas with a decent-sized lot for each family. It’s a big planet and a stable population doesn’t threaten to overpopulate it. A stable population sustains itself and doesn’t need culling.
Where does the money come from to give everyone a livable free wage? From our government, of course. It prints money. If you want more than an acceptable basic living, you can find a job that pays. Not everyone will want that, but most people will find ways to occupy themselves and keep the economy and society working. It’s human nature to strive.
Counting on the best part of human nature instead of the worst part of corporate nature is a way forward for Canadians. We can and should quit slaughtering people in the Middle East for the U.S. war machine. Our troops are for defending Canada. Tell your politicians you want Canada to guarantee a livable annual income for each citizen as a right of citizenship.
Frank’s idea is more sane than insane. People need to consider that you don’t get perfect systems from imperfect humans. We don’t have any perfect social economic systems on earth. Indeed, Neoliberal capitalism has descended upon us, like the predators – tax evading corporations, the greedy rich and the politicians they’ve bought to use for their own purposes – twisting all economies into very grotesque, inhuman forms. Should people, in light of those facts, serve economies. Or should we insist that economies, and rules (ahem, Mr Harper), serve people, as in ‘all’ people. Until God guides us into perfection (‘our’ perfection), enabling us to in turn shape perfect economies?
We are only in this mess because our first human parents chose to learn, the hard way, that independence from the perfect Source of life doesn’t work. They rebelled, raising the issue (or lesson) of universal sovereignty, which has fairly been settled. (Is God’s way of love superior to ‘riches for the strongest’, a game in which there ‘has to be’ losers? Are they equal alternatives? Is ‘riches for the strongest’ superior?) There’s not much time left for the predators to do their preying. The lesson has been learned, whether we like it or not. Independence from the Source of life, and the Cause and Master of nature, doesn’t work. Those who have the power to pull us back from destroying our liveable earth have indicated (by actions and false words, telling us that they will fix things once they’ve destroyed things) that they have no intention of doing so. Left to our own devices, we will zoom right on past that 2 degree C global average temp rise that scientists tell us we must not go past, as we destroy all the fresh water, pollute our land and bodies, and continue to make money murdering each other. We can lie to ourselves and say “No. We have no hard lesson about independence from our Creator to learn here. We are doing great!” But that doesn’t mean that the lesson hasn’t been taught.