It’s always about the Hierarchy of Importance (q.v.). This planet is raging out of control with many absolutely fundamental errors, so that the trajectory of this fragile biosphere is visibly crashing into chaos. The immediate problem is the biological collapse on every hand ~ the loss of the trees, the loss of the topsoil, marine necrosis, layers of toxic pollution everywhere, raging consumption of fossil fuels, and continuing deforestation when the only hope is the most accelerated replanting possible ~ the whole planet is literally burning up, while Nero fiddles. Donald Trump is certainly a basket case, but he is just one of many raging idiots on this planet who have no idea of what is going on. Everything and everyone is rushing on by inertia, and, as everyone knows, that force is very hard to stop. Whether it is a long standing addiction to crack cocaine, or the addiction to running the planet as a war game for profit, winner take all, the inertia against any change in direction, or even the rate of change, gets harder and harder the further you get into the drug.
So the immediate problem at hand is the collapse of the biological integrity of our planet. Is this a technological problem, or what? Oh, no ~ there are plenty of people who could tell you what needs to be done, and, while the answers range around a number of approaches to the problem, any of these programs for solution would be a whole lot better than just to follow the present inertia. Overcoming the inertia, then, is what has to happen before we can turn this planet around. So how do we do this? The roots of the problems are not technological, they are political and economic.
I know this keeps going around in circles, but we can’t advance the argument very much at all until we can finally sort out the political problem on the planet and achieve some sort of political unity. We just have to do it. There is no excuse for such chaos on the earth at this date. A thousand years ago we didn’t expect any better, but by now we really have to deal with this, or go down to defeat as a failed species.
I have long seen the problem as a question of the source of authority, and I have always thought my solution was practically uniquely effective for providing an institution that could reliably produce an effective trustee for the planet. The argument that the authority would come from God is not offered frivolously ~ any student of energy dynamics, from whatever school, will clearly understand what I am trying to do here. “God” is an abstract idea whose meanings and process will be progressively illuminated and revealed as the students of the Seminary pursue their studies. Anyone who has no idea what “God” means, or who suggests, naïvely, that there isn’t a God, and neither is there Time, Gravity, Money, or the Sandman, may simply watch the progress of the Seminary, and learn all about it.
But that’s not today’s idea ~ that was all just by way of review. Moving right along, today’s idea is that, suppose we have our Advocate, or Avatar of God, installed on his or her Cathedra ~ now what does one do? How does one exercise one’s mandate to correct errors as one sees them? I speculate about the astonishing folly expressed daily all around us, reading the News. During all of this time, with multiplying crises raining down upon us, everyone seems to be rushing around perpetuating the most egregious follies imaginable, and there is no mechanism to correct any of this. So, where to begin? I could even suggest dozens of places where I might suggest a political intervention, but I won’t even go there, not on this trip ~ the idea is that by making use of that Universal Abstraction, Money, then the Steward, Advocate, or Avatar of God could work out all the problems on the globe, without addressing, directly, any other political problem.
Money is the Problem, so obviously money is the solution. The problem is that Money determines the structure of the economic and political system in place on the ground, everywhere on the planet. Absolutely everything happens in pursuance of the profit motive. And we see where that has led us! This is not to deny that the profit motive has a very useful function in society, but it should not be the overall structure of the living system itself. Just think of what sweeping changes could be made simply by directing the flow of money! The basic program is simple ~ money would be put out everywhere to encourage everything useful. We could hire all available workers to plant trees; we could pay every farmer for the food they produce wherever the market price isn’t enough for the farmers to prosper; we could set up free farms where anyone can live for free who doesn’t have any better alternative; and then we could tax money off the top from whichever players are gathering up the most of it. That means that everything would be free for almost everyone on the planet. Everything useful would simply be funded ~ education, health care, public transit, etc. Private enterprise would be free to function on its own, subject, of course, to the resource depletion or pollution tax.
When I have said earlier that the only tax needed would be a simple property tax, I now want to expand my interpretation of that to mean all property, including assets of any kind, not just real estate. Taxes could begin above a million dollars of personal wealth, and they could progressively increase up the scale. However, even billionaires would hardly feel the pinch ~ taxes below the first few billion might be moderate enough, but then would begin to rise pretty sharply up there somewhere, so fanciful agglomerations of wealth would get taxed pretty heavily. But why should they care? Anyone taxed in those æthereal elevations would already enjoy pretty remarkable advantages in this world, so they will cheerfully pay their tax, and pray that nothing changes. The other one will get them in the end, anyway.
Everything else would sort itself out. Sure, drive your roadster around the town all you please to impress your girlfriend (or your boyfriend). At $10,000 for a gallon of gas, there are still plenty of people in the world who could afford to do that. The electricity to run an electric vehicle around is going to be a lot cheaper, but still pretty hefty, until renewable sources of electrical generation can begin to meet the demand. As for hiring a private airplane to take you across the world for $80 million a trip ~ well, some people have important affairs on hand, and they need to travel quickly. The rest of us will take bicycles.
And once we get under way setting up free farms everywhere, starting where they are the most needed, then everyone in Yemen, or Syria, or Chicago, or Portland will simply leave their guns at the door and just eat and sleep in peace until their consciousness very gradually begins to recover, and begins to rise once again. And if we guarantee to give every able-bodied man or woman a job planting trees, with very high salaries for professional guidance and direction, we will sort out this climate crisis pretty rapidly ~ maybe even within a few centuries. Once we are on the right road, it may turn out that we will manage to survive, after all.
