If I ask one of my friends if it's possible to turn earth into a paradise, probably almost all of them would just give me a very confused look. The idea seems to be utterly laughable.
I will try to show in this blog post that it's maybe not. That it might be very well feasible today or in the near future. And even if it's really not, it's at least very enlightening to muse an hour about this possibility.
First we must define, what we mean exactly when we talk about paradise. There is the full version, where everybody is somehow maximally happy. I leave this strong definition for the religions and prefer a slightly downscaled but clearly defined version which I call the para-paradise:
A para-paradise is a state of human society with the following properties:
- Every human being on earth enjoys a better life than the wealthiest person living today [1]
- Humans live in a sustainable balance with a rich and diverse natural environment
- It allows humans to change the state anytime if they wish to do so (i.e. no „lock-in“, humankind remains free to do whatever it desires)
We could say that it is the least ambitious version of a paradise which is still attractive for everybody.
And we have to also define what possible means in this context. There are two parts of this question which need to be discussed one after the other:
- The state must be stable. If the para-paradise candidate inevitably decays into a state which does not qualify as a para-paradise after some time, we have not reached the goal.
- The state must be reachable. This means that a not too painful (a more precise definition will be required) transition to the state from the current state of society must be possible.
I will focus on the first part in this blog post. The (much harder to prove) second part will be the topic of following blog posts. Note that a stable state would mean nothing less than that humankind is capable of sustained life in a para-paradise.
As mentioned above, most people think that such a state of society is impossible. The reasons given for this assessment are typically the following:
- Humans are selfish and greedy by nature. This problematic nature must be controlled by laws and moral rules. And a society with courts, police and an army cannot be a paradise.
- Natural resources on earth are limited and the wishes of humans are infinite. Therefore a good life is only possible for a small minority which has sufficient access to this resources.
- People are too stupid to live in a paradise
- Humans are intrinsically evil
Let’s discuss this reasons in detail. We will stumble over more typical assumptions which seem to prohibit the construction of paradise later.
Yes, in our current society people are often selfish and greedy. But this is, as I have explained in previous blog posts, a rather recent phenomenon and can be attributed to the invention of agriculture and ways to store work efforts (like cultivated land, metal ore or later money). It’s definitely not the natural (and preferred) behavior of humans. In our pre-agriculture past, people „saved“ value by helping others, i.e. by accumulating social credit. This is why we still enjoy helping others much more than bringing our money to the bank. Unfortunately the latter strategy has become much more successful and therefore mandatory, even if nobody likes it.
Money seems to be indispensable as it is the only efficient means to regulate the allocation of the (allegedly) scarce natural resources.
The first problem with this idea is, that the scarcity we observe today is to a very large extent (like 90%) the result of competition. A huge amount of our work is actually required to organize the redistribution of money (like the financial system, social systems, insurances, government etc.). Without all these activities, our requirements for natural resources would be reduced by about an order of magnitude (i.e. to 10% of today).
The second problem is the imminent transition of our society to an information society. Advanced AI controlled technology will improve resource recycling dramatically. It will also lead to the invention of alternatives for products which require scarce natural resources today (like oil or rare earth elements). Furthermore, information technology will make many economic activities obsolete which consume natural resources today (like business travel).
The problem today is that the technologies to achieve this will be owned by somebody („intellectual property“) and therefore unnecessarily expensive. This prevents a wide adoption.
It seems clear that the „scarcity“ we observe today is a direct result of people being forced to save resources and money for themselves and their families. This is introducing a fierce competition between us which is actually against our true nature and causes huge social problems and damages to our natural environment. Competition gives us - in a vicious circle - the false impression of „scarcity“. It is simply impossible to secure the (infinite!) future of our families by saving (= monopolizing) money and resources. And as our corresponding wishes must be infinite, greed is a direct and unavoidable consequence.
But money has another function which is immensely important today: It allows the production of complex goods by allowing us to build local production sites („factories“) which produce only a few highly specialized products. Of course, the people who work in a, let’s say, car tire factory need also other goods and not only car tires. Money allows them to buy these goods from other locations which produce them (but cannot make car tires). Money is a highly efficient tool which regulates our distributed global economy. But our current economy is only distributed because it is still controlled mostly by humans. And humans have a limited capacity to acquire and memorize process knowledge. There are small towns in Switzerland which focus mostly on the production of mechanical movements for luxury watches. This kind of local specialization is required because engineers and workers cannot have all the other skills required to produce everything else they need.
But this will not be the case anymore in the future. Production will be controlled by software and AI which could, if IP was allowed to be transferred freely to any place, allow the production of any kind of goods anywhere. Intelligent robots will be able to build a complex computer chip factory in the desert in only a few days. Maybe one day, we all will have our own „genie in a bottle“ AI which is able to produce anything we need in a very short time from locally available resources.
In the coming world of hyper abundance, scarcity becomes an absurdity, a mental disorder of society. It can only exist in the future if we perpetuate the culture of owning. If we abandon the idea of owning, something very surprising will happen: our desire to help others will grow to an unprecedented scale (very similar to the sad growth of greed we observe today). The reason for this is, that in this case we can secure our future only by investing into the community. Helping is a kind of luxury, this is why we enjoy it so much. And now, devoid of options to store our surplus energy in material goods, our desire to help others increases with our wealth.
Note that this means that our requirement for stability is satisfied: when people invest into the community, our all wealth increases which in turn increases our desire to invest into the community. Therefore our all wealth will increase until - for some reason - saturation is reached. And this final state should be stable.
Wouldn't this be like communism? No, there is a huge difference: people like to help others directly but they hate to pay taxes or to work for anonymous groups which cannot communicate back their joy. Every solution which is based on money must therefore fail. There is no place for money in paradise!
What about the argument, that people are stupid? Yes, we definitely have a problem with education. But this is also connected to competition: knowledge is power and in a competitive world we prefer to keep our knowledge for ourselves or sell it only for very good money. This is why good education is for most people prohibitively expensive today. But there is no reason why we should not be able to change this using AI, the internet and - most importantly - an updated mindset.
But are people not simply evil by nature? I don’t think so. But it's a complex topic which deserves its own blog post.
Therefore: stay tuned.
[1] Even if I’m really not rich for Swiss standards, this is probably currently me :-)
Image: DALL-E
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