With modern technology, we could have preference voting. Thomas Edison learned a relevant lesson trying to pitch an electronic vote counting system to the U.S. Congress. It was 100 years later that such a system was finally installed.
With modern technology, we could eliminate all advertising. People wouldn't find out that a good or service existed, without having a need for that specific good or service. And the process would all be initated by the buyer, not the seller.
With modern technology, we could eliminate pollution. What's waste output for one industrial process, is an input for another process.
With modern technology, we could eliminate war. War results when there is a disagreement between factions as to their reletive strengths. With modern communication infrastructure, there could be all kinds of methods to mediate these disagreements, and ways of finding out reletive strength without bloodshed. (I am not claiming that we could or would want to eliminate conflict, just that conflict would no longer merit the label 'war'.)
With modern technology, we might not be able to eliminate diease, but we could reduce its global impact on people's lives dramatically. If you look at the numbers of people who suffer from problems that are easily fixed, the room for improvement boggles the mind.
With modern technology, we could drastically mitigate poverty. That by itself is a pie-in-the-sky statement, but Buckminster Fuller fleshed out the argument to several deciaml places, using language that not everyone is comfortable with. I don't think we could (or would want to) eliminate disagreements about human wealth.
A lot of people ask me about why don't seem to act on my big ideas, and the answer I give them is related to the problems with these ideas. It's not the technology that's lacking. It's design skill. Humanity has got lots of people who know how to take a plan as written, and run with it. We've got a dire shortage of people trained to ask critical questions about why these plans might not be such a good idea. And even fewer people equipped to propose reasonable alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I think a progressive sales tax is a pretty cool idea. But the reason such a tax is not going to happen any time soon, is related to the question of why we can't trust our election system to deliver accurate reports on the domocratic process.
If you look at the reasons why any of these above listed ideas aren't going to happen any time soon, a pattern emerges. If anyone can find a way to articulate this pattern and combat it, without being killed, driven insane, or forced into irrelevancy, they could write their own ticket.
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Add that to the list.
With modern technology, we could eliminate all advertising. People wouldn't find out that a good or service existed, without having a need for that specific good or service. And the process would all be initated by the buyer, not the seller.
With modern technology, we could eliminate pollution. What's waste output for one industrial process, is an input for another process.
With modern technology, we could eliminate war. War results when there is a disagreement between factions as to their reletive strengths. With modern communication infrastructure, there could be all kinds of methods to mediate these disagreements, and ways of finding out reletive strength without bloodshed. (I am not claiming that we could or would want to eliminate conflict, just that conflict would no longer merit the label 'war'.)
With modern technology, we might not be able to eliminate diease, but we could reduce its global impact on people's lives dramatically. If you look at the numbers of people who suffer from problems that are easily fixed, the room for improvement boggles the mind.
With modern technology, we could drastically mitigate poverty. That by itself is a pie-in-the-sky statement, but Buckminster Fuller fleshed out the argument to several deciaml places, using language that not everyone is comfortable with. I don't think we could (or would want to) eliminate disagreements about human wealth.
A lot of people ask me about why don't seem to act on my big ideas, and the answer I give them is related to the problems with these ideas. It's not the technology that's lacking. It's design skill. Humanity has got lots of people who know how to take a plan as written, and run with it. We've got a dire shortage of people trained to ask critical questions about why these plans might not be such a good idea. And even fewer people equipped to propose reasonable alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I think a progressive sales tax is a pretty cool idea. But the reason such a tax is not going to happen any time soon, is related to the question of why we can't trust our election system to deliver accurate reports on the domocratic process.
If you look at the reasons why any of these above listed ideas aren't going to happen any time soon, a pattern emerges. If anyone can find a way to articulate this pattern and combat it, without being killed, driven insane, or forced into irrelevancy, they could write their own ticket.