Courage to change fundamentals - Engineering Paradise

The problem, as you may have concluded, is getting enough people to agree this ideal world, this future, is possible and to get us started in engineering it.

There are certain elements in power right now that are enjoying their position and don’t want things to change.  I get that.  They have spent years to build wealth for themselves and their families and they may believe the planet cannot offer perfect balance and harmonious circumstances for the billions of people living on Earth anyway.  So, they play the protectionist card, to keep the status quo so that they don’t lose what they already have.  Meanwhile, these people dismiss the bad fortune of others and put it out of their mind as much as possible and call it a shame and an unavoidable consequence of life.

What we need is a population that demands movement in the direction of an ideal paradise.  Though we cannot change the minds of the people in power through facts alone, we can force their hand through civil disobedience and/or through bypassing centralized systems of power.  We can improve the world for ourselves working with each other, thus replacing traditional systems of control.  This is one of the biggest arguments for decentralized ledgers and direct democracy.  The bypass method has been very efficient throughout history.  From political to economic revolutions, the old has always been replaced by new systems through crisis.

Make no mistake, we are in a crisis today.  There are forces right now testing new systems that can change the status quo.  Through the Internet, a growing number of people are clamoring for basic income and artificial general intelligence to transform our society for the better too.  All these concepts can change our world in fundamental ways.  This book describes how the world can function leveraging these ideas and technologies.

The difficulty is the popularization of these concepts and their deployment.  The faster the people adopt these concepts as great ideas that elevate our society and empowers everyone, the better.

What we need is a population willing to engage and change political and economic systems.  Then, perhaps we can reach some international consensus among the people to put the needs of all people first.