Dawn of the Unthinkable (5 page)

He started to write. His first sentence
should resemble something like the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, or any other famous document he could remember
(though that was about it…no, wait, he also remembered some of the
Gettysburg Address). They all had starting sentences that people
remembered; he would like his to do the same. It needed a good
title, too. He thought back to what words had come to him before
and decided on, “A Proposal to Reorder Society.” This was arrogant
sounding, but it was probably catchy enough to get people to try
the first paragraph. Now back to the first sentence. He wrote, “A
lasting society should eliminate hunger, crime, homelessness and
need. A just society should provide food, clothing, and shelter to
all it’s people for free, without cash, credit or debt. A
transcendent society should do this because it is the right thing
to do. ” This summed up his grand vision, and was short enough that
people might actually remember it. He went on to reference the
Declaration of Independence, and how it said that all men were
created equal; therefore all should have a chance to thrive, which
was a word he really liked.

He also wanted a meaty theory known as “The
Equality Principle” or something like that. He thought of how
things worked now, where people often bought as much of a quantity
of an item as they could afford, whether they needed it or not, and
whether or not they were going to be leaving enough for other
people. He thought,
everyone should just have one of everything
that they need, and then once everyone was satisfied, we could take
care of their wants
.
I’ll call it “The Theory of One”
,
and proceeded to write:

There shall be one item for each person
unless he or she can prove the need for more than one. Once
all
the needs of
all
the people of the society have been satisfied, then
society shall address the
wants.

There, that seemed to sum up what he was
thinking. If people
just took what they needed,
the idea
stood a chance of working. However, what was the likelihood of
teaching people that? Many civilizations before this one had done
that naturally. The Native Americans in this country only hunted
for what they needed and then used every bit of the animal they
killed. He realized it would be extremely difficult for those who
grew up under the current system to change. But difficult tasks
challenged people and gave them goals. There were societies in the
world now where there was distribution according to need, such as
kibbutzes and communes. These arrangements often collapsed,
however, because their method was at odds with society as a whole,
and humans needed to feel, to a certain degree, that they were
conforming to the majority. Nevertheless, if all of society was
doing it, then there would be peer pressure to not take more. So
getting all of the society to do it was the key.

He was jumping ahead of himself. A finished
article would be required before any discussions about
implementation took place. He went back to his writing. The first
step had to be getting rid of all types of money. It was not a fair
method of allocating resources, as could be seen by the disparities
in income.
Why should the owner of a computer software company
be worth billions when a cop or teacher has to struggle to make
ends meet?”
he thought.
Why should a guy get paid millions
for bouncing a ball while a solider has to live on food
stamps?

While it was true that computer software
increased productivity, it was the working folks who saved,
preserved, or protected lives. That was just as important as
producing millions of copies of software. He knew that many people
thought like him on this idea, but the fact was that because many
people could learn how to become cops and firemen, and only a few
could learn how to become billionaires, the billionaires were
rewarded disproportionately to their contributions. This might be
tolerable if they were more altruistic, but to a large degree, they
contributed less of their income to charity than people with less
income did. To Ryan, the obvious conclusion was that money was the
cause of a lot of human suffering.

He pulled a dollar from his pocket and
looked at it. It was an old bill, turning gray with dirt and age.
He wondered how many hands it had passed through before getting to
him, and where it might go after he spent it. From a purely
practical standpoint, it was worthless. You could not eat it, it
was not a good fuel source (unless you had hundreds or thousands of
them to burn), and the paper would be worth peanuts if it were
recycled. It was expensive to create, haul around, and guard from
thieves. His first wife had been slaughtered for it. Actually, when
you thought about it, it was comical that someone would turn over a
nice car, airplane, or other expensive finished goods for mere
scraps of paper. If you tried to explain this to our first
ancestors, they would think you were crazy and would probably beat
you senseless if you tried to take their food by giving them scraps
of paper. He wondered if they would have survived, though, if they
would not have eventually found some means of exchange other than
just bartering.

Anyway, if not money, then what would be the
medium for exchange? Society was much too complicated now to
barter; there were too many goods and services available, and too
many people to make that effective. But could a computer system be
created to track everything? If there was to be no money or credit,
something would have to track who was taking what, or people would
just back a truck up to a store and clean it out! A card, kind of
like a smart credit card, could count what you were taking from a
store. It could alert you if you were taking more than allowed, as
determined by a pre-set profile. Who would determine the profile,
though? Here he had a thought that would become the linchpin of the
entire plan.

Who should determine a person’s standard of
living? Why,
everyone
should. That would be a
true
democracy. All citizens in society should have the right to
determine what share of the country’s resources everyone else
should get. In that manner, the computer software genius would reap
rewards, but not so much that other people had to do without
necessities. Moreover, the cop, soldier, and teacher would not have
to scrape for resources but would be in a middle class as they
should be. The solution to this problem was the creation of general
“profiles,” which would mimic the current classes by establishing
certain
minimums
and
maximums
for each step up the
ladder. The maximums would be the key; right now there were no
upper limits to how much wealth a person could accumulate, but
there was a finite pool of money (theoretically, at least). This
allowed the top earners to have so much money they could never
spend it in their lifetimes, which made the acquisition of even
more of it kind of ridiculous. It was clear that money was not the
best system for allocating resources.

The problem was that the Constitution was
developed for an agrarian, slave-based society. Things had changed
radically from 1789 when it was ratified, and maybe it had to
change again. Some kind of change this big would take some time
implementing. He thought that the year 2076 would be a good end
goal marking the tercentennial of the country. He wrote the date,
July 4
^th
, 2076 at the top of the document.

But if it was called socialism in any form,
it would never have a chance of succeeding. So, he decided that it
should be called HyperDemocracy. The “levels” would be determined
by a careful analysis of what made up the current standards of
living for each class (i.e. lower, middle, upper), and improving
the lower, while “flattening” the upper. One of the best things
about the plan would be allowing everyone to vote on what level a
person deserved, therefore eliminating the vagaries of money. If
you had millions of people voting and did a statistical analysis of
all the votes, choosing the answer right in the middle of the bell
curve, you would have a pretty good answer as to where that
person’s level was. A person would have a basic profile that
included his or her educational status, work experience, and
community participation. He or she would be encouraged to improve
him or herself during the course of the year and then be
re-evaluated. If they had some educational, work, or community
service achievements during the year, their profile would improve,
and if the system worked properly, society should recognize that
and reward them with a
slightly better
lifestyle. That was
important. By getting just a small increment in lifestyle, people
could be weaned off the obsessive need to acquire more things and
start to give greater value to what they had now
.

People would even get credit for evaluating
other people, so if they did nothing else to improve themselves,
even the most non-functional members of society could increase
their lifestyle.
This would be hard for people to accept
, he
thought,
nobody likes a slacker
. But there would be a
guaranteed basic package of sustenance, including all food,
housing, and clothing that “starters” needed to survive. Elected
and school leaders would be expected to emphasize the general
self-improvement philosophy, but a person would not face a penalty
if they did not. This would protect the homeless, who often had an
underlying condition (such as mental illness) that caused their
situation. It would also harness the tremendous amount of energy
and brainpower now wasted on the symptoms of poverty, where the
lower classes spent most of their time trying to meet basic needs
instead of being free to think and create. Some criminals were such
creative thinkers about how to screw everyone; it was awesome to
imagine what they might do if they were acting for the good of
society.

During an evaluation session at a computer
in a person’s home, the system would display a general description
of, say, the provider of a family of four. This would determine
what level of housing was available, what quality of foods and
other goods they were eligible for—type of transportation,
vacations, in other words, an entire lifestyle. Life achievements
would entitle him to choose between several different types of
goods or services to improve his lifestyle. They would have to make
trade-offs; for example, if they wanted a better car, they had to
get a smaller house.

This would allow rewards for all types of
work, be it producing new goods and services, doing volunteer or
community service work, or creating works of art. All types of
self-improvement could earn rewards, such as more education,
significant work accomplishments, or just reading some books. All
other family members’ evaluations would start upon reaching the age
of six, allowing even children to add to the family’s resources. In
this way, people would still have the incentive to achieve what
money currently provided, but they would not have to worry about
whether the proposed improvement to themselves would cost them
resources, such as paying for the education required to be a
participating member of society. The value of all improvements
would be determined by society as a whole.

On the other hand, those that completed
minimal or no improvements or could not improve due to health
reasons, would start to lose privileges in an amount proportional
to their decline, but they would
never
descend below the
bottom rung of the basic guaranteed package. In that way, people
could pick themselves back up without having to resort to drugs,
crime, or violence to survive. Of course, there would always be
those who, even if given every opportunity to improve themselves,
would still insist on finding their way into trouble. For those,
there would still be police, judges, and prisons to track and
punish. The emphasis in the justice system would be real
rehabilitation, not just confinement and punishment. Once again,
the idea of constant improvement of everyone in society, even
prisoners, was the goal.

Okay
,
I
have to write some
of this down, not just think about it
. He had a preamble and
the first few paragraphs but nowhere near the amount of volume he
would need to really interest a magazine. He thought he should do
at least eight or nine pages to allow for editing and streamlining
by a professional. He had been told once by an English professor to
write what you know for your first work because that is what you
will be able to convey most clearly. In this case, he did not know
everything about a futuristic society, but then again, neither did
anyone else with certainty. He started to write, but then the phone
rang.

“Billy!” he bellowed. The phone was rarely
for him, so he disliked having to answer it. Billy did not take his
eyes off the game he was playing on the computer, but activated the
internal phone, and talked into the computer’s microphone. “Yello,”
he mumbled.

“Who’s this? Billy?” the caller asked.

“Yeah, who’s this?” Billy answered.

“This is Mr. Douglass. Is your dad at
home?”

“Yeah, I’ll get him. Dad?”

Ryan picked up the cordless, and waited for
Billy to hang up the computer phone. He half-grinned while he
waited because he had heard who was calling and a call from
Douglass usually meant some type of manly adventure. Stephen
Douglass was a pilot for a private airline and the Army Reserve. He
flew helicopters, turbo-prop airplanes, and jets. He had wanted to
be a pilot since they were kids together, and he was one of his few
friends he could remember that actually became what he wanted to
be. He loved to fly, and was very good at it, so he was an
interesting companion for Ryan.