People often ask me about what would be a solution to the problems we are facing in modern societies. So many seem to think that if we take money from the rich and give it to the poor to make everyone equal we would suddenly live in a wonderful utopia. Unfortunately, that isn't true.
So what options do we currently have and why don't they work?
I am not going to use political terms to describe these systems because most people cannot see past those and don't realise that even when a “side” seems to be the complete opposite, it amounts to the same thing.
One of the systems we have is where the leaders control everything and own everything under the guise that it all belongs to the people. The citizens have their land and homes seized by the government. No one owns anything, they have to depend on the government for everything and they only get things from the government when they work like slaves to earn it. Some of these systems claim that they will look after those who can't work, but the reality is always much worse. The elderly and disabled are seen as a waste of food and resources that could be used for the fit healthy workers and so often times they are secretly euthanased by these regimes. The other people are powerless to do anything to help these vulnerable people because they themselves have no extra money, they are very poor and they themselves rely on whatever the government will give them. No one has the opportunity to move up in this system, they remain poor, like everyone else apart from those who are at the top, for their entire life. But the uncreative, the unintelligent and the unimaginative people like this system, they feel “equal” to everyone else.
The wealthy are protected in the system because they run the government and they own all the large government-run organisations where the rest of the population work.
The other system allows people to feel freer. They are told they can decide upon a few different choices that they vote for, all of them preach different ideas but they all amount to the same thing with just a few slightly different policies to appeal to people from different backgrounds. In this system people can own a house and a car, they must pay high taxes to the government on everything they earn and they can with luck, innovation, or hard work move up the ladder to become one of the wealthy. In this system, the poor workers wish they could have the other system above and would want that everyone is brought down to their level and so they wouldn't feel so envious. The middle classes have a few more luxuries but have to work very hard. The wealthy get taxed too, but the mega-rich who run everything always have ways and means to get out of that.
Both of these systems protect those who are running everything behind the scenes, and both systems have the rest of the people working like slaves their entire lives, the latter allowing for a short retirement if you last that long before dropping dead.
Neither of these systems are ideal, of course, the latter is better in so many ways. But because there are so many people these days it isn't like we can go back to small tribes and have barter, care and share systems, where everyone works doing the thing they are naturally drawn to and everyone helps out with the more mundane matters.
We also can't just take all the money in the world and spread it out equally, not when there are so many people. You might ask why. Well, think about it, if everyone on the planet suddenly won the lottery and knew they would have enough money to live off comfortably for the rest of their lives what do you think would happen? Everyone would instantly quit their jobs of course. We would have no Doctors, no nurses, no rubbish collections, no food grown/processed/packed/sold, the same for cars, clothes and everything else. We would all have lots of money but there would be nothing left to spend it on. No holidays to go on because there would be no one to fly us there.
It is very naive of anyone to think that someone works in mundane fields just for the fun it, because of course they don't. The whole system is set up to make sure everyone will be educated enough to perform certain duties that need doing to keep the society going and without those essential workers, there is no society.
So how can we make things fairer?
I'm afraid we can't, not while there are so many people. The only way would be to set up small tribes like the Theomerla project, but as we found out, people aren't ready for that, they feel more secure when they are working full time and paying taxes to the government. And even if the Theomerla dream came true we would still need to leave our sanctuary to visit the dentist, doctors and get surgery if we needed it. Unless the tribe managed to get people who were qualified in those things and knew what they were doing, which is again very difficult without the current system teaching them and providing them with the latest technology.
What we can do to improve things though is be kinder to others and not be so judgemental. Let's all be more willing to realise that everyone on this planet is suffering in some way and we should not add to that. It is easy to assume someone is happy and having a wonderful life when you are not walking in their shoes, don't know their pain and how they cry themselves to sleep at night. It doesn't matter how rich or poor someone is, we all suffer and we all appreciate kindness.
We get such a short time here, better to not waste it being angry, resentful and envious of others.
