TUESDAY, SEPT 29, 2020: NOTE TO FILE

What would a sapient society do?

If MPP, MORT, or  genetic predisposition is not in the saddle riding humankind

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: FORESIGHT INTELLIGENCE, ANTISIPATORY BEHAVIOR, FROM THE WIRES, MAKE IT SO

Abstract: The question is that of Rob Mielcarski, of the un-Denial site, and as ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’, I’ll process (think about, give ‘a careful hearing’ to) the answer by rewriting it. https://un-denial.com/2016/06/27/what-would-a-wise-society-do/

COOS BAY (A-P) — So,

What would a wise [sapient] society do?

[I’ll give a nod to George Mobus who envisions humans actually becoming sapient.]

A wise [sapient] society would choose some short-term pain in exchange for much less future pain.

A wise [sapient] society would understand that the foundation of the cliff it is climbing is crumbling and that it should start climbing down to reduce future harm.

A wise [sapient] society would move slowly and deliberately as it climbed down [to have a prosperous way down and] to avoid falling.

A wise [sapient] society would use some of the following techniques to climb down:

1. Educate the citizens [educators]  on what is going on and why.

• The goal is to minimize responses like panic or blame that can cause a breakdown of law and order [civil war]  or war; and to increase social cohesion and cooperation.

2. Implement population reduction policies [a socio-politico-religio-educational-media-economic reorganization of the current BAU control system, aka civilization, into perhaps 25,000 watershed management units (WMUs) for whom population increase or] reduction policies [are a local, not global, matter as Garrett Hardin noted].

• The goal is to achieve a humane [non-Malthusian] population reduction before nature forces an inhumane [as judged by humans] population reduction. 

• Given the severity of human overshoot we may not be able to out-race nature however, as Albert Bartlett said, every problem on earth improves with fewer people, so we should do what we can [i.e. ‘seek out the condition now that will come anyway’ —H.T. Odum].

3. Hold referendums to allow citizens to set priorities for reduced government spending. [Nature ‘decides’ or determines what works; hubris man does not get a vote as there are no political solutions.]

• The goal is to engage and empower citizens in difficult [listen to Nature, to engage and empower those who endeavor to listen to Nature to make] decisions that will have to be made. We need to move away from traditional and divisive left vs. right [tribal us vs them, for and against] politics into pragmatic resource husbandry [to maintain ‘a viable equilibrium between Man’s demands and Nature’s resources’].

4. Reduce government spending until expenditures are a little less than tax revenues. [Create global governance (e.g. a United Federation of Watersheds as a naturocracy) to replace a dysfunctional system of globalization that has self-organized to keep on keeping on for a time prior to dissolution/collapse.]

• The goal is to configure a [global WMU management] government that can function effectively through a prolonged economic contraction punctuated with occasional shocks, and that offers services its citizens can afford.

5. Model the availability of key resources taking into account the increasing cost of production caused by depletion, and declining demand (what people can afford) caused by falling incomes, declining debt, and decreasing government spending.

• The goal is to understand the shape of our Seneca curve which is needed for the next point.

6. Implement [a naturocracy to implement] policies to proactively reduce the consumption of key resources a little faster than the models predict will occur in a free market.

• The aim is to maintain social order by [designing a social contract and agreeing to mutual coercion mutually agreed upon via a social contract/design for a viable civilization that allows for] controlling the decline rather than being controlled by the decline [via humane but rapid depopulation via a birth-off rather than die-off to avoid scarcity induced conflict within regions of clustered WMUs, and to avoid the tipping point of a scarcity/conflict death spiral that follows to see who inherits the rubble].

7. Prepare fair rationing policies and mechanisms.

• The goal is to be prepared for possible supply disruptions.

8. Increase the interest rate enough to cause a steady decline in debt. [Replace the global economy with an emdollar based system of environmental accounting to manage interwatershed trade and allow WMU economies to self-organize as gifting economies, barter, or monetary economies as appropriate, with what works such as humans may best guess then test.]

• The aim is to climb down to a lower and safer elevation.

9. Hold a referendum [or otherwise manage] to decide a maximum reasonable wealth gap between the average and the rich [e.g. if 1 = ‘enough’ and 0.8 = ‘just enough’ to avoid measurable/presumed harm, then > 1.2 = ‘more than enough’ which is disallowed]. Tax excess wealth from the rich [e.g. the > 1.2 at 100% to manage overconsumption.] to pay down public debt. There are 3 justifications for this policy:

• In a shrinking economy the wealth gap between rich and poor will naturally tend to widen through no fault of the poor or skill of the rich. This is already occurring and will accelerate as the economy contracts.

• A too wide wealth gap is unhealthy and dangerous for a society. Think French revolution.

• Paying down public debt with excess wealth benefits everyone, rich and poor, because it helps to stabilize the money system in a shrinking economy.

• Note that the excess wealth should not be redistributed to the poor because this will accelerate our problems by increasing inflation, resource depletion, and CO2 emissions.

• The global economy is managed at the interWMU level and each of the perhaps 25K WMUs can manage their local intraWMU biophysical economy to make it work (or to fail) within limits all WMUs agree to as members of the global United Federation of Watersheds (and thereby incur benefits, e.g. protection from conquest).

10. Implement an aggressive luxury consumption tax [e.g. 100% for income > 1.2 of a 0.8-1.2 range and as corporations are ‘people’ too, the tax applies to them].

• In our new world [order], conservation is good and gluttony is bad [i.e. there is nothing desirable in consumption per se. The less consumption in a Society of Enough, the better off we are].

11. Place a tariff on imported food and use the funds to support small-scale local food production.

• The goal is to build resiliency to global food supply shocks that might [will] result from a financial or energy crisis, or climate change damage to crop productivity.

• [Emdollar or ‘perpon’ currency exchangeable for imported goods and services received by each WMU for sustainable trade as assessed by Federaton biophysical economists or services to be distributed in part to citizens per local policy who may buy imported food or other items. A WMU currency, if any, would be exchangeable for locally produced food and services. Food transported on average 1,500 miles to the end of a consumer's fork will be history.]

• [Citizens may spend perpons or save perpons to use for interWMU travel because ‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.’—Mark Twain]

12. Prohibit the development of farm land or the sale of land to non-residents [of a WMU’s 20 percent if land use is managed by ‘ownership’].

• This policy recognizes that in the long run the most valuable asset a country [WMU] will have is its arable land [that is part of the 20 percent of claimed land within a WMU].

13. Encourage soil restoration [Amen, and never use a soil where the rate of erosion exceeds that of soil formation, i.e. most currently arable lands as inabled by fossil fuel inputs].

• As fossil energy derived fertilizers become scarce we will once again have to rely on organic practices for soil fertility. We have depleted most soils. It will take time [centuries] to rebuild them. We should start as soon as possible [to seek out the condition now that will come anyway’].

14. Plant trees.

• Planting trees [Nature restorancy] is one of the few things we can do to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. In addition, wood will be a very valuable future resource.

15. Protect and restore watersheds.

• Water [apart from air and a place to stand/root] is the only thing more important to life than food.

• [No groundwater pumping, other than by human power, that lowers a water table or prevents recharge of an aquifer and surface flow of water.]

16. Encourage schools to teach skills required in a less complex society.

• Much of what is taught today will not be useful at our destination.

• [Replace schooling systems intended to create servants of the global growth economy/society, the monetary culture including religious supporters, with an educational system based on a universal written language autodidacts can teach themselves to read using Rosetta Bliss. 

• Require, per Constitution of the United Federation of Watersheds, that all children of a WMU have access to Rosetta Bliss and to Encyclopedia Bliss such that any child, including those born into a hunter-forager-gardener society, could become a professor at the Federation Academy of Evidence and Reason and serve the matter-energy world-view it is based on.]

I realize that denial and other human behaviors make it highly unlikely we will do any of the above.

I also realize that some of the ideas require more thought to ensure a good balance between increased short-term pain vs. decreased long-term pain.

I [re]wrote this to demonstrate that we are not without means to influence the future in a positive direction.

 

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