Coronavirus Disease 2019 Graphic. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario “Charo” Gutierrez)
The world is a dark and scary place for many of us right now. A virus is spreading exponentially among us. We are seeing news of deaths daily. The number is always rising. We are afraid of dying from this. We are afraid of infecting someone else. We are afraid of infecting our loved ones. We are afraid to sacrifice our hard-won civil rights. We are unable to trust our leadership. We are a deeply divided country. And there is no doubt; we are in trouble. All of us.
I have cause for despair. My income is gone until, at least, June 15, assuming I can work in May. I will certainly be facing difficult times. I have cause to fear.
What I don’t have, as it turns out, is time to fear. For all the ugliness and horror in the air around me, I see more love than I have in a long time. I see people helping each other. Artists are giving away their services because, honestly, they are, for me, essential. People are continuing to go to work and stock the shelves, check out your groceries, and let you be pissed at them because they’re out of toilet paper, which is certainly the fault of the woman who is literally risking her life and the lives of her loved ones to make sure you can get whatever it is they still have for sale. I see neighbors reaching out to help one another. I see people loving each other and coming together by staying apart.
There is much to debate about what we should have done, and when we should have done it, and from where the virus came, and whose fault, if anyone’s, this is. We can argue over over reacting. We can debate whether the economy is worth the lives of the 1 or 2, or, depending on whose estimates you’re hearing, 5% of the population that dies so that others can live and the money keeps moving. They were going to die anyway. They might as well do it now and reduce the surplus population. We have to save The Economy.
I take issue with that. I’m happy to have a minority point of view. Others who have a different one can teach me. I’m always willing to learn. With that disclaimer, I’m diving in, but very briefly. Why is this form of The Economy so valuable? Is it really the only kind we can have?
I want to start with what I believe is the function of any economy. It turns out humans do best when we work together. This began with forming tribes to help with hunting. It continues from there. We build villages. This is my village. It’s not yours. My town. My county. My state. My country.
The function of the economy is to allow us to trade our talents and work together to create the best world we can. We have chosen to use an item we have simply all agreed has value. A bottle of water has more actual value than a hundred dollar bill, absent this social agreement for which most of us never signed up, and to which we certainly didn’t give our consent freely. Without the fact that everyone is willing to trade many bottles of water for this printed object, it’s just a printed object. I can’t eat it. I can’t drink it. I can’t make my crops grow better with it. I could, in an emergency, use it to replace the toilet paper that is actually worth more than the hundred dollars. TP provides a necessary function. We all have to wipe our asses. Yes, even in social isolation.
The Economy, as it stands now, is fulfilling its purpose exceptionally well for some Americans, and, in fact, for some citizens of the world, but it is failing entirely for others. The number it fails is much higher than the number it serves. Listen to any Bernie Sanders clip of more than 3 minutes. He’ll certainly give you the numbers. And they will probably be accurate.
Why do we work? Some of us do it because we are fulfilling a lifelong dream. We are pursuing careers that test our skills, cause us to grow, and make us feel valued, respected, and properly compensated. We have enough to live, and we are making a difference by doing what we do. I believe those in this category would go on doing precisely what we’re doing without these printed items. We would continue because it makes us happy. So long as we can live a decent life doing what we do, we will go on doing it.
Some of us work because if we don’t, we have nowhere to live. We’re not fulfilling a lifelong dream. We’re selling DirecTV to unsuspecting old women on the phone. We’re dealing with drug addicts who park in front of the Circle K we’re working alone at 2 in the morning, and we’re wondering if they will wake up and take the needles out of their arms before the police arrive. A video camera records us when we go out for a cigarette. If this group could live a decent life without doing this, many of us would quit doing it. We would spend their lives creating podcasts, or writing, or singing, or painting, or playing video games (my former partner make money doing this, so you can’t say it’s not a profession anymore!), or researching something, or… whatever it is that we would really like to do if you would leave us alone and let us do it. And… there would be some people who would continue doing those jobs because we enjoy them. The work is necessary… well… I wouldn’t cry if DirecTV never sold another cable package, but, I suppose there are those who need it and value it, so… we’ll let it go. We certainly need someone to work in Circle K and at the grocery store and Amazon and all sorts of other places that pay very little for what we have now learned is “essential” work.
Some of us work because we are only as valuable as the money we make, and money should be gained only by hard work. Hard work, for us, is a value in and of itself. It’s a sign of being a good person. We’re contributing to society. We’re taking care of ourselves. We’re not asking anyone else for help. We earn our place in this economy. We’re proud of what we’ve earned. We have a right to be.
But, what would it be like without these printed objects? We would still have exactly the same resources we do now. We could go on living in our perfect economy in precisely the same way.
No… We can’t. No one will workanymore.
There’s an interesting point. You mean, in our perfect economy we work only because we’re afraid of not doing it? Just as there were some slaves who were treated better than others, based on their perceived performance and value to the slaver, there are some of us who are treated as more valuable than others. And you remember how slavery was… you know… wrong? Yeah, well, it still is.
When you make us work only by threatening us with doom if we don’t, we are slaves. We have no physical chains. We are not whipped, at least not legally. We don’t face the physical horrors that slaves did. But, we are functioning under threat just as surely as if we had masters. If you are not a holder of many of these printed items, you are not allowed a place to sleep, food to eat, medical care, or a cellphone. Not even a flip phone. Sometimes you can be afforded a night or two in a homeless shelter, if you are willing to follow their orders, or a jail cell if you’re not. I don’t think anyone would argue that a jail cell represents freedom. This is a form of slavery. It is only slightly less brutal. And it is determined by printed objects whose only value is our agreement to their value.
I’m not going to design a whole new world for you. But, I would like you to think a little while about how the world would exist if we decided that money no longer had value. Would we be able to exist? Would we be able to function?
I think we would, but this is the time to examine what value we place on our economy. I hope we’ll use this time to consider changing our world.
For the first time, we are realizing that poverty is bad. More and more people are tumbling into it, and now that there are enough of us, Congress has decided to act. Are we doing it correctly? Ask me a year from now. I don’t know yet.
This time is economically frightening, but it’s personally gratifying.
I’m seeing kindness pouring out around me. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll notice our logo has changed. I got a painting from an artist friend of mine, Michelle Sylvester, who is as isolated as the rest of us. She’s a teacher. She has time on her hands now, and this was her way of helping. It was good for her. It’s good for me.
I have a couple of friends working on recording a song I desperately need for what I hoped would be tonight’s episode. My friends are doing it to help out.
Another friend, whose father is a bit of a philanthropist, brought over some groceries and left them outside my door. I had some cases of regular Pepsi Amazon had mistakenly sent us a couple of months ago, and I set those outside the door so she could donate them to someone who could use them. (I’m diabetic, one of my roommates has a heart condition that prohibits caffeine, and the other one just won’t drink Pepsi, so… we’re thrilled someone else can get some use out of it.) She included some cash with the burritos, and it will do so much for helping us through just a little while longer.
Another friend sent us some dinners from Home Fresh. We can’t afford those even when we have our regular incomes.
I have a friend who checks on me every day. (We’re supposed to check up on old people you know.)
I see people saying kind things on Facebook. I see people understanding we’re all in this together.
I hope when this is over we’re all still here. I hope all of our loved ones will still be with us. And I hope we learn enough to keep this from happening anymore.
If nothing else, perhaps we will finally, finally learn there is no Them. We are all Us.
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
– Emily Dickinson
Imagine
As I write this, the world seems to be turning upside down. The President has been impeached. John Bolton has offered to testify before Congress, if subpoenaed, to tell us what he knows about the President’s behavior. Iran is looking for revenge over the assassination of one of their military leaders. Australia is burning. Refugee children are dying in cages. Homelessness and poverty are rising. Suicide rates are up; life expectancy is down. To turn on the news today is to invite a heaping helping of despair. Worse, there is the helplessness that follows despair like a shadow. The world is out of control, and, we are told, we can’t change it.
I take a different view. “Yes, we can,” as one of my favorite Democratic Presidential candidates said during his campaign. I believe there is much that can be done to change the world. The point of both my blog and my podcast is to find our path to the more just, humane, and hopeful world that we Idealists believe should be the birthright of all human beings.
In 1971, John Lennon asked us to “Imagine.” The world he described was a beautiful one. It’s been nearly 50 years since then, and we don’t seem to be much closer. There appears to be plenty left we believe we need to kill and die for. The need for greed and hunger continues to grow. But we can get to such a place.
Today, I ask you to imagine a world without poverty. I want you to imagine a world in which everyone has a place to live. We all have our own beds, our own bathrooms, our own food and clothing. We have the medicine necessary to keep us alive and healthy. We have the time to spend on the things we most enjoy. We have the time to better ourselves and our world. We exist for more than mundane work. We exist so we can find meaning and joy in our lives. Imagine, in short, John Lennon’s “Brotherhood of Man.”
We can, and, I believe, inevitably we must, get there.
There are several obstacles to overcome before this world can exist. Mr. Yang has ideas for each of them.
Climate Change
First, we need a planet that will sustain us. The fact that ours is in jeopardy is not even worthy of debate. Australia’s fires, all but destroying the country, are directly related to the fact that the world is getting hotter. If we do nothing to change this, regardless of what a perfect civilization we create, there will be no means of living in it. Our first priority needs to be saving ourselves from a planet that won’t support us. If we can return it to a condition that is conducive to human life, we can begin to make those lives more meaningful, interesting, and productive. We might even find a bit of happiness along the way. The climate is a challenge in the present. Climate Change is a challenge to our future.
Like many good candidates, Mr. Yang has ideas about how to keep the planet capable of sustaining human life. What makes his ideas different? They will not simply address the idea that the change can be slowed, if not halted entirely. Mr. Yang proposes moving America to higher ground now, before water, over which no one has any power, does damage we can’t easily repair. There are things we can do in the present, based on what we’ve learned in the past, that will help us in the future. Mr. Yang has more than 10,000 words on his site concerning the need to deal with Climate Change and the best methods to do so. I will, then, quote just these few as examples of real things that can be done, right now, that will help:
Research coastal communities that are likely to be impacted by rising sea levels and provide property owners with information about risks and options.
Make up to $40 billion available in subsidies, grants, and low-interest loans to individuals who wish to elevate or relocate their homes, or move to higher ground.
Help communities plan for rising sea levels with expertise and information.
Invest $30 billion in high-risk cities to build seawalls and water pumps, upgrade roads and sewer systems, and rejuvenate beaches to serve as barriers to rising sea levels.
I have confidence he can keep the planet in good enough shape to continue to support us for quite some time. Beyond that, I know that he is a “numbers guy.” He listens to the science, he uses facts and data, and he seeks the opinions of those who know more than he does to find solutions to the problems we face. You should check out his high tech ideas for combating climate change, including folding mirrors in space. How very Star Trek of him!
The Climate is only the first step to creating the world we all want.
Humanity First
The next step is to end poverty. This is simple to do. Buy it off. Everyone gets a basic income that guarantees them the bottom two bricks of Maslow’s pyramid. Our survival and safety needs are met. Before you start screaming Socialism, please understand that it is nothing of the sort. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production. This is what Mr. Yang calls “Capitalism that doesn’t begin at zero.” I want you to imagine what this would mean.
First, it all but ends homelessness. With Yang’s Freedom Dividend of $1000 a month, people can now get together to rent a house. There are more than 18 million vacant homes in America today. There are roughly 600 thousand homeless people. In short, we certainly have the room to house everyone. The facts can be found here:
It gives workers power that, at the moment, belongs to employers. Instead of working simply to survive, we’re now working to make things better for ourselves. We’re already surviving. If your boss is a prick, you can find another place to work without having to worry about making rent next month. Your Freedom Dividend has that covered for you. This will lead to better, higher paying jobs, complete with improved working conditions, because we’re no longer slaves to employers. We have the power the wealthy have worked so long to deny us.
Martin Luther King told us:
“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance condensed into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper class until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
The curse of poverty has no just of justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
The only thing keeping us from a truly free world is the idea that money matters more than people. Yang’s slogan “Humanity First” is more than a catch phrase. It’s the simplest statement possible of the most powerful truth we all need to recognize.
We have heard Black Lives Matter. We heard the reply All Lives Matter. Both statements are true. I maintain that the life of the panhandler outside of Circle K matters precisely as much as yours, mine, Yang’s, Trump’s, and even more than my cat’s. (And I love my cat deeply.) We are all human beings. We are all here for a very brief time. We all have a human right to the best existence we can create for ourselves. And that existence should not be dependent on the whims of the wealthy.
I have no objection to someone being wealthy. It’s often a reward for hard work, innovation, courage, creativity, or simply good luck. I’m happy for the people who have wealth. I don’t ask that they sacrifice it on the Altar of The Poor.
But money is Freedom. The more one has, the more choices are available. Jeff Bezos can do, within the law, anything he wants at any time he chooses. The panhandler at Circle K can’t do much of anything at all. They occupy the far ends of the Economic Spectrum.
America has always been The Land of The Free. Freedom is the cornerstone of our country, and the desire for it is probably the last idea that still unites us. How we get there is the subject of endless debate, but we all agree that Freedom is an American value.
Aaron Sorkin put these words into the mouth of Jeff Daniels in the opening episode of “The Newsroom.” The scene is frequently called “The Best Three Minutes in Television History,” but only by people who never saw the whole scene. (You need at least 7 minutes to get the real value.)
“And with a straight face, you’re gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom! So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.”
And that’s a narrow definition of Freedom. It means, mostly, that you’re allowed, as John Mayer suggests, to “say what you need to say.” Governments have less and less problem with this idea all the time because they have successfully ensured that most of us now have the attention span of a rabbit on crack. “Go ahead and express your ideas,” they think. “No one’s going to pay attention to anything beyond what will fit on a meme or a bumper sticker. You’re no threat to us.” I believe they’re wrong. When poverty is eliminated, we’ll have more time to devote to ideas. Our attention spans will increase, and that will, by itself, add to our Freedom.
Freedom begins with the awareness of choices. I can’t choose to listen to an artist of whom I’ve never heard. I can’t read a book I don’t know exists. I can’t choose to express my ideas in a blog or a podcast if I haven’t heard of those media. With more of my time to focus, I can learn much more.
Freedom continues with the material means to fulfill your wishes. While I won’t try to argue that we should all have equal access to everything (I don’t really deserve a 3 million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills), it is beyond debate that everyone deserves the basics of survival. If we can be sure of survival, we can devote our minutes and our energies to the pursuits we believe will be of greatest benefit to ourselves, and to the world we all share.
A Freedom Dividend allows you to choose what to do with the money the government collects. Bureaucrats hire minimum wage workers to sit at computers pre-programmed with algorithms based on regulations passed by people who know nothing about the problems faced by people living in poverty. These workers tell the poor whether they deserve any help. They tell them how much. Then they take it away if the poor start doing any better, thus trapping them into an endless cycle of failure. A Freedom Dividend does precisely what its name suggests. It increases your Freedom, my Freedom, and the Freedom of everyone else in America. It makes us, for the first time, truly The Land of the Free.
Yang’s Freedom Dividend, including how we pay for it, can be found here:
Automation, as Mr. Yang has told us repeatedly, is going to change the world. The work of humans will be done, with greater speed and accuracy, by machines. This could spawn disaster or utopia. The last comment Stephen Hawking ever made publicly discussed this very idea:
“Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
While technology seems to be a scourge because it is stealing jobs from human beings, it is, in fact, if properly applied, a benefit to humanity. We will be free from mundane, exhausting, and dangerous work.
Technology is here whether we like it or not. It’s the reason you can read this. It’s the reason you can hear it. It’s running your bank, your stores, your traffic lights, and most of your life. We can no more shut it down than we can turn off the sun or dry up the oceans. It’s up to us to make it work for us.
Imagine, again, robots who can clean up after us. They exist today. Wouldn’t it be incredible never to have to do the dishes again? How much would you love to have a machine to fold your clothes? We already have little robots running around doing the vacuuming.
The only question to answer is whether these will be readily available to everyone, or will they belong only to the rich? One way to ensure that all of us share in the benefits of technology is to give us all an economy that allows us to participate in the world. Yang’s Democracy Dollars would put $100 per year in the hands of every American to donate to any political campaign they wish, thereby removing the power of the wealthy to buy the elections and politicians who ensure the money stays with them. This will give us the chance to see the technology working for all of us instead of just The Few. These robots won’t make us lazy. They’ll make us free to use our minutes for the things we want to do instead of the things we have to do.
It’s time to recognize The Puritan Work Ethic is obsolete. Relaxing and enjoying life doesn’t qualify a person as evil. We simply don’t have to work as hard as we once did. Our lives are no longer necessarily dependent upon our labor. We are finally, after 200,000 years, becoming free.
An Improving Economy
With poverty vanquished, people have money to spend in their local economies. Small businesses prosper. The money we all have speeds through the economy. The Velocity of Money is a measurement of how many times money changes hands in the course of a given time. If, for example, someone spends $10 at the local market, and the owner of the market spends the $10 at the local restaurant, and the owner of the restaurant spends it at the movie theater, that $10 bought $30 worth of goods and services. It provided 3 times its value to the economy. It will often do much more. And the more money we put into the economy, the more it will grow. This will mean more jobs, better pay, improved working conditions, better family relationships, and decreases in both domestic violence and suicide. It will quite likely reduce crime. When desperation dries up, much of crime evaporates along with it. We become safer.
This is an opportunity for us to produce, to quote Mr. Sorkin again, “the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy.”
Why will we be able to do this? We will have the time. We will be freer than we’ve ever been before. Instead of struggling through mundane tasks that leave us as exhausted as they do unfulfilled, we are spending our lives doing the things we most want to do. We are making meaningful lives for ourselves. We are living for more than survival.
The Ideal World
Imagine with me now the world in this kind of economy.
Let’s use our friends from one of my earlier posts and podcasts, Sylvia and Christina, a pair of young women living together to save money, as examples of the possibilities available to residents of our Brave New World. They both have jobs that pay more than minimum wage, but neither of them can really survive alone with that money in this Cowering Old World. Now… let’s give them the Freedom Dividend.
The rent on their two bedroom apartment is $1400 a month. With their Freedom Dividends, their rent is paid, and they have $600 a month left. That pays for their food. All of the rest of the money they make can now go to paying off the car, going out to dinner once in a while, perhaps taking a vacation now and then, and paying all of the other bills they face: car insurance, cell phones, utilities, school loans, gas in the car, child care, and, of course, health insurance. Yang has a powerful plan for healthcare as well. It doesn’t go as far as I would like, but it’s a step in the right direction. You can find it here:
The girls move closer to fulfilling lives instead of simple survival. And when they spend their Freedom Dividend, they’re increasing the Freedom of those who earn the money the girls pay.
That’s the immediate future. But, what about the more distant time when this is a normal part of existence?
We can create a world where automation is a friend instead of an enemy. Most human tasks are given to robots of one sort or another. There is less need for physical labor, and greater need for creativity, thought, Art, Philosophy, Science, and Spirituality. Our world is thriving. Our minds are expanding. Our hearts are embracing the diversity that makes anything possible in this world. Human potential becomes limitless.
Donald Fagen said it best:
“What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free
On that train all graphite and glitter Undersea by rail Ninety minutes from New York to Paris (More leisure for artists everywhere) A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision We’ll be clean when their work is done We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young”
Is that too optimistic? Perhaps. But I agree with John Lennon:
“You, you may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you will join us And the world will be as one”
Emily Dickinson’s little bird could tell us that Andrew Yang can lead us to a kinder, more compassionate, and more unified world. When poverty is gone, cooperation will be more important than competition. Hope, which is the seed of Love, will grow like weeds when life is free from desperation. And Love will save the world.
Andrew Yang ended his book, The War on Normal People, with these words:
“Through all of the doubt, the cynicism, the ridicule, the hatred and anger, we must fight for the world that is still possible. Imagine it in our hearts and minds and fight for it. With all of our hearts and spirits. As hands reach out, clutching at our arms, take them and pull them along. Fight through the whipping branches of selfishness and despair and resignation. Fight for each other like our souls depend on it. Climb to the hilltop and tell others behind us what we see. What do you see? And build a society we want on the other side… get up, it’s time to go. What makes you human? The better world is still possible . Come fight with me.”
Let’s begin our fight for our Brave New World by electing Andrew Yang President of the United States.
Did you know that if you had a billion dollars, you could spend a dollar a minute, every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year for the next 1900 years? I looked it up. It’s much different from being a millionaire. If you’re a millionaire, you could do the same thing, but for less than 2 years. To possess a billion dollars, then, is to have more money than you could likely spend in 19 lifetimes. It’s more than enough for you and the next 18 generations of your family to be certain it’s unnecessary ever to do a minute of paid labor of any sort. You are as financially free as anyone could ever want to be.
That’s great, Fred, but what’s immoral about that?
When a person has more than he can possibly use, it seems to me, that person has an obligation to the rest of the world that has made this possible for him (or her). There are those who have recognized this, and I admire them for it. J.K. Rowling gave up her status as a billionaire by donating more than $150,000,000 to charity. She’s helping to improve the world. Good for her. Good for any billionaire who does what she does. Bill and Melinda Gates are also to be congratulated. But… here’s the thing: we still have homelessness.
But, the homeless didn’t earn their money. Why should those who worked hard and earned money be required to help the lazy?
“It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
— Abraham Lincoln
It’s true, I suppose, that billionaires have toiled and worked to earn bread, and that the poor and homeless are eating it, but the slaves are the poor, not the wealthy and the powerful. It has always been so. It will always be so.
When you have more than you need, you can help others without hurting yourself. To fail to help is, to me, unwarranted selfishness. I have been the fortunate recipient of more help from my friends and family than I have deserved, and each time someone else reduced, by a not insignificant amount, their ability to do things for themselves because they did things for me. This is what it means to be a decent human being. It is the recognition that others are as important as you are. It is an understanding that each person’s suffering is, to some extent, your own. It is an understanding of what John Donne told us all those years ago:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
It’s estimated that Jeff Bezos is worth more than $115 billion. What does this mean? It means that he could spend enough, every minute, to send my roommates and me to Outback for dinner. And he could keep doing it for 1.9 millennia. We can do this, ourselves, perhaps 3 times a year.
It’s estimated homelessness can be abolished for 20 billion dollars. Bezos has the money to do this 5 times over, and he would still have enough to spend $15 a minute until the year 3920.
I don’t expect people to hurt themselves to help others. But, I really don’t see how Mr. Bezos could possibly be hurt by helping millions of people. I don’t know why Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates, or any of a host of others don’t end world hunger, end poverty, and end homelessness all by themselves. If you can do good, and you can do so without endangering yourself, how is it possible to choose not to do it?
Forbes claims there are 607 billionaires in the United States right now, with a combined worth of 3.111 trillion dollars.
Yes, Fred, but those people did something extraordinary to earn that money. You have no right to demand they give it away.
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” – Adrian Rogers
I agree with Mr. Rogers to the extent that it’s wrong for one person to work for something without receiving the benefits of his labor. Where I disagree is how much that labor is really worth. In most cases, I think the labor is worth much more than it is paid. In many fewer cases, I believe the labor is unimaginably over priced.
I congratulate Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates for their accomplishments. I am grateful to them for the things they did. They absolutely deserve wealth for their contributions to the world. But… THAT much wealth? They have (or had) more money than they could ever spend. It becomes pointless to have more. There’s nothing more for them to do with it. They can already buy anything they want at any moment in time. They’re never going to worry about having enough for a pack of cigarettes, let alone paying rent, or going out for an evening’s entertainment. I don’t deny they deserve that. I’m happy to contribute to that. Again, they earned it.
But… when you have more than you could spend in 19 lifetimes, it seems to me that one is simply a dragon hording his treasure. It may be yours, but it doesn’t serve you in any way. It could be serving a much higher purpose than adding to itself. If you leave a billion dollars in an average savings account, doing absolutely nothing, you get 2,000,000 a year in interest. It’s just sitting there. It’s not buying anything. It’s not adding to the economy. And you get 2,000,000 for absolutely nothing. Jeff Bezos could have more than a hundred such accounts. That’s 200 million dollars a year for… what exactly?
It’s not their job to take care of the citizens. It’s the job of the government.
I agree. As I have written many times before, to the extent that any civilization includes homelessness, poverty, hunger, a lack of education, or insufficient medical care for all of its citizens, that civilization is a failure. It’s my opinion we should have been doing something about this 40 years ago. Instead of the clearly failed “Trickle Down Economics,” that increased the already, even then, widening Income Inequality, we should have been spending the money to make sure everyone had a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, schools to attend, and the healthcare they needed. I believe we should be doing much better at this by now. The government has the primary responsibility. But, many people will disagree with me on this. That is an argument for a different essay.
This is not political. It’s personal.
The fact that people with this kind of power allow homelessness to exist is simply wrong. There is no alternative case that I can see. If you can make a convincing one, I would love to hear or read it.
They allow these things to exist in the world, when, with no significant effort, they could end them.
I can’t save these children.
I can’t give this man a place to sleep.
I can’t get these kids a washer and dryer or a home in which to connect those appliances.
All of this suffering is going on, right now, today, this very minute, and any billionaire could end it simply by deciding to do so. Failure to do so is immoral. What right have you to more than you could ever possibly need when others will never have enough to be sure that they will have a place to live next week? It doesn’t matter to me whether you earned it by saving the world or by enslaving your employees. You are equally morally bound in either case.
When you are willing to recognize this old man’s right to exist is precisely equal to your right to exist, that his suffering is unnecessary, and that we should value him as highly as Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest, you will have begun to be morally enlightened, assuming you’re not already so. When the billionaires take positive action to end suffering, they will have erased my contempt, and they will have earned my gratitude and admiration.
Until then, being a Billionaire is Inherently Immoral.
I know that there are many writers and podcasters who have a massive following. I know they make a living doing what they do, and that they change people’s minds about ideas. I have respect for them. I believe what they are doing is important. It can make a difference. I, however, like my quiet anonymity on my little Front Porch. My podcast, “The Front Porch Podcast” has an estimated audience of, I believe, 15 right now. While that’s embarrassing for many, it’s really the way I like to envision it. It’s just me talking to a few folks. If you’d like to join them, I have 18 or 19 episodes up as of this writing, and you can find them here:
I believe I lost one of the few fans my podcast has today. And that’s a shame, but it is probably also my fault.
He believes I share too much of who I am, and it makes me appear too flawed. I don’t deny my flaws. In fact, I’m rather fond of them. He believed I had the potential to be a sort of cultural warrior. I don’t believe I do.
The following was the last of my writing he read. I’m posting it here to make it less likely that I misrepresent myself in the future.
Dear Listener
I never saw myself as a warrior. I’m more of a Vulcan than a Klingon.
I have no shame about who I am. I do have some pride in it. My experiences have shaped me into who I am.
How I learned what I learned is relevant to understanding both it, and why I believe it.
I don’t mind admitting that Captain Kirk began shaping who I became when I was 4 or 5 years old. I think it’s important to recognize both the power and value of Art.
Religion and Art
Where most people have religion, I have Art.
Religion has 3 main functions:
1. To answer questions we can’t answer by traditional means. What happens after I die tends to be high on the list.
2. To give one a moral code. This is good. That is bad. Nearly every religion will decide those things for you.
3. To offer comfort. Religion is lovely when someone dies. The idea that my father is in a better place would bring me comfort if I could believe it.
Art does the same things.
1. It answers questions that can’t be answered in traditional ways. One thing that I am fairly certain that will happen after I die is that the Art I have created will live on. Maybe only for a day or so, but it would continue to touch people.
It also gives me some beautiful ideas about what happens when we die. I don’t know that any of them are right, but it’s still nice to think about.
2. It provides a moral code. I learned my morality by learning to empathize with fictional characters. I have wept when Tom Robinson was convicted, and I have cheered when Sherlock Holmes caught Dr. Roylott. No one wrote me a set of rules. They showed me in books and movies and paintings and music and dance.
3. I find my comfort in Art. When Spock died, Dr. McCoy said, “He’s never really dead… as long as we remember him.” I understand that feeling.
Hemingway told me, “Man is not made for defeat; a man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”
Being Human
If I am open about who I am, I make myself more human. I am at least as flawed as anyone else. I am nothing special. I just believe some things about the world, and I hope I can get a couple more people to share the idea that homelessness, poverty, and hunger are failures of civilization. I would like people to believe that Us vs. Them is a bad idea. There is no Them. We are all Us.
If I can get a few more people to consider those ideas, that’s enough for me.
I don’t want to shout in a stadium… ever. I want to talk quietly on my Front Porch with anyone who cares to listen.
My
life is, in most measurable ways, much worse than it has been in
decades. I’m probably at just about the lowest point I have ever
experienced. The idea that it is going to improve much from here is
difficult to believe. I have no money. It’s unlikely that I will
ever have any. I have been on the edge of the abyss, both
intentionally and not, more times in the last 3 years than I have in
the 53 preceding them. Homelessness is never far from me. Death is
always at its heels.
From that point of view, I ought to be miserable. If I measured my happiness only in material form, my depression would have beaten me as surely as Rawlings once put one of my alter egos, Frank, on his back on the mat looking up through eyes obscured by his own blood dripping into them. (It’s in a story I wrote nearly 40 years ago. “The Boxer” was written when I was in materially better condition.)
And
for all that, I am, in many ways, happier than I have been in my
life. At this moment, I’m sitting at my computer, typing this. I
just finished another Star Trek book while sitting in the backyard
with my soda, a pack of cigarettes, and a very nice bowl donated to
me by my best friend’s boyfriend, who is also my landlord. Phil
Collins is singing “If Leaving Me Easy,” my soda is on the desk
to my right, and, for this moment, I can think of nothing else I
would rather be doing.
It
can be argued that I am lazy. That may even be true. I’m not
convinced, anymore, though, that Sloth is a sin. The universe can
continue to unfold whether I go and do unpleasant and exhausting
activities or not. I’m not hurting you by sitting here. You could
argue my food stamps are taking your tax dollars, and I have no right
to that. I would disagree. You know me, by now, well enough to know
I’m an Idealist. I believe all of us deserve the basics of living,
simply for being here, and because life is all too brief to waste it
on unhappiness. In either case, I am living within the system that
is now present, and I am finding my own way as best I can.
And
I am spending my time in ways I find to be best for me. I had no
alarm clock to destroy my morning. I still have them in my life, but
not with the daily horrors they once held. On Sunday, I had to face
a 3:30 AM alarm so that I could get to Prescott to teach my Defensive
Driving Class. The real fear wasn’t just the alarm. It was that I
might end up in the hospital in the time following it. It’s
dangerous for me any time I exhaust what is left of my body. I just
got out of the hospital, for the 13th time in 3 years,
last week. But I redoubled my efforts to ensure my health was as
good as I could make it, and I took the necessary precautions to
allow myself to help myself when I was so far from home. I had both
food and insulin with me at all times. I needed the food, but the
insulin was left untouched. I did well. And now I don’t have to
face that horror again until next Sunday. Until then, I am free to
choose what to do with the time that is given to me. And I find
happiness in that.
Would
I be better off going back to my last post-teaching job selling
DirecTV to unsuspecting old women? I would then be earning money,
but I would despise myself again. I’m not making the world better;
I’m making it worse. I’m depriving people of their money by offering
them something that isn’t worth what they’re spending. They submit
themselves to commercials that interrupt whatever they might have
been enjoying prior to their invasion. Netflix is cheaper by far,
and it’s free of commercials. I see no contribution to the world in
my efforts. I see only that I am trading the minutes of my life for
little green pieces of paper. I would rather have the minutes and do
with fewer dollars. I can do good things with my minutes. This is
one of them.
I
get to experience some happiness this way. Is there more I would
like? Certainly. I would be thrilled to have enough money to go to
California every time Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden play. I would
love to be able to have nicer equipment for my podcast and my videos.
I could really use a new backup drive for my music. A nice car
would be lovely. But, I can live without those things, and I can
find happiness in what is available to me.
Gandalf
told us, “All we have to decide is what we should do with the time
given us.” I
think we all need to be more capable of making those decisions. I
don’t believe life should be merely a struggle for survival. I don’t
think it has to be. I think we can do better as a civilization for
those who inhabit this planet, if we decide we want to do that. I
would never want to dictate to people what to do with the time given
to them. But I would very much like for all of us to be able to
decide.
How
can we help them do that?
I’m
not in charge of the world, and I make decisions for no one but
myself. But, for those who do have the power, I would recommend
this: Give all of our citizens enough money to ensure they can meet
their basic needs, and then let them each decide how to better than
themselves, and for some of us, how we can better the rest of
humanity. What are the logistics of this? I don’t pretend to be an
economist, but Andrew Yang, a fairly obscure Democratic Presidential
Candidate, has some ideas about how to do this. If you don’t like
his ideas, there are others that might accomplish the same goal that
you might consider. My concern isn’t the logistics; it’s the idea.
How can you object to the idea that our citizens ought, actually, to
be Free?
Freedom
isn’t merely the absence of coercion. Freedom is the ability to see
choices, and the education to select the choice most likely to bring
about the desired outcome.
If
there is one thing upon which all Americans, whether they be
Democrats or Republicans, Socialists or Capitalists, Atheists or any
variety of Theists, Anarchists and Legalists, all agree, it is that
we should be Free. Freedom is the first door that must be opened
before anyone can begin the endless search for happiness, for
meaning, for purpose, or for passion.
Let’s
free our citizens from the oppression of poverty. Let’s not worry
about what they will do with their lives once they are free. If we
really believe we must enforce The Puritan Work Ethic with the threat
of poverty, of homelessness, of death, I don’t see that we’re The
Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave. Life need not be unduly
unpleasant in order to be worthy of living. For this moment, I have
the Freedom to enjoy the Time that’s been given to me by my choices.
For this moment, so do you, lest you wouldn’t be reading this.
Freedom is the natural state of life. Let’s work together to find a
way to allow people to spend their lives doing what they want. Let’s
find a way to set humanity free.
What
have I decided to do with the time given to me? I’m going to try,
and almost certainly fail, to change the world. What will you do
with yours?
Calvin: When I grow up, I’m not going
to read the newspaper and I’m not going to follow complex issues and
I’m not going to vote. That way I can complain that the government
doesn’t represent me. Then, when everything goes down the tubes, I
can say the system doesn’t work and justify my further lack of
participation.
Hobbes: An ingeniously self –
fulfilling plan.
Calvin: It’s a lot more fun to blame
things than fix them.
That was written more than 25 years
ago. It fits the world I see around me now. It’s tempting to ignore
it all. Income Inequality, Corruption, Racism, Cruelty, and Hatred
seem to be everywhere. The sight of them is always sickening.
People argue about the science that tells us that the climate of the
earth is changing and represents a threat to our survival. They
attack 16 year old girls who want to try to avert that catastrophe
before it’s too late, and they invent covert motives for her.
They’ve made Science into a partisan issue, as though Gravity were a
left leaning lie. We search for dubious facts to support our
preferred beliefs instead of accepting the reality that Science shows
us. I want to turn away from it all and just read old comic strips.
But even those alert me to the fact that, if I’m going to be here on
Earth, I have a responsibility to try to make things better.
And, I am trying.
I write a blog that’s been viewed just
short of 3,000 times. I was proud of that for a time. Sometimes,
when my depression lets me up off the mat for a moment, I still am.
I have started a podcast in which I discuss issues of the day and
read the occasional short story. I comment on posts on Facebook. I
talk with my roommates. I try to spread my Idealistic ideas
everywhere I can. And… very little changes.
The little voice in my head
whispers, “You’re wasting your time, Fred. Go smoke a bowl, read a
book, watch a movie, take a nap, teach your classes, and hope that no
one hurts you. It’s enough just trying to make rent every month.
Remember that “…just surviving is a noble fight,” as Billy Joel
taught you 43 years ago.”
That
seems like the thing to do. I can’t seem to make a difference
anymore. Few people read what I write, and an alarmingly few listen
to my podcast. (I have only 2 plays on my last episode, and one of
them is my best friend who hasn’t even finished it. Even my roommates
don’t listen to it.)
How
can I make a difference? If I can change just one mind, or even get
just one person to consider things from a different point of view,
maybe, just maybe, I have not lived in vain.
If
I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If
I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one
fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
—Emily
Dickinson
If
you read something of mine that makes a difference to you, please
share it with someone else. Discuss it. Why am I right? Where am I
wrong? What is a better way to think about the issue? This way I
don’t have to feel the futility of shouting into the darkness of an
empty cave. You encourage me to keep trying.
These
are the things I believe, and the things that I would like to see
everyone believe.
Everyone
deserves the basics of a decent life. Which are the people who
deserve to die for lack of money?
We
must eliminate human suffering in all the ways we can.
Love
and Kindness, born of Empathy, are the Highest Form of Humanity.
If
you believe those things, too, perhaps you could help to spread those
ideas among your friends, and we could become what a Republican
President once suggested, “… a kinder, gentler America.”
Captain
Kirk told me that the three most important words we can say to
someone are not, “I love you,” but “Let me help.” I’ve done
what I can for the moment. I hope to find the courage to keep
trying. I hope you will do the same.
Fred's Thoughts 