Photo:
Pixaby
36 Silo worlds
Individual worlds of our own creation
vary according to our perceptions and experiences. Unresolved
differences leave our planet inhabited by a large collection of
separated silo worlds.
For example, the current market system
couples individual occupation to individual housing; you lose
your job, you lose your house. The virus pandemic is straining
that model: when through no human fault people can’t go to work,
why should that cause a devastating crash in the housing system,
putting property at risk of not being maintained?
The previous article called for
“brand-new thoughts,” inviting a kinder, gentler world. Today’s
shifting socio-economic terrain is an opportunity for
improvement: better ways of supporting each other without
bullying or dictatorship.
Continuing the Martian invasion analogy,
this is the time to drop old grudges and power struggles along
with old rules about property. There have been pilot
programs making homeless people stewards of vacant houses, to the
benefit of the people and of the houses. Suspending traditional
“ownership” put resources to good economic use, lessening the
burdens on the home dwellers and the banks.
Now I am imagining a thorough uncoupling
of individual production and consumption. Our production system
makes sure work gets done and everybody has occupation
(traditional or otherwise). Our consumption system makes sure
housing is effectively occupied and everybody is housed. Both
systems can run at large scale so that no lone individual bears
the brunt of economic shifts like the present job
disruptions.
Food production and consumption are also
decoupled from each other. In times of bad harvests, the job
system works on shifting work assignments while the distribution
system reallocates food supplies. The systems absorb the
aggregate shock without putting narrow segments of the population
through trauma. No individual person loses a house or
starves.
There is a lot of scrambling to escape
the above disaster. I propose inventing a permanent large-scale
system that keeps the houses occupied and the available food
distributed among all the population, especially while people
find their places in the shifting work force.
It will appear just as hard to overhaul
our market economy as it was to evolve it in the first place.
Reinventing cannot be completed in one season; the dream will
take time to manifest itself. Let us keep the vision. If most
people on one side of the boat row forward (invent) and most
people on the other side row backward (curb greed), eventually
our boat will turn around.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2020 Kent Busse
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