Why not let people ride without helmets, drive without seat belts, smoke, use fluoride-free dental care, and allow their children to run around without vaccinations? Eat all the sugar, drink all the alcohol you want. You want to sit around all day and watch TV or play that video game? Great!
All I ask is that we have all that in a Copiosis society. That way, the choices you make and the responsibility for those choices fall on you and you alone. Meanwhile, the problems your choices create become opportunities for others to become wealthy. And for you to learn a lesson or two.
Today, people who choose to overeat, drive or ride without personal protective equipment, etc., represent a tremendous cost to society. Dealing with emergency traumas from gunshots, accidental and otherwise; traffic accidents where people are drinking and driving without seat belts or riding motorcycles without helmets; managing deadly disease outbreaks which are preventable; employing societal resources in long-term management of preventable chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, COPD, etc.—the choices behind these outcomes cost societies hundreds of millions of dollars. In debt-based economies dealing with those consequences is socially expensive.
What’s even more expensive is how those choices constrain what else we could be doing:
- We can’t solve hunger because it costs too much to feed everyone.
- Everyone can’t get a great education because it costs too much for many people.
- Everyone can’t get top-tier proactive and personalized medical care because it would be too expensive.
- We can’t quickly shift from fossil fuels to renewables because the shift would be too destructive to the economy and cost too much. Besides, we have sunk all this investment in the fossil fuel industry, i.e., too many people’s fortunes are locked into sucking oil from the Earth to make the shift
- I can’t put enough food on the table because it costs too much for my employer to raise my wages.
- I can’t get a better education because I can’t afford to quit my shitty job.
- I can’t do that thing that lights my fire because I have to provide food, shelter, education, and health care for my family.
In traditional systems, none of these things can be done because we’re spending all the money doing things that HAVE to be done, including managing the effects people’s choices have on overall society. In Copiosis, the things we can’t do because there’s not enough money become doable because it doesn’t cost money anymore.
What’s possible when cost isn’t a factor
We can solve hunger because people aren’t limited by the cost of resources required to do that. Everyone can get a great education because the cost of people providing the education and educational resources to deliver said education doesn’t exist.
Everyone can get their medical needs met because there are no more cost-restrictions preventing people who want to become medical professionals from becoming that, because insurance companies no longer exist creating an unnecessary cost layer on top of care, and because providing care becomes a passion, not a job that must be “cost-contained” so others can earn a profit from “healthcare”. Profit investors use to feed, house, educate and provide medical care to their families.
We can make the shift to renewables because choices to go in that direction are no longer constrained by politics, competitive roadblocks, and fears about job destruction and price increases. Instead, people can join together and do what makes sense, not what makes money.
Families can put food on the table regardless of how much they “earn” because food access is a human right, not something you buy. Employers no longer have to worry about “wages” because “wages” no longer exist.
Neither do “employees”. Employee-related costs go out the window. “Jobs” don’t exist either, so troubles individuals deal with jobs go away: figuring out the job market, unemployment, underemployment, glass ceilings, fear of getting fired, occupational boredom, 401Ks, Roth IRAs…all those things disappear.
Anyone who wants to get an education can, because access to education is a human right, not something you buy or inherit through your family connections. So everyone is able to become nearly anything they want to be, just by investing time in learning.
Since basic necessities are provided to all, there’s plenty of time to get good at that thing that lights your fire. So you can add value to other people’s lives by doing that thing you love to do.
And what about those people who want to be free, who put their life at risk by riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or choosing not to vaccinate their child? They are free to make those choices, and live with the consequences.
The downside…If there is one
I can’t predict what those consequences would look like. It would depend on the community where they live. If a bunch of anti-vaxers choose to live in a community, and measles wipes out half of their children, that might be a consequence.
If they choose to ride motorcycles without helmets and splatter their skulls across the pavement in an accident, that might be a consequence. Same goes for smoking, doing drugs, driving without seat belts, all the reckless behavior humans do.
What’s great about Copiosis is that your reckless behavior becomes the impetus for others to become rich. In Copiosis, everyone is rich compared to people living in capitalist societies because everyone’s basic necessities are provided at no cost to them. Beyond that, people who make other people or the planet better off become even richer.
Paradoxically, self destructive choices offer opportunities for others to improve the lives of those you leave behind. You no longer cost society. Instead you provide society with cases that could save millions of others, thereby making millions better off.
Who knows what opportunities could come from those who offer themselves as lung test dummies, motor vehicle crash test dummies, and overeater-no-exerciser-dummies, i.e., living, breathing test cases?
I’ve always believed in personal freedoms. The challenge with personal freedoms in a democracy ruled by capitalism and traditional governments is society has to bear enormous costs of those freedoms. In a Copiosis society, costs become opportunities and people’s lives get better and better. That’s a civilization I can’t wait to experience!