Lately @dantheman outlined a very good question How to Allocate the Worlds Resources Fairly? In that he invited us to go on an imaginary travel how it could look if we start from new and allocate the worlds resources fairly.
Here the question comes not only how this could look like, but first of all which resources and to who?
In the following I also want to invite you on an imaginary travel and outline more about the who. To start with, just let us drop everything we know and imagine the following:
How could it look if we allocate the worlds resources fairly considering all beings?
But first of all what lead me to this question?
to quote @dantheman:
If we start from new:
¨No one has Earned Anything
The first fact that the people would have to address is that no one has any history by which they can claim to have "earned" anything. There is no basis for entitlement. All men, women, and children would have equal standing.¨
Sounds logic, but haven't we forgotten something important? Human beings are a minority on this planet and human beeings, even if they are very powerful, still are very depended on other beings to life a live that its worth to be called living. Just imagine a world without plants and animals. Only humans water air and rocks.
Would you want to live in such a world for a long time?
Ok maybe somebody wants, just take someone that wants to life on Mars. But for sure even he would miss something after a while. In nature everything is in dependency. There is nothing that can be called independent. If we influence one species, this will influence another species and in the end ultimately us. Everything has its function in nature and is perfectly designed to fulfill its purpose.
There is nothing that can be called superior
Just imagine how bad a job we do if we want to take the task of a plant to create oxygen through using sunlight, or imagine what effort it would be to fulfill the task of a certain bacterial. Of course we humans have the capability to use technologies, but mostly nature is far far superior to our technology.
Just imagine how your life would look like if everything must be done through human technology.
Back to the topic, every species has its purpose in nature and humans are a part in nature. Yes we may forget that, but we truly are :). So why not consider all beings fairly in the distribution of resources?
My point is not so much if animals or plants can own something, my point is that if we do not consider them, we will naturally do harm, in the end also to our self. Ultimately we are dependent on them to life a life that can be called complete. Everything in nature has a purpose and its balance. If we remove or reduce some part of it drastically it will affect us. Therefore we should not forget them. Nobody should have the right to exploit other beings including animals or the nature itself. There must always be a balance between taking and giving. If not it end up like cancer destroying the ground it grows on.
¨Property rights presupposes the own respect others property. Plants and animals cannot do that and have no use for money. ¨ @dantheman
Even if animals / plants cannot ¨claim¨ their property, sometimes in away they do, many animals have their district they protect and often they also respect the district of others, even plants have a space they claim through simply standing on it, we as humans have the responsibility to to do it in their name. Take for example nature reservations.
Yes @dantheman is right. One thing really differentiates us, thats the use of money.
But just for imagination, lets assume, that for living in harmony each species on this planet needs a certain space to thrive, why not allocate the money equally to all species according to the space they need to thrive, so that they could ¨afford¨ to have this space.
Beings able to handle money like humans could take care of the money for beings that are not able to handle money. With that money natural reservates could be financed and incentives for ecological farming / handling of property could be given.
How could this look like more in detail?
Lets take a basic income currency with 1% money inflation per year. 20% of that is given to human beings 80% is given to the rest of nature. Human beings are chosen to speak and act in behalf of the different animal and plant kingdoms and of course ultimately in behalf of nature itself. Ultimately the money is used to provide space for these beings, because what they need most is simply space without much human intervention. But especially in the beginning we could use some part of this money to give incentives to transform the current exploitative and harming economy to a fair and sustainable economy that respects all beings.
Just to mention what we could do:
- Give incentives to grow organic food by using permaculture technices
- give incentives if someone sells organic food grown with using permaculture techniques
- give incentives for chemical free products
- give incentives to let the nature (on a part of the property) just thrive on their own
- give incentives to make nature reservates and pay for employees
- give incentives for using clean solutions (air filter, etc)
- give incentives to plant trees
- give incentives to make forests out of deserts
This incentives will not only do good for nature, but also bring incentives to use the currency itself.
Why I mentioned permaculture and not only organic food? Because just having organic food without chemicals is not enough. Each being needs certain beings in his neighborhood to fully thrive. If one is missing imbalances will naturally occur.
Writing this I became to know about my own ignorance... so back to the original question from @dantheman:
How to Allocate the Worlds Resources Fairly?
Even if we consider all beings, we still forget the biggest part of nature. What you will think? Is he now fully going crazy? Maybe yes maybe not, but just imagine how a world would look like without air, water, sun and earth / land. Hard to imagine how life could look like without this or? If we talk about resources dont we talk on the end over water, sun light / stored sun light, air and earth?
Just lets make a though experiment like Albert Einstein loved to do.
Instead of distributing an basic income / money to beings, we could distribute directly to these elements, water, air, fire / sun and earth /land or if you want so the planet earth itself.
You may think, but how on earth can a rock or the water can handle money?
Yes, maybe they cant directly, but the same way like with animals human can in behalf of them. For now lets say, we distribute money equally to all these elements. So 1/4 to air, 1/4 to sun, 1/4 to water and 1/4 to earth / land.
With the money we could now give incentives to keep the air, the water or the land clean. Give incentives to grow trees to create new fresh air, give incentives to make better use of the sunlight, also the stored sunlight in oil, coal or wood. Give incentives to re-naturalize rivers and wast water treatment support permaculture projects just to mention some. This also could be done locally. For every region of the planet a caretaker could be chosen to speak and act on behalf of this piece of the planet and through that to ultimately speak on behalf of the planet itself. This system would also be more resistant to cheating, because unlike with human identities its hard to claim the same part of the planet twice, at least not for a long time...
Just imagine how our thoughts would change.
Instead of thinking what can i do with the land, we could ask the question what can the land / nature / planet do with me.
Oh my god, just again I became aware to my own ignorance while writing this.
Back to @dantheman question:
How to Allocate the Worlds Resources Fairly
Isnt our imagination the biggest resource we have. In the end all we create and do starts with our imagination or a lack of it. Now we could look at it the other way round. Instead of asking how we could distribute our resources fairly, we could ask how we could distribute limited so called physical resources to our creative visions of imagination. But maybe lets discuss that in another topic :)
Hope you enjoyed!
Als always, please feel to comment or give feedback, I m nearly always happy of all of them :)
If you want feel free to also read about my other articles like:
Happy steeming!