Open Up

Kyle Butz

Undergraduate/Undeclared

Today, the material structure of our society has its foundation in the monetary system. Monetary gain or profit is awarded when people compete against one another—acting in their own self interest. Hypothetically, this competition should result in an efficient allocation of resources. In reality the monetary system perpetuates scarcity. The unlimited wants and needs of consumers in a world with a limited amount of resources serves as a window of profit for corporations. Considering what is best for the public good or the environment is secondary to monetary gain. Profits drive corporations to perpetuate the condition of scarcity, which gives rise to poverty, hunger, strategic corruption, labor abuse and exploitation, power concentration, social stratification, war, and technological paralysis.

Technological innovations that would direct society towards a more efficient, abundant, and sustainable economy are limited and stifled by multinational corporations out of their own self interest for continual profiting. There is no conspiracy. There is no group of financial bankers meeting behind closed doors to plot. There is only a narrowing collection of corporations seeking to maximize profits and minimize costs. Exxon and Wal-Mart now have more purchasing power than nations such as Poland, Norway, Finland, and Greece. In 1960 the income ratio of the world’s top fifth earners to the bottom fifth stood at 30 to 1; by 1998 the concentration of wealth reached a gap of 74 to 1. From 1970 to 1985, global GDP rose 40 percent while global poverty rose 17 percent. From 1985 to 2000, the world saw an increase of 18 percent of those living on less than one dollar a day. From feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism to globalization, humanity had to shift its values to allow the use of technology to transform its economic systems for increased prosperity. We have to make that shift now.

We must redesign and reinvent our cultural values around the globe in accordance to the carrying capacity of the Earth. Superstitions, political ideologies, and religions are irrelevant when focusing on the intelligent management of our resources. Since resources are our path to prosperity, we must break down the financial barriers of the monetary system surrounding these resources by eliminating scarcity. How can we kill scarcity? Scarcity is eliminated by using technology to create abundance. Scientists, technicians, and engineers are currently serving the monetary system, because projects won’t be funded if it’s not profitable in the monetary sense.

Here in America we have the finest universities, research facilities, and lab equipment; however, we have no national commitment. We need a change in consciousness. Humanity needs to look to the invention of the pencil, which allowed one to solidify ideas on a piece of paper for communication. The pencil is just one product of technology amongst many other creations—bifocals, electricity, motor vehicles, calculators, telephones, computers. Technology has served to free humanity from labor through efficiency and automation. It’s not the pundits’ or politicians’ job to improve human life; technology has the sole ability to increase the standards of living in a society.

Political candidates and parties of all ideologies have no relevance for humanity’s economic and environmental prosperity. Candidates elected to the legislative and executive offices of government serve to perpetuate and preserve the status quo of the static institutions and multinational corporations that elected them; thus, government is fundamentally corrupt. Furthermore, the candidates that are sincere lack the technical capabilities to solve societal problems. Our government’s sole capabilities consist of managing budgets, declaring war, and passing laws to cope with government’s own failures. Laws, police, prisons are examples of patchwork legislation and enforcement, which has only lead to an increase in racial disparity, wealth inequality, and crime. The American political process is a façade; government represents just one of the many ailing institutions that are the direct result of the material structure of our society. The political process must be boycotted and abandoned.

Humans must replace political activism with the research and development of helpful technology, which has the potential to end scarcity, poverty, crime, war, law, and employment. The public must begin to view the scientific method as a near universal functionality that can be applied to new areas of society in ways we haven’t even considered. The scientific method should be used to create an abundance of natural resources, increase efficiency, and automate manual labor; therefore, humanity would be able to escape the conditions of scarcity and enslaving employment.

For instance humans could apply the scientific method to create technological advancements in the area of energy. One hour of sunlight at high noon contains more energy than the entire world consumes in a year; we’d only need to harness 0.01 percent of that energy to power the entire planet forever. The Department of Energy has admitted that wind fully harvested in just three of the fifty states could power the entire nation. Tidal power could serve 34 percent of the United Kingdom’s energy needs. Around half of the world’s energy could come from wave power. Geothermal alone could power the entire planet virtually forever.

Applying the scientific method to transportation has led to the creation of electric cars capable of traveling over 100 miles per hour for 220 miles on a single charge, but oil industries like Texaco own the battery patents. Maglev trains, which are propelled and suspended in air by magnets, require 2 percent of the energy used during plain travel. Japan’s outdated maglev trains, or “bullet trains,” travel 361 miles per hour. Maglev technology has the potential to travel up to 4,000 miles per hour—underwater. With this technology one could travel from Washington D.C. to Beijing in two hours or take an extended lunch break in Los Angeles traveling from New York.

The monetary system is driving humanity to rapidly escalate its societal problems, while decreasing the standards of living. Society must abandon all religions, ideologies, and national allegiances as they are irrelevant to, and incapable of solving, societal problems. Embracing technology as the means to change the world will free humanity from employment, poverty, hunger, strategic corruption, labor abuse and exploitation, power concentration, social stratification, and war. The time for a cultural value shift is now.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/43025.pdf
http://www.bwea.com/marine/resource.html
http://www.oreg.ca/docs/IEA_docs/IEA_Annual_Report_2007.pdf
http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf
http://www.et3.com/intro.htm



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