Money makes the world go round. It is also the root of all evil. How many industries and jobs and just about most constructs of society exist because of money instead of satisfying a real need?
My job is nearly a perfect example. My wife and I own a pet sitting and dog walking company. We take care of people’s pets while they are at work or out of town, and the reason most people are doing those things is because of money. They need to earn money or go somewhere to relax because they’ve been earning money and they pay us money to take care of their pets. It is a strange pattern of circular behavior.
So much of this thing we call the economy is. In no real sense do we need most technology. It makes out lives better or easier only because it is built on top of other unnecessary technology. The question is how much of society could we tear apart without removing things that do help with the acquisition of food, water, and shelter? That is the biggest question there is.
It is probably true that we have already passed the diminishing return of technology. That further steps won’t make our lives better and may, in fact, make them worse. It is also true that it is likely impossible to pick the exact moment in time where people were at their height.
This is largely because technological advances don’t move at the same rate. Factories and pollution made life worse they also happened before something like the polio vaccine that made life better. Pinpointing an exact moment and saying we should go back to the technology of 1874 would remove an equal number of good and bad things from our lives.
I think this is why sci-fi movies paint the future as they do. People are largely living in tight social clusters that resemble medieval villages, take electric trains everywhere, have some sort of easy to use communication device, and live mostly around close friends and family. It can create interesting moments where a character goes to get water from a well and then hops on a super fast electric train to go to the shopping district in the city.
It also creates another interesting question. If we could visualize the perfect society and then work backwards from there what steps would we need to take today to get there and in that society would we still need money?
David Huzzard Writes 