Ideal World

What are your individual ideal worlds? Everyone must have some idea of their own little perfect world. What would it be like?

Everyone, throughout history has had their ideal of Utopia.

Mine involves a little bit of work by the people in it, and I believe could easily be achieved if people really wanted it to.

Firstly, we need to get rid of all forms of nationalism, patriotism, prejudice based on tribe, race, colour, culture, sex, etc. This is done quite simply actually by people stopping thinking they are better than others. When everyone realises that they are exactly the same as everyone else in the world, no better, no worse. Whether you believe in creationism, in which case you believe in God creating the first man and woman and us all being descended from them; or you believe in evolution, in which case we are all descended from a small tribe based in Ethiopia, we have to accept that we are all related at some point, and so cannot be held different from others based on where we were born, what language we speak, what football team we support, or any other manufactured reason. We could easily all learn to speak a single language, chosen by popular consent. It may not be wise to use a current language in use, as this may cause problems between those who speak it as a native language and those who have to learn it anew, so maybe we should renew a dead language such as Latin, or a newly invented language, that all have to learn from new.

Once this is done, we now have one human race, instead of separate countries, and as such we would naturally have one governing body overseeing all people equally. Through this single government, the taxes raised from the richer countries can be used to irrigate the deserts of the world and to turn previously uninhabitable land into farm lands and new cities for people to live in. Of course, with only one government, this also means no more wars (as no nations to argue with each other) or hunger (food is equally distributed to all people throughout the world).

We would do away with the reliance of money and appearance in how people are judged, this has the added benefit of ridding us of the beauty industry and saving the population millions of pounds a day. By getting rid of peoples’ reliance on money as a judgement of who you are, this allows us to do away with must of the greed and corruption that a monetary system brings. By doing away with appearance as a judgement of who you are, this allows all people, whatever colour, whatever disfigurement to be accepted equally by all as stops this foolish belief that beauty must be good, and ugly is bad and forces people to accept that good can come from ugly people and things and bad may come from beautiful people and things too.

We must also do away with the reliance on oil based energy, using solar energy through panels in orbit (which is already possible, but won’t be used because this provides free energy for all the population and puts the energy companies out of business).

Free enterprise is not completely removed. Companies are still allowed to buy and sell many things and to make profits from doing so, but many things that are considered essentials would be made free to everyone: energy; water; health; communications; public transport; a free and unbiased media; etc so that a certain quality of life is guaranteed to all, paid for through taxes of people working and businesses making profits. However, business profiteering would be curtailed to a small extent. There would be a ceiling profit margin (for example of 40%, but to be determined by popular consent of all) to prevent companies from making excessive profits and cheating customers.

Capitalism would still be allowed (under the above restrictions) and the taxes raised from the rich areas would be equally spread throughout the world, based on the population number (which would mean that at present areas like America that produce higher tax revenue, would in effect be subsidising areas like india where less tax is raised, but have higher population density).

Lifelong education would be free to all. Anyone who chose may continue studying for their entire lives without being charged for it.

People would be taught from a young age to respect and look after each other and society, to help everyone to progress, rather than for an individual to progress at the expense of another. Research and design for many areas would be in the public arena, encouraging scientists, developers and scholars to pool their resources and work for the good of all, rather than for the profits of a company. This would mean that by working together, great discoveries could be made, and instead of being kept and profited from by individual companies, they can be used for humanity as a whole.

The new governing system would be a true democracy, unlike the systems we have now, where the government truly listened to and represtented the population, with closer ties to and consultation with them. There would be no tolerance whatsoever of corruption in the form of nepotism, or the person with the most money having political influence or power because there would be no party system and members of the government would always be expected to vote for the good of their constituents and for the people as a whole, rather than for pressure groups or political, social or economic bias and if it were felt that they were not acting for the best of all then they would be dismissed immediately and replaced by someone else who would. There would be no extra added political influence in this governance for the former rich countries, but representation would be decided by population, with one representative per X amount of people, no matter where that population was in terms of the former countries.

There would also be careful legislation to prevent "cult of personality", as although popular short-term, charismatic leaders tend to cause more problems than they fix. While remaining a democracy, every effort would be taken to avoid charismatic individuals from gaining too much power. Charisma is not necessarily the best trait for a leader, it will invariably make them the most popular with the population, but does not mean that they are the best person to govern (in fact the opposite is more often the case, as their personality and popularity often leads to problems swuch as scandals, corruption, etc).

There would be one, conjoined police force, worldwide. So there would be no probelms with extradition, no chance for criminals to escape detection by travelling to other parts of the world, and with a global DNA database, with every person giving a DNA sample at birth, many more crimes would be solved, more efficiently.

Should any problems arise from peoples of former areas or countries wishing to regain their independence again then they would be permitted to do so, however, they would not be permitted to trade with the rest of the world, as they are the ones that are claiming to not be part of the human race.

Should military trouble crop up anywhere, there would be a united, global army, made up of representatives from evry area equally, which would be there to prevent illegal armed uprising or crimes of such nature. However, these armed forces would primarily be used for peaceful means, such as disaster relief, etc, and force would only be used in absolute extreme cases (there will always be people that believe that all questions can be answered with a gun or bomb).

Well that’s the bones of it, I am sure that I could expand on it ad nauseum if I was given enough time.

your socialist views are extremly admirable yet you undermine your own pilosophys with untanagble ideas.how can you possibly have a world where everyone is equal yet still have capitalism?
the whole idea is ludicrous.
yes we could all be equal but then again a pig might fly into my kitchen,carve itself into slices and dive under the grill.
or we could just nick a duck from the park and put it into a spring roll ugh

I agree with happyjo that real equality cannot exist within capitalism. Capitalism always involves a minority owning a majority of the wealth, which can't lead to equal access. I think, Nick, that if your ideas were put into practice they would eventually lead to a global version of the old Soviet system. The problem, in my view, is that having single, global authorites for police or distributing income from taxes would inevitably slide into a very powerful elite. The safeguards you suggest to avoid or remove corruption suggest that you realise this would be a danger. However well intentioned to begin with, people within that organisation would have too much responsibility for anyone to realistically cope with. Also, single authorities like this may not be able to take into account cultural or regional variations. (I'm not a cultural relativist, by the way, so I don't think that forced marriages, for example, are right for one culture and wrong for others. Some things are just wrong for everyone!). Please correct me if I've misinterpreted or misunderstood you, though. I think you're right to place a high emphasis on getting rid of predjudice, snobbery etc.

I'd describe myself as an anarcho-socialist, which means that I'd advocate anarchy, with democratic measures in place to prevent chaos. In practice, this would mean a society without private ownership of land, factories etc. All resources for the means of production would be owned communally, which means that It's the old Marxist maxim of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'. This would mean that money would no longer be needed, and people would be able to take what they wanted from 'shops'. Common ownership would also mean that concepts like national boundaries, competing companies (except competing to be the best or most efficient, rather than the most profitable) would be redundant.
Abolishing private ownership of the means of production does not mean abolishing personal ownership of houses, furniture, CDs, cigarette lighters etc. Everyone needs personal property, and the theft of it in our society is ultimately caused by scarcity, which wouldn't need to exist in the sort of society I advocate.
This would mean that there would have to be an equillibrium between the amount of commodities produced and the amount which people want to consume. A society in which everyone wants four ferraris but no-one is prepared to build them couldn't function for long. In our capitalist society, there is alot of wasted work which doesn't contribute to human happiness (such as weapons manufacture). Any financial industries (insurance, accounts etc) also only exist to perpetuate capitalism rather than satisfy needs and desires. So, overall there would be less work needed in an anarcho-capitalist society to produce a greater amount of goods. I think that this applies even when you take into account the greater production needed to bring poorer regions like Africa up to a decent standard of living. Regions like Africa are held back by capitalism because it's not cost efficient for capitalist companies to invest in poorer regions.
As for decision-making, there should be democratic structures in place to ensure equality of opportunity and accountability for those in positions of responsibility. I would prefer for these to be as small-scale as possible - for example, a democratic committee in a town would decide issues like whether or not it needs a by-pass. Any large, power-based structures like a state are inherently undemocratic, and would be redundant.

Firstly, please remember that the topic is “your, individual, ideal world” not “someone suggest one and everyone else pick it apart”

But seeing as my ideal world is being picked apart, I may as well try and defend it (somehow).

I disagree that equality cannot exist with capitalism, only with the form of capitalism that we have been forced to accept so far. If people can be taught to still trade and make money without the greed and feeling the need to have others suffer in order for you to progress, then capitalism can be made to work within the society. It is only where people take it to extremes and insist on making extreme and unreasonable profits and become so greedy that others (including their customers) are made to suffer so that the capitalist may prosper that these problems ensue. By teaching people to respect and work for the good of society as a whole, then capitalism can be used for the benefit of society rather than against it.

I am merely attempting a practical and realistic (in my view) option, as there have always been, and will always be, merchants, and in trade has always been incredibly important to the growth and development of all societies throughout history. Trade produces the taxation that allows the government to spend on social welfare, it encourages exploration (not just physical travel, but intellectual exploration too) and development of new ideas. It was trade that allowed ideas to spread and be brought to other areas that hadn’t heard of them before, and it was trade that encouraged people to seek out new lands, new people (and unfortunately kill or enslave them, but that was also due to the belief of people that they were better than others). Trade has also always been used as an important political tool in dealing with others (do as we say or we’ll put the price up). Trade and traders will always be around, no matter what we do, so it is important that it is incorporated (if you will forgive the pun) into the political and governing system, or else the people will reject that system in favour of one that may be worse but still allows for some trade.

I don’t like the idea of capitalism myself (you may have guessed that I am somewhat of a socialist in my ideals), but I have to accept that it a necessary evil, and so should be adapted to be of benefit to all, rather than to the few, and this can only be done by changing the way that people think about it and convincing the capitalists that they would benefit themselves from using their capitalism for the benefit of all in society rather than just themselves.

The comment from Mike that a single authority may not take into account cultural or regional differences is fair, because I did forget to point out that in my initial idea migration would be a moot idea. As every area is now free from intimidation, poverty and prejudice, various areas (think the former countries or areas) could be set aside for different groups that wish to live in different ways. There will always be differing ideas of how people wish to live their lives and where they wish to live, so under the worldwide government of humanity certain areas could be set aside for those that wish to live separate from others. There could be an area for people who wish to live by traditional Islamic culture, one for Jewish culture, one for Christian culture, one for hedonism, one for people wishing to live in commune-style culture, etc and people could freely migrate between these areas and choose which kind of culture they wish to live in and not need to have small pockets of these cultures mixing with contradicting ideas in close proximity. Everyone is free to live the kind of life they wish in specified areas and are free to change their mind and move to another area anytime they wish to experience or live in a different style of life.

One of the major dangers that we face at present when it comes to “advancement of countries” is that it tends to be assumed that the advancement means a conversion to a more Westernised lifestyle, and this is not true. Many cultures would be ideal to live within if only the people had more wealth to afford what they needed. This is what often causes the friction within developing countries, where the population do wish to advance, take advantage of technological and commodity advancement, but reject the need to completely convert to a US / Westernised culture in order to gain them. My way would allow all to gain the advancement for life that they wish, without having socio-political change forced upon them as well.

I suppose that whenever we imagine an ideal world we become its dictator, in a sense!

I would doubt that the capitalist class could ever shape a more equal or benevolent form of capitalism. This is because their interests are inherently opposed to those of the working class.
(By the way, by 'working class' I mean anyone who doesn't live off the profit which derives from the work of others. This would include unemployed people and people who see themselves as 'middle class' because of a fairly high income or priviledged background). Capitalists need to maximise profits for their company to remain competitive, and this means minimising wages, the number of staff, perks, decent working conditions etc. Workers, on the other hand, quite rightly want higher wages, more colleagues to share the workload, better perks, better working conditions etc.
As for trade always being a necessity, I'd say that it was necessary in earlier centuries/decades, while capitalism was still developing. Now that we've got the technology and resources to distribute commodities, equipment etc., the need for trade as a 'prime mover' in society has become out of date.
Sorry to pick, Nick, and I'm sure that if your ideal society came into fruition, it would be much happier than what we've got now.

Pick away my friend! I don't imagine for a moment that I am even close to correct in this, and without input from others, I would never be able to see the flaws in my own arguments or ideas would I?