Editor’s note: We had a visitor ask a question and thought others might have the same or similar questions.
How Copiosis addresses [wealth] inequality is unclear since property can be transferred and currently less than 10% of the people own more than 80% of the resources. How do you get the 10% to distribute the resources they own for free given a vague promise of future benefit?
There is no need to “get the 10%” to do anything actually.
The redistribution of everything (except actual cash) occurs naturally in Copiosis. Despite what the 99% (or the 90%) claim, the 1% – 10% know exactly what is happening and are suffering as much as everyone else. In some cases they are suffering more (see this post for more on that).
Some of these people want a solution just as much as the next person. These people will not have to choose to give up their ownership stake in resources. Copiosis will do it automatically. We describe how in an upcoming post called “What happens to Corporations in Copiosis?”
Copiosis doesn’t deal with “inequality” the way we think of it today. What it does is it neuters the power such inequality creates. The very rich will still be very rich in a Copiosis economy, but they can’t use that wealth to do the things they do today that create power inequality, suffering, poverty and the rest.
We like this definition of power. It makes possible to decouple power from wealth.
In Copiosis, wealth doesn’t facilitate power. The wealthy can’t pay people crappy wages, because they aren’t responsible for determining what people get paid. They can’t threaten people with economic ruin by firing them or ruining their careers because people no longer work for others in a way that gives “employers” economic power over the “employed”.
The concept of “employer” and “employed” disappears after transitioning to Copiosis. The wealthy can’t coerce people through poverty or the threat thereof to work in terrible and life threatening conditions. Why not? Because people no longer need work to survive….essentially, no one can force anyone to do anything in Copiosis.
That’s why we say Copiosis creates real freedom. Like “Power” we specifically define what we mean when we say “real freedom”:
A person who is free can do nothing if that’s what they want to do. A person who wants to spend all their time learning to paint, play video games all day, or fish or whatever, can. And they can do those things (or anything else) without going hungry, living on the street, or getting care for their body (or mind) if necessary. If they’re free that is. They can also get all the education they need or want to learn or improve any skill while doing whatever they want without having to earn money to get those things. And…the person exercising their freedom can do so without anyone else having to do anything they don’t want to do to support that person.
No one today enjoys real freedom. Even the rich.
Most importantly, the wealthy can’t use their money to coerce or influence government, the courts or the financial sector because these institutions don’t exist after the transition. Courts do, but they don’t operate after the transition the way they do today. We’re writing an essay about how Copiosis transforms Justice too.
What’s more, after the truth and reconciliation process – similar to what went on in South Africa after Apartheid – some of the very rich may have a hard time finding a community willing to support them. Copiosis becomes a great leveler in regards to ill-gotten gains of the past because all the productive power now rests with the people who actually do the work and produce stuff – not the people telling others what to produce, where to work and how much they get paid for that toil.
So a wealthy person pre-transition, still has his wealth in Copiosis, but that wealth has no power after the transition.
Copiosis Alchemy: making wealth admirable again
New wealthy people in Copiosis can only become that way by producing massive positive Net-Benefit, meaning they have created something or done something or enabled something that produced benefit to massive numbers of people and the planet. In effect, for the newly rich, wealth is a sign of respect and praise. Old wealth, for some, will be a sign of shame and disgrace probably.
So there will still be wealth disparity in Copiosis, but the story of wealth changes. Wealth no longer equates to power. What that means is how people think about the wealthy changes too.
By the way, everyone in Copiosis is “wealthy” by today’s standards, because they no longer earn a living. Their lives are freed from earning an income to pay mortgages and other bills, taxes, paying off student loans, food, and utilities.
With all that gone, all people can pursue their passions – just as the wealthy do today. I guess what I’m saying here is the meaning of wealth is transformed through our innovation.