Ah, the rich. They have few worries. They can pay people to take care of their problems. They enjoy the finest things.
Some people, particularly those on the left, believe that rich people are to blame for the world’s problems.
I don’t think they are. In Copiosis, the rich will get richer, and that’s not a problem. Here’s why.
First, everyone in Copiosis becomes far richer than they are today. You’re out of debt and can’t get back into debt. Your house, condo, or apartment is yours. Student loans are eliminated. If you want to continue your education, that’s provided to you at no cost.
Second, money you’ve been spending on healthcare, insurance, and taxes you get to keep. Many formerly ordinary expenses are a thing of the past. Your grocery costs are far less than you pay today because your basic food is yours at no cost. If you want luxury foods, you’ll have to offer NBR for that, but it will require far less NBR than the amount of money you’d spend today. Dining out at many restaurants will be at no cost too, if they offer basic, not luxury foods.
So if you’re not wealthy today, in Copiosis, you are in the sense that many of the things you had to earn money for are now available to you without having to pay for them. All that money you would spend on these things is now free to be used for whatever luxuries you want. What’s more, you’re free to choose any occupation you want. You don’t have to rely on a job to earn a living. You’re rich.
Of course, the same applies to rich people. In Copiosis, they’re even more rich than they were before. Taxes go away. All the property they are paying for is immediately theirs, free and clear. Whatever debt they have is eliminated. Their educational expenses, basic food, and medical care—like yours—is provided to them at no cost. No more insurance, either. Everything you enjoy, they get to enjoy too.
Today the wealthy are also powerful. They can influence society by paying to create laws and policies favorable to their interests. In many cases interests means not losing the money I do have and making more of it doing what I am currently doing. In fact, the United States was founded on this basic principle.
In Copiosis, wealth has no power. A rich person has no power to sway any decision, because wealth is expressed in terms of Net-Benefit Reward (NBR) not cash. The only thing anyone can do with NBR is obtain luxuries.
There’s no government in Copiosis, so there’s no legislative influence to buy. Even if there were, NBR is non-transferrable. Buying influence means giving your money to an elected official with the expectation that your support will get you special treatment. NBR eliminates those transactions.
Property wealth simply means more opportunity to benefit others with that property. Property in and of itself has no value unless it’s highly desirable. Even then, a person with a highly desirable property could sell it, but the NBR he requires doesn’t come to him, so selling property seems crazy. Value in property is created when it is used to make people and the planet better off. So if your property is a cigarette manufacturing facility, well, you’re not likely to get richer with that. The net benefit of creating cigarettes, is likely to be far too negative to make it worthwhile for people to work in the factory, for advertisers to tout such a product, and for stores to stock them.
The rich can’t lord their wealth over others and make them do their bidding by paying them a wage. That’s because no one’s income is dependent on any other person. A rich person’s NBR, like yours or mine, is worthless to anyone else because it is non-transferrable. What a rich person can do is create opportunities that may attract others wanting to be part of that opportunity. There will be lots of opportunities in Copiosis, far more than today.
The rich tend to be pretty bright people, too. If they use their smarts to make people or the planet better off, and those solutions help a lot of people or benefit large portions of the planet, rich people can become richer. Things they need—capital goods and labor—to make their ideas reality they don’t have to pay for, so it’s easier for them to make things happen in Copiosis.
Of course you, too, can become richer if you do something similar. Things needed to make your ideas reality come at no cost to you, as well. Both you and rich people just have to convince people that your idea is a good one, that it will benefit people or the planet, thereby generating NBR. So in regard to getting rich in NBR terms, the Copiosis playing field is far more level than what we have today.
Some fear the consolidation of power. No one can consolidate power in Copiosis. There is no power to consolidate massively enough to cause systemic damage. Some fear hoarding of natural resources. That’s not possible in Copiosis. Even if one person could own all the resources, he still needs others to do something with them. In Copiosis everyone is reacquainted with the age-old truth of humanity: We’re all in this together, and we all depend on one another for our wonderful lives.
That includes the rich.
