The Lung Test Dummy

dummiesI believe in personal freedom.  I also believe in personal responsibility.  So when it comes to your freedom to choose what you should and shouldn’t be able to do, I say go for it.

Why not let people ride without helmets, drive without seat belts, smoke, use fluoride-free dental care, and allow their children to run around without vaccinations?  Eat all the sugar, drink all the alcohol you want.  You want to sit around all day and watch TV or play that video game? Great!

All I ask is that we have all that in a Copiosis society.  That way, the choices you make and the responsibility for those choices fall on you and you alone.  Meanwhile, the problems your choices create for others become opportunities for them to get rich.

Today, people who choose to overeat, drive or ride without personal protective equipment, etc., represent a tremendous cost to society.  Dealing with emergency traumas from gunshots, accidental and otherwise;  traffic accidents where people are drinking and driving without seat belts or riding motorcycles without helmets; managing deadly disease outbreaks which are preventable; employing societal resources in long-term management of preventable chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, COPD, etc.—the choices behind these outcomes cost societies hundreds of millions of dollars in debt-based economies managed through traditional government systems.  In such economies, dealing with those consequences is expensive.

What’s even more expensive is how those choices constrain what else we could be doing:

  • We can’t solve hunger because it costs too much to feed everyone.
  • Everyone can’t get a great education because it costs too much for many people.
  • Everyone can’t get top-tier proactive and personalized medical care because it would be too expensive.
  • We can’t quickly shift from fossil fuels to renewables because the shift would be too destructive to the economy and cost too much.  Besides, we have sunk all this investment in the fossil fuel industry, i.e., too many people’s fortunes are locked into siphoning oil from the Earth to make the shift
  • I can’t put enough food on the table because it costs too much for my employer to raise my wages.
  • I can’t get a better education because I can’t afford to quit my shitty job.
  • I can’t do that thing that lights my fire because I have to provide food, shelter, education, and health care for my family.

In traditional systems, none of these things can be done because we’re spending all the money doing things that HAVE to be done, including managing the effects people’s choices have on society at large.  In Copiosis, the things we can’t do because there’s not enough money become doable because it doesn’t cost money anymore.

We can solve hunger because people aren’t limited by the cost of resources required to do that. Everyone can get a great education because the cost of people providing the education and educational resources doesn’t exist. Everyone can get their medical care needs met because there are no more cost-restrictions preventing people who want to become medical professionals from becoming that, because insurance companies no longer exist creating an unnecessary cost layer on top of care and because providing care becomes a passion, not a job that must be “cost-contained” so others can earn a profit from “healthcare”, which they use to feed, house, educate and provide medical care to their families.

We can make the shift to renewables because choices to go in that direction are no longer constrained by politics, competitive roadblocks, and fears about job destruction and price increases. Instead, people can join together and do what makes sense, not what makes money.

Families can put food on the table regardless of how much they “earn” because food access is a human right, not something you buy.  Employers no longer have to worry about “wages” because “wages” no longer exist. Neither do “employees”.  Employee-related costs go out the window! “Jobs” don’t exist either, so troubles individuals face getting them go away:  figuring out the job market, unemployment, underemployment, glass ceilings, fear of getting fired, occupational boredom, 401Ks, Roth IRAs…all those things disappear.

Anyone who wants to get an education can, because access to education is a human right, not something you buy or inherit through your family connections. So everyone is able to become nearly anything they want to be, just by investing time in learning.  And since basic necessities are provided to all, there’s plenty of time to get good at that thing that lights your fire.  So you can add value to other people’s lives by doing that thing you love to do.

And what about those people who want to be free to choose to put their life at risk by riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or choosing not to vaccinate your child? You are free to make those choices, and you get to live with the consequences.

I can’t predict what those consequences would look like.  It would depend on the community where you live.  If you and a bunch of anti-vaxers choose to live in a community, and measles wipes out half of your children, that might be a consequence. If you choose to ride a motorcycle without a helmet and you splatter your skull across the pavement in an accident, that might be a consequence.  If you survive, thanks to the fact that “cost” no longer exists, perhaps some folks have developed a new process to put you back better than you were before, like the Six Million Dollar Man (minus the dollars of course).  Same goes for smoking, doing drugs, driving without seat belts, all the reckless behavior humans choose to take on.

What’s great about Copiosis is that your reckless behavior becomes the impetus for others to become rich.  In Copiosis, everyone is rich compared to people living in capitalist societies anyway because everyone’s basic necessities are provided at no cost to them.  Beyond that, people who make other people or the planet better off become even richer.  Paradoxically, your choices to destroy or injure yourself, whether in an instant while riding a motorcycle without a helmet or over a long period of time through smoking, or choosing to eat poorly, you present opportunities for others to create improvement in the lives of those you leave behind.  You no longer cost society.  Instead you provide society with cases that could save millions of others, thereby making millions better off.

Who knows what opportunities could come from those who offer themselves as lung test dummies, motor vehicle crash test dummies, and overeater-no-exerciser-dummies, i.e., living, breathing test cases?

I’ve always believed in personal freedoms. The challenge with personal freedoms in a democracy ruled by capitalism and traditional governments is society has to bear enormous costs of those freedoms.  In a Copiosis society, costs become opportunities and people’s lives get better and better.  That’s a civilization I can’t wait to experience!

 

 

2 thoughts on “The Lung Test Dummy

  1. That all made sense to me except for one very important detail, which is…That drugged out person behind the wheel that hits and kills my 10 year old daughter crossing the crosswalk has just provided my daughter with zero opportunity to have any future opportunities to enjoy the Copiosis society and provided me, the parent with the grief and pain of loosing ones child which lasts a lifetime. So, how do we protect the innocent…ones? the ones who are on the other end of those kind of choices? .

    1. That is a worthy question. The example you gave opens the door to more questions than the valid ones you ask. Those questions will (finally) have to be addressed by us all as Copiosis reinvents the justice system. Often, because of the world we live in today, we come to quick conclusions about who is at fault, often missing the opportunities, including the opportunity of really understanding what impact such events can have in our lives. We must ask questions we may not have asked before, given the nature of what’s possible. For example: Is it the drugged out person who is culpable for your daughter’s death and for your grief? Is it someone else or someones else? Or is it a much larger situation that is responsible? Here’s a really tough one to figure out: Is your daughter really left with zero opportunity? This goes to the heart of our beliefs as human beings and the nature of our spiritual beliefs….I am personally familiar with the grief and pain a mother faces: my little brother died seven years ago and my mom is still torn up about it. She will never be the same….. In a society such as Copiosis, where there is radical personal responsibility for everything that happens, can we as a society really put all the blame on a single person for anything? Or is the event in question systemic, including your reaction to it?

      Unfortunately, Copiosis is not Utopia. There will be accidents. There will be tragedies. Our innovation is really about a new level personal responsibility and understanding – for ourselves – and a new level of compassion and understanding for others.

      So what would be your answer to the questions you pose Susan? Given what you know so far about Copiosis?

Leave a Reply to Susan SCancel reply