The Unique Future Where People And The World Win

People who build things that last get rich in Copiosis. Such people get richer if those things can also be repurposed when no longer useful. They get richer still if those things get made in sustainable ways.

Today, people and businesses get rich building things consumers must replace frequently. Making them as cheaply as possible works too. Economists call this product production cycle “planned obsolescence”. Planned obsolescence is so commonplace today consumers don’t bat an eye about replacing something that could be built to last.

Our modern, get-it-now, fashion-oriented culture perpetrates planned obsolescence. Some clothing items, for example, which still remain perfectly functional, often find themselves in landfills. They end up there because they go out of fashion. Thankfully, marketplaces exist these days which recycle or upsell such items. Goodwill is a great example.

Many companies, including big ones like Nike and Apple, repurpose and recycle their products too. That’s all good stuff.

Build to last, not to replace 

But what if everything was built to last? What if builders used resources to create things that lasted generations instead of a planned obsolescence period? Then, after centuries perhaps, what if people dismantled and then re-distributed those resources into other goods and services? Goods and services which then lasted another few centuries?

Imagine how our impact on the environment would lighten. What’s interesting is, hundreds of years ago, that’s exactly the way we built. We built things to last. Such a building ethic became popular, perhaps, because getting resources – trees for homes or metal ore for machines – was backbreaking work back then. But people also took pride in their output. Their products stood in for their name. So quality was literally a reputation thing. One’s good name depended on what one made.

As a result, people prized such things. Such things passed from generation to generation. Some of those things still exist today.

Even as late as the 80s, people still made things that last. Today, not so much. That explains memes like this:

Money buys quality

Today, we rely on many things built the old way – with enduring quality in mind. Many 1800-era buildings – churches, tools, and other hardware still function today. Our infrastructure in America – roads, sewer systems, electric grids – still serve us even though Americans who live many decades ago built them. Homes built hundreds of years ago still stand.

People who made these things took pride in their work. What they built reflected their reputations. As a result, their work literally stands the test of time.

Today, such an ethic still exists. Such quality commands top dollar though. Products built by-hand to very high quality standards surprise us. Even though such quality was once commonplace. Back in the day, nothing less was expected or accepted. Today, only those with means can afford such quality. Quality with names such as Patagonia, Feadship and SAOTA.

In some ways, that’s changing. More affordable brands bring earth-friendly manufacturing combined with top-quality construction. There still remains, however, a bevy of companies out there making crap.

That past can be our future though. And it will be once Copiosis, the New World Order, takes over. Until then, the profit motive makes some people create things with obsolescence in mind. It demands low cost production processes and cutting corners. Wall Street lionizes bosses who boost profits by cutting costs, including employee benefits. While those who do the opposite get called “socialists”.

It’s not wrong or bad that any of this happens. It’s just different from how things work in the New World Order.

Can a resurgence happen?

In the New World Order, pretty much everything is different. For one, there are no costs. So cost and quality don’t compete against each other. In the New World Order Copiosis represents, the old way, where people cared about “the how”, enjoys a resurgence.

Copiosis doesn’t bring back the past though.

Copiosis thrusts us forward. Even in the past, when people imbued things with exceptional quality, modern man still voraciously devoured environmental resources leaving vast swaths of wasteland. Buffalo, salmon, beaver and timber, for example, bore the brunt. The air suffered too. In built up cities such as London, coal fired everything belched black smoke into the sky polluting everything.

So Copiosis isn’t about Making The Past The Future. It’s about creating a different future. A different, better future.

The paradox of human existence is its simultaneous desire to express the best of itself, while at the same time expressing the worst of itself. Much of the worst expression occurs because of money, competition, and other elements created since the time of monarchs. In that time, hierarchies, patriarchy, inequality and religious fervor reigned. Women, brown people and, yes, some white men, were seen as “less than” “savages”, “slaves” and “property.”

And yet, there was nothing wrong or bad about those conditions. After all, because of those, because of the horror they struck in the hearts of human consciousness, eventually, we created the modern ideals and systems of today. Ideals and systems which sprang out of the past as steps forward. Even if shadows of the old ways still pervade these new steps, the new steps get better and better.

A world of riches and prosperity for all

Just because we’ve created better societies than past ones though doesn’t mean what we have represents the best humanity can offer. We still have a long way to go. We can do better than we do stewarding the environment and caring for one another for example. Things we make can last longer. And the way we make them can touch the earth more lightly.

Ironically, our history still holds us back. Reliance on debt-based mediums of exchange, buyer-seller and market-based systems and the notion that people must earn a living, all represent age-old shibboleths we must reject.

And reject we will.

We will reject them once we understand these shibboleths no longer merit preservation. But that clarity won’t come until a large number of us get that a society depending on them is unsustainable. We’re learning that today. More people are waking up. And, as more people do so, they will search for something different. Something better.

In the meantime, Copiosis is ready. The only thing needing to happen between now and the full adoption of Copiosis, is more and more people wanting something different, something new, something better.

When that happens, we’ll be ready. Ready to make everyone rich, no one poor and the world richer too. In other words, everyone wins.