Editors note: Another great question about necessities came in the other day. It’s worth sharing:
I noticed your list of necessities is very broad and that worries me as a person whose body cannot tolerate pesticides. As a disabled person on an inhumanely low amount of food stamps I eat very little so that it can all be non-GMO and organic because to eat a bit more but with pesticides leaves me mostly nonfunctional and even bedridden.
Yet such food is much more expensive. How will food be handled in such a system with people with food allergies, restrictions and necessities different from the standard American diet?
Also, how will you decide what quality or size of housing is allowed for the disabled and the same for clothes and furnishings and hygiene products and so on? Has any of that been figured out yet? What is luxury to one person is necessity to someone else. The $4.69 pens I use for my art, for example, are necessities, so how is all this decided in a world with thousands and thousands of products and different people with different ideas of what is necessity and what is luxury?
Christine
Hi Christine,
You don’t need to worry about the broad range of things made in the world in a Copiosis society. All you need to think about is the kind of food you want.
Copiosis doesn’t regulate anything. What it does is say “ok, producers! Make what you want and make it how you want it! But if you want to get paid, you gotta make the best things you possibly can from the standpoint of protecting the Earth and benefitting people”.
In a world like that, some would probably use pesticides. But, just as today, many won’t. Those that don’t use pesticides get rewarded more.
So don’t you think, over time, those using pesticides will stop on their own? Especially when everything they need to make their food comes at no cost (I’ll talk about that more in a moment)?
That leads me to your condition. In Copiosis, not only does food you eat not cost you anything, the food you eat doesn’t cost people making it anything either.
“Food stamps” don’t exist in Copiosis. You don’t have to pay for necessities, so you don’t have to starve, nor do you need food stamps. Living on food stamps: that’s not living.
The world is large. There are all kinds of people making food. More are making organic non-GMO varieties all the time. Pesticides and GMOs are food production inputs. They are used because, today, some people believe it costs too much (in lost production due to insects and poor crop yields) to make food without them. They believe it costs too much without them because when they use them, yields go up and losses go down.
Organic food production today, comparatively, is more expensive. So organic foods cost more. Pesticides and GMOs are capital goods. In Copiosis, capital goods are like necessities. They are provided at no cost to producers.
That means, food production costs in absolute terms go to zero. Even for organic production.
So think about that: What happens in food production? Well for one, for you, you get healthy organic food at no cost to you. And the people making it make it at no cost get rewarded. So there’s plenty of organic food for you to eat.
But it also means it doesn’t matter if crop yields are lower or losses occur due to insect predation, it’s more beneficial for the planet if pesticides or GMOs are not used.
Does that mean everyone will stop using these things? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean anything to you when the food you like to eat you get at no cost and is plentiful.
Housing gets decided by builders
To your question about housing: We don’t tell anyone what they can or can’t do in Copiosis. So it’s up to builders to decide what size house, or condo or apartment to make. Same goes for clothing and furnishings and everything else.
All kinds of varieties of things are made today. Why wouldn’t that continue in a Copiosis world? Bottom line: it’s up to producers what gets made. And as far as what you get to live in, it depends on who is willing to let you live there.
So what kind of person are you being? Are you nice? Are you kind? Are you doing what you love and benefitting others? In other words, who you are decides what kind or size of place you live in.
It’s the same with everything pretty much: it’s all up to you.
Whither capital goods?
Back to capital goods: You are an artist. Capital goods are land, labor and equipment, generally. Your pens are not necessities in Copiosis. We’ve defined necessities and pens don’t fit in these categories.
Your pens, as an artist, are capital goods and all capital goods are provided at no cost to producers. Who decides what is a necessity, luxury or capital good? The people making those things and offering them in stores.
So you would possibly need to show some evidence that you’re a painter doing art as your passion before someone offers such pens to you at no cost. But since you do that kind of art, showing evidence should be pretty easy, right? So getting your pens at no cost is easy too.