this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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I mean, it’s all fine on paper.
But… how… the… fuck… do…. we… get… there???
Communism is fine on paper. Fuck. Even capitalism is fine on paper.
However; through empiric data we can learn that humanity is full of shitheads who want to be in power and have control.
Sadly, as I see it, that is incompatible with any form of utopia.
I’m from Norway and we used to be fucking close to having an utopia for a short while. Politics were civil, the differences between low income and high income were low, and we actually pooled our oil money into a pension fund so that we would be wealthy when the oil age ended.
On top of that we were rich on natural resources and had abundant renewable electricity from harnessing our mountains (read: damming up valleys and putting rivers and falls in pipes) to create hydro power.
Combine that with a socialist government (“the Scandinavian model”) with free education for the masses, affordable housing, free healthcare, some of the best employee protections in the world, great consumer protection with the law basically granting consumers 5 years warranty on everything from cars to phones or TV’s.
Sadly, since everyone was feeling so wealthy everyone stopped caring. Housing is now anything but affordable. Electricity that we paid for by destroying beautiful nature is no longer a resource for the Norwegian people, but thanks to numerous new export cables to Europe and the fact that production is sold on a fucked-up “stock market” where the most expensive bid to produce electricity for any hour of the day sets the price for everyone, we now have extremely high and volatile electricity prices affecting inflation and reducing competitiveness of Norwegian businesses.
On top of that politicians keep getting caught with their hands in the cookie-jar at an ever increasing rate, and I think it must have been 20-30 years since we had a prime minister with actual work experience.
Call me cynical, but good things don’t last if we even get them at all.
The Romans knew it; the masses simply needs to be entertained by bread and circus and you can do what you want.
Social media is the best circus so far, and when everyone is busy debating pronouns or whatever flavor of distraction there is this week the political decisions that actually affect us gets made without anyone paying any attention.
Sincerely though, best of luck with your utopian society. I hope for all of us that we get what you describe.
I sadly suspect we will keep doing what we are doing until it kills the planet.
i am gonna call you cynical, at least a little bit. the reality is, we are today far closer to the kind of utopia i'm describing than in any other point in human history. access to knowledge has improved massively in only the span of a couple of decades, and even with how much things suck right now, its still like the best time to be alive. most of human history has been pretty miserable for most people.
climate change spooks me real bad, and i have felt the way you do. i have never lived in a country where we had the things you're describing you have lost. it doesn't matter. it doesn't even matter if we are going to kill the planet and everything's gonna die and things will just get worse and worse.
the reality is, our bodies have less than a hundred years, maybe even significantly less, before we become nothing, and in the long run, humanity and everything we've ever created will also become nothing. with that perspective, at least for me, the problem of what to do about the various injustices of the modern world becomes fairly simple. imma do what i can until i'm dead in the ground, then i won't care if we're in an anarcho-communist solar punk utopia or a nuclear wasteland.