Some Thoughts on Changing the World

This one is a little random. Just a bit of thought exercise, both to help me organize my ongoing project(s), and to give you, the reader, an idea of HOW I arrive at my conclusions.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

I got the photo above by searching “plenty” on unsplash. This relates, heavily, to what I would like to see happen in the world. My ongoing focus has been Universal Basic Income, and I will continue to focus on that. But it, like many other ideas, is a tool. That tool is designed so that humans may have plenty.

Not subsistence, not almost enough to live while scrambling like a cockroach, but actual plenty.

“So,” you might say, “What the fuck are you talking about, Kevin?”

And it would be a fair question. So, here’s the definition of plenty from Merriam-Webster:

Plenty:

an adequate or more than adequate number or amount of something : a number or amount of something that is enough for a particular purpose

Think on that for a moment. Not “just barely adequate”, and not “over the top supply”, but rather, enough, or slightly more than enough.

Enough what? The basics. The things that make your life a life instead of a grinding hell.

Food.

Clean water.

A place to live.

Adequate access to good medical care (mental and physical)

Enough excess resources to have a good time, some times. That’s all. Anything beyond that is good, but that should be the baseline.

This is why I focus on UBI so much. It provides, if properly structured, all but one of those things. Medical access for all citizens is already the baseline of a civilized society. Yes, I said the quiet part out loud. There are few metrics where the United States might be considered a civilized society. Damn few, and they’re shrinking.

But while the United States of America is and remains a case study in exactly how not to organize a wealthy society, it is hardly alone. It is unique in it’s outsize influence, it’s willful blindness, and it’s ongoing ability to pretend that the rest of the developed world has passed it by in just about every meaningful way, but it is not unique in…