Fixing the World
Kim Griest: 19 October 2019
Many of the world’s problems are easy to fix. I give some examples below, arranged in order from easiest to hardest.
1. Climate change/global warming is easy to fix.
Starting this year put a $30/ton carbon tax on coal, oil, natural gas and all fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide when burned. This works out to about $30 on each 100 gallons of gasoline, adding about 30 cents per gallon. Increase this tax by $30 a year for 10 years, for a final tax of $300/ton ($3/gallon). At this point solar and wind energy would be much cheaper than fossil fuels and normal economic principles will cause all except the rich to switch to solar and wind for energy. Meat, SUVs, air travel and other energy-intensive products would also become more expensive than the more ecological alternatives. The trillions of dollars collected from this tax during the transition to clean energy should be used to create green infrastructure and to help reduce carbon. For example we need ways to store electrical energy, we need smart electric grids, etc. The tax money can also be used to buy up and protect forests around the USA and the world and to plant more forests everywhere. It can also be used to fund research on green science and engineering, e.g. on better batteries. The tax should charged as close to the point of production as possible, i.e. to the company pulling oil or coal out of the ground, to Saudi Arabia if they sell us oil, etc. Other countries should be convinced to have a similar tax, and countries that don’t enact this tax should have the carbon footprint of everything they export calculated and the tax added. Sanctions can be placed on countries that don’t comply, and US companies should be forced to preferentially trade with countries that have the carbon tax in place.
One objection to the above is that a carbon tax affects poor people more (it is a regressive tax). This is true, but should not be used as argument against the tax. This effect should be addressed with the problem of income and wealth inequality as discussed below; with some of the tax money collected being paid to poor people.
2. Income and wealth inequality are easy to fix.
a. According to standard laws of economics, when the return on capital, r, is greater than the growth rate of the economy, g, then the rich’s share of wealth increases and the middle class shrinks. It really is that simple; see the paper, https://medium.com/@kimgriest/the-real-reason-the-american-middle-class-is-disappearing-e7700c593368.
So we need to ensure r<g. The easiest way to do this is to change the tax structure back to how it was in the 1940s-1970s. Progressive tax brackets with 90% tax on highest marginal bracket (say above $5M) effectively lower r and help decrease the share of the nation’s wealth owned by the top 1%. However, since most income of the very rich is unearned income, the tax laws need to be changed so that unearned income is taxed the same as wages, that is, capital gains, dividends, royalties, rents, inheritances should not be taxed at the current low rate (e.g. 15% for long term capital gains), but at the progressive rates above. This will further help reduce r < g. Note, as the world runs out of resources, the population cannot continue to grow. The growth rate, g, is the sum of population growth rate and productivity growth rate, so g may never again reach the high values that obtained during the 1940s-1970s. Thus we need to lower r permanently by changing the tax structure. To make quicker progress towards fairness, a progressive wealth tax should also be instituted, say 2% on all wealth over $10M and 3% on income over $1G. This tax alone would raise around $275 billion/year, which could be used to lower tax rates on poor and middle class people, and to pay for the universal basic income described below. The wealth tax also has the important effect of forcing transparency on the rich; anyone hiding money should have all their assets confiscated. Offshore tax havens such as the Bahamas, Switzerland, Panama, etc. should have sanctions placed on them until they make all their books open. Americans who move abroad to avoid these taxes should be put on an anti-American list and have sanctions placed on them as well.
b. Health care should be run by the government. This would make it available to poor people and make it much cheaper and more efficient (by removing profits of drug and insurance companies), as in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, etc. This can be paid for by changes to the economy mentioned above and below. College education at a state institution should also be free to all citizens. We currently have socialized beaches, national parks, K-12 schools, fire departments, libraries, roads, social security, etc. so it is not a big step to also socialize healthcare and college education.
c. In order to deal with the terribly small fraction of wealth that the bottom 50% (poor/lower middle class) currently own, a universal basic income (UBI), and/or higher minimum wage should be instituted. A reasonable UBI would also allow removal of minimum wages, rent controls, etc. Economic studies show that price controls such as rent control, etc. distort markets and give perverse incentives for inefficient behaviors, so most economists agree a UBI is a good method of helping the poor and increasing fairness in society. However, until a UBI is established, higher minimum wages are needed. Studies show the amount of the minimum wages correlates well with the wealth owned by the bottom 50% (The bottom 50% currently own less than 1% of the total wealth in the U.S., but this would increase rapidly if the minimum wage is raised.) A UBI can be paid for by the additional taxes on the rich as discussed above and would replace food stamps and all welfare programs. The amount each person gets should be enough for rent and food and basics in an average area. Note there would be no need to provide money for education or health care since these will have been socialized as described above. If people want more than this very basic survival income, or want to live in a nicer area, they can work to make more money.
d. Currently patents are mostly used to form government enforced monopolies, greatly skewing the market and allowing anti-competitive practices. Drug prices in the USA are typically 10 to 100 times higher than the rest of the world, almost entirely due to patent monopolies. Patent lengths should be reduced to just one or two years, and attempts to extend monopolistic patent rights strongly resisted. Removing drug and medical equipment patents would cut the cost of medical treatment in American hugely, in part paying for the free health care for all Americans mentioned above.
3. The problem of corporations and the rich dominating politics is easy to fix.
a. Corporations are not people and should not have the same rights as people. Limited liability corporations (LLCs) were created to limit liability, that is, to protect the fortunes of the rich people who own them. LLCs are fine as entities to help business, but they are not people (e.g. LLCs never go to jail for crimes they commit) and therefore should have a different set of laws governing their behavior. Therefore laws should be passed stating the corporations do not have the rights of people, for example, corporations should not have the right of free speech (which the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted as including giving as much money as desired to influence elections), etc. It should then be made illegal for any corporation to give any money for influencing any election. The rich people who own the corporations are people and so can give money for elections, but there should be a maximum (e.g. $300 per candidate or issue). Corporations who violate these laws should have their charters revoked, their assets seized and be sold off. This change will allow democracy to function better in the USA, moving us toward the “one person, one vote” ideal and away from the current “one dollar, one vote” situation. It is well established that elections are usually determined primarily by the amount of money spent on the campaign, thus allowing corporations and the rich to have an undue influence on the government. In order to implement the changes above and below it is crucial to enact changes preventing corporations and the rich from buying elections as they currently do. The rich, and large corporations will fight these changes very hard and so we need to limit their influence in every possible way.
b. Anti-trust laws should be greatly strengthened and rigorously enforced. Adam Smith, in the first book on capitalism (The Wealth of Nations), pointed out how bad monopolies are for capitalism. Competition is crucial for a market to function efficiently and the public to be served, but economic laws show that monopolies and oligopolies lead to very inefficient markets and very poor economic outcomes. So most mergers and acquisitions should be stopped, and most large corporations broken up.
c. Many of worst recent political changes were caused by Republican appointed Supreme Court judges: gun laws (Heller vs. Washington DC), political contributions (Citizens United), abortion rights reduction, etc., so we need to get reasonable people who care about human rights back on the Supreme Court, and also reverse the current trend of radical rightwing extremists being given lifetime appointments to federal courts. This will take some time, but the key is to ensure that Republicans never have both the U.S. Presidency and the Senate majority at the same time. Thus, in swing states, lots of grassroots organizing and election funding for leftwing candidates needs to be done.
4. Media propaganda is easy to fix.
Once democracy is restored as per the above, large media companies should be broken up due to anti-trust considerations. Public newspapers, TV, etc. should be well funded and run by democracy. Large corporations and rich people who own other media should be prevented in having any effect on selection of the directors of public media.
5. Environmental destruction is easy to fix.
The most pressing long term problem for planet Earth is that humans are using up all the resources in a non-sustainable way: fresh water, soil, fossil fuels, helium, nitrogen, ocean, land and atmospheric dumping grounds, etc. This problem is easy to fix:
a. The human population needs to be reduced to below the carrying capacity of the planet (defined as the maximum human population that can exist sustainably in perpetuity.)
b. Every girl in the world should receive at least an 8th grade education. Several studies show that when girls get education their birth rate goes way down.
c. Birth control and abortion needs to be made available free of charge to every woman in the world. This may require reducing the power of religions such as Catholicism, Islam, and other religions that oppose abortion. Advertising campaigns showing the destruction caused by these religions should be carried out and a very strong separation of church and state enforced in the USA and elsewhere. The tax money and carbon money collected above can be used to fund this.
d. As a way to reduce use, taxes should be placed on all non-renewable resources. The amount of tax should be calculated as the value of the “externality” of the resource, e.g. the total real value of forest ecosystems should be added to the cost of wood production. Just as a carbon tax will reduce fossil fuel use, accurate externality taxes will reduce usage to the sustainable level.
e. The carrying capacity of planet earth is controversial, but we need to know what it is. My guess it is probably under 1 billion humans total, maybe 10% of the current 7 billion. Careful scientific studies need to be done on finding out what the human carrying capacity is. Once the carrying capacity is known, the human birth rate needs to be quickly lowered to below that number. Various incentives will be needed to encourage people to have less children.
6. Wars and violence are not easy to fix, but it might be possible.
Violence is a part of human nature, but we may be able to ensure that people with violent tendencies do not have positions of power within our society. Taking power away from these people will be difficult because it is precisely the people who most want this power who will have to have it removed from them. Over time this change could be made by implementing a new kind of meritocracy. Currently, many decisions about a person’s life are determined by various tests they take. The SAT/ACT determines whether and which University you get into. The grades you get in high school similarly greatly influence your career possibilities, and grades plus MCAT determine who gets to become rich by becoming a doctor. We accept these restrictions on career paths as a part of a meritocracy, where the most capable people get the important and well-paid jobs. The problem with this meritocracy is that it only measures intelligence/competence, and measures nothing about how kind, empathetic, or nice a person is. Society is full of sociopaths in powerful positions. This is a main cause of wars and violence.
Thus we need to add another dimension to our current meritocracy. Starting at a young age all humans should be given tests of empathy, compassion, kindness, violence, etc. and these scores should be used, along with the competency based scores, to determine career possibilities. Positions of power should only be available to people who score high on both the competency scale and the niceness scale. Sociopaths may be very able to succeed technically as doctors, generals, or CEOs, but because they have low niceness scores, any jobs that require power over other people would be off-limits to them. This may sound radical, but we all accept that medical school is off limits to people with low MCAT scores.
This new meritocracy would result in much more power going to women, since women are, on average, better at listening to other’s points of view, are kinder, and are better at compromising. Thus the patriarchal system we currently have would gradually fade away.
Most wars would stop and wars would be much less likely to start. Almost all conflicts throughout the world would be better solved if people with high empathy and kindness ran everything. This niceness criteria should be extended to all positions of power, including management of large companies, state and city governments, Congress, churches, etc. The USA spends trillions of dollars on the military. This expenditure could be reduced a large amount without sacrificing safety, and that money could be spent paying for these tests and also on the economic and environmental programs above.
It will take some time to develop these tests (though tests to measure sociopathy already exist). Also, once everyone knows you need a high niceness score to get a good job, cheating will become a problem. Just as lots of effort goes into preventing cheating on academic tests, methods to stop faking niceness need to be developed. It will not be as hard as it might seem; most people can instantly recognize nice people; imagine a society where people compete to be nicer! People who score low on niceness can still be productive members of society, but shouldn’t have jobs that entail power over others, or decisions about the environment, wars, etc. Those with high tendency towards violence can channel those tendencies into sports.
Note that after the changes in campaign financing mentioned above, all the above the changes could be made completely by democratic means (i.e. elect people who agree with these changes and have them change the laws to implement them).
7. Some things are not easy to fix.
a. Dishonesty, graft, selfishness, addiction, cruelty, and stupidity are a major part of human nature and not likely to go away.
b. We are all going to die, and before that get sick and suffer.