Opinion: We Could Have a Global Utopia, Immediately

The only thing standing between us and a perfect world is ourselves.

Photo byRickey Esquivel on Pexels

In this article I’d like to imagine a world wherein a grand trade-off has been made: In this hypothetical world, in exchange for ceasing all technological development, we gain the ability to rearrange or optimize everything that currently exists. For example, when it comes to an end to technological development, this means no AIs more advanced than those already in existence, no smaller or more powerful iPhones or laptops, no new medications or medical equipment, no new electric cars, none of the potential gene therapies and synthetic biologies opened to us by CRSPR — nothing new at all. In exchange, we can make more of whatever we currently make, we can distribute it as we will, and we can modify it as far as we are capable, so long as it doesn’t involve any additives. Now that we have clarified our terms, we can begin to see what it would look like.

If no food went to waste, with no one growing obese from overconsumption, and instead every person got exactly what they needed food wise, world hunger would cease immediately. Not only would it cease immediately, but we’d have an over abundance; it is estimated that humans currently produce one and half times the amount of food needed to feed everyone on Earth. It’s also enough to accommodate the peak human population expected in 2050, estimated at ~10 billion people.

What if restaurants stopped selling, and people stopped eating, food full of sugar, saturated fat, and preservatives? What if everyone exercised regularly? What if we stopped, to the best of our abilities, polluting the air we breathe and the water that we drink? What sort of health outcomes could we see?

What if every vehicle was optimally aerodynamic? A team at the Rocky Mountain Institute found that there were huge gains in energy conservation to be had just by replacing bent pipes with straighter ones and widening those that were too small. A house can be made far more energy efficient just by the way its oriented in regards to the sun. What if every house and building was built or retrofit to be optimized for energy and water efficiency?

What if companies used every available technology to become carbon neutral? What if the world made it a priority to plant more trees and cut less down? What if we ate less animals and more plants? What if we stopped poaching and hunting endangered species? What if fossil fuel burning cars were banned in favor of electric ones? What if our cities were mapped out so that driving became a luxury not a necessity?

What if it became a global priority to make sure every locality had clean water?Every country with a huge military budget only has such an expense to match the amounts spent by potentially adversarial countries. What if we could agree to have a 50% global disarmament? How many childhood deaths from waterborne illness could be avoided with those funds? How many people who currently don’t have access to electricity could it be given to? All of them? What if it was a 75% or 90% global disarmament?

What if every dictatorship ceased to exist, and instead people were allowed to express themselves and develop a life for themselves as they wished? What if politicians put their countrymen and women first, instead of bribes and campaign donations? What if politicians spent less time fundraising so they can put out misleading ads and more time trying to make things better for the citizenry they represent?

What if our education system was reformed so that we had higher standards for teachers, who were in turn paid more and allowed more freedom with their curriculum — like we have in the countries with some of the best educational outcomes, such as Finland? What if we expected more of our students and worked to gauge their comprehension instead of just their memorization, ridding ourselves of the scourge of multiple choice tests? What if the criminal justice system wasn’t designed to be punitive but instead sought to lower recidivism rates by solving the root causes for why people commit crimes?

What if the wealthy weren’t given more of everything, including easier paths to growing their wealth, such as tax loopholes? What if the poor weren’t burdened with worse health outcomes, over-policing, underfunded schools, and all the rest? What if things were a little bit more fair, and everyone was given a fighting chance at social mobility?

What if we didn’t dedicate so much mental energy to racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia? What if starting today we decided to make caring for our fellow human beings the global norm? What if instead of casting judgement on those who are down and out, we extended a helping hand to them? Wouldn’t we have a utopia with what we have available right here and now?

I’m not someone who relishes pointing out the failings of human beings. I think we do fairly well, all things considered. But I wanted to demonstrate — by isolating the future from the present — how much better we could do today with what’s already available to us. Perhaps a shorter list would have been to list those things that we can’t currently do anything about, like curing cancer or Alzheimer’s. Honestly, except for things of this nature, I have difficulty imagining what problems human beings face that we don’t cause ourselves.

With a concerted effort, we could at a remarkable pace convert our world in to a veritable utopia. And while the changes discussed throughout this article seem impossible to implement, they just represent a change of priorities, and so they also seem laughably easy to implement. This utopian world is right there, running on a parallel track next to ours, and all it would take is a mass change of heart to switch tracks.