> Imagine a society in which the state doesn't feel the urge to "structure society" at all...
Sounds great! So, who is going to build the roads, schools, hospitals, water sanitation, power plants, transportation, and ensure their upkeep and performance without conflicts of interest? Who is going to decide whether you can hire private armies to enforce your will or not? Who is going to make sure that those with power are held accountable to those without?
There are many local maximums between pure socialism and pure capitalism. Capitalism, in its purest form, is winner take all no holds barred competition. Ruthless, dirty and vicious. Pure socialism is stagnation, with no rewards for additional efforts beyond the bare minimum.
There are many countries that have realized this, and have implemented capitalism's competitive force in a controlled, positive sum manner while simultaneously leaving a generous safety net for those getting started or recovering from failure.
However, I believe that in the past few decades, modern nations have had no guiding principles other than economic growth. This begets a huge host of problems, mainly resulting from parasitic and wasteful economic practices which tend to be zero or negative sum when all externalities are accounted for.
If we look closely at history, our guiding principles have always been based on fear in the form of massive wars, whether waged or theoretical (WWI, WWII, Cold War, etc.). Increasingly I've become convinced that in order to address all of the failings of modern societies, we need to have national principles based upon something other than pure economic performance and/or war.
I sincerely hope that someday, modern nations will adopt scientific research as their guiding principle, and structure society around the continuous quest for knowledge. Research would be the economic engine that drives growth, and national spending would be based upon catalyzing scientific and technological progress. Professional science would be the developed world's biggest industry, which would facilitate implementations in private industry when technologies mature. Universities, hacker spaces, and all academic institutions would provide a plethora of training opportunities that would be sponsored by national spending, ensuring a citizenry that would be incredibly educated and willing to engage in research at all levels, from lab technicians to principal investigators.
As such, there would always be a job available in the nation's scientific infrastructure for every citizen at some level. The state would be the employer of last resort, but would also allow opportunities for incredible advancement. Furthermore, this would result in an extremely informed voter base, with the time to participate in direct and/or representative democracy.
I see this as being an incredible opportunity going forward. As automation proceeds to rapidly destroy middle and low class jobs, the entire concept of employment will have to be reevaluated. Capital will eclipse labor in the economic factors of production, leading to a necessity for people to find another meaning in life other than just "jobs" for the sake of survival. We'll need a guiding principle to structure our society around.
Thus, I humbly nominate the pursuit of science as our prime directive.
Sounds great! So, who is going to build the roads, schools, hospitals, water sanitation, power plants, transportation, and ensure their upkeep and performance without conflicts of interest? Who is going to decide whether you can hire private armies to enforce your will or not? Who is going to make sure that those with power are held accountable to those without?
Please share your thoughts.