Clarifying Utopia

Currently, there are many certainties in the world. Among them are the need to work, the need for money and wealth, and taxes. These are also the sources of many of our problems. In Utopia, can we get rid of work, money, wealth, and taxes and thereby get rid of these problems? Many works of Utopian literature portray such a picture; but, is it possible?

This chapter is an examination of the constraints in play when thinking about a society, and even a Utopia. We will outline what a society can and cannot do. We will also outline what a Utopia can and cannot do. This kind of examination will clarify multiple concepts about society and Utopia. These concepts play an important part in the rest of the book. We will discuss the reasons why, even in a Utopia, we cannot get rid of work, money, wealth, and taxes. We will also outline the importance and urgency of fixing our monetary systems.

Utopia is a social idea. It is not a technological idea. Any goodness that one gets due to progress in technology, is just that; some goodness. It should never be equated to an ideal society.

For example, if automation were to progress to such a level that humans do not have to work at all, then would it lead to an ideal society?

Imagine a society in which everything that needs to be done is automated. Further, imagine that in this society, all the automation is owned by a single person. In this society, what are the rest of the people supposed to do? If the rest should not be stealing, then they will have to live on the charity and philanthropy of the "one". That is hardly a way to live. That is hardly an ideal life. Such a society can hardly be called a Utopia.

Now imagine that instead of the one person owning all the automation, the said automation is owned by 10% of the population and the remaining 90% own nothing. What are these 90% of people supposed to do? If the rest should not be stealing, then they will have to live on the charity and philanthropy of the 10%. That is hardly a way to live. That is hardly an ideal life. Such a society can hardly be called a Utopia.

Regarding automation itself, automation implies some machines and computers doing all the work. These require energy. Imagine that energy can be produced in unlimited quantities. Then whoever owns the production of such unlimited energy can demand whatever price for that energy. Since automation requires energy, the price that the owners of such automation have to pay for the use of energy will reduce the profitability of the owners of the automation. Since energy can be produced in unlimited quantities, it will have a higher profitability. This will lead to the owners of the energy producers eventually owning all the automation and hence all the means of production. Thus, the technological idea of unlimited energy is good, but in a social situation, its outcome may not be good for most of the citizens.

Fantastic technological ideas like full automation and unlimited energy don't necessarily lead to an ideal society.

Imagine the people of 1770 viewing our current state of technology. Surely they will view our current technology with utmost awe and disbelief. To them, perhaps our technology is a million times better than what they possessed. And yet, these people from 1770 will see poverty, homelessness, wars, and crime in our society. Would they think that we live in a Utopia?

Thus, Utopia is a social idea. Advanced technology does not necessarily lead to Utopia.

Work

Currently, we work in order to satisfy our needs and wants. Even in a Utopia, people will have to work.

Suppose for a moment that the statement "Even in a Utopia, people will have to work" is not true. That is, we are assuming that "In a Utopia, people will not have to work". Thus, there can exist a Utopia in which humans do not have to work. In this Utopia, all the needs and wants of humans can be satisfied without them doing any work.

This implies that such a society will have machines doing all the work that is necessary to satisfy every need and want of every human. This also means that humans become just consumers and are no longer required to be a producer of anything.

Further, in order for every person's needs and wants to be satisfied, the "means of production" in such a society cannot be owned by a few people. If they were, why would these people let their machinery get used in satisfying all other people's needs and wants? So, in such a society, the means of production will be owned by the society.

So, if the means of production are owned by the society and if a person wants to produce something, say a basket or a chair or a painting or whatever his or her heart desires, then how would they go about doing it? The obvious answer is that society makes available to this person whatever means of production are required to produce whatever this person wants to produce. So this person can use these social means of production to produce something that he or she desires. And then what? Perhaps he or she would then want to do something else, and of course the society will provide this person whatever means are necessary to do whatever that other thing is.

In this sort of world, it is possible that someone may desire to travel to the moon for a holiday. Humans have already been to the moon and hence a want of this kind is well within the realm of imagination and someone will sooner or later want it. So, the machinery of the society will fulfill this want of this person, because this is a society in which no one needs to work to satisfy their needs and wants. Seeing one person do something, others may want to try to do it. Soon there will be a higher demand for vacations to the moon or perhaps to Mars or perhaps just a space flight to Venus and back. These sorts of wants can arise. It takes a lot of fuel to safely take humans to the moon and bring them back. If everyone were to raise such a want, Earth does not have the resources to fulfill them.

In this kind of society, in trying to fulfill all the needs and wants of its citizens, there will come a time that there will not be enough resources to satisfy all those wants. Thus, some wants cannot be satisfied. But having fulfilled the wants of some, not fulfilling them for others is discrimination and this situation that "something was done for some and will not be done for others" is contrary to the idea of Utopia.

Thus, once a society, in an attempt to be a Utopia by relieving people from having to do work, takes the responsibility of satisfying all the needs and wants of its citizens, it will soon realize that it does not have enough resources to satisfy everyone's needs and wants. Such an ambitious society will fail in its objective of satisfying everyone's needs and wants, and thus can never be a Utopia that it wanted to be.

We started this train of thought with the assumption that there exists a Utopian society in which people don't have to work, and we arrived at a situation in which this society cannot be called a Utopia. We arrived at a contradiction. Thus, our original assumption must be flawed. And thus, our assumption that "In a Utopia, people will not have to work" must be wrong.

That is, Even in a Utopia, people will have to work.

At this point, some may object that there is a flaw in previous reasoning. Let us investigate some possible flaws in the reasoning that can be reasonably raised.

The first objection that could be raised is as follows: "It is reasonable to assume that people will not have to work to satisfy all their needs. It is not reasonable to assume that a Utopia satisfies all the wants. However, this Utopia will satisfy a pre-selected set of wants without discrimination and without running out of resources."

The problem with the first objection is as follows: In this kind of Utopia where people do not have to work and yet all the needs and wants of people cannot be satisfied, then this Utopia is deciding which wants can be satisfied and which cannot. In this Utopia, a citizen cannot even take any effort in satisfying his or her wants because the means of satisfying these wants are owned by the society. When such a society decides that some want is not worth satisfying, the citizen has no choice but to comply with the wishes of the society. In this scenario, this society itself does not seem like a Utopia. So, this objection is not justifiable when the society portrayed in the objection is called Utopia.

The second objection that could be raised is as follows: "A Utopia should only satisfy all the needs without people having to work."

The first problem with the second objection is as follows: When Utopia satisfies only the needs, it is very likely that people will increasingly classify their wants as needs. Eventually, there will come a time when society will run out of resources to satisfy these bogus needs; and hence this society cannot be a Utopia.

The second problem with the second objection is as follows: If the society has commandeered all means of production in satisfying the needs, then what enables citizens to satisfy their wants? In this situation, the citizens cannot satisfy their wants at all; and hence this society cannot be a Utopia.

The third problem with the second objection is as follows: If the society has not commandeered all means of production for satisfying all the needs, then clearly its resources have a limit, and by an argument similar to the one made for wants, there will be some resource intensive needs that the society cannot fulfill for all citizens. Even in this situation, the society fails to achieve its objective of satisfying all the needs of all its citizens; and hence cannot be called a Utopia.

That is, a line of thought in which citizens do not have to work to satisfy their needs, and society chooses and restricts what exactly those needs are, eventually leading to a situation that cannot be considered ideal. Such a society can exist; but it cannot be called a Utopia.

A Utopia cannot satisfy all the needs and wants of its citizens.

Ownership of Means of Production

The only reason for a society to commandeer all means of production is to satisfy all the citizen's needs and wants.

Once a society adopts the attitude that it will satisfy all the citizen's needs and wants and hence commandeers all the means of production, the society is on the slippery slope that leads the society to dictate what a citizen can need and want and very quickly such a society starts looking far from ideal. Such a society most definitely will not be a Utopia.

When people have to work and if society commandeers all the means of production, then people are forced to work for the society and that too in a way that society considers as an equitable distribution of work. It takes away people's choice, initiative, individuality, and creativity because whatever must get done, must either be agreeable to all or must be planned by very few. In either case, from an individual's perspective, the situation is far from ideal.

"Central Planning" and "Centralized Command and Control Structure" may be acceptable means of planning and coordinating work when a society faces enormous adversity, but when we want the best from our life and society, we should be nowhere close to adversity. Adversity is a rare situation for a society. In normal times and in normal situations, a society requires only a minimal overall coordination and planning; everything does not need to be planned by a few and imposed on the rest of the citizens.

Thus, regardless of whether citizens have to or do not have to work, when a society owns all means of production, it cannot be a Utopia.

Thus, A Utopia cannot own all means of production.

Exchange, Money and Wealth

We have progressed a lot, and our needs and wants have grown so much that it is impossible for almost all individuals to satisfy them completely; based on their own work. There may be very few individuals who may be capable of satisfying all their needs and wants completely on their own, only if they reduce their desires for their needs and wants significantly. So, we live in a society where some of one's needs and wants will be satisfied by some work done by others in exchange for something that they need or want.

Thus, it is impossible for any individual to satisfy all their needs and wants by their own effort.

A long time ago, this exchange of work was in the form of exchanging one thing for another thing. It is called the "barter system". Everything that is bartered has a different value, and that value is based on people's perspective about what that thing is worth to them. A giver of a thing and a receiver of that thing may value the same thing differently. The barter system cannot standardize the value of some work or a thing. A barter system lacks the idea of "standard of value".

Eventually, we humans figured out the concept of "standard of value". Money is the idea of standard of value. Currency is the physical form of money, and this physical form can have various denominations of the standard. One physical currency unit can be exchanged for another and much different currency unit based on the standard exchange rate between those two currency units. Initially, the currency and the money were standardized based on some physical thing that was rare to find and hence served as a standard (like cowries). Gradually, we switched the physical standard to more precious and more rare things that were very hard to fake or imitate, like gold or silver.

More recently, that is several decades ago, we have refined this idea of standard of value further. We have removed the link to something physical, something precious and rare. We have switched the idea of money to that of a "fiat currency". Fiat currency is an arbitrary standard of value, and it has numerous conveniences. The world runs on fiat currencies, money still is a standard of value, physical currency is made of cheap material, and manufactured in such a way that it is very difficult to counterfeit. The bills and coins that we use today are representations of this fiat currency. The money in our bank accounts is valued in terms of some fiat currency and is exchangeable with the physical representations of that fiat currency, that is, the notes or coins. These bills and coins are money, and they represent wealth to the extent of their denomination. That is, a dollar coin represents one dollar's worth of wealth and a 100 dollar bill/note represents a hundred dollars' worth of wealth.

We have come a long way from the barter system. Sometimes, we may barter with our neighbors and friends. Sometimes, we may just give help for nothing in return. Those times are the exceptions.

Most of the time, work is exchanged for money and money is exchanged for some products or services. The value of everything is measured by the standard we call money. Money enables us to standardize the value for work done or something produced. Thus, current societies have a concept of money.

But, will a Utopia have the concept of money? Let us assume that "In Utopia, there will be no concept of money" and see where that assumption leads us.

In such a Utopia, where there is no concept of money, imagine a citizen has a need or a want. Since there is no concept of money in Utopia, the citizen has no money, and hence the citizen cannot satisfy that need or want by exchanging his or her money for something that satisfies the need or the want. Thus, society will have to satisfy that need or want.

In this Utopia, there is no standard for value. When a citizen has a need, whether the citizen's need should or should not be satisfied cannot be based on any such standard of value. In the absence of such a standard of value, the society will have three choices:

Satisfy the need.
Satisfy the need if it is on the must-be-satisfied list of items.
Use random chance to decide whether to satisfy the need.

Is there any other choice? Similar choices exist for satisfying wants.

We have already seen that when a society attempts to satisfy all needs and wants, it does not lead to a Utopia. We have also seen that when a society decides to satisfy needs and wants based on a pre-chosen list, then that leaves citizens helpless in satisfying what the society will not. Hence, such a society is also not a Utopia. Finally, a society that uses random chance to decide whether a citizen's specific needs and wants should be satisfied is clearly not a Utopia.

Thus, in the case of each of the three choices, we conclude that the so-called Utopia is not really a Utopia. We arrive at a contradiction if we start with the assumption that "In Utopia, there will be no concept of money". Thus, our starting assumption must be wrong.

Thus, even in Utopia, there will be the concept of money.

Thus, each individual is in possession of some amount of money, and they exchange this money for something that they need or want. Similarly, each individual is capable of doing some work, and they exchange this work for some money. This is the routine give and take that occurs in any society. Even in a society based on a barter system, this give and take of work for something occurs. Money just makes it easier to translate the value of work, products, and services into standardized units.

The money that people possess is the origin of the notion of wealth. Since every possession can be valued in terms of money, one can measure the value of all the possessions of an individual and find the total money that it equates to. This total money that represents the value of all the possessions of an individual is said to be the wealth of that individual.

Thus, even in Utopia, there will be a notion of wealth of an individual.

Contrary to the image portrayed by many works of romantic Utopian literature and sci-fi literature, Utopia will need the concepts of money and wealth.

Private Wealth vs Common Wealth

How much of the wealth in a Utopia will be held privately by the individuals in that society?

We have already seen that a Utopia cannot satisfy all the needs and wants of all individuals in the society. When the well-being of humans is one of the primary concerns, then we need to empower individuals to be independent in satisfying their peculiar needs and wants.

Satisfying needs and wants can be done with work and resources on which or with which to work. For that, one must have access to resources. Thus, of all the resources available within a society, at least some resources will be owned by individuals.

If an individual owns a negligible amount of resources, those resources cannot be of much use to satisfy the needs and wants that the society cannot satisfy. If we want the well-being of all humans, we will need to allow individuals to own a sufficient amount of resources so that they can do something useful with. That is, of all the resources available in a society, a non-negligible amount of resources should be privately owned by its citizens.

If we consider just food as a need, different people have different needs and tastes and hence likes and wants. Thus, even in this basic need, society cannot take on the responsibility of providing for this need.

Because the needs and wants of individuals are varied, society can at most hope to satisfy only those needs and wants that are common to most individuals. This limits what the society should do and that places a limit on the amount of resources that society can use exclusively for the purposes of the entire society. The constraint, that society can do only the things common to most individuals, severely restricts what a society can do and that restricts the resources that a society can keep at its disposal. Thus, most of the resources would be available to be privately owned by individuals.

Imagine a society, which at its "beginning" distributes all its land equally among all people. After that initial distribution, people own agricultural land, use their knowledge and skills and grow crops, then sell the produce in exchange for money and use that money to satisfy their other needs. These other needs could be clothes, house, medical attention, etc. Some people may sell their agricultural land in exchange for money and use that money as their capital and set up businesses and industries that produce other goods and provide other services. Thus, members of society engage in whatever activity suits them and based on that activity satisfy their needs and wants.

In such a society, there will be people who would be at a disadvantage in being independent and self-sufficient in satisfying their own needs and wants. Some may be at a significant disadvantage. Some others may thrive in this situation, and some others may do merely better than average.

But in all that, most individuals can do something to improve their situation. Take away people's ability to have private ownership of the resources of the society, and no one is left with any ability to improve his or her individual situation. Thus, when we are concerned with the well-being of all humans, we are compelled to let a significant proportion of the resources of the society to be owned by individuals.

Thus, even in Utopia, most of the wealth will be privately held.

Common Good and Taxes

Once a significant amount of resources of a society are privately owned, the society itself owns fewer resources, and hence the only kinds of things that a society can do are those that satisfy the common needs of all members of the society.

That is, society can collectively undertake only the common good.

A society cannot sell the resources that it owns to fulfill its responsibility of satisfying the common needs and wants, because if it did, then eventually there will be no resources owned by the society, and then, society will be unable to fulfill its primary responsibility of doing "common good".

Since the common wealth of a society can never be sold, contemplating its value in money terms has very little use. Thus, all this common wealth should be considered as having value of zero. But, if ever some of it were to be sold for some good reason, then its selling price needs to be figured out so that society can sell it at a fair price.

Some societies may own a profit generating resource. For example, some societies own their oil fields, extract that oil, sell the oil, and generate revenue and profit. Other societies may prefer that these resources be privately mined and the private miners pay a "resource depletion charge" in proportion to the mined resources. For most societies, such profits or "resource depletion charges" will be insufficient to fund their common good. This leads to the idea of "taxes".

The point here is that society fulfills its responsibility of providing for the common good, and it has funding to do so. Taxes are inevitable, even for societies that own vast amounts of natural resources and exploit them using social ownership, because there is always more common good to do.

Thus, Societies will have taxes; Utopia is no exception.

Citizens and Economy

While society is fulfilling its responsibility of satisfying the common good, citizens are expected to use the resources at their disposal to satisfy most of their needs and wants.

That is, citizens are expected to be independent and self-sufficient.

Because we are interested in the well-being of all individuals, we will place minimal restrictions on what people can do with their knowledge, skills, time, and resources. By resources, in this context, we mean their privately held wealth. When we say minimal restrictions, we mean that people should not steal other people's resources or harm them, etc. Of course, we all already know and accept these minimal restrictions. Whatever else remains after these minimal restrictions, we usually refer to as freedoms. These freedoms include freedom to move from one part of the nation to another, freedom to practice any allowed activity, freedom to trade any good that has not been prohibited for sale, etc.

The idea of freedom always comes with the dual qualifications of "as long as exercising those freedoms do not cause others harm" and "not every act by someone else can be construed as harm".

Empowered with resources and freedoms, citizens can do whatever they think will help them in satisfying their needs and wants. People can work for others, save their wealth, invest their wealth, etc. All this leads to what we call an Economy.

The main idea here is that citizens are expected to be independent and self-sufficient. Citizens ought to do whatever they can to make their own life better, that too without harming others. They ought to satisfy their own needs and wants to the best of their abilities. A society is made up of its citizens. Whatever better life these citizens desire, they have to create it for themselves. No society, not even a Utopia, can take care of all its citizens.

What happens when some citizen is not independent and self-sufficient? If this sort of thing happens to a large proportion of its citizens, then can such a society be called a Utopia? Obviously not.

A Utopia does not merely desire its citizens to be independent and self-sufficient, it needs them to be. It is in the best interest of an ideal society that all its citizens be independent and self-sufficient, or at least are progressing towards achieving that goal. Thus, an ideal society will help its citizens become independent and self-sufficient.

When the help given is sufficient and when citizens of the society desire to be independent and self-sufficient, most of the citizens will manage to become independent and self-sufficient to a significant extent. Some citizens, in spite of the help given, may still not achieve it. That is OK. That is part of life. Failure of some to achieve independence and self-sufficiency does not disqualify a society from becoming a Utopia. A society not doing everything reasonable to help those who need help surely disqualifies that society from becoming a Utopia.

An ideal society takes on the responsibility of ensuring that all its citizens have what they need to become independent and self-sufficient. It gives help to those who need it in the proportion that it is needed. Giving such help is considered as a common good. This is one of the aspects that distinguishes a Utopia from other kinds of societies.

Wealth Inequality

In Utopia, everyone cannot have the same amount of wealth

Suppose for a moment we consider the idea that "in Utopia, everyone should have equal amounts of wealth". Let us see if this idea is even possible. If everyone ought to have an equal amount of wealth, then it means wealth equality should be ever present. At no instant of time would the wealth of one person differ from the wealth of another person.

So, when a person visits a restaurant and orders a meal and consumes it and then pays for it, even after that he or she should be left with the same amount of wealth as everyone else. At the start of the meal, the customer and the restaurant owner had the same amount of wealth, and even after paying for his or her meal, as per our notion that "everyone has the same amount of wealth all the time", the customer and the restaurant owner still have the same amount of wealth.

Why did the restaurant owner go through all the effort if it does not result in a benefit to him or her? If doing something that involves an exchange of money does not impact how much money one has, what would be the point of conducting such an exchange? In the case of the customer and the restaurant owner, the customer got a meal, but what did the restaurant owner get in return? Is this fair to the restaurant owner? Would the customer who got the meal think it is a "fair exchange"?

If a society could exist where no matter what one does, one still cannot change the amount of wealth one gets to possess, then would we even call it a Utopia?

In a society, we do things because we want to derive some benefit from it. If running a restaurant and providing meals to customers does not change the amount of wealth one possesses, then why bother doing it? The same question exists for everything that is done in a society. Thus, when we live in a society and when we conduct our routine business as a member of the society, we get involved in give and take. This give and take is in the form of products and services being exchanged for money. This transfer of money from one person to another implies that everyone will not have the same amount of wealth.

So, even in Utopia, there will be differences in the amount of wealth that people possess. In Utopia, everyone cannot have the same amount of wealth.

Could some people in a Utopia be rich? Yes. Could some people in a Utopia be poor? Yes. Let us discuss the reason.

When we have Utopia, we will have eliminated most kinds of unfairness, and we would have retained fairness.

People will also have the freedom to work in any field that they would like to. When we consider individual fields and skills, some people are naturally better than most people at those individual fields and skills. Thus, these people, if they work in the field in which they are good, will offer better value to others than most other people can. People will recognize the better value and will favor those who provide better value. In a Utopia, having eliminated various kinds of unfairness, success would depend on the goodness of that individual's talent, a demand for that talent, and "luck".

So, when people become successful, and since we would not be eliminating the exchange of money for services, some people will naturally be able to have more customers, and hence more people will give them a part of their wealth in return for whatever these successful people offer so well, and that will result in a few people accumulating larger amount of wealth than the rest. This makes some people rich.

Thus, even in Utopia, some people will be rich.

Utopia is a society. It cannot impose control over things like "luck" and "misfortune". So, even in Utopia, there will be people who will encounter lack of luck or misfortune. There will be some people who are significantly more unfortunate than even the normal levels of misfortune. There will be some kinds of misfortunes that will prevent people from working for an extended period of time. These people, because they cannot offer others anything, would not be receiving part of other people's wealth in exchange for their services. However, these people still have to live. They still have their needs and wants, and to satisfy them they still will need to buy products and services. If such unfortunate people were not enormously rich before the misfortune struck, then such people will eventually deplete all their wealth just in order to survive. This sort of situation would make such people poor.

Thus, even in Utopia, some people will be poor.

This discussion about wealth inequality, rich and poor should make one wonder: What is so special about a Utopia? From the poverty perspective, a Utopia should render poverty harmless. While rendering poverty harmless is necessary to have a Utopia, a Utopia should do many other good things for its citizens.

Importance and Urgency of Our Situation

Currently, we do not have unlimited energy, and we do not have full automation. With every passing decade, we will make progress towards these goals. Since the start of this century, the 21st century, we have made plenty of progress in these areas. Notwithstanding the occasional shocks due to economic and other disasters, eventually energy generation will become sustainable, renewable sources of energy will become dominant, and the price of energy will start to fall. During all this time, automation will continue automating more things.

There are still plenty of decades before unlimited energy and full automation will become a reality. Both these technological achievements require a tremendous amount of work from plenty of people; and doing all that work takes time. Plenty of people are currently engaged in achieving those two technological goals.

These people are building on the knowledge and technology advanced by several prior generations of humans. It is truly a case of "standing on the shoulders of giants".

Most of this work is done in the private sector. Part of that work is funded by the society. The funding is usually for doing more research and more development that could help in achieving those goals or getting closer to those goals.

As humanity progresses in that direction, wealth inequality will continue to increase. Within our current socio-economic model, achieving unlimited energy and full automation will take wealth inequality to intolerable levels for almost all humans. The current situation of increasing wealth inequality is the early warning for this eventuality. If we do nothing to solve that problem, socially, we will be worse off.

Increasing wealth inequality is an important problem; we must solve it.

Making our monetary system fair, not just the taxation system fair, will solve the increasing wealth inequality problem and many others. This is a worthy goal to set for ourselves. Making the monetary system fair will set us on the path to converting our society to a Utopia. There is no Utopia without a fair monetary system.

How much time do we have to solve this problem?

Assuming that automation doubles every 10 years, in the next 40 years it will be 16 times the present levels. That is one order of magnitude larger. Which means that all non-rich citizens will face hardship that is at least 10 times larger than in the current era.

Assuming that automation doubles every 20 years, and this is a very conservative estimate, in the next 80 years it will be 16 times the present levels, and all non-rich citizens will face hardship that is at least 10 times larger than in the current era.

Thus, at most, we have this century, the 21st century, to solve the problem. Realistically, we have only about 40 years.

How much time will it take to solve the problem?

This book series presents the changes that we need in sufficient detail. From the time a society considers these ideas to be effective, and throws the full backing of the society to implement them, it will take at least 10 years to build the new systems and make them operational.

So, if we start now, we will have begun our journey towards Utopia by 2035, at least in the first few countries, and by 2050 the desire to be a Utopia can reach all countries in the world.

Even if it takes another 10 years for the first few countries to agree that this is the way to move forward, all countries in the world can begin its journey towards Utopia by 2060.

What would be the consequences of not solving the problem?

If we reach the 22nd century, and we have not solved these problems, then expect French and Russian style revolutions. These would not be good for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between.

How about stalling the progress in automation?

We should not want to slow down the progress towards achieving unlimited energy and full automation; because we want to enjoy the benefits of all that. In the Stone Age, wealth inequality was not a problem, but we would not want to live in the Stone Age. It is better to have more automation instead of less, but without the adverse side effects of the automation on socio-economic life, and it can be done.

Instead of stalling one kind of progress, we should be thinking of making social progress. Social progress will not only tackle the problems introduced by these kinds of progress, but it will make it possible for all to have a good life. Utopia is not just about solving our current problems; it has more worthy goals.

The problem of increasing wealth inequality is a social problem, and it needs a social solution. Without intervention, the problem will become intolerable for almost all people. That is the importance of this situation.

We need to fully fix the monetary system of our society before those two technological goals are achieved. We have just enough time to make our monetary system fair. That is the urgency of our situation.