Independent and Self-Sufficient

This chapter introduces the idea that the citizens being independent and self-sufficient is one of the primary goals of ideal societies. The core idea of an ideal society is that it continuously endeavors to maintain the current good that it has, increase the amount of good that it can have and reduce the amount of bad that it has. Citizens not being independent and self-sufficient is a bad situation from a Utopian perspective. Thus, ideal societies take sufficient efforts, not just significant efforts, to help and make all its citizens independent and self-sufficient.

The section, "The Words and Their Meanings", quite simply is discussing the meanings of the words "independent" and "self-sufficient" in this particular context. While everyone knows the intuitive meanings of these words, a discussion is necessary to ensure that all of us are discussing the same exact meaning.

The section, "Independent Thinker", illustrates, using a story, that a Utopian society should desire that its citizens be independent thinkers. Why? Because, being an independent thinker is part of being independent.

The section, "Capabilities", discusses that an ideal society should desire that its citizens are capable of doing some work. That is because doing work will still be necessary in an ideal society. The need for such discussion arises because of a commonly occurring notion that it is possible to live off of our accumulated wealth without any need to do any work. This notion is inapplicable for almost all citizens most of the time for multiple reasons.

The section, "We Should Want it", discusses that ideal societies should "want" their citizens to be independent and self-sufficient. It cannot be classified as just a "need". We discuss this from the perspective of many commonly occurring categories of citizens and from the perspective of the entire society. Without citizens wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, there cannot be a Utopia.

The section, "Do We Have it?", examines the independence and self-sufficiency of four commonly occurring categories of citizens; the citizens are categorized only by their age group. It provides some estimates in percentage terms.

The section, "Social Context", discusses the idea that what is considered independent and self-sufficient really depends on the social context. Is our current social context sufficient to enable all citizens to be independent, capable and self-sufficient?

The section, "Components of the Social Context", discusses that for citizens to be independent, capable and self-sufficient, citizens would need health, wealth, knowledge, skills, opportunity and motivation. These are the main components of social context. Changes are warranted in all these areas.

The Words and Their Meanings

Let's discuss the words "independent" and "self-sufficient" and outline the exact meaning with which we plan to use those words. If you look up these two words, you will find several meanings associated with them. In general, all those meanings are quite appropriate. Of all those meanings, we will focus on very specific meanings.

The word independent when used as an adjective for a person means a person who can think using his or her own brain; as in an independent thinker. It means that the person knows how to think. The person can identify and obtain all the relevant information from whatever sources that are available, sift through the information, and decide which of that information is critical for the decision that he or she has to make.

An independent person can not only choose from given choices without assistance or prompting, but an independent person can also notice relevant options that are not even listed. An independent person can propose such options for the choice and substantiate why his or her proposals have merit.

The word self-sufficient means that a person can do whatever is necessary to take care of himself or herself. In order to be self-sufficient, one is required to do some activities that get the person something necessary to take care of himself or herself. In order to do those activities, the person needs to be "capable" of doing those activities. The word capable when used as an adjective for a person means a person who can do things using his or her skills, training and resources. The person when faced with a task, a challenge of doing something uses all his resources like wealth, knowledge, skills, training and body to take the challenge head on, complete the task without needing help. Being capable means not needing help in completing the task. The moment help is required, the ability to do it does not exist.

A capable person will most certainly be able to do all the activities that a normal human requires for living and enjoy life. Regarding the abilities to perform those activities that are necessary to take care of oneself, some people may have abilities much better than the rest of us, and some people may have abilities that merely pass the definition of "being capable". Regardless of how wide the range is in ability, a person who has abilities at the lower end of the scale is still able to do the task, just not as well as a person who has abilities at the higher end of the scale.

There is a distinction between the ideas of being capable and being self-sufficient. When a capable person uses his or her capabilities to do something that helps him or her take care of himself or herself, then only this capable person becomes self-sufficient. This distinction between capability and self-sufficiency is similar to the distinction between having a talent and using the talent. This distinction is similar to the distinction between having a high Intelligence Quotient and doing something useful with it. The key point is that without capabilities, there cannot be self-sufficiency. A capable person can be self-sufficient.

A capable person does not need to be able to do everything. There will be things that a capable person cannot do. Being capable allows for the possibility for collaboration and cooperation. Being capable allows for several people to combine their individual abilities together to accomplish that which was difficult or impossible for a single individual. Capable people contribute their efforts, collaborate and cooperate with others to do things far greater than their individual abilities.

A person who lacks the ability to cooperate and collaborate, may still be able to lead a good life. But, his or her life can be better if he or she can also cooperate and collaborate with others. Society is made from such cooperation and collaboration. Such cooperation and collaboration is the basis on which we have built our human civilization.

Independent Thinker

Here is a completely made up story to illustrate why we need citizens to be independent thinkers. While reading the story, keep in mind that it is fiction. If you find that this story resembles any events that may have happened in the past or may occur after this story has been written, then that resemblance is merely coincidental.

Imagine a world gripped with a highly contagious disease that is being caused by some germ. People are staying home to avoid getting germs from others. In this setup, imagine two neighbors. They get along well, and of course they are keeping a safe distance from each other. One day, the senior neighbor is talking to his doctor over the phone. During the casual conversation, the doctor tells this senior neighbor that researchers have been studying how to curb the germs and have found that certain disinfectants can kill the germs within a minute. Later, in another phone conversation between the senior and junior neighbors, the senior tells the junior about what the doctor told him about disinfectants that kill the germs and expresses his high hopes that the end of the epidemic is near as doctors are close to a potential cure. Later that evening, the senior was surprised and shocked to see an ambulance in front of his house. Paramedics took the junior to hospital because he gargled with a household disinfectant and swallowed some of it. Naturally becoming concerned, the senior asked one of the paramedics about the nature of the medical emergency, and the paramedic informed him as to what the junior neighbor had done. Luckily for the junior, his wife was at home and called the paramedics. After hearing this, the senior could not understand why the junior would do such a thing! The End.

How is it that the senior got high hopes that a cure is near based on the information that some disinfectants can kill germs quickly? That is what disinfectants do. Some do it faster than others. Why did the junior think that gargling with a household disinfectant is a good idea? Does he not know that these kinds of disinfectants are intended for kitchen counter-tops, bathrooms, toilets and floors? They are not intended for humans, after all they are either poisonous or toxic or corrosive.

In the story above, it might seem that the senior or the junior are too trusting in what they hear from others. However trusting they might be, how is it that they were unaware of what disinfectants are and what they could do to a human body? Not only did they not have this understanding, they also could not read the labels on the disinfectants, interpret them, think about the consequences of taking a proposed action before acting on the impulses.

While this sort of thing, hopefully, does not happen in real life, let us do our utmost to ensure that our citizens have sufficient knowledge of at least all routine household things, of our own health and have the ability to think and take better decisions to stay clear of doing things that could be harmful to themselves.

For us, to make our society and our country better, we definitely need to clear the low bar described by the above story. To make our society, our country and our world a much better place, a Utopia, we need much more than just clearing the low bar. We definitely need citizens to be independent thinkers.

Capabilities

Can we be self-sufficient without being capable? What if we have a sufficient amount of wealth? Can we live off of our wealth?

Let's explore this thought and see where it leads us. Let us look at a real example. We will use some statistics about the United States of America at the beginning of 2020. The average wealth per-person is about 300,000 dollars and the per-person GDP is about 60,000 dollars. The per-person GDP loosely corresponds to per-person income.

Further, let us assume for a short amount of time that the average wealth and the per-person income is available to each and every citizen. This assumption, however unrealistic, is useful to illustrate the concept of "It is necessary to work in order to enjoy a good quality of life".

Thus, if such an average person decides to not work but still enjoy the quality of life by spending his or her personal wealth, then he or she can do so for about 5 years. If the person reduces their quality of life to half of the current amount, then the money would last 10 years. At a quarter of the current quality of life, the money would last 20 years. At one-tenth of the current quality of life, the money would last about 50 years. You see where this is going? If one decides to live on the wealth that he or she possesses and have the current quality of life, the wealth would last a very little amount of time and after that there will be plenty of years that the person will have to work to maintain the current level of quality of life. Thus, without capabilities to work and earn money, the quality of life that one would get to enjoy will be significantly lower than what we currently have.

At this point, one might think that this sort of situation occurs only in the United States of America. That is not so. If we look at various countries, their total wealth and their GDP, then we can find the ratio of Total Wealth to GDP. This ratio represents the number of years that people in each of these countries can live without working. If you look at the table below, you can see that people in all these countries cannot live off of their wealth for more than 6 years, regardless of how developed they are. In the table below, Total Wealth and GDP amounts are in trillions of US Dollars.

Country	Total Wealth	GDP	Total Wealth / GDP
USA	105.99	21.44	4.94
China	63.82	14.14	4.51
Japan	24.99	5.15	4.85
Germany	14.66	3.86	3.80
UK	14.63	2.74	5.34
France	13.72	2.71	5.06
India	12.61	2.94	4.3
Italy	11.35	1.99	5.7
Canada	8.57	1.73	4.95
Spain	7.77	1.40	5.55
South Korea	7.30	1.63	4.48
Australia	7.20	1.38	5.22
Switzerland	3.87	0.72	5.38
Netherlands	3.71	0.90	4.12
Brazil	3.53	1.85	1.96
Russia	3.05	1.64	1.86
Mexico	2.70	1.27	2.13

The information in the table was obtained from the page List of countries by total wealth estimated at the beginning of 2020 and the page List of countries by GDP (nominal) estimated for 2019 by International Monetary Fund.

There is another line of thought that some people advocate. It is that "we should invest our wealth and earn passive income from it, and then we can live off of such passive income, and we don't have to work". Let's examine that line of thought. Suppose each citizen has 300,000 dollars and invests it to earn at say a 10% rate of return. Maybe they invest in the stock market, maybe they buy rental properties and put them on rent, maybe they buy junk bonds.

Even at a 10% rate of return, they would get 30,000 dollars and the current standard of living for an average citizen is 60,000 dollars. Such passive investing would only get them half of their current standard of living. What if someone had 600,000 dollars, then they would have the current standard of living. Sure, but in order to double the wealth, only 50% of the population can do so at the expense of the remaining 50% of the population. Thus, while 50% of the population can enjoy their current standard of living, the other 50% will have no wealth and will have no choice but to work to earn their living. It's as though the poor 50% are working so that the wealthy 50% don't have to. Does this sound familiar?

Even if everyone has the same amount of money and is willing to enjoy a lower standard of living than the current average standard of living, then also there are multiple problems with this "passive income" way of earning one's own living.

The first problem with "passive income strategy" is that there are risks in investing or buying rental properties or junk bonds. Because of these risks, over a large amount of time and on an average the rate of return will be less than 10% annually. Maybe the rate of return is 8%, or maybe it is 5% and that means that the quality of life that we surmised earlier is over-estimated; in reality it would be lower.

The second problem with "passive income strategy" is that the rate of returns is not fixed at 10% per year, but it is merely the average returns. Some years may be good, and some years may be bad. Any person attempting to live on such passive income needs to know how to handle these situations. Will everyone have the right mindset to deal with these ups and downs and uncertainty of rate of return?

The third problem with "passive income strategy" is that it is unclear what sort of knowledge is required to obtain such a passive income. How does one get it? If knowledge is indeed required, then the act of gaining this knowledge is work. How long does it take to gather or learn this knowledge? Is it a continuous activity or is it like attending a course in the local college? Or is it just watching a few videos on the internet, and then you are set for life? After all, if it is indeed a "passive income strategy", then the amount of knowledge required should not be a lot.

Finally, and disregarding all the issues mentioned earlier, if this "passive income strategy" could work for all of us, then clearly our society has messed up big time and missed out on such a simple opportunity to provide everyone with a certain quality of life without doing any work!

In reality, this kind of living off of passive income earned by investing one's wealth is possible only for those who are rich, and even then it has risks and requires knowledge. This choice is not available to most of us who are not rich. If we are thinking about the well-being of all citizens, then this line of thought will not produce any good results. And if it cannot work for all of us, we shouldn't rely on it to make our society a much better place.

So far, we have discussed the problems with both "living off of one's own wealth" and "passive income strategy". Let us, for a short time, disregard all these problems, and consider what would happen if all citizens decide not to work and adopt one of the two strategies and either live off of their wealth or live off of passive income generated from their wealth.

In this scenario, who does the work that all these citizens need done in order to survive? Who does farming, fishing, manufacturing and providing services? Who runs the restaurants? Who makes movies? Who keeps the public transit system working? Who produces crude oil, who refines it, who delivers refined gasoline/petrol to gas stations, and who maintains cars? Who produces electricity, and who maintains the infrastructure required to produce the electricity? Who keeps our tap water flowing, and who takes the garbage away? If everyone decides to live off of their wealth, then who does the work?

Living off of wealth or off of passive income from wealth for an entire lifetime is only possible for those few who have plenty of wealth, and that too only as long as the rest of the society continues to work, grow food, manufacture products and provide services.

Thus, if we are thinking about the long term well-being of all citizens, then living off of wealth or off of passive income from wealth is certainly not a possibility for all citizens.

The real reason that we all enjoy our current quality of life is that so many of us work. Not working is not a good choice.

In reality, wealth is not equally distributed and income is not the same for all. Thus, the poor people and low income people are at a significant disadvantage when compared to the rest. The situation is much worse. The rich own a large proportion of wealth in our society, but are a small fraction of the entire population. Thus, far more than 50% of people have wealth less than the average wealth. Similarly, income is not equally distributed, and far more than 50% of the people have an income of less than 60,000 dollars.

Thus, even though a large proportion of people work, the majority of people do not enjoy the quality of life implied by the average wealth or income. A large proportion of people work to make the lives of a small proportion of people excellent, and in return they themselves get less than average quality of life. This is the real problem of current times, current society and current systems.

This does not mean that we take all the wealth and distribute it evenly and then think that everything will be good. Doing such a thing is no different from stealing and if we are thinking about Utopia, we should not resort to actions that have no moral goodness, no ethical goodness.

Similarly, it does not mean that we undertake income equalization. People provide some value to others and in return earn some money. The provider of this value earns some money and after paying for expenses associated with providing the value, what is left is profit and loosely speaking this becomes the income of the provider of the value. The person who exchanges his or her money in return for the "value" that the other person provides, gets what he or she considers a fair trade; trading money for something valuable. Thus, a person who can provide something that is considered more valuable should get more income, and a person who can provide something that is considered less valuable should get less income. It is fair. Thus, income equalization would be quite unfair to those who can provide higher value to others. Would they continue to have the same motivation in providing the higher value when they do not get sufficient money that they consider is fair for the higher value that they provide?

Thus, we need to discard both the notions of "distribute all wealth equally among all citizens right now" and "equalize income for all".

Thus, we are left with the need for citizens to work and provide value to others and let others accept this valuable work and in return willingly part with their money in exchange for this valuable work. It is necessary to work to earn the money necessary to sustain our quality of life.

That brings us back to the notion of capability. If one has no capabilities, what possible value can one provide to others to earn the money that is necessary to sustain one's quality of life? Thus, there is a need for every citizen to be capable. Capability can lead to self-sufficiency. A capable person still has to use his or her capabilities to be self-sufficient.

Once capable people are willing to work in return for money, they can be self-sufficient. We still need to ensure that this exchange of work for money is fair. Regardless of the current unfairness, the need to work exists.

There is one last point left about the need to work. Living off of wealth is impossible for everyone at the same time. However, everyone does not have to work all the time. Individuals can live off of their wealth for small amounts of time at the same quality of life, or for longer amounts of time at proportionately reduced quality of life. The only requirement is that everyone does not rush to do that at the same time. This concept is the basis of taking vacations and retiring. If you are going to retire, then the amount of wealth you have at the beginning of retirement will determine the quality of life that you can have for some planned duration.

We Should Want it

The prior sections discussed whether it is necessary for citizens to be independent, capable and self-sufficient. Those sections focused on the aspect of "need".

However, is it a "want"? A "want" arises out of desires, not out of the knowledge that something is needed. We humans tend to ignore our needs and go after our desires and wants. Like with everything else, is making our society better a want of everyone? Or is it a desire of just a few?

Each group of citizens has a different perspective on why they would desire to be independent, capable and self-sufficient.

A parent would want his or her children to be independent, capable and self-sufficient. This is because parents usually desire the best for their children. Parents can understand the needs and usually have a desire to provide for the needs of their own children. In this case the need is to make the child want to be independent, capable and self-sufficient.

A young child may not be able to understand these aspects and hence may not relate to anything in this book. The question of wanting something or not wanting something does not arise if one cannot even relate to the subject of discussion.

A teenager may be able to understand the need for independence and the need for being capable and self-sufficient. However, teenagers also are facing many other distractions in their life. Can we, as adults, leave enough impression on the minds of teenagers for them to desire to be independent, capable and self-sufficient?

An adult would want to be independent, capable and self-sufficient, rather than be dependent on someone else or the entire society. Something about pride in oneself makes a person want to be independent, capable and self-sufficient. There are many examples of people with obvious disadvantages still succeeding in being independent thinkers, capable of doing many things and in general self-sufficient. So, any person with no obvious disadvantages should, in theory, succeed in being independent, capable and self-sufficient. In practice, an adult may face problems that he or she may lack the means to solve, and it is these problems that become the dominant hindrance in people being independent, capable and self-sufficient. The entire society can set up systems that reduce the hindrances.

A young retired person, who is still young enough and has excellent health and wants to enjoy the extra time, would want to be independent and self-sufficient. Being dependent on someone is not as joyful after having worked for decades and being independent and self-sufficient.

Some older retired people may have some level of difficulty in staying independent and self-sufficient, and that is a natural consequence of aging. If we manage to set up our social systems well enough, we can succeed in keeping the vast majority of older retired people independent and self-sufficient.

The society would want all its citizens to be independent and capable so that citizens can collectively contribute to the well-being of the entire society without anyone feeling that they are contributing more than their fair share. When almost all citizens are independent and self-sufficient, citizens would know that their contribution towards the society is not being wasted on maintaining some other citizen's quality of life, especially when that other citizen can do it himself or herself.

Society can think of "making all citizens independent and capable" as a goal. This is because, currently, we have plenty of citizens who are not independent in their thinking or capable of providing for all their needs. The current inabilities are not the fault of those individuals, but it is the fault of our current systems. These current systems are not fair. They are not nurturing and supportive enough to make all citizens independent and capable.

The society can also think of "make all citizens independent and capable" as a means to a higher goal of making our society a Utopia. When citizens are independent and capable, they can think about what a good life is and how to make it a reality for every one of us. When citizens are independent and capable, they can think about what happiness is. They will not only have the liberty to pursue happiness, but they will have the means to pursue happiness. Our current lack of independence and capability is a significant hindrance in being happy. When citizens are independent and capable, they can meaningfully ponder about their true purpose in life.

From the perspective of the entire society, a better society can be a want if more than 50% of the citizens want it. Citizens would want it if they are convinced of the need and convinced of its desirability. Parents can only attempt to influence their children, but without the rest of the society backing them, their efforts would have limited results. Every citizen stands to benefit by being independent and capable. However, not every citizen has the means to be independent and capable. This puts the task of making citizens independent and capable firmly in the category of "common good". Whatever needs to be done to accomplish this objective, needs to be undertaken by society.

Do We Have it?

How independent, capable and self-sufficient are our citizens? We will consider citizens by their age group. There are four age groups to consider: young children, teenagers, adults and senior citizens.

It is quite obvious that young children are neither independent nor capable enough to be called self-sufficient. Of course, they spend their childhood and teenage years getting educated so that they can eventually be self-sufficient, either by working for someone or some corporation or by being self-employed. Either way, when children grow up, they will be self-sufficient. When children grow up and become self-sufficient, they become adults. At what age do we think that children can be self-sufficient? Is it 18? Is it 25? Could it be different for different children? Should it be the same for all children?

What about teenagers? As humans grow, their capabilities increase. They gain knowledge and learn ways to think. They play games and sports and thereby increase their physical and mental skills. In any game or sports match between a young child and a teenager, the teenager most probably will win. Clearly, teenagers are more independent and capable than young children. But can we consider them self-sufficient? While we do not approve of child labor, we allow teenagers to work and earn money. Thus, they are getting introduced to the concept of earning money. But what is their motivation in doing so? Is it to be independent, or is it to buy that video game that their parents won't buy for them? While both motives may seem to be attempting to be independent, the first one is that of preparation and the second one is borne out of necessity. If teenagers work only when necessary to provide a want or need that otherwise does not get satisfied, all they are learning is short-term gains. That sort of attitude towards work won't make them thinkers and planners. They might merely be able to get the necessities of life. So, what is your opinion of most teenagers? Are they preparing to be independent, or are they practicing being a consumer?

Usually, we can consider a citizen to be an adult after he or she turns 18 years old; it could even be 20 years old. Whatever this age is, from this age till the retirement age, people should work, earn money and support their own life. Some people may be fortunate to be born to rich parents, and some may have the fortune of having talents and satisfactory nurture to hone their talents to be great skills. Different people have different strengths and skill sets and different skill sets have different levels of difficulty to attain, and usually people with those skill sets that are more difficult to attain can demand more money in exchange for offering their skill set. Thus, the wealth earning capabilities of adults depends on their initial wealth and their skill sets. As a result, the outcome of this wealth earning process can vary quite a bit in the current society. Some people may be unfortunate to be born to poor parents and have limited talents and lack nurturing of whatever talents they possess.

What can you say about the wealth earning outcome of adults? Of all adults, how many do you think are self-sufficient? We can look up the unemployment numbers to answer this question, but that is not quite right because the unemployment number that is published does not include those people that have abandoned looking for work because they are discouraged. A better number is the "participation rate". This number represents the percentage of working age citizens who work. Depending on which country you live in, this number could be as low as 50% and as high as about 70%. If we look at the participation rate, most countries would not be called as successful in being independent and self-sufficient.

Some people think that participation rate overstates the number of people who are not self-sufficient, because there are plenty of individuals who do not have to go out and work and earn money to sustain their life, because someone else in their family is doing the job of going out and earning money in return for this person doing the household work. That line of thought may have some credibility, but to what extent is not known as we do not have data supporting this special case of unemployed people, who are not rich and who depend on someone in their family to earn the money and that the other family member depends on this person for household work.

Senior citizens are those people who are in some loose sense retired, or of the age when most people are retired from active work life. This boundary between a working age adult and a senior citizen is usually around 60 years of age. So, are these senior citizens self-sufficient? The answer depends on how much wealth they had accumulated in their adult working life and if that wealth is sufficient to sustain their life all the way to its end. If the wealth is not sufficient, then they are not self-sufficient.

There is some data about "wealth of family by age of the oldest person or oldest income recipient". But this kind of family data with no information about the number of members in the family is useless to draw reliable conclusions about the retirement prospects of older people. We need data about individuals, not families, as families are not what they used to be a century or two ago. In the absence of good data, it is hard to answer whether senior citizens would be self-sufficient. Perhaps about 20% to 30% would be self-sufficient.

So, in current times, not all citizens can be considered to be independent and self-sufficient. Do we have any data that could answer this question?. There is no concrete data that would answer this question. No one currently classifies citizens as self-sufficient or otherwise and publishes those numbers.

It is likely that 60% to 70% of our entire population is not self-sufficient enough to have the standard of living implied by the average wealth. This is a really bad situation, and it needs to be remedied.

The things that an independent and capable person can think and do depends on the social context that the person lives in.

A few hundred thousand years ago, we could make spears, bows and arrows. A few thousand years ago, we could make plows and could domesticate some animals. A few hundred years ago, we could make cannons and could ponder what natural laws make those cannonballs fall back to earth. A few decades ago, we could figure out that even light can fall into an object if the object is very big.

Without knowing that the speed of light is constant, one could not have pondered its consequences and one could not have conjectured that even light can fall into sufficiently large objects and without this conjecture, it is quite unlikely someone would be looking for evidence of this phenomenon, and that seeking of evidence led to the observation that light bends when passing near even our sun. In the age of cannonballs, it was thought that light travels instantaneously, and hence it was quite impossible to dream of a curved space-time. However still, in the age of cannonballs, it was possible to think of the cannonball and the earth attracting each other and that the cannonball falling to earth is just an appearance due to the fact that earth is a lot larger than the cannonball.

Context is important. Independent and capable persons are still limited by their context. At any point in time, what a person can do depends on all prior knowledge and current social systems. To make our society better than what it is right now, we have the context of our current society. A better society will have a context that is different, a context that is much better than the current context, a context suitable to proceed towards utopia.

Our task is to change our current context in such a way that the new context enables almost all citizens to be independent, capable and self-sufficient.

To be independent, capable and self-sufficient, citizens would need health, wealth, knowledge, skills, opportunity and motivation.

The aspect of motivation is itself multifaceted. One of the facets about motivation is the availability of control over one's own life and the influence one can have over society. The key need is that no one should feel like they are a slave to society. Currently, we are not in charge of making decisions. Currently, we are powerless. We need to be able to meaningfully participate in the decisions of society. We, the citizens, need control over running the business of the society. When we have the right kind of control, we will be able to make the decisions that will solve our problems.

We need a system to manage the wealth of our nation. Currently, we are not in control of the wealth of our own nation. We definitely need this control. Once we have control, we need to manage this wealth so that it is fair to all.

We also need to be able to control, manage and use our own personal wealth. What kind of management is needed? Is it saving or is it investing or is it starting a business? Have we, during the course of our education, received any information about this important and ever-present life detail? If we are to enjoy the concept of retirement, then we would need money to retire. How exactly is it going to be? Each person needs to think about "Who is paying for the retirement of each individual?". Thinking about it personally, "Who is financing my retirement? Is it me or is it someone else? If it is someone else, then whose retirement am I currently paying for right now and how?"

Regarding our personal wealth or the wealth of the nation, that wealth needs proper management. Once we citizens are able to manage our wealth and the wealth of our nation, we can use it to solve our problems.

We also need a proper healthcare system that deals with the set of services that a person has to avail to fix something about his or her health that he or she cannot fix on his or her own effort.

Knowledge and skills are obtained by learning to do something, practicing it and doing it. In order to be able to do it, one needs an opportunity to do it. This requires an education system that provides learning and practicing opportunities. This requires an employment system that supports learning and practicing in doing the work. We need an education system that makes us employable, and an employment system that doesn't ask for qualifications that it does not need.

And, by the way, did your education indicate to you that gargling with household disinfectants would be a bad idea? How many good ideas did your education give you about your own health, and is that enough?