Overview of Chapters

This chapter provides an overview of all the chapters in this book, including all the preceding chapters. The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader, in a single chapter, a full overview of everything in this book.

Introductory Chapters

Humanity has made plenty of progress, and yet we see plenty of problems. Can we find elegant solutions to many of the current problems? Can we make our society the best that it can be? Yes, of course.

The chapter, Introduction, introduces the thought that most of the problems in our present-day societies are caused due to scarcity of money, and that is rooted in the unfairness in our monetary system. A symptom of this unfairness is the increasing wealth inequality. Rather than make small improvements, we should eliminate all unfairness; we should aim to convert our society into an ideal society; a society that strives to achieve well-being for all its citizens.

Why do we have increasing wealth inequality? That is, why do the rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer? The for-profit style of economy has several mechanisms that cause money to flow from the poor to the rich. These are just the mechanisms; they are intrinsic to the for-profit economy; the mechanism is not the reason. Moreover, the for-profit economy is also not the reason. The for-profit economy works within the confines of several monetary systems that have been developed over centuries. These monetary systems have several kinds of unfairness, and they are the reasons for increasing wealth inequality. The chapter, Reasons for the Rich Getting Richer, discusses these mechanisms and reasons.

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?

The chapter, Clarifying Utopia, 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.

The highest level goal of an ideal society is to ensure the well-being of all its citizens. The chapter, Utopian Goals, expands this highest level goal to three high-level goal categories, and then outlines the systems that will fulfill those goals. The categories are: Citizen Controlled Democracy, Fair Monetary System, and Social Welfare System.

Citizen Controlled Democracy

On what basis can the democracy of an ideal society be controlled by its citizens? And how? The chapter, Citizen Controlled Democracy, provides an overview of the answers to these questions. We will discuss the need for axioms, the axioms themselves, and the most important consequences arising out of the acceptance of these axioms. These consequences are in the areas of law-making, government, determining the will of the people, and policy parameters. The axioms are the basis, and the consequences are the tools of a "Citizen Controlled Democracy".

Fair Monetary System

When we hear the term "Wealth Redistribution", we can easily formulate an intuitive description of the concept. That intuitive description is not wrong, but it is not precise. The chapter, Wealth Redistribution, makes the intuition precise. We will discuss the need for wealth redistribution, its conceptual implementation, and the problems tackled by wealth redistribution.

We have already discussed several kinds of unfairness in our current taxation system, and we have introduced wealth as a potential basis for taxation. The chapter, Wealth Based Taxes, concludes that discussion. We will outline why the current bases for taxation are wrong. We will specify why wealth is the right basis for taxation. We will, through generalized numeric examples, assess the extent of unfairness of our current taxation bases when compared to wealth as the basis for taxation. We will also outline all other reasons, besides fairness, that makes wealth the ideal basis for taxation.

Deciding which sources of funds to use and to what extent is the primary decision of a fiscal policy. The chapter, Fiscal Policy, discusses several currently used sources of funds, and concludes that wealth-based taxes and "printing money" are the only two sources of funds that are appropriate for financing the operations of an ideal society. Based on these two sources, we outline the entire fiscal policy and its rules. A few of these rules involve "destroying money", the complement of "printing money". We cannot have one without the other, and both play a key role in the overall fiscal policy.

Current societies deal with availability of money under the name of "monetary policy". Instead, monetary policy should deal with the amount of money supply in a society. The only goal of the monetary policy of an ideal society is to ensure that the total monetary value of the privately owned wealth of the society remains almost constant. The chapter, Monetary Policy, discusses the reasons for adopting this goal, its outline implementation, and compares it to past and present monetary policies.

Foreign trade has a very long history. It has been practiced in the world for several millennia. In general, foreign trade provides plenty of benefits. Foreign trade has a dark past. Foreign trade was instrumental in conquest and colonization of large parts of the world. It is foreign trade that led to the subjugation of many nations, exploitation of several continents and wiping out indigenous people entirely in some cases. It played a key role in the establishment and perpetuation of slavery. With such a history, all nations of the world and all citizens of each country need to be careful in dealing with foreign trade. We want to eliminate all the bad aspects of foreign trade and keep all the good ones. So, what is the most important reason for foreign trade? What are the desirable characteristics of foreign trade? What systems and mechanisms are required to ensure that foreign trade actually can have the desirable characteristics? Can we redesign the system of foreign trade so that trade wars become obsolete? Can this system be fair to all countries? These are the questions that we will discuss in the Foreign Trade chapter.

Core Idea of Social Welfare

People have needs and wants, and they ought to be able to satisfy them. Those who can satisfy their own needs and wants are deemed to be independent and self-sufficient. The ideal situation for any society is when every citizen is independent and self-sufficient. But, that is not possible for significant chunks of a citizen's life. Enabling citizens to become independent and self-sufficient is the core idea of social welfare.

The chapter, Independent and Self-Sufficient, 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. From a Utopian perspective, citizens not being independent and self-sufficient is a bad situation. Thus, ideal societies take sufficient efforts, not just significant efforts, to help and make all its citizens independent and self-sufficient.

The chapter, Needs and Wants, discusses the ideas of needs and wants of a citizen, and an ideal society. A need is that thing which when not satisfied causes harm, and a want is that thing which when not satisfied causes only disappointment. Needs can be broadly classified in the following categories: urgent, essential and desirable. There is no need to classify wants for this kind of discussion.

It is not the case that just people have needs and wants. The entire society also has its needs and wants. For example, a society aspiring to be a Utopian society will need its citizens to be independent and self-sufficient. To become independent and self-sufficient, a citizen would need some resources, and the citizen may not have them. So, a society aspiring to be an ideal society would want to help those who need help in being independent and self-sufficient so that the society's objective of being an ideal society is also accomplished.

There are two systems that fulfill the core idea of social welfare. The first is the Utopian Payment Model and the second is Social Employment. There are several chapters dedicated to the discussion of each one of these systems.

Chapters about Utopian Payment Model

When we live our lives and do whatever we like to do, we invariably have needs and wants, and we would like them to be satisfied. There are social systems and private businesses that satisfy different kinds of needs and wants. In order to satisfy most needs and wants, there is a cost incurred, and this cost needs to be paid by someone. "Payment Models" answer the dual questions of "Who pays for it? And how much?". There are also "Payment Systems" that deal with the actual aspect of transferring money from some account to some other account. These payment systems work with "accounting systems" that keep track of accounts and what is in each of those accounts. The chapter, Current Payment Models, discusses the current payment models and payment systems and the issues associated with them.

When citizens are independent and self-sufficient, they will be able to satisfy their own needs and wants to the best of their abilities. But, when citizens are unable to satisfy even their essential needs, they are clearly not independent and self-sufficient. The chapter, Utopian Payment Model, introduces and discusses at length the Utopian Payment Model. Utopian Payment Model is the primary mechanism of an ideal society to assist those citizens who have difficulty in fulfilling their own essential needs. Such citizens need help before they can be independent and self-sufficient. They need help so that they can get to a position of helping themselves. This is the way by which an ideal society helps their citizens become independent and self-sufficient, and later help them stay that way.

The Utopian Payment Model was designed to assist in paying for essentials and only to the extent that assistance is needed, and that too with some limits. The chapter, The Essentials, introduces and discusses at length what an "Essential" is in an ideal society. When thinking about essentials, at the conceptual level, we need to identify the categories of essentials, justify why each of the categories is an essential, identify the kinds of products and services in each category and finally conceptualize what sort of limits should be placed on these broad categories. We will discuss the criteria for identifying the categories of essentials, and we will discuss the specific categories of essentials.

Health is one of the most important aspects of human life. Having and maintaining good health contributes significantly to our well-being. Currently, different countries adopt different payment models to pay for healthcare. In some countries, citizens pay for their own healthcare using the Full Price payment model. This means that citizens are limited by their own wealth when obtaining healthcare. In some other countries, citizens pay using the Full Price but paid by Insurance payment model. Then, there are some countries that provide many aspects of healthcare to all their citizens for free, that is, in these countries, citizens pay using the Free payment model for many of their healthcare needs and for the rest of their healthcare needs they either have to use the Full Price or Full Price but paid by Insurance payment models. Each one of these payment models has some undesirable aspects. The chapter, Paying for Healthcare, discusses the reasons Healthcare should be considered as an essential need, and we should use the Utopian Payment Model to pay for healthcare. We will also discuss the ramifications of this choice.

Education is important in making citizens independent and self-sufficient. But, is education a common good or is it an essential need or is it a want? The answer to this question indicates the payment model that is best suited for paying for education. The chapter, Paying for Education, discusses Education as an Essential in an ideal society and its ramifications.

The chapter, Utopian Payment Model Rocks, explains why the Utopian Payment Model is significantly better than all existing implementations of the idea of "the society helping its citizens" combined. Note that the Utopian Payment Model was designed to assist in paying for essentials where needed. But, the benefits go well beyond just providing the assistance.

Chapters about Social Employment

The chapter, Evolution of Work, examines the evolution of work in our societies. This examination sets up the stage for discussing the problem of unemployment and solving it. The main conclusion drawn from this examination is: Unemployment is a big problem today. Based on the evolution of work and its expected future trend, and if we do nothing about it, unemployment will be an ever-growing problem. That is the reason that we need to tackle the problem of unemployment fully.

The chapter, Overview of Employment and Unemployment, explores employment and unemployment and its relationship to poverty.

The chapter, Analysis of Employment and Unemployment, examines and analyzes the causes of unemployment. It also exposes issues in our current employment systems. The purpose of this discussion is to enable the formulation of the approach to tackle the problem of unemployment. We need to analyze the issue before we can solve it.

The chapter, Tackling Unemployment, introduces the approach adopted by ideal societies to tackle the problem of unemployment. It is called Social Employment. Social Employment is the mechanism by which society fulfills its desire of full employment. Social employment is the mechanism that keeps citizens out of poverty.

The chapter, Regular Employment Policy, outlines the standards, rules, privileges and responsibilities associated with various aspects of regular employment. This is the regular employment policy. This policy has policy parameters that citizens have control over and use that control to fine-tune the working of this policy.

The chapter, Social Employment Policy, outlines the standards, rules, privileges and responsibilities associated with various aspects of social employment. This is the Social Employment Policy. This policy has policy parameters that citizens have control over and use that control to fine-tune the working of this policy.

The chapter, Unemployment and Poverty Tackled, outlines how Social Employment combined with the Utopian Payment Model effectively solves unemployment and poverty problems. In short, with the presence of Social Employment in addition to the Utopian Payment Model, citizens do not ever need to worry about them being poor and its adverse consequences. These two don’t make riches available to citizens, but citizens are assured of financial security regardless of any factor that may adversely impact their wealth situation. Some of these factors are: age, health, origins, inexperience, absence of luck, desire to do social work, absence of savings and investments, poor education, poor guidance, etc.