Stable Society

It is the responsibility of the citizens to keep their government in check. However, citizens cannot protest what they don't know about. Governments keep much of their actions a secret, claiming security reasons. What you don't know can hurt you.

Throughout human history, we have seen great nations fall to greed and corruption. Time and again, we try to prop entire countries up onto the shoulders of a few individuals, the ones we call leaders and representatives. It is only human nature that these leaders eventually use their power to their own advantage and to their friends' advantage rather than for the citizens they answer to.

Capitalism has superseded all governing systems. The government operates on money, so whoever has the most money controls the government. Citizens have very little money compared to corporations. It is really quite simple. Money is the physical manifestation of human greed. Before there was money, a village would work together to take care of each other because they all cared about one another. They were rich in social capital.

Science is a time-tested method of definitively proving the laws of reality. One might even say that the scientific method will always lead you to the truth. Science has been largely ignored throughout human history. Its findings were always inconvenient. As it turns out, without science, we would still be cavemen, without any of our precious technology.

The power of knowledge is demonstrated every time a government covers something up, every time a politician is caught cheating on his wife. More concretely, the power of knowledge is demonstrated in engineers and others that use technology to their advantage. These are the people in society that turn information into knowledge and finally into products that do amazing things for you and I on a daily basis. People with detailed knowledge of the inner-workings of systems that run the world also have an immense amount of power.

Communication is an essential part of any human relationship. When a relationship lacks communication, it typically crumbles. As it turns out, communication is simply the transmission of information. If we strive to increase the flow of information, our relationship as a country will dramatically improve. If knowledge is power, then information is wealth. As information is easily duplicated these days, why not make everyone rich with information?

A stable society would be built on a foundation of truth. A stable society is heavily invested in social capital, not monetary capital. A wealthy society is rich with useful information. A healthy society communicates this treasure trove of data with everyone. A stable society can reach higher than any unstable society could ever imagine.

Humans are not perfect. If we were, we wouldn't need a system at all. People would just go about their business doing the right thing without being asked or threatened into coercion. Our current system is prone to fail at the weaknesses of the humans running it. A stable societal framework would find a way to make our weaknesses irrelevant or much easier to overcome.

11.18.2010. 10:22

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