By: John Silva – February, 2017
If I were king, I would strive to provide positive opportunities for everyone to become productive citizens. I would invest in our people and their futures, and stop protecting people and companies that are destroying America for the sake of making a profit no matter what the cost.
Domestic Policy:
We need new paradigms. We are entering a new age, and the decisions we make will establish our place in the world for ourselves, our children and their children for a long, long time. We need to do a better job of providing basic services and opportunities for everyone in our country and to provide an environment that aggressively cultivates our most important assets… our people.
Education:
All education from preschool to post doctorate will be available throughout an individual’s lifetime. It will be free. It will be extremely flexible. and it will be conducted over the internet 24/7. The goal of this new educational system will be: To allow students to develop first their “abilities” and then their “desires” during their entire lifetime.
With the unlimited power of computers, the internet and virtual reality laboratories in their homes, it is feasible to offer unlimited educational choices and settings twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. For example, if you demonstrate the ability to pursue the knowledge required to be a rocket scientist or a poet or both you can pursue your dreams as long as you desire to learn. You can be in a large or small class or even have private tutors. Using advanced software, you can specify your virtual classmates and instructors. They can be friends, a favorite aunt, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King or even the Pope. You can participate in virtual open heart operations in the Harvard University medical laboratories or discuss philosophy with Aristotle.
The degree of difficulty can be sped up or slowed down. Students can mix and match their areas of study with input from their virtual counselors. Favorite virtual instructors and/or presenters can be specified. You can choose instructors that are funny, serious, focus on successful outcomes, provide basic concepts or very detailed information. You will be able to select your instructor’s voice and take your lessons anywhere in the world or even in outer space. Additionally, the program will keep track of your success and provide remediation when needed
Social skills and personal problems can also be addressed as well as a variety of other options. You will be involved in improving the classes you select. The goal will be to make positive changes… making a profit, not so much.
The educational system will be constantly monitored, evaluated and improved. Learning will be seamless. Age will not be a factor in what you choose to learn. Students who are twelve years old can learn about physics and advanced chemistry or how to write short stories. Academic, vocational, and classes for personal enjoyment will all be available along with counseling to assist students as to what classes will best help them to achieve their goals.
Life skills will also be offered. Additional topics such as how to invest in the stock market, or which type of insurance to buy, or how to run a marathon will also be offered. New topics will be constantly added depending on need and interest.
Special needs students will also have a full range of information available to them as well.
Lifetime learning will be available to everyone at no cost.
Employment:
Employers will be able to specify what knowledge they require so individuals will know what knowledge they should acquire.
success will be integrated with the organizations, agencies, employers etc. that can offer individuals employment opportunities. Employers can indicate that they would consider or hire applicants if they would take certain classes before being considered or after being hired, allowing students to focus on a path with a greater possibility of success or not. Some students may work towards specific employment opportunities and know that if they stay on track they will be hired when they graduate. Also, students will know far in advance if their course of study will lead to employment and the compensation they will likely receive.
Everyone that is physically and/or mentally able has to do something productive to receive government assistance. The goal of employment will be to provide opportunity for everyone that desires employment. Individuals not interested in working will be required to choose from a selection of manual labor jobs such as turning big rocks into little rocks with sledgehammers for road construction or generating electricity by pedaling a stationary bike in order to receive food. After several opportunities and serious counseling, those refusing to work and contribute in a positive way to society will be put into the penal rehabilitation system.
Online services will act as intermediaries between employers and future employees with the goal of helping the round pegs to find the round holes. Individuals wishing to change professions, careers or trades can do a search for what opportunities are available and what learning units they must have or be willing to learn. Individuals wishing to advance will be able to project the time required to retrain, projected financial benefit, level of difficulty based on their specific skill sets and abilities. Employers can also project the likelihood of success of certain applicants.
Penal System
The goal will be to rehabilitate offenders, and assist them to become productive citizens while protecting society from violent offenders. Nonviolent inmates will be given at least two choices. First, take out a loan to pay for the 24/7 rehabilitation program of their choice. The programs will provide the inmate with the skills and attitude adjustments necessary for them to be a productive citizen. The loan will be repaid with graduated payments as they are successfully reintroduced into society. Second, choose to work for various companies that are interested in hiring them as indentured servants. This option will provide them with the opportunity for a limited income which will be equally divided between restitution to victims and their families, a savings plan to help them transition back into society, and spending money for themselves. Thirdly, inmates can suggest an alternate plan for consideration. We will give those inmates that desire to be productive citizens a chance at success.
The goal of the penal system will be to provide positive rehabilitation and release offenders as soon as possible based on a probability that they can become viable and productive members of society. The amount of time required in the system is determined by the inmate’s ability to successfully complete a program of rehabilitation as opposed to releasing them unequipped, angry and after a certain length of time regardless of their chances of success.
Offenders will not be allowed to cycle through the system endlessly. Those prisoners continually resisting rehabilitation and/or unwilling to pay for the cost of their incarceration will be sent to a remote area cut off from contact with society with other like minded individuals. They will provide their own livelihood, laws and enforcement… In other words they will be a law unto themselves. However, sympathetic individuals or organizations may suggest other solutions if they so desire.
Society will put sufficient resources, train, educate and recruit the best people and constantly refine programs that reduce or eliminate poverty by whatever means necessary. The goal is that opportunities will be provided to everyone willing to work and to improve themselves and willing to do whatever it takes to avoid poverty and crime. Support will be given so individuals can succeed including counseling, childcare, travel assistance and training. Poverty as a lifestyle will be discouraged.
Money:
The nature of money and the consequences of its use will be the subject of intense study. The need for money will be assessed and eliminated whenever possible with the intention that the negative impact of money on our society and individuals will be reduced and when possible eliminated. For example, the incentive to accumulate, steal, bribe, gamble, kill, injure or harm individuals that seek to acquire more and more money will be reduced if money has little or no value.
The Future:
Whether by design or by the passage of time, capitalism as we know it will be replaced hopefully with a more humane and just system. For example, think about the selective service. We will no longer need nearly as many military personnel as we did thirty years ago and as drones, mechanized machines and warriors become plentiful and less expensive we will need even less. Technology and increased productivity will continually reduce the need for many types of workers and careers exponentially. As providing the necessary food, shelter, education, medical services, etc. will require fewer workers, new systems that presently do not exist will have to be created. Necessary items will be ordered on the internet and delivered without the need for money. Bartering may replace money or perhaps something else. Luxury items may require some form of money or credits (that can’t be stolen) to acquire.
Not possible? Consider this, you won’t have to go to the store to buy a vase, toilet or hammer because you can download the plans for anything you want from the internet and make it in your home on your 3D printer. Travel will become increasingly virtual thereby eliminating or reducing the need for cars, petroleum, electricity, road repairs, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes, etc. You won’t have to go anywhere because you can go wherever you want virtually. Instead of going to the store to buy a dress, your 3D scanner will send your measurements to the factory where your dress will be made with automatic gluing machines and delivered to you by a drone.
Machines will do our farming, driverless trucks will deliver our goods, robots will build our buildings, drones will take our aerial photographs. Intelligent machines will be utilized to eliminate anyone or group that threatens the peace ending the need for wars and crippling military budgets. Many medical problems will be diagnosed without you leaving your home by doctors operating from their residences thousands of miles away. Medical students will practice and perfect their surgical techniques without ever leaving their home.
Most entertainment will eventually become virtual, eliminating the need for theaters and travel. As hundreds of thousands of jobs are eliminated, we won’t need people to work in those industries. And since most necessities will be provided at no cost, the need for money will be reduced, and utilized primarily for non-essential goods and services. What will people do if they don’t have jobs? Primarily things they enjoy.
Perhaps you think this is impossible. Consider this, we already pay farmers not to grow crops, we pay other countries to stop wars, we provide the Earned Income Credit for lower income individuals (They pay no taxes, and we give them money, we build airports, roads and bridges that people for the most part use free of charge, we provide free education for students in elementary and high school and some countries already provide all education at no cost to its citizens. What will be the role of money in the future and how soon will the future get here, only time will tell. But, like it or not, it’s not if… it’s when.
Judicial System:
The Judicial System is seriously flawed. Criminals that are guilty of crimes go unpunished on technicalities. Cases drag on for years. Victims are not compensated. The cost of putting someone in jail for a year is between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. Lawyers actually plan on delaying cases. Victims and witnesses are not protected from their attackers. Taxpayers pay to put someone in jail when they did nothing wrong or their crimes are better handled in ways other than jail. Continuances should be rarities. Costs must be reined in. Justice will be the goal of the legal system, not blind adherence to the law. The law is there to protect victims… not criminals. The law needs to be modified as required so that justice is more important than historical precedent.
Foreign Policy:
War — We will implement a more effective way to maintain world peace. Wars will be eliminated. They are simply ineffective and a waste of lives and money. Our new policy will be to protect world peace in the most efficient and inexpensive way possible. Why should we spend billions of dollars because some dictator wants to invade a neighboring country? Why should we send military personnel to risk injury and lose their lives for another stupid war. We will develop and utilize intelligent killing machines to track down and terminate these kinds of individuals or groups. They must not be allowed to hide behind the law. If a nation wants to develop a nuclear arsenal or ICBMs and destabilize the peace one small conventional or nuclear device well placed should solve the problem and serve to discourage other monsters.
The solution to the Israeli Palestine conflict and other similar disputes — If you want land that does not belong to you, you have to negotiate a price for the land and buy it or trade something for it. The country receiving payment must use it in positive ways and not for war or terrorism and agree to safeguards.
Trade — Level the playing field and help countries to develop their infrastructure and economy so that they can be effective trading partners instead of sources of cheap labor while undermining the local economy, destroying the ecology and raiding natural resources. Is our need for “stuff” so great that we have to destroy people and countries to get what we want?
Immigration — People immigrating to our country are given conditional entry. If they prove to be productive, they can stay. Otherwise, no deal. Procedures and technology need to be developed to control immigration and insure positive results. Citizenship should be possible, but a positive track record will be the required first step. People that are here “illegally” but have lived here and are productive citizens that contribute to our country can stay. For example, their presence provides a positive impact on their neighborhood. They don’t produce a negative drain on resources. We are willing to assist people that want to become productive citizens.
Drugs — Major medical and behavioral research needs to be done to eliminate this scourge. Research should be supported to eliminate addiction. The War on Drugs was a mistake. The war should have been to destroy the addictive qualities of drugs. The focus will be on solving drug problems. Not putting people in jail.
If you would like to be King, what would you do?