A country is a political state or nation or its territory. But what is in a country? That question does not appear anywhere on the in Internet, presumably because it is so self-evident. I believe it is a question worth asking.
Physically a country is a an area of land, and sometimes a bit of sea or ocean, with boundaries that separate it from other countries, or parts of the globe that are not assigned to anyone.
In that physical space we have:
- earth/soil/rocks/minerals/oil/gas below us
- air above us
- flora and fauna
- human-built structures
- humans
We also have intangibles, which all come under the umbrella term society. Without society it is hard to have money, religion and knowledge. And it is impossible to have a country.
Forgive me, I am not a Christian, so I do not believe that God has given us a right to dominate other animals. So when I think of equality, it goes beyond rich and poor humans. I feel that to some degree any talk of equality must involve the air, the soil, forests and animals. To discuss these, tap the shoulder of nearest greenie.
A country cannot exist without society. A country is society. So, what is society?
One dictionary definition is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
Wikipedia says:
Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members.
A country is society. And society is everybody.
As society improves, it becomes more inclusive. Country was once the rulers, the chiefs and aristocracy. Those who didn’t own and run the country, may not have even known their country existed. Monty Python is a good resource for this:
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we’re all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
After that society was just men of power, then just men, then women as well, then you couldn’t exploit children any more… and now today, in all advanced democratic economies, everybody is equal – no matter your race, sexuality or religion. We are on the verge of giving rights to the land and animals, as we end caging chickens and give personhood to rivers (New Zealand’s Whanganui River).
I am all for ending animal cruelty, but as we move onto respecting the non-human aspects of country, we are forgetting that there is a lingering item of inequality amongst humans that has not been fixed: wealth, intelligence and income. The current trend is for such inequality to get worse. It is a by-product of capitalism, and capitalism is seen as untouchable by politicians.
Lets take a moment to leap forward 20 years and look at inequality around intelligence. Let us take an easy connection between intelligence, ability to improve wellbeing of all, and rewards for doing so.
Just like everything else you are born with, intelligence is there. Nobody earns intelligence, and intelligence leads to greater prosperity (I don’t expect anyone to bother me to back that up…).
If we extrapolate trends towards improving equality, one day intelligence will be in the mix of discussion. The end result seems obvious to me – people who achieve wins for all of society should be primarily rewarded with knowing they have done well (and social applaud), and secondarily with rewards of wealth. The latter will inspire people to achieve, it simply needs to be balanced right.
As a parent I noticed that my children would strive for relative superiority over their siblings, regardless of what the reward for success was. Exaggerating to make a point, it could be given 5 twigs instead of 4.
While retaining rewards connected to economics, we need to reward other forms of contribution to society. And more so, we need to make sure that something you are born with, and cannot change – intelligence – should not condemn you to a suffering in any form.
If we look at the most equal societies – also known as the most primitive – we see that that even those who are least capable to contribute, are afforded equal status.
There are no statistics around equality in “primitive” cultures, because nobody owns or earns anything. That is instructive in itself.
Ultimately country is society, and society is everybody. Capitalism, machines, culture and jobs are all the result of society, the result of everybody. Without the person who maxes out their credit card to buy the latest Apple smartphone, there isn’t the CEO (Tim Cook) earning $125 million per year.
Society is a collective, and we should collectively share the bounty that comes from our natural resources and our collective endeavours. A great deal of our wealth has come from a system based on rewarding those who do well, so we cannot end that. But we need to recognise that they do not “do well” purely on their own. Their parents raise them, society teaches the, society provides them with the framework to succeed in, and society gives them rewards by taking a little from everyone else.
Inequality doesn’t mean that the wrong people are rewarded. They should continue to be rewarded. But not at the expense of the pool, the desperate and the disenfranchised.
All of society participates in growing the the wealth of the successful. Much of society suffers, despite being good, caring, hardworking people.
Inequality cannot exist without society. And we need society to fix it. The solution is obvious – every member of society gets to receive enough reward for their participation (which is essentially simply existing) to achieve minimum standards of healthcare, food, housing and enjoying being human.
I propose calling UBI a Celebration Dividend, a payment that reflects the fact that humans have never achieved as much as right now, and we all deserve to be rewarded.