The conversation around the Occupy Wall Street protests, lack of jobs, and the widening income gap in the US reminds me of Disturbed’s Land of Confusion video. Hopefully the future doesn’t come down to wars in the street, and hopefully some shadowy dark superhero doesn’t show up, but he’s probably a metaphor anyway. At some point society needs to agree that the capitalist drive for maximizing shareholder value also includes certain moral/ethical behavior instead of profits-at-all-costs. But the harder part is agreeing on how to enforce that behavior, since “The Market” doesn’t really encourage it. Which I think is one of the real issues in the world today, and has been for a long time.
I think it’s about getting over money, which a lot of people haven’t managed to do (a lot of them because they need it for basic necessities). But a lot of people can afford to do that (the number for that seems to be an upper bound of $60.000/year – I got that number from happiness research, but students get by for a lot less). So now you just need to convince everybody to finance a welfare state with that amount of money. And then educate people about what to do with their life.
Sounds like I’m crazy? But it’s at most 10 trillion dollars per year. To get a Star Trek world. That’s pretty cheap for awesome. Now if only people everywhere wouldn’t think money is important…