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Saneism- wherein we all
receive “Citizens Income” in consumer and investment dollars. We work when we choose, but not for money. If the work is not needed or valued by others, or of interest and joy to ourselves it is not worth doing.
We have to begin to think about work differently. At one time in our history, we needed everyone to work. That was necessary for our survival. We still carry with us the moral codes of that day. If someone doesn’t work he is, as Demaris views him, a “deadbeat.” Yet today’s strange reality is that we need most people not to work if, by “work,” we mean helping to create yet one more product or service that requires yet one more building, highway, shopping mall, or parking lot; yet one more electrical generator, one more power line.
I have begun to realize that my tentative definition of “work” under Saneism is inadequate. I had said it is any activity that results in a product or service for oneself or others. But by this definition it would not be good for society if most people “worked” for this would mean the creation of an even larger gross national product. Perhaps under Saneism the word “work” will disappear and we will think, rather, in terms of “do. “ People might, as Demaris suggests, smell the roses or read podtry; or as the letter-writer Bill Freitag suggests, do something they love instead of the “heavy lifting.” In Saneism, these would all be socially beneficent ways of spending time, of “doing.”
If most people don’t work, how will there will be enough wealth (i.e. goods and services) to go around? The answer lies in the amazing ability of our technology to replace human labor. Imagine, if you can, a world in which the goods and services we want are miraculously there like water and air. Let us suppose your neighbor is not nearly as industrious as you are. I don’t think you will mind if he still breathes as much air and drinks as much water as you do. Why, then, should you mind if he has as much spending power as you do?
It is true that some people are still needed for the “heavy lifting,” but fewer and fewer will be needed as time goes by. At a Robotics conference I attended I was amazed to hear how con
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