SOCIETY

SOCIETY: A group of people broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture.

I posit, for the purpose of this paper, that the US is one large society. I don’t believe that is a difficult concept to embrace. Society provides us with many benefits. We have people we can trade with, socialize, mate, support, and many other things. Not everyone in society possesses the same intelligence, common sense, opportunities, and luck. The opportunity to become wealthy or otherwise successful is “paid” by those less fortunate. The wealthy and successful have a duty to pay this debt. The greater the wealth, the greater the debt. This is certainly not to say they owe everything, but the debt is great.

I saw a Tweet this morning advocating for affordable healthcare. I think this is wrong. Healthcare should be free. Its cost is part of the debt owed by the fortunate. Most of the cost is already covered, there is just some restructuring required. This extends to many things: climate change mitigation, education, poverty, and many other issues. In populations where these issued have been addressed at a level higher than in the US, the people are generally happier and experience less stress in their life.

The current trajectory of the US is to create as much stress and unhappiness as possible. We must reverse this trend. Unfortunately, in many cases, this will require a heavy hand of the federal government. I realized this will upset many, until we show the ability to do this without intervention, it’s the only way. The other option is to keep sliding into the abyss and the ensuing darkness that will envelope us.