Our Basic Needs Are Abundant, Not Scarce

     In late November 2017, I posted a commentary to social media regarding what I regard as the most basic and primary set of human needs, whether they are scarce or abundant, and how we could access and afford them more easily. The post, originally titled “Everything Should Be Free”, follows:

     The law of supply and demand dictates that if a good is abundant (i.e., more exists than people need), its price will fall towards zero/free.

     To clarify, resources existing in a fixed amount, does not necessarily guarantee scarcity by that fact alone. Nor does scarcity only refer to shortages; shortages which are locally felt may be a symptom of inefficient distribution, unequal distribution. Scarcity is a condition in which a resource exists in a smaller amount than the amount demanded or needed.

     We can verify that most things we need to survive are not scarce, by simply thinking about it. Which things do we need to survive, and which phenomena and technologies make them freer? Our most basic needs are air, water, food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. I have not addressed clothing here, nor the need for plumbing and sanitation; but I did not leave them out because they're any less important; they're no less important. Instead, I have chosen to comment on how to make energy and transportation more easily available to people.

     AIR is free to breathe, but there will only truly be no price for clean air, when there is no more unnecessary air pollution, and when the costs of cleaning the air up (that is, cleaning up after ourselves) have gone down to zero. But it is possible.

     WATER falls from the sky in abundance. We can collect it, but only when it's legal. Sometimes it's illegal for a good reason, like when altering rain flow affects our neighbors' property, or threatens wildlife in the area, or drastically changes the water table or causes flooding. But when collecting rainwater does not require creating an artificial lake, it can be done freely and safely. Through rooftop water filters and rain collection systems, we could make water much easier to afford and acquire.
There is also a product called LifeStraw, which converts contaminated water into free, safe, filtered, drinkable water. If this product were made easily and cheaply available to the third world, perhaps through charity or mutual aid, then struggling people would have a much easier time acquiring water, one of the most primary things we need to survive.

     Enough FOOD is produced on the planet annually to feed 10 billion, while we have to feed only 7.5 billion. While the US throws away 40% of food, France requires groceries to donate unsold food to charity. Teach people how to grow food, and let them do it in cities. Watch “Extreme Couponing” and look up the mutual aid organization Food Not Bombs.

     SHELTER could be easily made cheap, or even free, through liberalization of homesteading requirements, changing local building codes to keep up with modern safety innovations and allow experimental architectural techniques, and returning the vast swaths of land owned by the federal government back to the states and the people. This will make land more available, and in turn, more places to stay.
     There are now 6 empty residences for each homeless American. Remove all government supports (including police protection) for absentee property ownership. Allow people to host homeless and needy people in their apartments without requiring them to pay rent, and allow renters and trailer and tiny house residents to claim state homestead tax credits (in states other than Wisconsin, the only state in which residents can do so).

     MEDICINE is kept artificially scarce and artificially expensive through patents, taxes, insurance mandates, trade barriers (against foreign-made pharmaceuticals), deadly approval delays, and other unnecessary and often unconstitutional intrusions. Getting rid of these privileges and barriers could help reduce the prices of medical care, medications, and medical devices.

     ENERGY is kept artificially expensive through patents, regional monopolies, preferential subsidies for one energy source or the other, and more. Letting the market choose renewable resources like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and Alternating Current energy could save money, lives, and the planet.

     TRANSPORTATION could be made cheaper by withdrawing all government and taxpayer supports from car dealerships, used car lots, and car graveyards. Vehicles in car graveyards, and aircraft sitting on government-owned lands, could be repaired and turned over to those who need them. The idea that car dealerships sit on cars, and have state-licensed private security guards and the police to protect them (sometimes at taxpayer expense) should indicate that price reductions are the only way to clear the market. The fact that supply and demand are not meeting, and causing markets to clear, ought to indicate that what's being sold simply isn't worth what they're asking for. Maybe it even indicates that there is not currently a free or fair market in transportation.

For more information:

- look up Citizens for Truth in School on Facebook,

- read my article "You Don't Need Money to Live" at http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/02/you-dont-need-money-to-live.html

and

- read my blog entry "Links on Homelessness and Moneylessness"
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/05/links-on-homelessness-moneylessness.html

Originally Written in Late November 2017

Edited and Expanded on December 1^st, 2018

Published on December 1^st, 2018

Thoughts on Education

     It matters what children are learning. But it also matters why they're learning it.

     Why do we send children to school? Is it to “compete in the economy” and “compete for jobs”? Well, whom are they supposed to compete against? What if they'd rather cooperate to get what they want? What if encouraging a culture of competition in school, and the economy, and sports, and our militant culture, is actually harming us, and we need a dose of cooperation to balance it out?

     Children will never learn anything – especially not critical and abstract thinking skills - as long as they are expected to learn most information in the context of “how can I use this information to climb the socioeconomic ladder?” After all, nobody should be willing to compete against their own neighbors, friends, and family for resources, for the bare scraps of survival. Yet many of us are, because of what we're taught in school, and how we're taught.

     In rich and poor districts alike, youth culture glorifies raking money in through whatever means necessary, and in an educational system which decreasingly teaches valuable practical hands-on skills, that could very well mean more young people becoming unskilled janitors and food service employees, failed rappers, drug dealers or prostitutes, or sellouts to the interests of exploitative companies.

     Education should be about transmitting knowledge and skills, and teaching students how to think critically, think for themselves, and independently investigating what other people are teaching them is the truth.

     Schools and economics textbooks assume and teach that there is not enough to go around, and that therefore government and markets need to distribute and allocate what scarce resources we have. However, the study of economics – and economizing (that is, saving money) – do not need to be applied to resources which are abundant, because they are not scarce, and there is enough of them go around. The resource in question might be fixed (as in the case of land), but fixedness does not necessarily guarantee that the resource is scarce.

     Between one-third and one-half of all food in America is thrown away, and without food waste there would be enough food to support 2.5 billion additional human beings. Not only is food not scarce; air, water, land, and many other of our basic needs, are abundant, or could easily become abundant or free (or at least cheaper) by removing government interventions and cronyist privileges.

     It makes absolutely no sense for a child to go hungry at school, and be expected to concentrate while hungry, because their parents have failed to keep current on their lunch payments. Teaching kids that we have to work and compete for everything we want, and that even food is a privilege that can be taken away from us, might prepare them for a cruel world, but it also normalizes such a cruel world in the process.

     Our society has chosen short-term financial gain over the real purpose of living: learning how to live a long, healthy, fulfilling life, doing so comfortably, and helping others to do the same. Nobody is going to care about truth over money, nor people over profits, until they stop prioritizing short-term gains, and keeping up with the Joneses, and frantically saving and stowing away for the future, refusing to share what they have earned with other people.

     As far as my thoughts on education policy go, education vouchers (just like housing vouchers) could serve as a popular multi-partisan compromise. Libertarians, progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, progressive conservatives, conservative Democrats, and maybe even some neoliberals, could be convinced to support vouchers, if the proposal for it were triangulated right.

     During his 2016 campaign, Gary Johnson suggested that students engage in a year-long nationwide boycott of colleges and universities. This, he says, would increase colleges' demand for students (and their money), thus drastically lowering the price of tuition as soon as the boycott ends. Hopefully, this would lead to at least a few good years of low tuition, driven by people engaging in voluntary exchange through the market. Of course, that only works for privately funded schools, because publicly funded universities can only be fully boycotted once the flow of taxpayer money into them ends completely.

     The decline over the last few decades in the number of wood shops and auto shops in high schools concerns me. While I understand parents who say they're concerned that their children might get injured while taking wood or auto shop classes, acquiring hands-on skills is a valuable professional skill to have; especially now that trade skills are in higher demand. While students should not be pressured to take these classes, students who are enthusiastic about taking them should be asked to sign forms and waive the right to hold the school responsible for any injuries they sustain while taking them (but within reason, and with the schools' and teachers' responsibilities to ensure safe operation clearly defined).

     I personally spoke to a former high school shop teacher, who told me that his classroom equipment was removed without notice, after the course was terminated, on account of wealthy parents who were concerned that trade skills would lead their kids into “low-class jobs” like carpentry, electrician work, H.V.A.C., and plumbing. Of course, that is nonsense, because these are needed and valuable skills, there is no shame in providing them.

     Additionally, students introduced to such skills early could easily become interested in more advanced fields; specifically S.T.E.M. fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), which often pay even more than trade jobs. Getting more people into the trades, and into S.T.E.M. fields – and making sure that everyone owns, or at least has access to, means of production - could very well be the only way to protect our nation's future when it comes to jobs, technology, and industry.

     I hope that America's educational future is one which features the inexpensive and efficient transmission of knowledge and skills. It's not that teachers owe students an education; teachers and students each deserve a seat at the negotiation table when it comes to the costs involved. Online learning, distance learning, PDFs, e-catalogs, and other technologies have made education less expensive, and if universities expect to survive, then tuition must fall.

     Additionally, I hope that America's educational future features the dissemination of knowledge through decentralized learning. Little could be more effective at ensuring that such decentralization of knowledge becomes possible, than encouraging people to not only read, but to question what they read; to do their own research, verify facts independently, and come to their own conclusions.

Written on July 4th, 20th, 26th, and 27th, and August 1st through 4th, and 6th, 2018

Edited and Expanded on September 4th, 2018

Originally Published on September 4th, 2018