They aren't evil, they're just wrong

My dad has never really been full of "fatherly advice," it was only a little more than a year ago (I'm 27 now) that we ever really talked about relationship stuff, and that conversation lasted about ten minutes-was tremendously useful-and would have been even more useful if we had had it 15 years prior.

At least from what I observed my dad never went out of his way to guide me and my brothers, but if we went to him and asked for help or advise he would give it. I used to think how if only my parents had pushed me I could have, for instance, become an amazing violinist, but mostly I am glad that they simply allowed me to pursue my own interestes, and when those interests changed they allowed me to pursue my next interests. I have a lot of interests. I was given the opportunity to develop a multifaceted-interrelated-integrated view of the world. It seems, for instance (again with the "for instances"), that a lot of the large problems faced in the world persist because a weak ability to see multiple perspectives. The old idiom...something about not being able to see the forest for the trees, is often misused. We must both be able to see the trees, and the forest as a whole, and the soil systems too. I mentioned in the "God is 4" post about models, and how they reduce the details of things in order to give an overall picture. Take a map, if you are good with maps (as I am happy to admit I am), you are able to get a good spacial representation and orient yourself (and if you have a topo-map you can even imagine the hills and valleys you might have to traverse) but you can study a map to your heart's content, but it will never compare to actually stepping foot in the real place.

So, to cut to the chase, where my parents lacked in guidance, they made up for in allowance (not the money kind (actually I might have just made that use of the word up)). They allowed me to explore the world...literally, and see the forest and the trees...literally.

Back to my dad, and his advise. He didn't sit me down and tell me about les oiseaux et les abeilles, mais I leaned early on that he knew a lot about the world, and lucky for me I was very interested in the world. I would complain to him about all the stuff that was messed up in the world, and I was probably 16 when, after espousing the evils of some corporation or political group he told me, "If you think that they are evil and corrupt, then there is no way to win. But if you think that they are just wrong, then you have the ability to help give them the right information and make things better."
...a couple years later Bush somehow became president, and the years that followed made my dad start considering the evil-corrupt argument more seriously.

Sure, there may be some corruptness, but those corrupt folk are just wrong about how they operate.

Why did I think about this post? Because the production side of our economy is steeped in unnecessary and toxic pollution, and it is not that politicians and business people are evil and corrupt and want power and money at any cost, but rather we just haven't fully educated the chemists, engineers, designers, the creators of what we produce, and people in general, to understand the whole picture. A chemist can manipulate atoms, but courses in toxicology aren't required of chemists. Green chemistry, biomimicry, ecology are not part of their education, so how would they know any better about how to create things that are sustainable? They aren't evil mad scientists, they just don't know any better.

Policy and economic incentives can only get us so far. If sustainable solutions are not achievable because people don't know how to find or create them we can't do anything.

Underfunded good

I was just thinking about how I could live a really comfortable life with less than $10,000 per year.

So I looked at what the Gross World Product per capita is, and low and behold, if the money produced this year were equally distributed to every man, woman and child in the world, we would each have a purchasing power of more than $10,000.

Now what would I do with an automatic $10,000 income? I would be able to contribute all of my energy to directly working for a sustainable and prosperous world. I would create things that would make life better. I would meet more people and network, and share. I would follow my dreams, without having to get side tracked by needing to work within our flawed social structures in order to make money.

No one should have to sacrifice their potential to make money to live. We should all be able to do what we are good at and/or enjoy doing. But of course, that is my bias. Since I feel happiest contributing to the well being of everyone and everything in the world, I sometimes forget and think that that is what everyone would like to do. But really, the world would be much better off if people contributed their full potential.

Public goods are underfunded because they are hard to remunerate (receive payment for), so you face the dreaded free rider problem. I would have to say that Ideas are my favorite potential public good. I say potential because they need to be shared openly in order to be non-rivalrous, and non-excludable.

With that, I say that ideas are the biggest underfunded good (save for clear air, water, etc). Which is why I will probably end up getting a PhD, because there are lots of grants that give a decent monthly stipend to PhD students to think and study and produce new ideas to share. But besides that, my dream job is one where I just get to think about and create things to allow all to fulfill their highest potential.