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.