Basic Survival Package

A few days ago, Tom Craver asked what, other than food, would I put on a list of basic life needs.

Here's my initial list of manufactured things I'd like to see everyone on earth have access to:

• Clean water
• Weatherproof and burglar-resistant housing
• Light at night
• The Web and voice communication
• Mosquito nets with long-lasting insecticide
• Optional birth control
• Clean cookstoves and/or solar cookers
• Vaccines

Many of these things are available today, at a cost where the world could afford to supply them to everyone... if we all got together and really tried. Some of these things are quite inexpensive, on a global scale. For example, the UN says that everyone could have clean water for $20 billion per year, which seems like a lot... but we spend somewhere around $20-$100 billion per year on bottled water.

There's already significant movement in this direction, as seen in these Google proposals:

As manufacturing gets less and less expensive (in large part, thanks to nanotechnology), it will be more and more possible for private individuals to make a world-class difference. According to The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist, Buckminster Fuller said in the 1970s that the planet now has the ability to provide for everyone, but it would take 50 years for us to fully act on it. In another ten years, a basic web appliance (with display, or maybe full voice interface) might cost $10 instead of $100. Likewise for a water filter. Adequate lighting might cost $3 instead of $30.

I'm not talking charity, nor communism, but simply preferring to live in a world where a small expenditure of money can give the world a billion fewer "poor people" and a billion more productive, participating citizens.

Some important things that didn't make the list:

• Clothing: Depends on individual taste; already available in most areas
• Medical care: Can't be automated and manufactured (yet)
• Food: Grown, not manufactured; should be produced locally
• Education: Some comes with the Web; some requires major human resources
• Sanitation: Probably more about education, water, and habits than manufactured stuff
• Employment opportunities
• Healthy social structures
• Decent government (information can help keep governments accountable)

I'm just starting to study this stuff, so please suggest additional ideas and corrections.

Chris Phoenix

Comments

[David]

I'm very interested in how responsible nanotechnology could bring clean healthy water to people more cost effectively. I read on this blog about how nanometer-scale pores can remove 100% of bacteria, viruses, and even prions. Anyone else hear any new ideas about nanotechnology advances in water filtration?

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

I would not expect 15 nanometer pores to remove prions. On the other hand, I've never heard of water-borne prion diseases. Prions are a problem in meat.

Chris

[Summerspeaker]

A decent list, though we can do much better. The species had the ability to provide for everyone well before the 1970s. Of course, this would take radical social change rather than major projects within the existing capitalist system.

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Summerspeaker, what would you add to the list?

What do you see as alternatives to capitalism, and in which contexts? Would you want to change the whole system, limit its scope, develop a system that could outcompete it, or...?

(Apparently, Bucky Fuller would have agreed with you that the system needs to change in order to provide all basic needs. I haven't read enough of him to know what kind of change he was proposing.)

Chris

[Summerspeaker]

Based on the principle of equality, I believe everyone should have the same access to the good things of life. While it would be a dramatic step forward to assure the basics you've listed to each human being on the planet, the system would remain oppressive because of the vast inequality. I propose an alternative along the lines of the technocracy movement or the anarchist society described by Ursula Le Guin in The Dispossessed. We should leverage technology for an even and abundant distribution of wealth across the world.

[Tom Craver]

I guess I'd add "bicycles" - to expand people's range of action.

And I'd add "electricity". I realize electricity is somewhat implicit in your list, and being immaterial doesn't quite seem to fit. But having the physical means to gather energy from one's environment, store it, and later convert it to electricity on demand - that gives people *options*.