The Society of Honor by Joe America

Bill Gates’ home. [Source: parhlo.com]

By Joe America

Humanity is on the ropes. You know it. I know it. Neither of us are doing much about it.

The Situation

Global warming is at us like a swarm of locusts, melting ice,  warming seas, and bringing drought, fire storms, and wind storms that are out of this world. We will drown or dry up depending on where we live. Mass starvation, millions of weeping children; aliens will turn and flee at first sight.

Breakdown of civil social discourse is infectious and quarantine is impossible. We are neck deep in shit: lies, politics, misinformation, and our own ignorance. It’s lapping at our lips, it’s distorting the thinking in our brains. It is contagious, one fallacy leading to another, one insult leading to five in response. Our friends are enemies and our trust in government, ethics, civility, and sense is evaporating.

I tell you, we have our work cut out for us.

I set that scene as our macro-world and it leads me to believe that we can only fight these twin revelations if we change the fundamentals of what we are about. We can no longer be about money . . . but people have no alternative. We can no longer be about claiming resources . . . but we know no different.

We are devouring our planet like bugs and spreading the plague across its peoples, but have no where to turn.

What are our drivers supposed to be?

Ummmm . . . instead of getting rich, how about surviving?

That at some point will become clear. I suggest rushing the enlightenment a little.

We need to be working on some solutions that are dynamic and aimed at solving the problem.

Space Tax

We need to socialize our living spaces. I read that Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, a bright, rich, and generous man, owns a house in Washington state that totals some 60,000 square feet. That’s 5,576 square meters. For two people? That’s 2,750 square meters per person?

Read this article and see if you don’t find something obscene about the property: 10 Facts About Bill Gates’ House

That dude should be taxed like there is no tomorrow. If five Americans are living in less than 30 square meters of space, they should have their rents or expenses subsidized by Bill Gates.

We need to digitize our claim to space on this planet, and lighten the load. Tear down the Gates mansion and plant pine trees, man. Turn Washington, Oregon, and Northern California into Amazon Forest North. Or better yet, move 500 people into the facilities.

Establish a baseline living space footprint. Tax the large properties heavily. Earth cannot afford them. Subsidize the small space users. We all should get comfortable with less, and proud of it.

The two benefits are simple:

1. People claiming too much space get penalized and made uncomfortable. Wealth is not the goal. Harmony with survival is.
2. We lighten the load on the planet for living space and increase it for life-saving trees.

Then it is on to the next metric. Probably private cars.

Reconfigure why we have them. To show off? To go fast? To joy-ride off road?

No. No. No.

To move a lot of people efficiently.

And lighten the load on the planet.