Building a better future

There's a phrase you'll hear bandied about by Baby Boomers and Generation X'ers (mostly, because Milennials have basically been denied any effective spending on any of their problems) that goes, "Throwing money at a problem..." and is often applied pejoratively in an accusation of mismanaged spending of some sort, usually leveled by conservatives at any sort of liberal program that helps people without punishing them for needing the help.

This phrase is also occasionally applied in a plainly descriptive manner, such as when overly proud Baby Boomers use it to describe how President Kennedy beat those damned Russians at the 'Space Race' of the time by spending a stupendous, colossal amount of money on scientific development at NASA. Make no mistake, the subjective problem of not being first in space WAS solved by nothing other than Throwing Money At The Problem in an historically unprecedented way.

In The Reagan Era, this phrase gained its unpopular implication as right wing nitwits applied it to demonstrably necessary federal discretionary spending like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, while it was studiously avoided in any conversation abut the cost of The War On Drugs, the inflation and establishment of The Prison Industrial Complex and several other incredibly expensive and ultimately deleterious and unnecessary conservative programs that kept Undesirables ( That's what Right-Wingers call their Deplorables ) in their place.

In the media maelstrom of today it is going to undoubtedly be applied to the concept that I am about to opine about in this piece.

Developing 'Shithole' Nations. 

Just look at this fucking picture that alleges to be from Haiti. I have not properly researched this image enough to know if it actually IS Haiti, but I am taking the article that I stole it from at its word:

The alleged 'shithole' that is Haiti

So, yeah, pretty fucked up looking. Sure. Definitely in need of an 'Urban Revitalization', so to speak.

Now, one of the modern problems wailed and bemoaned by people too unimaginative to envision a world where everyone is not a wage-slave to capitalism is the fearsome specter of Automation. ~ Robots taking workers jobs ~ I hear this foolishness from both sides of the political spectrum from Coal-loving, blue-collar Trump voters on the Right, to labor organizing, 'means-of-production' coveting Socialists on the Left. And in both cases there is a fundamental failure to recognize the objective truth that heavy and light production automation is in fact a long-overdue birthright of Industrialization and the evolution of human technology.

In fact we should be even further along in the process of automating all production on Earth than we are! 

ALL demanding, repetitive, physical labor should be performed by machines throughout he entire world. Everywhere. Even, and in fact, in the interest of human equality, ESPECIALLY where millions upon millions of unskilled laborers, capable of performing demanding, repetitive, physical labor, are cheaply and easily available. Such as in the developing world.

This idea causes Baby Boomer and Generation X economists to sputter and froth and wax vitriolic about how production automation on this scale would negatively impact, all sorts of socio-economic factors as unprecedented unemployment, brought on by disappearing job opportunities ( for uneducated, un-creative people, i.e - 80% of humanity ) cause desperation, panic and other calamities to spread like wildfire across the polities of planet Earth.

Yes, the capitalist Oligarchs who own everything would certainly face a dauntingly high percentage-chance of violent, desperate, French-style peasant revolution and the dissolution of their privileged way of life, to be sure. Pitchforks and guillotines loom darkly in their nightmare scenarios.

Unless the entire world economy WASN'T running on Capitalism! But rather a fully intentional automated, resource-leveling, global distribution and production system that was designed in regard to mankind in its entirety as opposed to a single nation's citizens or a single corporation's profits.

People not firmly entrenched in 19th and 20th century economic thinking can actually imagine sharing the planet's resources equally with fellow humans from 'shithole' nations equally, affording the same priority to a request for resources and productions sourcing in Sri Lanka or Ecuador as one originating in Norway or America. And THAT transformational way of thinking is key to the actual subject matter I intend to propose in this opinion piece about why and perhaps a little bit of how we should and can fix the world's 'shithole' nations.

SO...

Robots can fabricate materials, supplies and parts in dauntingly rapid time-frames. Sometimes faster than they could possibly be deployed to human assembly or construction workers to create new products.
And assembly robots, can often assemble simple structures, more accurately, ( within granularly fine degrees or error tolerance from an engineering standpoint ) and more rapidly, than even a team of skilled and experienced human assemblers could ever hope to.
And we have a number of technologies now that allow us to grind up the garbage we have accumulated over the decades of the industrialized era, such as landfill waste, plastic garbage, demolition scrap and so on, and re-purpose the material resources into building materials. See:

http://www.ecotek.com.cy/8-building-materials-made-entirely-waste-products/

https://www.citymetric.com/skylines/9-building-materials-made-entirely-waste-products-932

https://www.plasticsmakeitpossible.com/plastics-at-home/home-garden/home-improvement/build-your-new-home-with-recycled-plastic-building-materials/

http://www.criticalcactus.com/beautiful-recycled-homes/

https://www.cbsnews.com/media/8-homes-made-from-recycled-materials

And Finally:

https://inhabitat.com/tag/recycled-building-materials/

And this conversion from garbage to building material is done in big, automated machines in most cases, requiring little human labor at all if loading robots are employed to the task. We even have 3D Printing robots on a massive scale that can print houses out of concretized mixtures of recycled materials and a binding agent. See:

https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printed-house-homes-buildings-3d-printing-construction/ ( Keep scrolling down to see the good ones! )

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/americas-first-3d-printed-houses-99189/

Of course, the 20th century saw god-awfully designed concrete block housing designs in Soviet eastern Europe that are no famously hideous dystopian models of how not to make a living space out of concrete.

Soviet dystopian architecture we all know and hate

So clearly we are going to need the creativity and vision of non-traditional thinkers to avoid that pitfall. BUT today's CAD engineering software, and our incredible advanced in materials modelling and simulation allow us to work with an entirely new pallet of shapes and design aesthetics that were impossible for the limited engineering of the 20th century. Concrete homes need no longer be hideous abominations at all.

It's obvious where I am going now. Nothing less than the concept of literally grinding up the 'shithole' past into tiny bits and on the clean slate left behind by its removal, constructing a blisteringly modern, decentralized-infrastructure, forward-looking, ecologically-sound new world where rugged, wastelands of poverty, human suffering and widespread misery once reigned. 

But not merely in terms of housing and mercantile and business structures. Also in terms of the ground-up implementation of modern advances in telecommunication, in terms of deliberate wireless mesh networks. But also in terms of energy generation, storage and distribution, with Wind and Solar collection integration directly into the structures intentionally at the design stage. Distributed tidal generation energy via electric-vehicle delivered storage batteries from the coast to residential homes and inland businesses, where the electricity for the delivery trucks is provided by the tidal generators at point of origin. These simple visions are childishly obvious.

Short sighted observers might argue against a wholesale redevelopment of the third world, arguing that they contribute so little to the overall advancement of human knowledge and achievement, and so they don't matter enough to deserve this international largess. A common sentiment among the hard right in America. If I have to explain to you how that's the moral equivalent of badmouthing the amputee war veteran because he can't make a 30-yard football pass, there's no point in including you in the conversation.

Others may argue that we need to introduce these reforms right here at home as America is increasingly classified as further and further down the socio-cultural spectrum by successive international organizations for the deplorable state of infrastructure, education, economics, modern resource availability and so on in of most of the flyover country between the two coasts. To which a person with a global, human perspective can only answer, "Yeah , No." America has not even begun to understand real deprivation and human suffering and widespread lack and poverty like the developing world has known since the era of colonial imperialism. We can fucking wait our turn.

So billions and billions are spent each year on international aid and assistance by national governments and private charity NGOs. Often for great causes like wiping out river blindness or malaria. Or for rebuilding a nation after America unnecessarily bombs the living shit out of its cities for barely any reason at all. Hooray for all that necessary cash spent.

By and large though, a socio-cultural overhaul of a 'shithole' nation's society in the form of eradicating shanty-towns full of filthy, dangerous living conditions and disease incubating vectors combined with the establishment of national-scale education and medical facilities, and the basic advantages of the First World in a matter of months, via the magic of automated production, would be an equally worthy if not superior use of those billions of aid dollars.

Thoughts on the Problems:

Rampant political and economic corruption in the leadership and government or the societies of these 'shithole' countries. Them's the facts in many developing world nations. Warlords. Tribal Militias. Organized cartels Drug Lords warring over distribution rights and routes. Jungles or Forests full of Raiders and Bandits left over from civil wars and historical collapses of previous governments. Nationalist ideologues in command of police or emergency services or even the army of a sovereign nation. Religious fundamentalist jihadists with stockpiles of CIA-provided heavy assault weapons left over from the Cold War.
Yeah.
All sorts of bad shit lingers in places like Guatemala , Haiti, Honduras, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tribal ethnic cleansing. Religious purges of unpopular faiths in the region. You name it.
If you rebuild their villages into idyllic towns and cities of modern amenities and conveniences, those with the guns would just ride in, in shitty, 80's-era open bed military trucks waving cheap, shitty AK-47s and machetes and shove out all the innocent people so they could kidnap and turn all the teenage girls into prostitutes under their control, buy cheap, shitty booze, and sit around in stained fatigues pretending to be legitimate soldiers. Maybe occasionally using the educational facilities to provide a limited education to the sons ( only ) of the captains an warlords so that they could be able to count high enough to manage the numbers of the logistical requirements of their would-be army. Yeah. For sure they are gonna do that if you let them.

So the answer is to do nothing for them? To just throw up your hands and discount what is probably fully one half of Earth's humanity?
Really?
That's the full possibility of the scope of the vision for Earth's future that you can imagine?!

Thoughts on the Solutions:

I can imagine a single Earth government that has as its jurisdiction every square inch of the planet.

A government that would see a Donald Trump in charge of millions and millions of people and step in to remove him.

A government that would see several competing Congolese warlords at endless war with each other over every scrap of resource their would-be abundant country can possibly produce and would calmly nerve-gas the bases of those armies without delay.

A government that would regard the massive drug cartels of Central and South America, see the widespread suffering and destruction that they cause, and eradicate them even at a cost of 70% of the population of those countries if that was what it takes for the remaining citizens to get in line and act civilized.

"Oh, the Globalist, New-World-Order, Illuminati tyranny of it all!" Some will say.

"What unacceptable costs for a future of peace and civility and civic and cultural advancement for the entire human race equally, without regard to have's and have-nots privileged and established today by the wars and international maneuverings of the 19th and 20th centuries!" They won't be smart enough to say.

The time for the 'America First' mentality is long, LONG past.

The luxury of being concerned if half of the human race has to be wiped away for a sane, cooperative, egalitarian, abundant, peaceful, free and just civilization for all Earth's people is past.

Now, we are left with the hard realization that powerful, privileged leaders cannot be tolerated or allowed.
Neither to rule, nor to be allowed to rise to power.
No 'Deep States'.
No 'Shadow Governments'.
No deals in back rooms.
No closed committees can be permitted any longer.

We are almost in a time where we have the Artifical Intelligence, machine-learning system capabilities to model, simulate, predict and manage the entire planet Earths resources with incorruptible, non-self-interested machines.
Machines that cannot be bribed.
Whose families cannot be threatened.
Who if air-gapped cannot be hacked by malicious polities bent on grabbing resources for their consumption.

The future where all mankind prospers and benefits is one where logic, reason and science rule over weakness, fear, ignorance and self-interest.
It is a future of hyper-intelligent machines at the helm and mankind in receipt of the glorious abundance of our planet. And the abundance of the solar system as we mine and exploit the other planets and asteroids for all of their resource wealth.
A future where individuals are valued for their personal achievements and their contribution to the success and future of mankind as a whole and not their own wallets and posterity.