If my front porch wasn't crumbling before my eyes, I wouldn't have to repair it. I would have more money to help people who lose their homes in natural disasters -- like the earthquake that devastated Haiti a few weeks ago and claimed 200,000 lives. Sure, I could send money to a relief agency. But what about the next massive upheaval in another part of the world? And the one after that? If I came to everyone's rescue except me and my porch, it would lower the value of my house when I decided to sell it. This would be bad news for future earthquake, tornado, hurricane, typhoon and tsunami victims.
For Earth 2.0, maybe you could fix it so people wouldn't have to make agonizing decisions like these. Have a team of geniuses create an information clearinghouse of everyone's income and expenses (password-protected, obviously). For example, I would enter my financial data into the clearinghouse, select "I want to help others," and then be assigned a reasonable sum to pay toward resolving all current global crises -- while leaving me enough to cover my personal expenses. Everybody wins!
You could monitor this for a couple centuries, and then tweak if necessary. What do you think? Am I crazy?
Isn't this simply socialism?
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