The future is as bright as our greed allows for

Do you remember the days where you could look to the future with awe? Moments when hoverboards floated through your imagination, world hunger looked like something of the past-soon-to-be, and life in space—on Mars—seemed to be just over the horizon?

I admit, I find myself struggling to believe these dreams nowadays.

It’s not that I grew up. Not at all. In fact, I see more of the systemic issues that brought these dreams to my mind in the first place:

When I was eight, I wanted a hoverboard so I wouldn’t have to be driven everywhere. Now, I see cities designed with cars and not kids in mind. I wrote essays at ten about the path toward ending world hunger. Those essays seemed idealistic at the time, but I’ve since learned that we as a world have abundant resources to clear this hurdle; resources spent instead on giant underground clocks. And Mars... I still dream of Mars. I dream of Mars because here on Earth we’re stripping our planet dry for more cars and more money and more things that do nothing but perpetuate the status quo.

How did we get here?

Greed is a boringly natural trait that can be found in so many places on this planet. Ant colonies hoard food and territory. Foxes steal from other animals, even when food is otherwise available. Hell, even dung beetles hoard shit.

Greed is natural. For these creatures, greed offers some form of safety, whether that be food for themselves or for a future family.

Our form of greed? Well, let’s see. Revolutions that cut the heads off of mega-hoarders... check. Oligarchs choosing monetary greed over an opportunity to be the most beloved people in history... check. Greed in the form of social status, leading to child labor for new Nike t-shirts, rising child mortality rates due to stylish new cars, and the steady yet ignored crawl toward climate disaster so that beef can be a few dollars cheaper... check.

We express greed in unnatural ways, all because we have found infinite ways to tie our value to a number. What is a bank account but a greed account? In some quantity that greed is healthy and good. It provides safety, but there is a tipping point. Most of us will never reach this tipping point, because most of us have the extraordinary gift to see the intangible wealth of things. Some of us aren’t so lucky though. Some of us become billionaires.

Where do we go from here?

Our form of greed is so unique that as a society, we’re entirely in control of it. We set the values that dictate it. (Funnily enough, we’re even working on dynamic values and prices. How’s that for an anti-Communist 180?) We also choose what objects “show” value. Kanye’s Yeezy collection and other high fashion brands mock common clothing standards by showcasing clean raggedy clothes. If we can charge $300 for a shirt that I’d make by spending a week in the mud and weeds, we can choose how to price sustainable clothing.

But no one person is deciding the value of cotton t-shirts. We’re price-locked. We’re values-locked.

Our checks and balances failed long ago, and it could be argued that they were supposed to. Greed is natural. What we hoard can be changed, though.

During Amsterdam’s richest times, it was tulips of all things. In earlier times, the rich hoarded silks and riches, yes... but they also measured that intangible, internal wealth differently. Vanderbilts build accredited universities, Andrew Carnegie made libraries accessible to everyone, and Bill Gates is slowly donating his fortune.

These instances came from families, not corporations.

On corporate corruption

I’ll keep this short.

Corporations have branded themselves as individuals. They’re legally personified non-existent ideas that we’ve given greater rights than ourselves. A corporation doesn’t have a soul. It doesn’t feel tangible values. The only thing a corporation can measure is monetary wealth or statistics. I’d like to believe that social statistics like poverty and world hunger are what they measure... but corporations can only exist at such grand scale by ignoring these values.

What can we do to help society?

We can provide more of our product.

But our product is so well-made, no one needs it! We’ve peaked!

Then make our product worse.

Solving a problem—truly solving something—is existential to a corporation.

They’re leeches.