TO MAKE THE PLANET BETTER
1. Globally enforce responsible reproduction. Reproduction is more a responsibility than any right. Human Overpopulation generates almost all of the other major problems our planet is now facing. (Golden Rule applies)
2. Cut out the inane gift giving between affluent people. If all the money wasted by one affluent person, having no need for anything more, who gives a gift to another affluent person, having no real need for anything more, was INSTEAD directed to those with real financial needs, a lot of poverty would be alleviated. (Golden Rule applies)
3. Eliminate inherited sectarian religious dogma and everyone just practice what is universally accepted as genuine ethics----The Golden Rule. Most contentious issues can be resolved by the application of this logical and inherent ethical nature of humans everywhere.
4. Establish minimum global wages so that every country is not slowly driven to a third world economy. If not paying an honest price for the labor which produces something you want is not wrong, little else is wrong. If you wish to be paid a living wage for your work, then it is only fair that others be paid a living wage for their work. As Terrell Owens would say, "fair is fair". (Golden Rule applies)
5. Require by law that every war engaged in has to be paid for immediately by the generation which declared the war. (Golden Rule applies)
6. Require every citizen to share the burden of any declared war via a military draft, increased taxes, increased workload, etc. (Golden Rule applies)
7. Eliminate almost all foreign military bases. There is no moral reason why the United States should be the only country to suffer the cost of military bases all over the world or get so intrusively involved in the internal politics of other sovereign nations. (Golden Rule applies)
8. Adopt as our foreign and domestic policy the wisdom that "violence begets violence" A country which uses violence to solve conflicts will become seeped in violence at every level, at home and abroad. Even worse, global terrorism will thrive in such an atmosphere. (Golden Rule applies)
9. Decriminalize the abuse of recreational drugs and provide everyone having a recreational drug abuse problem with medical help. Drug abuse is a medical problem, The War on Drugs has been a colossal failure for over 50 years, worse then the valid reasons why alcohol prohibition only lasted 10 years. It has destroyed large parts of our cities, burdened us with the cost to track down suppliers, at home and abroad---plus the cost to find, arrest, prosecute and keep jailed drug users and dealers is outrageous----$30,000 a yr to incarcerate mostly young poor teenagers. (Golden Rule applies)
10. Return the taxes on the wealthy to where it was back in the early 1900's when the country went after the barons---the Rockefellers, VAnderbuilts, etc. The tax on the wealthy then was 90%. (Golden Rule applies)
11. Put back in heavy taxes on inheritance. Unearned wealth is not really the American way. There is no logical or ethical reason why 1-3% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth. (Golden Rule applies)
12. Require by law that the same about of money per student be spent on every child in America. Let states and local communities compete to find the best way to spend this money, but the amount per student should be the same. (Golden Rule applies)
13. Guarantee every person a job. If they do not make an honest effort to work in a responsible and meritorious fashion at their level of skill, then sentence them to hard labor. It certainly makes more sense to pay some kid a minimum living wage than to spend $30,000 to house him in jail. (Golden Rule applies)
14. Require accumulated wealth upon death to be returned to the society from which it came. This ensures a good pool of money for all young people to have access to for their own accumulation of wealth the old fashion way---earn it. (Golden Rule applies)
15. Every person should be entitled to good health care, a good education, freedom of religion, a plot of land upon which to live. (Golden Rule applies)
16. Every person should be entitled to control their own dying process and be required to update their medical directives every 5 years in case they become unable to make decisions at the time. (Golden Rule applies)
17. It is claimed that one third of all health costs come in the last few months of people's lives. No one should be forced to spend their own money to give themselves a few more months of life instead of letting the money be used to provide medical care for those with a potentially long life ahead of them. And taxpayer money should not be used to do this either. If a person feels the need to spend this kind of money for a few more months of life let the person or their relatives/friends pay for it. If it is a religious thing, let the church pay for it, before taxpayers . Golden Rule applies.
18. Recently billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have started a 'Club' dedicated to promising half of their wealth will go to charitable causes upon their deaths. This is, of course, laudable and remarkable. My own position is that the rights of society trump the right of individuals to hoard wealth past their own lifetimes. In other words, the wealth ought to be, by law, returned to the society from which the wealth was "borrowed". Each person, in a just society, should be expected to EARN their own wealth. Inherited wealth has no relevance to justice or merit. (Golden Rule applies)
19. If billionaires have a moral obligation to return extracted wealth from a society back to the society from which the wealth was extracted, then I reckon every person has a moral obligation to share wealth past necessities of living. Everyone has a right to shelter, food, medical care, transportation, entertainment, etc. "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor" is overkill. A person should not be required to maim themselves to show their concern for others. HOWEVER, when it comes to materialistic gains past reasonable necessities, at this point ethics (the Golden Rule) requires others, at that point, to count as much as yourself. You may, for example, need a car for transportation. One could buy a decent car which would comfortably get you from place to place for say, $20,000. You may, for whatever reasons, really want a car that costs, let's say $30,000. Fine, if you can afford the car, buy it BUT then $10,000 (the amount you spent past the basic $20,000) should be given to charity to demonstrate that the needs of others count as much as your own needs. The most absurd moral stance is to assert that you earned your wealth, let others get theirs the same way you did---earn it!!!!!!. Really? Did you earn your parents, your place of birth, your physical, mental, or personality genes, your schools sent to as a kid, your religion, your neighborhood child peers, your health, the lucky breaks you may have had, etc? Of course you didn't so stifle the nonsense. Of course the way we play the cards given to us in life is very important. Good decisions pay good dividends in life. STILL, take away the cards given, not earned, and what do you have left? So, at least it seems to me, that past the necessities of life, sharing any additional bounty with those most in need is an an ethical obligation. Dumping wealth on your kids or anyone else not in need is not meeting the ethical obligation ingrained in the Golden Rule.
20. God's gift to all life is the environment which enables life to prosper. Therefore protecting the environment is always---always---a priority. When politicians say we can't afford to protect our own environment this is an absurdity. The same slime ball politicians who take this stance (for cowardly, immoral reasons) are the same ones who scream the largest for spending money on military adventures, military bases, military hardware, police wars on recreational drug use, tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for giant corporations, and anything else that is demanded by powerful lobbyists of this or that group. Then, for icing on the cake, they remain mum on any laws to implement responsible reproduction. If God really thought multiplying was a virtue in itself, then amoebas would rule the planet. If life under any circumstances is valuable then let viruses and bacteria etc. live their life unmolested by human interventions. After all, if life is life, and if God is really controlling the destiny of every life, then just stop all this medical intervention to manipulate life. Let God do all the manipulating. God's evolutionary process gave us the ability to control our own health as we see fit and as is possible at any particular moment in time.
21. We license people to drive, to own guns, to run certain kinds of businesses, etc.
We do this, I assume, to protect the public from harm or abuse. But any nitwit can be a parent. Every child born should be afforded protection from poor parenting or absence of sufficient role models for healthy maturation. If every 'blessed' adult citizen would volunteer to be an 'uncle', 'aunt' , 'grandmother', 'grandfather', for a child in need, the prospects of that child maturing properly during their formative years would rise appreciably. Hilliary Clinton was right when she said it takes a village to raise a child. The notion that God actually blesses those who focus all their attention on their own offspring is suspect at the very least. (Golden Rule applies).
