Global Green Communism in 2023
I gave away 10% of my take home pay during 2022 without breaking a sweat. I'm 2 years into my 20 year project (due in AD 2040) of giving my way down to a sustainable fair share of global production, currently estimated at $2,200 per person per year. My current gross income is more than 80x that sustainable fair share. I'd have to give away over 98% of my income to reach my final goal. I'm working on it!
During 2023 I will move up to giving away 15% of my take home pay. Most likely by finding five new charities and funding each of them at $100/month. I don't expect to break a sweat over this level of giving either. I've projected my budget monthly through 2025, during which I'll be giving away 25% of my take home pay, and I'll still be doing fine, because by then I'll also be debt-free except for the mortgage I share with T.
I'm planning to retire by the end of 2027, during which I'll be giving away 35% of my take home pay, but then during 2028 I'll have to reset at my significantly lower retirement income -- I'll halt all giving during 2028 until I figure out my new post-retirement living/activity situation. I'll resume giving during 2029 on a new stepwise path toward my sustainable fair share in 2040.
Although it seems impossible to live on $2,200 per year, especially in the US, about 50 countries currently have per capita GDP below $2,200/year. India has over a billion people and its per capita GDP is only $2,277/year. So, plenty of people do live on that much or less. If I live long enough and don't abandon this project, I will probably need to move to another country -- which could pose considerable legal and financial obstacles, as your typical poor country doesn't want yet another poor person to move in.
In reality, I'll probably hit a point before 2040 where I struggle to survive on an amount several times my sustainable fair share. At that point, what will I have proven?
As a thought experiment, I know I couldn't live on that amount in the US without becoming homeless, giving up medical care, and practically starving. The average person spends more on groceries in a year than $2,200. Forget about all the other expenses of daily life.
Why is it impossible to live in the US on an amount that 50 other countries live on? That's a topic for another essay.
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This project and its associated thought experiments have pretty much wrecked me for having any sort of viable political strategy as a US citizen/voter/thinker/writer/etc. I do write about current events from time to time and I suppose I still cheerlead for Democrats as against Republicans within the confines of the two-party system. But I'm a registered Green, I tend to vote Green when I can, and I donate to Greens ... yet even US Greens are far from advocating what I'm advocating.
I usually conclude that my political platform is impossible. But I don't let that change my platform. It's because I did the math. Heh, for the same reason I maintain that causality is bidirectional along the time axis -- it's the math. What is the sustainable amount of production on planet earth. Divide that amount by the current population. That should be each person's spending limit. Pre-tax.
-----
If you think you should be able to spend more than $2,200/year, what's your justification for that? What makes you more important than everybody else on the planet? What makes you so important that you can destroy the planet? If a couple billion people can live on that amount, why can't you?
One classic difference between a communist like me and bourgeois liberals like you, dear reader, is that I start with the premise that every human deserves the same basic amount of stuff, unless you have a good reason for one person having more than another. Why do the people living in the US get to have 30x as much stuff as the people in India? What's your justification for this?
If your household income is higher than the median in your own country, what's your justification for this? Can you articulate one?
A reason why I disrespect people who "aren't into politics" is because I think they're ducking questions like these, but even people who do express interest in politics duck questions like these.
The entire point of what we call identity politics is to duck questions like these. Identity politics sets economic inequality aside and creates different abstract categories of inequality to struggle over, while ignoring ecological sustainability.
Oh, sure you can care about multiple things at the same time, you can care about identity politics and economic inequality and ecological sustainability. But what gets people most excited? Identity politics. In the US you are much more likely to say "as a member of the LGBT community ..." or "as a Christian ..." than "as a renter ..." or "as a wage earner ..." or even "as a member of the bourgeoisie".
-----
My only current justification for spending more than $2,200/year -- I spent more than that on my new laptop -- is that I'm in the process of giving more away. I'm working my way toward that goal. And I'm doing so in a measurable way. I started out with a 30-year goal, but I've already lopped 10 years off my timeline, and now I've completed 2 of 20 years, I'm 10% of my way there.
Well, another justification is that I don't work in the for-profit sector, I'm simply taking a public servant's wage, set by a democratic process, after working my way up through the system. Pursuing advanced education, and then putting that education and all my other skills at the service of the public, working to fairly enforce laws passed by a democratic process. For 20 years that was enough, I thought. But, no, it is not enough, I'm consuming too much, way too much. We're democratically destroying the planet, as we democratically withhold resources from billions of poor people around the world. Wait, how is that even a democracy, when 95% of the people on the planet get no say in how we in the US act?
Utopia in 18 more years! LOL. When I'm 73.
The rest of you won't vote to join me.
-----
I thought I'd start working early this morning so I could quit early this afternoon, but instead I've been writing, again, about this major life goal of mine. Well, I did stretch, and I will go running, and at some point I'll quit working and enjoy the weekend.
And I think part of why I do enjoy life more than I used to is because I've made a sort of peace with the inequality and ongoing ecological destruction. I recognize that these things exist, I recognize what we would need to do about them, and I've committed to doing what I can, over a reasonable timeline. I daresay not many other people on this planet have done what I've done. Either they ignore the problems, or they propose "solutions" that won't fix the problems. I see the problems, and I propose actual solutions, and I'm trying to implement my solutions one step at a time.
I don't expect my solutions to work either, but that's because y'all won't implement them, not because they wouldn't work. Stop having kids. Stop consuming more than your sustainable fair share -- at least consume less than you did last year. If as a species we're reproducing too much and consuming too much, somebody has to actually consume less. I'm committed to actually consuming less. 5% less next year. That's doable. What are you doing about it.
During 2023 I will move up to giving away 15% of my take home pay. Most likely by finding five new charities and funding each of them at $100/month. I don't expect to break a sweat over this level of giving either. I've projected my budget monthly through 2025, during which I'll be giving away 25% of my take home pay, and I'll still be doing fine, because by then I'll also be debt-free except for the mortgage I share with T.
I'm planning to retire by the end of 2027, during which I'll be giving away 35% of my take home pay, but then during 2028 I'll have to reset at my significantly lower retirement income -- I'll halt all giving during 2028 until I figure out my new post-retirement living/activity situation. I'll resume giving during 2029 on a new stepwise path toward my sustainable fair share in 2040.
Although it seems impossible to live on $2,200 per year, especially in the US, about 50 countries currently have per capita GDP below $2,200/year. India has over a billion people and its per capita GDP is only $2,277/year. So, plenty of people do live on that much or less. If I live long enough and don't abandon this project, I will probably need to move to another country -- which could pose considerable legal and financial obstacles, as your typical poor country doesn't want yet another poor person to move in.
In reality, I'll probably hit a point before 2040 where I struggle to survive on an amount several times my sustainable fair share. At that point, what will I have proven?
As a thought experiment, I know I couldn't live on that amount in the US without becoming homeless, giving up medical care, and practically starving. The average person spends more on groceries in a year than $2,200. Forget about all the other expenses of daily life.
Why is it impossible to live in the US on an amount that 50 other countries live on? That's a topic for another essay.
-----
This project and its associated thought experiments have pretty much wrecked me for having any sort of viable political strategy as a US citizen/voter/thinker/writer/etc. I do write about current events from time to time and I suppose I still cheerlead for Democrats as against Republicans within the confines of the two-party system. But I'm a registered Green, I tend to vote Green when I can, and I donate to Greens ... yet even US Greens are far from advocating what I'm advocating.
I usually conclude that my political platform is impossible. But I don't let that change my platform. It's because I did the math. Heh, for the same reason I maintain that causality is bidirectional along the time axis -- it's the math. What is the sustainable amount of production on planet earth. Divide that amount by the current population. That should be each person's spending limit. Pre-tax.
-----
If you think you should be able to spend more than $2,200/year, what's your justification for that? What makes you more important than everybody else on the planet? What makes you so important that you can destroy the planet? If a couple billion people can live on that amount, why can't you?
One classic difference between a communist like me and bourgeois liberals like you, dear reader, is that I start with the premise that every human deserves the same basic amount of stuff, unless you have a good reason for one person having more than another. Why do the people living in the US get to have 30x as much stuff as the people in India? What's your justification for this?
If your household income is higher than the median in your own country, what's your justification for this? Can you articulate one?
A reason why I disrespect people who "aren't into politics" is because I think they're ducking questions like these, but even people who do express interest in politics duck questions like these.
The entire point of what we call identity politics is to duck questions like these. Identity politics sets economic inequality aside and creates different abstract categories of inequality to struggle over, while ignoring ecological sustainability.
Oh, sure you can care about multiple things at the same time, you can care about identity politics and economic inequality and ecological sustainability. But what gets people most excited? Identity politics. In the US you are much more likely to say "as a member of the LGBT community ..." or "as a Christian ..." than "as a renter ..." or "as a wage earner ..." or even "as a member of the bourgeoisie".
-----
My only current justification for spending more than $2,200/year -- I spent more than that on my new laptop -- is that I'm in the process of giving more away. I'm working my way toward that goal. And I'm doing so in a measurable way. I started out with a 30-year goal, but I've already lopped 10 years off my timeline, and now I've completed 2 of 20 years, I'm 10% of my way there.
Well, another justification is that I don't work in the for-profit sector, I'm simply taking a public servant's wage, set by a democratic process, after working my way up through the system. Pursuing advanced education, and then putting that education and all my other skills at the service of the public, working to fairly enforce laws passed by a democratic process. For 20 years that was enough, I thought. But, no, it is not enough, I'm consuming too much, way too much. We're democratically destroying the planet, as we democratically withhold resources from billions of poor people around the world. Wait, how is that even a democracy, when 95% of the people on the planet get no say in how we in the US act?
Utopia in 18 more years! LOL. When I'm 73.
The rest of you won't vote to join me.
-----
I thought I'd start working early this morning so I could quit early this afternoon, but instead I've been writing, again, about this major life goal of mine. Well, I did stretch, and I will go running, and at some point I'll quit working and enjoy the weekend.
And I think part of why I do enjoy life more than I used to is because I've made a sort of peace with the inequality and ongoing ecological destruction. I recognize that these things exist, I recognize what we would need to do about them, and I've committed to doing what I can, over a reasonable timeline. I daresay not many other people on this planet have done what I've done. Either they ignore the problems, or they propose "solutions" that won't fix the problems. I see the problems, and I propose actual solutions, and I'm trying to implement my solutions one step at a time.
I don't expect my solutions to work either, but that's because y'all won't implement them, not because they wouldn't work. Stop having kids. Stop consuming more than your sustainable fair share -- at least consume less than you did last year. If as a species we're reproducing too much and consuming too much, somebody has to actually consume less. I'm committed to actually consuming less. 5% less next year. That's doable. What are you doing about it.