At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements ;)
What if there were no rich people?
There would go a lot of foundations that have been put into place by rich people to help others. It would be an interesting perspective; certainly a great equalizer if there were no rich people.
ReplyDeletebetty
It might be.
DeleteThen what would the motivation be to work hard? If you work just to put food on the table and pay bills, with no hope for a significant monetary reward, it might be disheartening. There are very few people who actually love their work, and the work itself is the motivating factor.
ReplyDeleteBut wouldn't it be cool if we all could work at things we loved? Imagine not having to work at something you hated just to put food on the table.
DeleteIt would be nice to think of a Utopian society but that's what Karl Marx thought and in came Communism. Just one problem-he forgot about People and greed
ReplyDeleteAnd he forgot about laziness too Birgit
DeleteCapitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
Deletevs
Communism: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless society
which means that in a capitalistic society everyone is out for themselves, as opposed to a communism in which everyone is out for everyone.
I think it would be a lot better than now. There wouldn't be any people who could buy power and do whatever they wanted. It's not like there still wouldn't be a reason to work and hopefully that excess money could go towards helping people who really need it.
ReplyDeleteThe term, socialist economy comes to mind. Though it has a more negative connotation (at least as I've come to learn), I find there's quite a bit of benefit to having a society where we're less concerned with how to get ahead and more interested in how to live in a society where we all have equal access and benefits to the kind of life we all deserve. (Just my two cents). hehe
ReplyDeleteI was trying to avoid socialism in the question. That word has too many negative connotations, and I don't know if that's the way to go, anyway.
DeleteFrom what I recall of studying cultural anthropology in college, you only have "no rich people" at the "band" level. The band level consists of one or several extended families, a small group of people who hunt together, live together, gather food together, fight together, all sharing what they have with each other. Such people tend to be nomadic, and may not engage in agriculture. So actually, such societies exist, although they are rapidly disappearing. Once you get into anything larger, you have inequalities of wealth distribution - rich people, poor people. Alana ramblinwitham.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteAh. But what if we could find a way to achieve that in our present society? (The idea of these questions is to see if we can generate a story from them, or at least some worldbuilding.)
DeleteNo rich people would mean no-one with the ability to help out those with less.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. Do the rich help out those who are not rich, though? Some do, of course.
DeleteThere should be no rich people. Or people with ridiculous amounts of wealth anyway. It's not how the world is supposed to be with 1% of the world's population owning 99% of the world's wealth. (Not exact figures but something outrageously unjust like that).
ReplyDeleteSo, let's imagine that there aren't any. What would that world look like?
DeleteI know this isn't meant to be a political discussion but there are good and bad aspects of capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. The problem as always is people. Capitalsim might seem the best way to go but Pinky has a point. Why should all the world's wealth be held by a tiny percent of the population when in fact they're not even doing most of the work?
ReplyDeleteIf there were no rich people maybe wealth could be distributed more equally and everyone could be middle class. I'd be pretty happy with that. But I'm guessing Donald Trump wouldn't be.
The problem is people ARE greedy. We always want more. So how to we eliminate that need to acquire? What changes would a society have to make? Personally, I think we will have to evolve more in order to get past our need to have stuff, have more than the next person, and that's going to be a while I'm afraid.
I don't think I would like it if there were no rich people. What would I have to dream about??
ReplyDeleteInteresting question. Do you dream about riches? Or is there something that riches can provide that you dream about? Could you achieve that dream without the riches? Probably, in one form or another.
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