The cutting of the cake
Saturday 19 September, 2009 - 161 ViewsThe problem is: we have a cake. How shell we divide it?
In the communist system we cut the cake in equal slices with the result that the slices are too small to feed everyone.
In the capitalist system the strongest you are the bigger is the slice you get. The result is someone getting real big slices, someone getting medium slices, someone getting small slices but big enough to feed, and a lot of people getting nothing at all.
It looks like whatever we do we will never manage to get things right, so what we can do?
There are three parts essential to the solution of the cake problem.
1)Get a larger cake so that everyone can get a large enough slice.
2)Reduce the number of people eating the cake
3)Get someone to cut the cake who is fair and independent.
If we look at it closely, the larger part of our world problems go down to these three points.
The cake is not large enough: we don't have enough resources for everyone and the few resources we have are not used in the proper way.
We have to many people to eat the cake: we have a severe problem of overpopulation with the number of people in the world growing at a rate of a billion every 10 or so years. We don't often hear of this problem but it is real and it is probably the single largest problem we have.
The one cutting the cake is hopeless: governments are greedy and corrupt and even if we had a large enough cake and a proportionate number of people to share it, we would still have problems because those in charge to cut and distribute the cake can be easily bribed and corrupt.
Even worst case if everyone is allowed to cut the slice they want without any regulation: the law of the jungle will prevail.
This leads to the mother (or father) of all the problems: human beings tend to be selfish and greedy.
If we can not structure the society to control and make good use of this innate selfishness and greed of the human beings, we will never be able to solve any of the three problems above and none of the myriad of other problems that generates from them.
It is self evident that our society is not structured in a way to control and make good use of the innate selfishness and greed of the human beings.
At this point we need an act of faith.
Can we believe that humans are able to self regulate in a way to overcome greed and selfishness and to build a better society?
It is very hard to think we can but as the only alternative is arming ourselves with guns and machetes and jump into the jungle to get the largest possible slice of cake, we must believe or at least we must hope that we can, and we also make our part to make this happen.
This web site is for the people who are ready to give it a try.
