It's never too late to change the world

Looking at today's world you'd be right to be worried about the direction that Society and the wider world is getting into. The tensions in Ukraine, the many governments around the world that seem to be backsliding into Autocratic regimes, conspiracy theories causing perfectly rational people to act in completely irrational ways, LGBTQ+ Rights being reversed or limited, The Right to abortion constantly on threat of being taken away, more and more police violence against minorities and Governments being unveiled as un-ashamedly Corrupt. By no means am I an unbridled optimist, but realistically. All of this is symptoms of a wider issue, we, as a Society don't know where to go next. Most periods of Human history can be marked as revolutionarily changed, something happened, something changed. But what do you change when everything is markedly different from how it was 70 years ago?

Rutger Bregman is a Dutch Historian, one of the things he notes is that History by en-large was worse than today. "99% of the world was poorer, dumber, unhealthier and uglier" than today. Most of history had utopian thinkers who reached for the stars and got Society to the moon. What do we have today? Not much, Revolutionary thinking is on the fringes or thrown out of the discussion as "insane". Society has changed, but been changed by the "moderates" or "Centrists" all change has been via compromise with the Utopian thinkers of the time. But nowadays, who do the moderates want to compromise with? The Right, by en-large. What do the Right want? Lower taxes? Anti-Culture War rhetoric? Cuts in welfare spending? Pretty much all of the above, they are anti-everything that changed in the past 70 years. So we can't really be surprised that everything seems to be backsliding.

The Left, The Progressives have resorted to an almost Technocratic habit of re-using old policy. This goes for American Progressives, not just European Progressives. Which is good in some regard because we have something to base Policy off of. But it also gives free Ammunition to the right to pick apart all the things that didn't work or ad hom the governments who originally brought the policy in, usually by resorting to McCarthyist Red scare buzzwords like Socialism or Communism, or Marxist. The Left needs Visionaries, people who look past the history or current structures of society, not relying on the old tactics and crossing your fingers that they'll work again (assuming they ever worked in the first place).

Chile's President Elect, Gabriel Boric gives me some hope in this regard, He's promised an end to Neo-Liberal policy which in Chile has strong ties to the Dictatorial control of Augusto Pinochet.

"Chile was the birthplace of Neo-liberalism, It too shall be it's grave"

Boric is a Libertarian Socialist, which to the Americans is a head turner because you associate "Libertarianism" with Capitalism. Libertarianism historically was anti-status quo, the status quo being either Authoritarianism or Capitalism, or more than likely, both. Libertarians were on the left of society not the right.

Libertarian Socialism doesn't really have a strict outlook on where to go with Society, its an Umbrella Ideology with a lot of Ideologies beneath it like more Market orientated ideologies like Market Socialism and Mutualism to more Communist ideologies like Collectivism and Anarcho-communism. Its a broad spectrum but every school has its policy programme and either way Boric decides to go with it. There's a pretty clear blueprint of where to go with it.

Where do I think we should go? Well I'm in Boric's camp. I'm a Market Socialist. I think that the next steps for Society are to change the entire way the Market operates, incentivisation of Co-operatives, changing the tax code in such a way that it creates a Minimum Salary and a Maximum wealth. For example, creating a Dividend tax where everything under $70,000 is taxed at 0%, everything up to $15 million is taxed at 30% and everything over $15 million is taxed at 100%. Establish a fully funded National healthcare service, Nationalise the railways and Public Transport, Fully fund Education making it free from cradle to grave, Create a Nationalised bank that can serve as a Primary bank account for all citizens and residents, and use that as a means of providing a Universal basic income of $70,000 giving real bargaining power to workers.

By no means do I think my blueprint is where all countries can or should go, I'm Scottish, I'm basing it off of where I think society could go from the perspective of where I'm at. But the beauty of Progress is that it is us that benefit from the path that we forge. We should never give in to the pressures of the status quo, aim for the stars like our forefathers, because the worst that can happen is that we get the moon, the best that can happen is that we get exactly what we wanted.