I had a long thinking today (lots of brain calories spent ) about how I would like to see the world shaping into. This is the organization scheme that I have came up with:

* Citizens are living in small autonomous towns, up to 5,000 residents each.
* Every town is about 5km away from the next towns, north, east, west and south. Together, they shape a circle with 5 towns in any given circle (”sister towns”).
* Each town can be part of up to 4 circles, meaning that its immediate neighbors can be up to 13 towns (”cousin towns”, check image). It is the responsibility of each neighbor to make sure their 4 neighbor sister towns are in good health. If there is a natural disaster, it is the neighbor’s responsibility to help out (for free) the unlucky town. Because this would put a strain on the financial resources of these neighboring towns, their own neighboring towns must help them out. Overall, it balances out because of the “neighbor system” that keeps expanding far away.

* Each town is completely autonomous, they produce 80% of what they need. For the rest, they import while at the same time they export their own “special” resources.
* Each town is 90% the same as their neighboring towns, however there is a difference on the services it can provide (e.g. you only need one law school for each 100 towns). This way, the most immediate needs are satisfied by the town itself, and the less immediate ones from another town that exports this ability as a unique service. This means that if a town needs a lawyer, they must send the qualified student to study in that other town (or they must “import” a lawyer who would agree to move to their town with his family). In other words, that 10% of difference is what sets each town apart in terms of “having something special to sell”.
* There should be birth control so population never rises in a way that puts the rest of the community in jeopardy by creating e.g. a jobless environment or lower pays. Each town must regulate itself. It is like a country in itself and so when necessary, it can pose controls like “1 child per family for the next 10 years”.
* Each town is governed by the 5-member “Council” which is voted by the town’s residents (they are all citizens anyway) every year. Voting is mandatory for all above 18 years old.
* Citizens must apply for move if they want to live in another town. Each of these citizens have been specialized in a profession, so there should be a need for that profession in that new town, and there should be enough population margin to be accepted in.
* Each town is built identical to the other one, although it would be nice to have architecture “themes” simply because humans hate repetition. But overall, each town is built like in the picture below.

* Because these towns are pretty small, citizens can go anywhere they like by foot or bicycle or the town bus system that can circle any point in town within 15 minutes. There is no reason to own a car, although it is possible to own an electric one (if you have the money for it, as it would be considered a luxury at that point) and visit neighbor towns and attractions.
* Every about 100 towns there is a “city”. A city can have up to 10,000 people in it. It is shaped as any town (it’s just bigger) and it is also a part of a circle. A city has a special role. It is the place where it has a specialty that no other city or town in the world has. For example, it could be a city where NASA produces their turbine engines. Or Viagra makes research… Or most movies are shot. Or the central government is housed.
* Because these cities always have to import stuff from other places, they will have to export their special good. Prices are always regulated so you don’t get extorted to give them 100 oranges for 1 pill of viagra.
* The “central government” is nothing but another, larger council, that regulates the towns’ well-being and overall stability rather than taking super-important decisions. That council is called “The Regulators” and they are nothing but mediators. For example, if there is an epidemic the Regulators can decide to order a town that creates a specific drug to send help immediately for cheap or no price (their loss would balance out when their own neighbors help them to overcome that loss). But they can’t take life and death decisions, neither they can approve a let’s say, $20 billion budget for NASA. To approve very important decisions, they must prove their case in the 50 or 100 or 500 of the neighbour towns that are affected by the decision and then their Councils should vote. This way, democracy prevails in a more direct way than the kind of democracy we have today. If the important matter is global, then all town Councils of the world can vote (electronically, of course).
* Despite this model showing people as “isolated”, this is not true. People can travel for vacations and they can communicate freely via the internet or any other similar form. They can exchange ideas freely.
* Buses run within every town and trains within their sister and cousin towns. Each city can easily be reached by train. Each city has an airplane field.
* Because there is no traffic problem anymore or long driving times to go from home to work and vice versa, citizens can work 8 hours a day, plus 1 hour of community work and still have enough time to… go out and play.
* Every person pays three kinds of taxes. One for his town, one for his neighboring towns and one for the whole globe (cities). Each person can cut in half the tax of one of these 3 taxes by working one extra hour a day on a community project.
* For example, if NASA requires a new guiding system, a local engineer can take a role on that global community project and work 1 hour per day on it. If his local school needs gardening, he can take that job for 1 hour a day and have that kind of tax cut in half, etc. There should be a big approved list of projects eligible for the 3 kinds of tax cut.
* All kids above 12 years old are encouraged to take on a similar local project for an hour a day. This helps them strengthen the notion of community. Senior citizens can too.
* People who work at night or weekends will get the local tax cut without having to work on community projects. This way people with “screwed up” jobs balance out with people with more normal jobs.
* There can be freelance jobs, e.g. lawyers, artists. Artists can get a permit to perform at nearby towns. They can get asked to come and perform further away if they are too popular and they can get that global success via the internet.
* People can get rich. However, there is not much you can do with all your money. You can buy an electric car, jewelery, even apply for eligibility for a bigger house, or a summer house at a town close to the sea (for the right price to a town that specializes in leisure for example), but overall you have limits on what you can do with all the money you make. You can’t buy a jet for example, or start building a 30-room villa or buy big chunks of land. In fact, the more you give back to the town (e.g. you can sponsor local researchers, or pay medical bills for your townsfolk that need to go to a specialized hospital at another town) the more you become eligible to use your money in more ways possible. Basically the money is not the end target, but a vehicle to help yourself and your peers.
* Overall, the system has a big middle class of citizens, few rich people who are not really living a life much different than the middle class people and even fewer poor people — who are not really that poor.

The three major points of my proposals are:
- Autonomy.
- Specialization.
- Balance.

Some people might find this model “communistic”, but I don’t think it is. It has elements from ancient Sparta and Athens, Buddhism, both communism and capitalism and the fact that each town is autonomous gives the citizens a reason to live for. Their town is their family and chances are that they will stay close to perfect that environment. There is real equality, real representative democracy and a sense of community towards your peers. I think the model can work, but not before there are no “Countries”, “Corporations” and “Corruption” in the world (the 3 Cs). Maybe after another world war the humanity gets it right, who knows.

It seems that eventually the “300″ movie will have the most sold tickets in the history of movie theaters in Greece. It is already seen by 1 million viewers within 18 days, while the last movie that came close to 1 million mark needed 38 days to sell as much.

There is a series of documentaries by Adam Curtis on BBC this month about Nash’s “Game Theory” that was used during the Cold War and how now UK’s and USA’s governments are using the same technique to spark civil servant’s interest to perform better.

The theory is based on the assumption that humans are selfish by nature and so each part of their life must be all about screwing the person next to them for personal gain. According to Nash, just like in a poker game, because everyone would think in the selfish same way, the world would not dissolve into chaos, but instead an equilibrium would be reached. USA and UK started using this theory on their own civil servants by creating a “points” system where the employees must achieve specific goals by any means necessary. The idea is to create a free marketplace at any level in life. Basically, this is 100% capitalism, not just from the business & economical point of view, but it’s about a society that’s driven by the “values” of capitalism from head to toe: screw your fellow man to make a buck.

Curtis debunks this approach, and even Nash himself recently said that it might not work as well as he thought as it would be when he invented the theory in the ’50s (simply because employees try to “game” the new system anyway, and also the theory falls apart from the moment a person shows compassion & altruism towards his fellow man). When Curtis was asked what politicians should do instead of using such “inhumane” methods to manipulate their citizens to work more, he has no answer.

In my opinion, no matter what political system we get above our heads, things won’t get better. You can get the same kind of screwing from either communism, capitalism or royalty. And there is a reason why people are not happy with any of these economical or political systems: because the people involved (both citizens and politicians) are not mature and determined enough to handle their place in the society as they should.

There is no perfect political system. And the reason for this is because people are not perfect. People are not good by nature, neither they are bad by nature. They are complex creatures. You only start to get a pretty good society when all the citizens of the country are well-educated and moral people. Societies mature with time, just like humans do. I believe we are some 500 years away from a “pretty good” political system where people would feel “happy” with — that is, if totalitarianism doesn’t take over sooner.

Humans must become model citizens to perfect their system (be it communism or capitalism or something else). Education and responsibility is what would drive a society to prosperity. And when some few of these citizens rise to power, you get these much-desired model politicians rather than face today’s corruption. It’s all about the quality of the citizens and mature societies. Not that political systems can’t further mature (corporations should lose some of their power for example), but without the people themselves get responsible and wise, no system can work.

No, you can’t lean on the “goodness” of people to do their paid job. As I said, people are neither good or bad (the vast majority of them at least). Communism failed because people didn’t care to do their everyday jobs (bakeries anyone?). To _care_ to do something means that you _understand_ WHY you are doing it. You see the big picture. And you can only see the big picture, when you have an open mind and a solid education on your back. Sure they are going to be some jerks to spill the milk, but hey, overall it would balance out.

Maybe another way to make humans understand their role into the society would be to bring the population down (below a billion people), and then have them live and work in small cities rather in megacities where they lose their purpose. A person is more prone to go help in his free time to paint a school in the small town where he knows everyone and understands his role, rather than when living let’s say, in New York. I believe the fact that as many as 40% of Americans suffer from depression has to do with the fact that they don’t live in the country side anymore. They’ve lost their purpose because they don’t get gratification of their current role. They don’t feel part of the community anymore, but part of the faceless mass. I never met anyone in Greece, outside Athens or Thessalonica, having this medical condition, while it is almost an epidemic in USA.

This whole thing kinda reminds me of the utopian world of Star Trek. If you really try to pinpoint the political system that drives Earth in the Star Trek universe you won’t find any (other than some vague notion of democracy in the Federation and the fact that there is no currency anymore). What you get in your face each time you watch a Star Trek episode though is how perfect the citizens are in their relationships, morality, points of views and daily responsibilities.

It’s all about mature people. Look no further.