Defining utopia

Main article: Political Systems

Main article: Ratings system

We might say, somewhat tongue in cheek, that we are designing utopia. But what is our definition of utopia? Among many ideas, here are some:

Utopia permits personal freedom of choice, expression, and action. The only constraints on these involve interactions and effects on others.

Utopia, mostly through personal choice and consensus, rather than government diktat, distributes its wealth equitably. It minimizes the distinction between haves and have-nots and maintains inequality only to the extent that it motivates people to perform at their best. Utopia places a high value on providing “essential” goods and services to everyone: food, shelter, education, medical care, etc.

Utopia dissolves sub-optimal systems naturally through a ratings-based consensus process. The private health insurance and medical care system of the US would be replaced. The currently legal but corrupt system of money in politics would be eliminated. The justice system, one yielding a regular stream of arbitrary, ideological, and monetarily influenced results, would be done away with.

Utopia dissolves the personal aggrandizement motivation in our current society and minimizes rent seeking economic behavior.

Utopia strives toward a post-scarcity society and concentrates its attention on future betterment. It is an investment-focused society.

Utopia strives to perform good work to maintain and advance itself. It is not an idle society.

Utopia strives for social equality and rates its people by their contributions, accomplishments and character. It does not judge on the basis of race, origin, gender, sexual orientation. It minimizes ideology as a basis for judgement since it is open to new ideas and hews to the idea of optimization. It seeks generally to take ideas from all ideologies to produce an optimum result.

Utopia values objective truth and advances it. It has a cultural intolerance for lies and falsehood. It carefully weighs controversial ideas before dismissing them, however.

Utopia is peaceful and strives for peaceful solution to conflict. It understands that it shares the world with other communities that are ideologically diverse. It avoids conquest, military adventurism, and covert campaigns of intelligence or propaganda directed at other communities.

Needless to say, many societies will agree and even have these ideas written into their foundational documents. The difference between our Utopia and these conventional visions is the emphasis on communities of choice, the centrality of personal choice, a formal and transparent system of ratings, a focus on rigorous optimization as a standard for success, and a wholly idea-based culture that seeks objective truth.