Microstory 981: Upcoming Equality

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In my research for a topic I originally called Growing Equality, I learned that inequality is actually on the rise, much like violent crime, both of which I found surprising. While I can’t actually give you the statistics proving my supposition that things are getting better, I can promise that trends do not necessarily predict the outcome. When you’re watching a sports competition, and things start looking bad for your team, you don’t immediately turn it off and assume you’re going to lose, do you? Well, maybe you do, as I’ve heard fans nauseatingly recount to other fans what they missed when they did this. But you shouldn’t, because there is always hope for a shift. While recent data demonstrates that inequality has increased in every single region of the world, that doesn’t mean we won’t win in the end. The rich are getting richer, the poorer poorer, and hostilities are adding up, but we are working on ways to fix these problems. I keep bringing up automated labor, and universal basic income, because tests have proven that they work, when implemented properly. I believe strongly that they are the future of our global economy, and I won’t believe otherwise unless I find myself on my deathbed, having lost out on the opportunity to use other technologies to become immortal. Basically, if we don’t progress enough to conquer death by the time I’m old enough to die of age-related medical issues, I can’t be sure it will ever happen, because we are on course to solving that problem. It won’t matter how much richer the rich are when we decide money is worth nothing anyway, and the first step towards that is increasing the value of material objects that really matter—like computers, 3D printers, and nanotechnology—decreasing the value of pointless trinkets and wasteful machines, and decreasing human labor. The reason there is still so much inequality is not because that’s what the people want, but because most of our governing systems were built on a foundation of injustice. The majority are, at the very least, tolerant of people who are unlike them. Many accept our differences, and some even love diversity. It is the system that’s working against us, but systems can be changed within the span of a political campaign. If a bad candidate can suddenly wrest control over a state from its people, than certainly a good candidate can do the same thing next time. No, equality may not growing, but it doesn’t have to, because the strongest opposing actors are operating under borrowed time. They will die soon, and we will prevail, but only if we keep preaching our love, and not giving into discrimination. Love trumps hate.