Chapter 39: How Will Life Stay the Same and How Will It Change In The New Paradigm?

Some things in life are pretty much universal. These will be similar under any paradigm. People will always grow and eat food, build homes to live in, travel, make friends, fall in love, have children, create and enjoy art and other entertainment, have personality conflicts, have accidents and illnesses, experience successes and failures, exhibit wisdom and stupidity, die, etc. Other things are almost completely culturally defined and determined.

While the new paradigms will eliminate vast amounts of avoidable and unnecessary suffering, strife, stress and destruction, it would be a mistake to assume that life will be free from problems and difficulties.

It is natural for us to unconsciously form high, often unrealistic, expectations, when embarking on a new undertaking, whether it is a new relationship, job, location, religion, technology, or a new and improved socio-economic paradigm. We will be wise to be aware of such expectations and strive to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the Transition will solve all human or personal problems.

Such thinking and expectations are unrealistic. They carry the danger that when the new paradigm does not match them, we may be more likely to give up rather than to persevere. Similarly, a new romantic relationship may enrich one's life immeasurably, but expecting life to be problem-free in the relationship is virtually dooming it to fail. So it is with the formation of a new kind of human society.

Every undertaking, every relationship and life itself requires perseverance, readiness to constantly learn, adapt, and do the hard work and troubleshooting needed to make it work and succeed. Even the most successful friendship or marriage has its challenges and issues to work through. It is even more so when embarking on something as complex as a new socio-economic paradigm.

Post-Transition societies will be very different from Capitalist societies in many important ways that can be anticipated and many which are impossible to foresee.

Many occupations and whole industries will disappear as they will no longer be needed. There will be no such functions as advertising, marketing, sales, billing, collections, corporate law, stock trading, real estate, insurance, management, supervision, loans, credit, banking, dealerships, retail, wholesale, evictions, landlord-tenant attorneys, assessment, employment agencies, financial aid, welfare, taxation agencies, prostitution, identity theft and theft in general, fraud, CEO's, CFO's, lobbyists, and many more.

Other occupations will remain but change in fundamental ways.

Accountants, for example, will still be needed to help track and balance the flow of goods and services; but they will need to learn how to do so without money being a factor. They will track how many tractors, tons of oranges, guitars, pairs of shoes and so forth have been manufactured, are needed, and are in storage; how many Kilowatt hours of electricity are needed in each area and how many can be produced, load balancing, also tracking person hours and barter arrangements involved in international trade agreements with Capitalist countries.

Engineers and designers will need to focus on designing and producing the best reasonably achievable products that meet the needs and desires of the people, rather than finding new ways to make short-lived products look impressive and be incompatible with other products.

Medical professionals from doctors to physician's assistants to nurses and orderlies will find themselves re-focused on serving the health and well-being of patients rather than serving the bottom line. They will be freed from having to obey the dictates of health insurance companies, hospital administrators and their ilk. Practitioners of the healing professions will at long last be free to devote themselves to the fullest health and well-being of their patients.

Former advertisers and marketers will be able to adapt their skills to education, public information, technical and other writing, and possibly performing arts.

The legal professions will change a lot in many ways. Entire specialties (such as corporate law, landlord-tenant law, the monetary aspects of civil and family law, and more) will be obsolete or fundamentally changed. Other aspects of law will change little or not at all. Murder will still be murder; assault will still be assault; drunk driving will still be drunk driving. Yet some aspects of criminal law will change. Fines and other kinds of monetary penalties will no longer apply. Alternatives will have to be devised, probably largely in the form of community service, treatment or rehabilitation where applicable, and imprisonment where necessary. Theft will have to be substantially redefined. Many behaviors that are currently defined as crimes will no longer apply. The overall number of criminals will likely decline. Some new crimes may have to be defined or redefined.

As covered in other chapters, many goods and services currently concentrated in mammoth central facilities, such as power generation, fuel and food production and more will experience a shift. They will be diversified and decentralized in favor of widely, more or less evenly distributed networks of smaller, citizen-run facilities such as single building, block and neighborhood power generation, farming, composting, fuel production (especially natural gas) and more.

National defense will be enhanced as the existing military will be supplemented by a populace trained in active guerrilla warfare and civil defense in case of invasion or siege. The right to bear arms is important to a free community, at least until humanity has matured beyond the need for self defense. However, citizens must be trained and drilled in their use just as they must be to drive a vehicle; and steps need to be taken to prevent firearms from finding their way into the hands of mentally unstable and criminal individuals.

The quality of goods and services will vastly improve because of the shift away from forced overproduction of throwaway goods driven by artificially overinflated demand, and towards maintenance production levels of goods and services designed to fulfill people's needs, last a long time, and be easily serviceable and upgradeable. Waste, resource depletion, pollution and the accumulation of trash will decline dramatically.

People living in the new paradigm will experience a significant reduction in the number of work hours needed to maintain and advance normal life. There may be an initial period of high production volume to replace current inferior products of Capitalism with superior products of the new paradigm. This will only last until all inhabitants have their needs met and there is a small surplus to offset breakage and such. At that point the typical work week will scale down to significantly fewer hours to sustain a higher quality of life than is possible under Capitalist paradigms. People will enjoy more free time and less stress. Their time more meaningfully spent, for other reasons as well.

No time will be spent paying bills, figuring out budgets to survive on too little, dealing with corporate bureaucracies, sorting out scams from legitimate offers, dealing with banks, cutting coupons, doing taxes, and dealing with all the stress associated with these activities. Even in little ways, time will be better spent, more efficiently and on more meaningful activities.

Examples abound in matters big and small. For example, under capitalist paradigms, stores frequently rearrange all their merchandise to force customers to spend more time in the store looking for things, because they know that statistically customers will end up buying more that way. Popular items are not placed in the most accessible locations, but rather in more inconvenient places so customers will have to walk by more merchandise and most likely buy more. This wastes a lot of customers' time and requires staff to perform meaningless long hours of drudgery for the sake of corporate profits while being paid sub-living wages. All of this waste of time and energy, this pointless oppression of spirit will end once and for all. The arrangement of items in supply depots will be determined by what is most efficient and convenient for the public and staff.

More time will be spent in activities like gardening and maintaining local infrastructure, which will tend to bring with it a greater sense of ownership, empowerment and community connectedness which will create a greater sense of well-being and lessen the isolation and alienation that are increasingly common in Capitalist societies.

Transportation technology will become more diverse in post-Transition communities. Dependence on fossil fuels will decline rapidly to a fraction of what it is now.

Diverse technologies already exist but have been effectively suppressed and marginalized by the petroleum, automotive and related industries through manipulation of government, economics, patents and propaganda. Transportation-related industries will be freed of profit motive and "market forces." Research, development and production of diversified technologies, and the infrastructure to support them, will rapidly expand and diversify. We can already envision the proliferation of electric, hybrid, multi-fuel (a technology that was already mature in the 1930's and 1940's), artificial muscle, maglev, mechano-chemical, human-powered and other new and novel types of vehicles and even increased use of horses, camels, donkeys, etc.

The design and manufacturing standards that will emerge will lead to vehicles designed with highly interchangeable parts for easy servicing and upgrading. Different types of engines, brakes and transmissions will be easily interchangeable in the same vehicle bodies. There will also be an increase in public transportation nationwide, and the proliferation of extensive bike, walking and horse trails with supporting infrastructure that will render these modes of transportation safe, practical, viable and more attractive then they are now. More comfortable, ergonomic bikes and other conveyances that under Capitalism are only affordable to few people pretty far up the economic pyramid, will be freely accessible to all who want them.

Air and water quality will steadily improve as use of fossil fuels decreases and profit motives no longer drive industries to engage in destructive practices such as fracking, toxic waste dumping, unnecessary drilling and strip-mining.

With the extinction of Capitalistic runaway production/consumption imperatives, hierarchical socio-economic structures, and constant relentless pressure to come up with money to ransom one’s existence, without living in a reality where one's peers are competitors for extremely limited resources and opportunities, the overall stress level will ease dramatically. This will lead to equally dramatic improvements in the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of individuals and families.

Of course these improvements will not prevent dysfunctional relationships from being dysfunctional, abusers from being abusive, bullies from bullying, nor make all physical, mental and emotional illnesses magically disappear. But the overall level of well-being will dramatically improve for all.

Those suffering from dire physical, emotional and mental disorders will all have access to the best healthcare available, free from the deleterious effects of financial and related stresses. Nobody will be denied or have to choose not to get treatment because of financial limitations.

People will no longer be forced by "economic necessity" to pursue occupations that are meaningless or abhorrent to them. We will therefore be free and unrestrained to find the occupations that give us the greatest work satisfaction. Thus empowered, we will be much more able to make our greatest contribution to the Community.

Regarding jobs that nobody wants to do, the Community will have to ask itself whether the job is truly necessary, or could be done differently. For example, there might be no need for street sweepers in a culture where people routinely clean the area in front of their own dwelling and workplace. If nobody wants to do garbage collection, which clearly needs to be done, then aspects of it can be automated as much as possible, and all citizens physically capable can take turns doing this job for a day or two now and then, in a way akin to jury duty. Nobody will be permanently relegated to doing a necessary job that nobody wants to do.

The level of constant sensory bombardment and overload that is prevalent in all media at this time in history will fall off dramatically. All media (TV, radio, printed media, the Internet, mailboxes both electronic and physical, streetscapes and landscapes) will be free from commercials, ads, junk mail, spam, come-ons and other valueless wasteful multimedia pollution without which a Capitalist society cannot function.

Media will instead be filled with real authentic artistic programming and whatever public service and informational announcements may be necessary. There will be no need for the cacophony of advertising in the media and physical surroundings, pop-ups on Web browsers and embedded in everything from cell phones to operating systems to magazines to movies. There will be no more junk mail. This will help rehabilitate depleted forests as the demand for paper used in advertising will disappear. Our sensory environment will become a lot less cluttered and chaotic, which will likely even further reduce the level of stress for all inhabitants and engender a more balanced pace of life. Our activities and priorities will be driven by true necessity and desire, rather than by insatiable consumerism driven to insanely unhealthy levels by Capitalist compulsions and imperatives.

All media will become more responsive to the people who watch, listen to, or read them rather than to sponsors, corporate policies, or the caprices and attitudes of a CEO. News reporters in all media will have little choice but to focus once again on reporting what actually happens instead of what their "masters" want to see and hear, for ratings’ sake.

Artists, inventors and researchers will no longer need to devote most of their time and energy to a "Day Job" to keep up with constant financial demands to pay legal “protection” money while pursuing their art "on the side" whenever they can manage to fit it in. In the new Paradigm they will be free to devote themselves to perfecting their craft and practicing it to the fullest of their passion and ability. This will likely result in a dramatic increase in the number and proportion of professional level performers among the population, and a vigorous up-tick in technical innovation.

Since the media will no longer be under pressure from sponsors, corporate whims and profitability imperatives, they will have little choice but to become responsive to the public. Because artists will no longer be stratified into stars on the one hand and "star-ving artists" on the other, we will see the emergence onto larger stages of many world-class artists who under Capitalist paradigms would languish in economic disempowerment. This will be the end of the "star" mystique and of the elevation of some artists to privileged celebrity status over others.

The media will most likely become a lot more accessible to the typical talented, dedicated artist than under Capitalist paradigms. Artists and scientists in particular, and the Community in general, will experience a cultural renaissance unlike anything seen in modern times.

Freed of the pressure to be "marketable," artists will be empowered to pursue their authentic expression. The arts and sciences in general will once again attract those pursuing their passion rather than those seeking fame and fortune.

Live venues – clubs, theaters and the like - will experience a rebirth and revitalization.

At the time of this writing, it is common for many clubs to function on a "pay to play" basis with no concern for the talent or quality of entertainment. Most venues do not even audition prospective performers. They simply say "you are responsible to bring in $xxxx. Anything you bring in over that you can keep. If you bring in less than that, you make up the difference." Artists are not allowed to bring their own videographers or live recording setups. If they wish to videotape or record their performances, they must pay large sums for the venue's crew to do it. Such practices will completely disappear. Venues will rediscover the importance of providing the best entertainment possible rather than bringing in the most money possible. The common practice in such venues of turning up the heat to make customers thirstier so they will buy more drinks will of course disappear.

Those performers who, under the old Capitalist paradigms, were stars and celebrities held above others and lionized will still continue to be appreciated. They will still be held in high regard if their fame was truly based on their excellence as entertainers; but they will no longer enjoy the status of virtual nobles, venerated above the average citizen. They will, however, have the company of many equally excellent entertainers who would never have a chance to be seen or heard under Capitalistic pyramidal economics.

Those stars and celebrities whose success was due more to marketing and packaging than to commitment and excellence, will either develop their own excellence or have to find other forms of expression, since not many will want to watch or listen to them.

Under Capitalist paradigms, the arts and sciences are dominated and largely controlled by corporations, wealthy investors, venture capitalists, producers and other parasites. Huge amounts of money are generated. Yet those who receive the smallest portion of that wealth are the artists themselves, who often receive less than ten cents of every dollar that they generate. This is true even of many so-called stars.

Performers themselves are often expected to pay travel expenses and crew salaries out of their portion of the profits. In Capitalist countries, this attitude has gone so far that the arts are usually referred to as businesses or industries, not as arts at all: The Music Business or Industry, the Movie Business or Industry, etc. This reflects attitudes and perceptions that have become common and widely accepted without challenge or question.

Any idealistic artists who question or challenge this paradigm are looked down upon as unrealistic and not to be taken seriously, no matter how talented they may be. Any artist who declines direction given for profitability’s sake is shut out. Art and entertainment, which are the essence of creativity and spontaneous human expression, have been reduced to products to be mass-produced like garbage disposals and paper clips.

Scientific research is forced to justify itself in terms of expected marketable outcomes and projected profitability. All too often the scientists and/or engineers involved in new discoveries and inventions suffer the same treatment as artists and more. Employment agreements dictate that all innovations developed by the scientist/engineer are the intellectual property of the employer.

Pure research is usually curtailed or cut in favor of research likely to generate marketable products. At this time in history, even space is being treated as something to exploit for profit, a thrill-seeking or exclusive kind of luxury tourism accessible to only those at the very top of the pyramid. This is an archetypal example of how Capitalism favors the ultra-wealthy at the expense of all others.

Art is the authentic expression of the human heart and psyche. It is fundamental to who and what we are as human beings. Art entails a deep primal connection between the artist and other artists, between artists and the audience, and among members of the audience which is the Community. It is a healing, uniting, liberating force originating deep in the human essence. Science is the sincere quest for knowledge and understanding of ourselves and of the universe that we live in. That quest generates technologies and products along the way that enhance and improve the quality of human life. For too long art, science and for that matter human beings themselves, have been subordinated, chained to the service of Capitalist profit motive and the modern ruling neo-Feudal elite.

Along with the emerging prevalence of community, block, neighborhood and workplace-based activities such as community gardens and energy generation, locally-based cycles of production and consumption, and shortening of commutes, we will experience an increase in participatory cultural and social activities such as community and street theater, amateur and professional level sports, and resource sharing. We will enjoy a shift from the current fragmented lifestyle with no real connection between home, work, shopping or entertainment venues, gymnasia, etc. to an integrated lifestyle with a high degree of overlap, connection and integration among one's home, workplace, provisioning venues, entertainment, etc.

We can anticipate that population will decentralize to some degree, reducing the crowding and overstretching of resources in cities and other population centers. Once most unoccupied land is free to settle, many living in overcrowded city centers will form communities on the outskirts, near enough to the population center to have access to large-scale facilities, resources and events but far enough away to experience less overcrowding and decaying conditions. People currently living in "the projects" and other caustic, inhospitable urban environments will no longer be trapped there by the chains of Capitalist economic constraints.

Nothing will prevent a person or family from finding an abandoned house, building, or spot of uninhabited land to homestead. Building materials, tools and equipment will be freely and readily available to all, as will the services of skilled builders, carpenters, electricians, architects, etc.

Of course we will need strict laws to prevent people from bullying their way into a home where someone else is already living, and to settle conflicting claims on a building or parcel of land. Some of those who have lived in "projects" and slums will want "the good life" formerly available only to the affluent. They will be free to occupy abandoned and/or otherwise unoccupied homes (of which there are millions), or to build their own in places where no one is living. But they will not be free to eject people out of homes that are already inhabited. Former landlords will not have the ability or authority to evict or harass former tenants.

Those who feel most at home in the "projects" where they were born and raised will of course be free to do so. This prospect will change radically in the new Paradigms, since the economic pressures that made these places fertile ground for violent and predatory lifestyles and businesses (human trafficking, drug and weapons trades, protection rackets, etc.) will be absent. We can expect such patterns to gradually dissipate over time in the total absence of reinforcement. Some, however, will not readily give up what is familiar to them; so some vigilance will be necessary to curb violence and coercive patterns. Freed of slumlords and bureaucratic barriers, residents will also have all that they need to repair and upgrade former “projects” to make them places to thrive.

Education will still include math, history, language skills, physical education and other familiar subjects, but the overall atmosphere will change considerably. The abundance or insufficiency of funding will no longer determine the quality of education given to the inhabitants of neighborhoods and communities. Gone will be the omnipresent specter of needing to prepare and strategize, at an ever earlier age, ways to find or create an economic niche to survive and attempt to escape economic slavery. The emphasis in education will be mentoring and the imparting of knowledge, skills, wisdom, and understanding to each generation with an eye to empowering them to fulfill their interests, aspirations, dreams and goals and in the process make their best contribution to the Community in a dynamic of symbiosis with mutual support.

At every level, from kindergarten through doctorate and post-doctorate level, education will empower rather than constrain, and breed free exploration from a strong foundation of knowledge and understanding.

Some people will still aspire to a career or endeavor for which they are not well suited. An aspiring physician, for example, who lacks the discipline or kind of mind necessary to gain the requisite knowledge and skills or who gets violently ill at the sight of blood, an aspiring gymnast with uncontrollable vertigo, an aspiring therapist who discovers that they lack the patience to hear people's struggles for hours on end, would all discover that they are in the wrong field. Any person will be completely free and unimpeded if they decide to change direction. People will no longer enter a profession "for the money," prestige or privilege. No longer will people possessing the necessary abilities and attitudes to pursue a given area of study be denied the chance due to financial insufficiency.

Graduates will enter the work world without the burden and stress of student loans to repay. The concept of debt will disappear entirely. One cannot draw water that isn’t there, as one can do with the concept of currency. One's senior year of high school or college will not be fraught with the stress of looking for a job in an environment where one's lack of experience is a handicap while rent, utilities, food and more still have to be paid for, with loans that must paid back whether one has a job that affords it or not.

Class-work will still be class-work. There will probably still be tests, projects, labs, lectures and long nights of study. There may be the competition among those striving to be the best in their field. But these things will not carry the weight of impacting one’s quality of life or survival.

Expectations on educators will change dramatically. Emphasis will shift from training for the job market to training for a combination of student interest and real needs in the Community. Freed of the demands of having to constantly concern themselves with financial survival, both educators and students will be able to devote their energy, time and attention to the educational process, and certainly be more productive than is possible for any but the wealthy under capitalist paradigms.

At the college and post-graduate level, we can expect to see an increase of innovation, ground-breaking research and creativity. At the primary and secondary level, education will no longer be at the mercy of funding, so the quality of education will vastly improve. No longer will arts, sports and science programs be dropped because there isn't enough money to sustain them. Private colleges that primarily exist for profit will disappear or else redefine their mission.

Quality and availability of food will also be beneficially affected in the post-Transition community. Under Capitalism, the most affordable foods tend to be less healthy. Healthier foods are almost always significantly more expensive. This fact is reflected in statistics showing that poorer sectors of the population are more prone to many diseases and conditions arising out of poor nutrition than more affluent sectors.

Proponents of capitalism have often cited these same statistics in an attempt to promote a point of view that the poor are less healthy because they choose to eat unhealthy foods and that their poverty is the result of their own bad choices to be lazy, unproductive and so forth. This is the same kind of logic that slave-owners used to justify owning other human beings and that medieval feudal lords used to justify their dictatorship.

When one is working full time or more for sub, barely, or barely over living income, paying $25/lb for meat or fish is not an option when there is cheap hamburger available for $2.50/lb; a $1.99 liter of reconstituted orange juice is an option while a $6.00 liter of fresh squeezed organic pesticide free orange juice is not. In addition, as covered elsewhere, the health and organic food industries have discovered the same capitalist principle that medical, dental and legal practitioners have exploited: when people know or believe that their health or life is at stake, they are willing to go to great lengths to get what they believe that they need.

According to classic capitalist "Supply and Demand" logic and imperatives, producers can keep supplies limited in order to charge a much higher price. This is at the heart of all capitalist paradigms.

Capitalism also generates a lot of wasted food. Grocery stores and restaurants often throw away perfectly good food because it has blemishes or is otherwise not deemed presentable for sale, or because packaging came open, or because it was prepared but unsold at closing time or ordered but not picked up, among other reasons. If employees, who in all sectors of the food industry are almost universally paid sub-living wages and treated poorly, take the unused food home or give it to others, they are immediately fired. If members if the public try to take it, even from dumpsters, they are chased away or even taken away by police. Under capitalism it is more acceptable to throw good food away, even when people are struggling to survive, than for someone to eat it without paying for it.

In the post-Transition Community, this will change completely for many reasons. Of course food will be available, free to all. There will be no reason to throw good food away. More food will be grown in the home community where it will be eaten, so food will be fresher, with less loss due to damage from being shipped hundreds or thousands of miles.

Overall quality will improve. Even in the case of imported or prepared/processed foods, the emphasis will be on producing the best products possible for all, rather than a range of quality from substandard to luxurious with money being the determining factor. In this way, food production will enjoy the same kind of improved quality and availability, as will be the norm across all goods and services.

A lot of laws that restrict and discourage home food production, usually in the guise of health codes and regulations, will be stricken from the books or modified, since the real underlying reason behind most such laws is actually economic; vegetable gardens, chicken coops, bass ponds, goats and other livestock tend to bring property values down in an urban or suburban setting. In addition, huge corporate factory farms of all kinds would lose major profits if it became common and accepted for people and neighborhoods to grow a large portion of their own food. This will change forever with the end of capitalist paradigms. People will be free, unrestricted and in fact encouraged to grow and raise food, engage in energy production in environmentally sound ways, stage cultural events, invent transportation devices, and more.

While not everybody will be inclined to garden or tinker with energy systems, those who are will likely be happy to share their expertise and skill with those who aren't. We can expect the emergence of a much greater level of community involvement and connection among neighbors, workmates, friends and family members. This will most definitely not be forced upon people but will come about because it will naturally develop and result in a greater quality of life for the participants.

Aging is an inevitable part of an individual's life and of every human community. Some more traditional cultures have venerated and cared for their elder members, valuing the wisdom that can only come from longer life experience. In the currently dominant capitalist cultures, however, the aged have come to be widely perceived as a burden and an inconvenience. Consequently these cultures are especially inhospitable places in which to grow old.

In a culture where a person's rights, freedom, quality of life and the level of respect afforded them is mostly determined by their place in the economic pyramid, the only elderly members of the community who can afford to buy the right to a peaceful life as respected members of the community are those at or near the top. The vast majority of the aged, increasingly unable work for money and lacking significant savings because of a lifetime of hard work for inadequate income, are mostly relegated to the barest minimal existence and not included in the life of the community.

Of course each family responds differently to their senior members. Many families who can, will do their best to care for their elderly loved ones, despite the financial stresses. Some do the best they can but lack the resources to give them anything more than moral support. Some are estranged from their elder family members or don't care. Some senior citizens have no family to care for them when they cannot care for themselves. The isolation and alienation common in capitalist societies is especially harsh on the elderly. Even among families who can and do care for their elders, the stresses are often devastating to all family members and to the family as a whole.

Most capitalist societies are disproportionately oriented towards youth, especially so since younger members of the society are at the beginning of their wage earning years. There is a lot more profit to be made off of them, especially young families with children, than off of the community's older members.

Each family is essentially an island, alone and isolated in their efforts to care for their older and infirm members. When their families cannot care for them, the elderly all too often end up in for-profit facilities where they are cared for by under-trained, underpaid, and overworked caregivers. Most such facilities charge the highest prices the market will bear while spending the least possible on both employees and residents in order to keep profits as high as possible. Naturally, this leads to poor morale among caregivers who are doing physically and emotionally grueling work for minimal pay, often with resentment and a cynical attitude. The elderly who need such care are easily neglected and abused because they are often physically and mentally depleted, and easily dismissed as demented. Almost universally, the quality of care and life experienced by our older citizens is determined by their financial resources, their position on the economic pyramid.

In the post-Transition community, this will change dramatically for a number of reasons. Money or the lack of it will no longer determine the quality of care and support that one receives. There will be one high standard of care for all elderly people who desire or require it: the best care humanly possible. If there are not enough facilities and trained people to accommodate the number of elderly citizens, then more will be built and more caregivers will be trained to care for them. The only limitations will be objective physical ones, not artificially-imposed economic ones.

In the new paradigm, keep in mind that the criteria for pursuing courses of action and establishing policies will be different from those used under capitalist paradigms. The well-being and empowerment of human beings and of the community will be at the top of the prioritizing process.

One might ask whether or not there will be enough people wishing to devote themselves wholly or partially to care for the elderly. After all, it is a demanding task physically, emotionally, mentally and in other ways. Not everybody has the temperament and interest for this important task. But we must also keep in mind that under capitalism, these jobs typically pay sub-living wages. The people doing them are most often treated with a profound lack of respect. This greatly decreases the motivation of many who might be drawn to this field.

Freed from the constant pressure of paying for their very existence, many who are natural caregivers who could literally not afford to go into this kind of work under capitalism will likely gravitate there according to their natural inclinations. Those who entered that field because they just needed a job, any job, but their heart was not in it, who resented it, will most likely leave to pursue whatever their passions or interests may be. Thus, the quality of care for the typical senior citizen needing help, will likely improve markedly.

Elderly people who are capable of looking after themselves but who under capitalism were forced by "economic necessity" to move to "senior housing," will be able to find or build their own places - something they could have never afforded or been permitted to do without massive amounts of money under the old outmoded capitalist paradigms.

Those families who were willing to take care of their elderly or infirm members but were unable to do so under capitalism, will be able to do so and most certainly will. Adding on an extra room or even a "mother-in-law apartment" nearby will no longer be impractical due to the expense. Having trained helpers come in will also no longer be out of financial reach. Thus, the number of elderly people who will need outside, non-familial care will be a lot smaller than it is under capitalism. In addition, the socio-cultural shift from isolated nuclear family units towards more extended family communities will naturally reduce the isolation, neglect and alienation of our older citizens.

With the new sets of reinforcers in the new paradigm, there will be motivation to assure that senior community members who have none to care for them, are cared for with dignity and compassion. Any of us could one day find ourselves in that situation. The greater degree of community interpersonal connectedness in the new paradigm will also contribute to all sectors of the community being included in its interactions and processes. No one will be coerced; but the psychological reinforcers that will be in place will heighten our natural instincts as a social species to care for one another and work together for mutual and shared benefit.

The new paradigms will not turn back the biological clock, restore declining mental faculties or failing body systems, or inspire estranged family members to magically reconnect. They will, however, remove overriding economic forces that under capitalism isolate individuals and nuclear family units within the extended family and in the greater Community, disempowering them from being able to support one another. We can expect that the elderly members of our community will enjoy a much more fulfilling life with much less stress and far fewer living tragedies. Dignity will be progressively restored to all members of the community. The elderly will no longer be cast aside as economic burdens to society and/or their families.

The treatment of youth will also undergo major changes. They will no longer be targeted by relentless marketing and advertising campaigns designed to program them into being compulsive consumers driven by an unending drive to have the latest gadgets, fashions and more. In the absence of such conditioning, young people will be more likely to develop spontaneously and authentically as unique, creative, critically thinking, empowered individuals.

The decline of pre-packaged diversions, activities, and products will be plant the seeds for a resurgence of creative, spontaneous play, activities, and interests.

Sadly, many educators have noted that the current generation of students appear to have short attention spans and exhibit few aspirations or dreams beyond a desire to have the latest consumer goods and lots of money. There is little creativity, passion about anything or curiosity about life. Relationships tend to be more superficial than in any previous generation, even taking developmental age into consideration. This is not an indictment of a generation, but indication of a tragedy. Much of this can be attributed to the shift towards digital, rather than face-to-face, interaction. Yet there is a bigger dynamic in play.

Much of this is likely due to the relentless, constant sensory bombardment of advertising propaganda in which they are immersed through their formative years, that very effectively programs and predisposes them to be compulsive consumers with insatiable material appetites while failing to nurture or reinforce the development of critical thinking, creativity, or human connection. Acquiring "stuff" is reinforced; critical thinking is not. Neither is creativity reinforced, except where it involves conjuring up ways to make money and get "stuff."

With the best loving intentions, most parents try to the best of their ability to give their children what they want. This is a natural and healthy instinct. Unfortunately in this context it intensifies the conditioning of young people to be consumers above almost all else. Here we see the manipulative skill that advertisers and marketers have developed over generations. They turn and subsume natural, healthy instincts into vulnerabilities to be exploited to feed the by-design insatiable profit-growth appetite of large Corporations that manufacture products and services targeting youth and their parents.

The "collateral damage" to the development of young people's minds and psyches is actually an asset for profitability, from manufacturers' point of view. Both Hitler and the advertisers of the 1960's and 1970's would have killed to have the sophistication and skill with which twenty-first century advertisers deliver their propaganda into the eyes, hands, ears, and brains of every man, woman, and child, all the more effectively with the aid of diverse advanced technologies.

Before the advent of cell phones and the Internet, advertising was primarily via TV, radio, print and billboards. One was not constantly inundated with it. With the Internet and even more with cell phones, both being tremendous advancements with enormous positive potential, we are all more or less constantly immersed in advertisements, wherever we go, whatever we do.

Another facet of being a young person in a capitalist culture is the looming, lurking specter of the wolves waiting to beat a path to your door when you reach adulthood, sometimes before. In the United States, for example, in the second decade of the twenty-first Century, children became aware that they must begin planning their economic survival strategy by the time they reach middle school. Parents are faced with trying to assist their children to get the best preparation possible. Sadly, they are often unable to do so because of the progressive decline in public education. This is in large part due to the withdrawal of funding in favor of charter and other kinds of private schools, which have been shown to fall short academically while remaining out of reach of most.

The quality of education that children receive is mostly determined by their place on the economic pyramid. As the pyramid grows ever more starkly stratified, everybody knows that more and more parents will be unable to assist their children economically much past legal adulthood. In the aggressive laissez-faire capitalist culture of the United States and other countries operating under capitalism, a child must begin early on developing their economic strategy for adulthood. They do so knowing that the overwhelming majority of jobs pay sub or barely-living wages, and that the few jobs that pay enough to live with quality of life are hard to come by. Competition is fierce, because there just aren't that many such jobs. The pyramid is much narrower that far up.

Thus grade-school children must already begin thinking of what field to try to go into that has a chance of paying well, then plot a course through school that will give them the best chance of being able to compete for such jobs, knowing that most will not attain them. The pressure is enormous and debilitating, crushing the spirit out of many young people at an early age.

A young person growing up in a capitalist country knows that once they become a legal adult, they will immediately have to start coming up with enough money to pay to be allowed to eat, get from place to place, get medical care, occupy space, dress themselves, etc. Yet young people, even college graduates, face a different set of barriers than senior citizens. Their lack of experience is used against them. You have to have experience to get the job, but having a job in the field is the only way to get experience. That becomes an excuse to justify paying sub-living wages. A job-seeker must convince a cynical hiring manager to hire them rather than dozens or hundreds of other applicants in an environment where employees are "a dime a dozen," a disposable, easily replaceable commodity of little value, readily discarded.

To some youth in the most economically disempowered neighborhoods, drug dealing, prostitution, stealing, fraud and other criminal and gang-centered careers appear to be worth considering when the alternatives are retail, food service, and hospitality jobs that pay minimum wage with poor treatment and no healthcare or other benefits.

In reality, people in organized crime and gangs view their activities as "just business." When one looks closely, one is hard-put to determine how exactly gang drug trade, gun running, extortion rackets and robbery differ from the legal analogs of these same activities. Both are profit-motivated in response to the reinforcers present in the socio-economic environment. Both will in one way or another attack, eliminate, and/or intimidate any who do not "play ball" by their rules. For a teen approaching adulthood in a capitalist society, the prospects are often bleak. Immediate gratification of conditioned consumeristic urges is the most immediate release. In this manner the humanity of a generation is eroded and neutralized.

In the new paradigm, youth will not be immersed in a sea of advertising that conditions them to crave the latest consumer goods. Youth will likewise be free from the crushing pressure to plan an economic survival strategy from an unnaturally early age. They will be free, empowered and supported to do what is natural at their age: to experience and explore their emergence as conscious, thinking, feeling, curious beings discovering who they are, awakening to their talents and interests, forming dreams and pursuing them. Young people from childhood to emerging adulthood will be unfettered and able to do just that.

There will be no "economic realities" or "economic necessities" to discourage or prevent them from pursuing their dreams, developing their talents, forming meaningful relationships among peers and older generations alike. Nor will they be deprived of useful and/or desired goods and services. On the contrary, they will have free access to anything that draws their interest.

If a young (or any other) person wants to learn to play saxophone, they will be able pick one out at the nearest musical distribution center, find a teacher and start learning. They will not be told regretfully by parents that they can't afford it now but maybe in a few years, while the public school they attend has no music program due to budget cuts. If a student wants to play a sport, they will be able to try out for the team of their choice and not worry about cost of uniforms, transportation, team membership fees etc. If a teenager is curious about astronomy, they will be able to obtain or access a telescope with no financial inhibitions.

In the absence of artificially-conditioned consumeristic reflexes and cravings, young people will be able to hear their own inner "voices," interests, passions and pursue them, once the pounding all-pervasive voices and images of advertising are silent.

We can expect that the life of a young person will typically be one of discovery and optimism, within the limitations of the human condition and the challenges of puberty.

The destructive kind of competition among youthful peers that comes with capitalistic ranking of people by economic status will gradually fade into the memories of a bygone dark age. The inevitable healthy kinds of competition that seem to be part and parcel of youth - the drive to excel at a sport, an activity, a skill, etc. - will take its place. Freed of financial stress and hierarchical command structures fraught with entrenched and institutionalized abusive patterns, parents will enjoy a dramatic reduction in stress, leaving them with more emotional energy to spend sharing with their children and spouses.

As covered elsewhere, work will demand dramatically less of people's time and energy, leaving people much more free to spend meaningful time together as families and communities. Children and young people will grow up and live in a world where they are valued members of an interconnected family and community that will support and encourage their happiness, safety, and well-being.

Growing up in post-Transition communities will be a much more fulfilling experience than under capitalist societies. Young people will tend to reach adulthood much more empowered, developed and able to make a meaningful contribution to their communities while authentically fulfilling their true nature than is generally possible under any form of capitalism.

Of course, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it would be a mistake to assume that all problems of youth or old age will magically disappear in the new paradigms.

Puberty is a challenge for teens and parents alike in any culture or paradigm. There will always be frustrations, some degree of peer pressure, the joy and pain of teenage crushes requited and unrequited, some degree of generational gap (especially between the first generations born in the new paradigm and their parents' generation), tension between the need for boundaries and the need for freedom to explore, better and worse parents, fewer but still probably some abusive family situations, grudges, teenage acne and so on.

Aging will still be subject to the physical processes built into our biological makeup: varying degrees of hearing and vision loss, slowing down and wearing out of bodily systems, the loss of lifelong friends and family members as one ages and so forth.

But young and old alike, and those in between, will not be burdened unnecessarily by artificially imposed stresses that exacerbate the challenges of human existence while degrading health, happiness, quality of life, motivation, curiosity, and the quality of relationships of all kinds. We could say that, while youth and old age will not become free of ups, downs, challenges and difficulties, they will no longer be stages set for slow tragedies to unfold upon. We will begin to meaningfully explore the positive end of the spectrum of potential human experience.

Generational interactions will most likely revitalize in the post-Transition community. Under capitalist paradigms, the constant unrelenting pressures and demands of individual and nuclear family survival have caused the fragmentation of the extended family, community, and society. Once these disruptive forces have been removed, we can expect to see a restoration of cohesiveness and healthy interconnectedness, including interactions among different generations.

Perspectives, fashions, issues, and perceptions naturally tend to change from generation to generation simply due to different shared realities and experiences. Historically in the Western world, there was a vast difference between the experiences of people reaching adulthood in each of the decades of the 20'th Century. Those who reached adulthood in the 1900's experienced a relatively stable world with changes in technology slowly generating a sense of optimism and expectation. Those reaching adulthood in the 19-teens were impacted in various ways by WWI. The generation growing up during the "roaring '20's" had a distinctly different experience, an era of contrast between footloose and fancy-free upper classes with grinding poverty elsewhere. The children of the Great Depression and WWII had very different experiences molding their perceptions. Those coming of age in the 1950's, 60's and '70's each had distinct experiences and issues impacting their perceptions and views. Yet through most of the 20th Century, with the exception of the Depression, each generation experienced an improved quality of life relative to previous generations.

This is natural. There is inevitably some stress caused by this dynamic. By the second decade of the 21st century, however, the level of alienation and isolation has reached unprecedented proportions. Children growing up at the time of this writing are aware that they will have to work harder than their parents for a diminished quality of life. They grow up knowing that for the most part they are on their own.

There will be a dramatic difference between the life experiences of three generations specifically: the last generation growing up under the capitalist paradigm, those coming of age at the time of the Transition, and those growing up after the Transition.

All individuals and sectors of the community will be free from the constant pressure to continually come up with money in a system designed to prevent them from doing so. The default number of weekly work hours will decrease dramatically. There will be a much higher degree of community involvement and mutual support among people. Because of these new realities, the level of alienation and isolation will drop drastically. The level of connectedness and involvement for all individuals and sectors will increase proportionately along with the quality of every aspect of life.

Rather than being potential competitors for, or obstacles to, artificially scarcified resources and opportunities, one's fellow citizens will be potential friends, partners and support team members. In such an environment, our natural instincts to form communities and work together for shared and mutual benefit and enjoyment will reassert themselves, increasingly so as new generations are born in the new paradigm. Those who grew up in the old capitalistic paradigms will learn, adapt to and thrive in the conditions and reinforcers of the new Paradigm. Subsequent generations will redefine what it means to thrive.

We can expect, therefore, that generations will be less disconnected from each other. All will benefit from the interaction and dialog among young, old and those in between. The quality of life for all generations will improve dramatically. The community will benefit from the ongoing synthesis forged out of this dialog and interaction among different perspectives, experiences, points of view, generations, ethnicities and so forth.

There will most likely always be some degree of dynamic tension between generations; but this can be a productive dialog between the wisdom acquired through longer life experience and the questing, questioning, and challenging of fresh youthful perspectives. When all participants respect and listen to each other, then that dialog leads to greater wisdom and innovation than any one generation could ever achieve alone.

Similarly, ethnic and racial tensions will likely lessen and weaken over time.

Economics has long been used as a tool for to seed and enforce arbitrary stratifications in any feudal and capitalistic society. The caste society of India (in which members of lower castes are denied access to well-paying jobs), racial discrimination in the United States and previously in South Africa (where people of color were and still are discriminated against in hiring, housing, and services to varying degrees), and the treatment of Jews in Czarist Russia and Poland (where Jews were forbidden to own land or engage in a variety of professions) are examples. Members of targeted groups are denied employment, rentals, housing, service in restaurants and other businesses, simply on the basis of their belonging to these groups.

In a society where people are forced to constantly come up with money to ransom their existence, denying access to ways of making money is an effective way to deny targeted groups the ability to survive or thrive. Where structured and enforced scarcity of vital resources, respect, and freedom are epidemic, mutual resentment between groups and among individuals is almost inevitable. Native born and immigrant, different religions, different races, different age groups, and other mutually-identifiable groups tend to blame and resent one another for the ongoing insufficiency.

This is universally encouraged, orchestrated behind the scenes by the Feudal Lords at the top of the economic pyramid as a strategy to keep the populace divided against one another and prevent united, concerted action to disrupt and deconstruct the economic pyramid.

When economics are no longer a factor and money no longer a necessity, no one will be in a position to deny another the ability to occupy space, eat, move about, access resources, survive, exist, or thrive. Nobody will be in a position to hold another’s life hostage. No paradigm can eradicate all ethnic, racial, religious or other hatreds and stereotypes, just as no paradigm can guarantee that conflicting personalities will get along harmoniously. We will see, however, that where personalities do conflict, none will be the other's boss, landlord or superior in a chain of command in a position to abuse that position to the other's detriment. No racial, ethnic, religious or other group has authority or power to grant or deny another’s access to resources.

Such hatreds and prejudices will not have economics or socio-economic hierarchies to abuse in order to enforce their attitudes upon those they look down upon and seek to exclude. If you refuse to work with me because you don't like me or my race, you will speak only for yourself. You will not be able to prevent me from finding someone else who will work with me. You will not have the power to prevent me from living someplace or working, nor will I have that power with respect to you. If one of us tries to physically block or intimidate the other, that will be by definition a crime or misdemeanor and the perpetrator will be treated accordingly.

Science and technology will also undergo major changes in priorities, emphasis and directions of innovation. Under capitalist paradigms, as mentioned elsewhere in this work, science and technological innovation are primarily driven and dictated by profitability. Pure scientific research is almost always forced to yield or orient itself to results that will make large companies a lot of money. Under capitalism, technologies are routinely suppressed or simply go un-funded because they are not sufficiently profitable.

The Supercollider is a sad example, as is the torpedoed public transportation system in Los Angeles, California in the early Twentieth Century mentioned earlier in this writing. That coordinated act of sabotage resulted in devastating degradation in the quality of life for all future generations in that metropolis, causing countless wasted hours of commuting time in some of the worst traffic congestion in the world. No one has calculated the number of lost and devastated lives due to traffic accidents in the extreme congestion of that city, as a result of the mob-style abortion of what was developing into a first-rate public transportation system.

Similarly, though a wide variety of energy technologies are mature and viable including solar, wind, geothermal, and others, the petroleum industry has effectively hog-tied government to prevent these technologies from being developed and mainstreamed because they would massively reduce their profits. Devastatingly destructive practices such as fracking, ever-expanding drilling everywhere possible with attendant pipelines and other infrastructures, continued use of coal as a fuel, and other destructive practices continue to proliferate worldwide as China enters the ranks of industrialized nations in a choking cloud of smog so massive that its edge reaches the west coast of the United States. In the U.S., fracking, coal and drilling operations render ever-expanding regions of land and sea uninhabitable. Spills and leaks cause epic devastation on land and at sea, and yet the behaviors continue unchanged. Damage from such disasters is almost always expressed in dollars, not in its impact on the environment and human beings.

Capitalism is a blind mechanism that devours, exploits, flattens and consumes all before it in order to generate profits for mega-Corporations run by out-of-control megalomaniac, narcissistic power-and-money addicts who have been enabled by billions of people worldwide living life according to the game rules dictated by them. Technology and scientific inquiry, like the arts, are forcibly enslaved to this blind obsessive-compulsive addiction. Once capitalism has been dismantled, and the aforementioned addicts divested of their drug of choice and ushered into compassionate treatment, the new paradigm will radically alter the orientation and reinforcers for scientific research and technological development. Freed of the choking restrictions and compulsions of profit motive, scientific research and technological development will be free to evolve naturally in service of knowledge and the well-being of human beings and the world we call home.

By its very nature, science is a quest for knowledge and understanding. The most significant scientific discoveries have always come when science was free to develop spontaneously. Examples include Einstein's Relativity, Van Leuwenhoek's invention of the microscope, the development of acupuncture and herbal medicine, Mendel’s and Darwin’s genetic experiments and observations, the invention of the first airplanes and more.

Pure research yields knowledge, which almost always leads to technological innovation. But it cannot be predicted, channeled, and harnessed the way capitalist paradigms demand. Discovering the true age of the Universe, the forces that govern it, and its likely future trillions of years from now may not immediately translate into marketable technology; but it will likely eventually spawn useful or entertaining innovations to enhance and enrich everyday life. Beyond the tangible, such knowledge inspires people, engenders the evolution of cultural and artistic creativity as well as social attitudes.

When all of Europe believed that the earth was flat and the Universe consisted of the earth with the sun going back and forth over it, the culture was stilted and bleak. Greater understanding of the true proportions, age, and magnificence of the Universe has been accompanied by expanded and more vibrant cultural attitudes.

It is said that being in space has a positive life-changing effect on astronauts and cosmonauts. This cannot be quantified into projected profits. Even if it could, to proceed along those lines would be a crime against humanity. The expansion of knowledge for the sake of greater understanding will inevitably lead also to practical applications for improving quality of life. Curiosity and the desire for better quality of life will naturally drive innovation. Pride of discovery and workmanship will be further stimulants.

Additionally, when human well-being and environmental sustainability are prime considerations, very different decisions will be made as to which technologies to prioritize and which not. A technology which generates electricity at the expense of destroying natural beauty will yield to a competing technology which does not. A technology which pollutes will never be pursued when there are alternatives which are non-polluting. A technology whose manufacture is hazardous or otherwise damaging to human beings or animals will be set aside in favor of one which is not.

Capitalist apologists would say that removing capitalist "Market Forces" would lead to scientific and technological stagnation. The opposite is actually the case. Like any system or organism, Capitalist paradigms and the money-and-power addicts they produce and enable, will always fight to perpetuate themselves.

Wherever profit motive has predominated, the advance of knowledge and technology has been stilted and strained; where this has been absent, knowledge and technological advancement have flourished.

A current example in the United States is the systematic suppression of all discussion or consideration of climate change by a regime deeply driven by, and tied to, the profit-motive of global petroleum and other energy industries to the point of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accords. This withdrawal was done under the cover of propaganda claiming that taking climate change seriously and acting upon it would eliminate jobs and thus be bad for the U.S. economy. In reality, however, the scientific evidence is incontrovertible that climate change is a real and dangerous phenomenon caused by human activity on a global scale. The new industries involving development and production of alternative technologies would actually create multiples of the number of jobs that would be lost in petroleum and related industries. This is a matter that affects the survival of the species and indeed of life on earth, and yet the very discussion of it is suppressed in the service of immediate profits for the Feudal Lords of Capitalism. This is typical behavior of addicts who will put their own and others’ lives in peril order to feed their addiction. This is a disability that demands diagnosis and treatment, not enablement, as we will see.

This has been frequently alluded to in this writing and it is important to understand Capitalist psycho-social dynamics and the actors involved, in this perspective. This behavior truly fits some definitions of insanity but can be best understood if we look at it in the context of the dynamics of addiction. In animal studies, mice with electrodes implanted in their brains to stimulate their pleasure centers will compulsively press a lever activating the pleasure center, even to the point of starving to death. In humans, the current spread of the drug Krokodil in Russia personifies this same principle as well. Addicts continue to inject the extremely addictive opiate even as it rots the flesh off of their bones and shortens their life expectancy to one or two years. In that context we can see clearly how those at the top of the pyramid, the ultra-wealthy billionaires of the new Feudal aristocracy, are in fact untreated, undiagnosed addicts whose drugs of choice are the wealth, privilege, opulence and power over others which their place on the economic pyramid confers on them in Capitalist societies.

Even the spirit of competition, freed from being shackled to "market share," becomes a stimulus for innovation as researchers and developers vie to be the first to accomplish a daunting or impossible-seeming feat, rather than to grab the greatest "market share" and profits. Whereas under capitalism, scientists, developers and engineers are frequently forbidden to collaborate and share findings due to corporate "intellectual property" laws, in the new paradigms there will be unrestricted collaboration. In short, we can envision that, freed of the limitations and constraints imposed arbitrarily under capitalism, scientific research and technological development will experience a "stimulus" above and beyond anything possible under capitalism. The world will benefit tremendously as a result.

Typical advocates of laissez-faire capitalism almost universally oppose taxation of mega corporations and the ultra-wealthy. They strenuously object as well to the use of tax money for social programs such as assistance for those in the weakest economic situations, victims of natural and man-made disasters and unforeseeable medical and situational catastrophes, refugees, public education, public healthcare, public transportation and more. They often make the argument that giving jobless or poor people assistance (be it welfare, food or medical assistance, affordable housing, need-based educational scholarships, grants, loan-forgiveness, etc.) conditions and habituates them to develop survival mechanisms based on tapping into that assistance, ultimately passing this pattern on to their children from generation to generation, while failing to reinforce self-sustaining behaviors such as finding jobs or starting businesses. This is the origin of the “generational welfare” and “welfare queen” myths.

Another reason why these same capitalist proponents almost universally begrudge paying anything towards assisting those in dire or non-viable economic straits is because they consider them to be a burden. These privileged neo-Feudal aristocrats insist that poor people are in that situation because they are inherently lazy, stupid, unmotivated or otherwise defective or unworthy of respect, dignity and life. Some extreme capitalist proponents and lawmakers have even expressed in so many words that those who cannot afford health insurance don't deserve to have healthcare, meaning in practice that they don't deserve to live.

These misinformed people become deeply upset about the amount of their taxes spent on social programs, when in fact the percentage of taxes going to these programs in typical capitalist countries is far less than is spent in subsidies and tax breaks handed out to mega-corporations. This attitude is strongly reinforced and conditioned in the capitalist paradigm, so it is not surprising to encounter it. The fact that we don't often see it explicitly expressed more widely is a kind of proof that this conditioning goes against our most fundamental instincts as a primarily social, interdependent co-operative species.

If our stone-age ancestors had operated under the principles of capitalism, the species would have died out long ago. The strongest, fastest, and most aggressive would have deprived the weaker, less aggressive members of their tribes of the means to survive and ultimately would have warred amongst themselves eventually into extinction.

But the issue of what social assistance programs do or do not reinforce is a legitimate question that deserves serious consideration and meaningful answers. In addition, we must ask ourselves what will likely happen to/in the "generational welfare" segment of the community in the new Paradigm, to the extent that such a sector exists.

The intention of social services and programs like welfare, food, housing and energy assistance, need-based grants and scholarships is to enable people to survive while in a disempowered economic situation so they can become strong enough to eventually support themselves again. There is an element of truth in the argument that this can and sometimes ends up reinforcing an ongoing pattern of relying on those services.

It is true that if people in a Capitalist society are offered, in effect, money when they are not working, it can in some cases reinforce continuing to not work. But this is not the whole picture, just as the half-truth that "anybody can make it" is not the whole picture. It is important to look at this dynamic in the context of the socio-economic environment in which it occurs.

In practice, approximately three-fourths of people who seek and receive the assistance of social programs use them for only a limited time until they are able to become "self-supporting." See U. S. Department of Health & Human Services statistics for confirmation of this. While about 21.3% of Americans are in public assistance programs in any given month, 56% of recipients of all forms of public assistance stay in the programs for 36 months or less and 43.0% stay in the programs 37 - 48 months (3 – 4 years) as of 2012. This means that approximately 99%, of recipients, are in the programs for four years or less out of their lifetimes. Only 1% of recipients are in the programs for longer, representing approximately .2% of the entire U.S. population. At the maximum, 4.26% were in the programs longer than five years. By age 65, 97% of Americans have been in some of these programs at least once in their life. This is a far cry from claims from those at the top of the pyramid that there are hoards of “generational” welfare queens sapping the life-blood of taxpayers, and confirms that overall, the programs are working as intended and benefiting the vast majority of Americans.

The approximately one percent of recipients who become and remain dependent on public assistance include many who are actually working but whose pay is not enough to live on. Knowing that the capitalist economic paradigm is a pyramid, we can see that no matter how hard they work, no matter what they study (if they can find the time, money and energy to study long and consistently enough to attain a degree) or what degrees they earn, the paradigm enforces an economic pattern in which the overwhelming majority of jobs pay barely or sub living wages. There is not enough room for very many people in the levels of the Pyramid where pay is sufficient to enjoy leisure, savings, investment opportunities, and freedom from constant struggle.

Capitalism would completely break down if somehow all or most people were making what the upper quarter of the pyramid affords. As detailed previously, in Capitalist paradigms communities, like individuals, have access to resources and support in proportion to their place in the economic pyramid. Most of the alleged "generational welfare" population are born and raised in neighborhoods with inferior schools and infrastructure, living in the poorest conditions in every respect. While there are notable, well-publicized individuals who manage to ascend the pyramid from those beginnings, such examples only serve to highlight the fact that there is no possibility that the vast majority of their peers will be able to do the same, any more than one's friend or neighbor winning at the casino increases the likelihood of one's self winning.

Contrary to popular belief, capitalism itself actually produces strong reinforcers for not working. Alongside the reinforcer of "money for not working", there is another reinforcer just as strong: the fact that almost every job typically accessible to people in that situation is a job where pay is sub-living for demanding work while being demeaned, treated poorly or even abused. This is just as strong a reinforcer for not working as is receipt of public assistance.

If a typical "generational welfare" person were presented with a situation where working offered them a significant improvement in quality of life (including freedom, options, respect, safety, sense of empowerment and purpose) in every way over receiving welfare, then the reinforcers would support going to work.

It is due to the dysfunction of the capitalist paradigm that there are people in economic situations where they need assistance in the first place. The paradigm makes it inevitable. It is actually capitalism itself that creates this situation in which a measurable segment of the population needs such assistance. People are not reinforced to get jobs when doing so entails a decline in quality of life over receiving welfare or working for a gang.

Our instinct to support one another for greater survival is what creates whatever forms of public assistance that do exist in capitalist countries. The fact that in some cases public assistance reinforces dependency simply hides the fact that it is capitalism that generates the conditions in which the issue arises in the first place. If a society wishes to reinforce the behavior of working, then they should logically set the stage for working to generate a satisfying quality of life in every way.

In the new paradigm, we can realistically anticipate this pattern changing at an ever-accelerating rate, especially among generations born during or after the Transition. With money no longer needed to live, nobody will need the kind of assistance that is necessary in a Capitalistic society. Those people currently in patterns of dependence on welfare will lose both welfare and the need for it. In the new paradigm, this segment of the population will not in any way be a "burden" upon any other segment of the population. They will be free and empowered to re-engage in pursuing their passions and rediscovering their abilities.

A young person who aspires to be a doctor, architect, carpenter or any other profession will no longer be at a severe disadvantage due to lack of academic preparation due to inferior education in poorer neighborhoods. Public schools everywhere will flourish without the constraints put upon them by financial limitations imposed under Capitalism. Lack of funds, accessibility to or awareness of financial aid resources will no longer create a barrier. The tyranny of Capitalist economics will no longer effectively bar people in such neighborhoods from studying or training in their fields of choice.

These segments of the population will, for the first time, begin to perceive and access resources and opportunities long inaccessible under capitalism and will respond by availing themselves. While issues of ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination will be more problematic to resolve and will likely take longer to transform, in the post Transition synergistic society and economics, there will be no employers or landlords with the power to discriminate as to who can live here or work there. The degree to which discriminatory attitudes could to lead to abuse of authority and position will be reduced dramatically.

People’s personal issues and struggles will still exist, and those who are born into the “generational welfare” population will be no exceptions. Those who struggle with drug or alcohol addiction will still have their conditions to contend with, which is a separate issue and challenge to resolve. Those who are in that segment of the population due to mental illness or physical disability will have free and unobstructed access to the treatment and the real support that they need in order to become as engaged, fulfilled, empowered and self-propelling as they are capable of being. Those few who are actually uninterested in engaging in the life of the community, who really only wish to watch TV, play video games and so forth, will not be numerous and will not be a burden to anybody. They will not be a bother to anybody. They will be taking nothing from anybody. Within a few generations, we can predict that the "generational welfare" phenomenon will nearly or completely disappear, along with the conditions which gave rise to and sustained it. A fire extinguishes itself in the absence of fuel or oxygen.

In the freedom of the new paradigm, we can expect to see the emergence of more kibbutz-like and other non-traditional, experimental lifestyles and models. Since the new paradigm will be designed to be self-examining with strong reinforcers for open dialog, introspection, and cooperative innovation, an ever-increasing quality and fulfillment of human life and symbiotic, synergistic relationships among individuals, groups, communities and sectors of the population will emerge. These diversifying lifestyles will be a valuable laboratory contributing to the betterment of ourselves as human beings, as individuals and communities. Such communities will be encouraged to document and publish their operating principles and the practical results in daily living over time for all to read and learn from.

That which works and that which does not, will equally contribute to our understanding in the human community of how to structure and design operating principles that maximize the quality of human life for all while minimizing strife, exploitation, bullying and other destructive behaviors.

In the absence of rigid, feudalistic concepts and principles of property, without capitalistic interpretations and applications of the concept of ownership, many legal, administrative and financial restrictions that currently limit or prevent the development of alternative lifestyles will go into extinction. The field will be wide open for such experiments. For example, there are zoning laws under capitalistic paradigms that limit the development of alternative-model communities by drastically limiting the number of non-blood-related people who can live on a given plot of land. Such laws will be stricken from the books. Lands which under capitalistic paradigms are owned by corporations (which will cease to exist) and the ultra-wealthy capitalistic neo-Feudal Lords will become free and available for use by individuals, families and communities.

Of course, new laws and guidelines will have to be established and fine-tuned to encourage harmonious implementation of this new openness. Universal accessibility is not to be interpreted as a Wild-West style “anything goes” paradigm with no laws or guidelines. We will need to develop ways of settling disputes in which more than one party wishes to use the same land at the same time. As previously mentioned, new reasonable limits will have to be implemented to the size of a plot of land that can be claimed by an individual, family or other social unit. Such laws and guidelines will have to base themselves on heuristics other than monetary ones.

Similarly, some degree of zoning will probably be beneficial, guided by real needs and realities. In the new Paradigms for example, we will certainly not want to have dwellings right next door to a rock quarry or a noisy factory.

We also need to anticipate the possibility that some of these experimental communities may lead to dysfunctional or destructive patterns that may require intervention or assistance to resolve. A community may develop a pattern in which a domineering personality, group or community is bullying, intimidating, victimizing or abusing its individuals or another community. A community may form that practices some kind of slavery or other systematic abuse. For such cases we will need mechanisms for stepping in to end the dysfunction and heal all involved parties. This necessary action would not be taken in a punitive or coercive manner, but in the same compassionate but firm way as one would employ to intervene to prevent a person from driving when they are in an impaired condition.

Fashion aesthetics under capitalist paradigms are heavily manipulated, subordinated and harnessed to the demands of corporate profit imperatives. It is likely that people will always seek to adorn themselves with jewelry, clothing, markings, hairstyles, and other personal artistic expressions. Reasons, taste and motivations vary widely from person to person; but it is undeniable that as human beings we have an artistic and aesthetic aspect that expresses itself in music, art, architecture, theater, film, and self-adornment among other forms.

Under Capitalism, however, this human expression is exploited by skillful propaganda (advertising, marketing), channeled and subverted into a programmed demand for products for sale at high prices. This corporate hijacking of the human penchant for self-adornment has the side-effect of squelching authentic spontaneous expression in wide segments of the population. Instead of each person discovering and developing their own personal style and expression, millions of people are trained, conditioned and programmed to seek the latest designer fashion as presented by the corporations and elite of the fashion industry.

The more expensive the dress, purse, shoes, hat, hairstyle, jewelry, suit, etc., the more the possessor or wearer is respected, the more doors are opened to them. In such hierarchical cultures of artificially-manufactured and perpetuated scarcity, in these denial-of-life societies where the individual is constantly subjected to messages denying their worth or worthiness, those lacking the means to acquire high-end designer items and status symbols are subliminally trained and conditioned to feel bad about themselves unless they can acquire these items.

Once again we see those conditioned to addiction to profits, feeding their addiction at the expense of the well-being of those at the lower reaches of the economic pyramid.

In the new post-Transition paradigms, advertising and marketing will be supplanted by factual and artistic information dissemination. In such affirmation-of-life cultures, we can look forward to seeing fashion evolve into much more authentic, unique, spontaneous individual artistic expressions. In the absence of marketing and advertising molding people's tastes and aesthetics to serve corporate profit motives reinforced by pyramidal socio-economic dynamics, people's individual aesthetic expressions will likely develop spontaneously, resulting in a much wider range of individual expression.

We can expect to see a major diversification and individuation of expression in the area of personal adornment. Fashion designers will of course still have a role to play and will find expression; but that expression will, as in all of the arts and sciences, be an honest and authentic artistic expression rather than a heavily-marketed product molded by corporate profit motive.

As in all of the arts, there will be an ongoing creative social dialog between the artist/designer and the public, to the enrichment of both. Pure aesthetics will predominate, freed from the arbitrary obsessive compulsions that drive fashion under capitalism. There will be no socio-economic pyramid, no concept of status or class, and therefore no artificially-conditioned consumption for those reasons.

It is likely that there will be wider variety of style and expression with less conformity or uniformity than we see under capitalism. It will not be surprising if user/wearer-customizable accessories become more widely available as many individuals will prefer to devise their own fashion expressions rather than consume designer products.

In the absence of restrictive capitalistic intellectual property laws, individuals will likely improvise their own versions and interpretations of what professional designers create. Designers will in turn be inspired and influenced by individual expressions that they see out and about on the streets of the community. This authentic creative existential dialog will enrich all participants.

Designers need not fear losing their niche. Not all people are seamstresses and many will still prefer to wear designer products rather than make their own. In the field of fashion and personal adornment, as in all of the arts and sciences, we can look forward to an artistic, cultural and scientific Renaissance on a scale heretofore unprecedented.

In all areas of endeavor, let us look at how decision-making processes will change in the post-Transition Paradigms. Under capitalist paradigms, virtually all decision-making processes are hierarchically driven. In all production, distribution, service and other workplace environments, living environments, and many social environments, the pyramidal socio-economic structure is replicated. Those at the apex of the pyramid make decisions that are passed down the pyramidal command structure and obeyed under penalty of termination, which means loss of livelihood and threat to survival, compounded by negative references to further impair one’s ability to find new employment.

This is a profoundly flawed paradigm that nevertheless gives the appearance of efficiency because decisions can be carried out and implemented very quickly when discussion is restricted to the giving of orders and to their acknowledgement and execution. This apparent efficiency can be compared to the appearance of increased productivity that can be achieved individually through the use of central nervous system stimulants. A person on stimulants (amphetamines, cocaine, etc.) appears to have more energy, at least in the short term, and to be able to get more done, more quickly, while requiring less food and sleep. Experience shows, however, that this increased energy and productivity is short-lived. The damage and detriments far outweigh the benefits.

Hierarchical paradigms do appear in the short term to yield faster response time and greater efficiency, especially when all participants are lifetime-conditioned to function in this paradigm. Here as well, however, the detriments and damage far outweigh the benefits.

As discussed elsewhere in this writing, the flaws are many. One major flaw is that humans have consistently demonstrated that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Humans in hierarchical structures are heavily prone to corruption and abuse of power at every level, from the CEO or commander down to the petty bureaucrat or functionary with power over one or two people.

While not all people will exhibit these behaviors, the reinforcers are there that strengthen them, while there are no significant reinforcers to the contrary. The result is that corruption and abuse of power to varying degrees are common, endemic, and entrenched. The hierarchical paradigm effectively enforces and institutionalizes the abuses of power that occur within it, since rank and position take on a life of their own.

Every pyramidal structure carries with it an imperative that "the chain of command must be respected." In practice, this means that in the event of abuse or corruption, the pyramidal structure will reinforce and support the abuser while suppressing or penalizing any who challenge or disobey them. Hierarchical social structures have proven themselves to be incompatible with human psychological response patterns. To continue attempting to operate in that paradigm in the assumption that it will produce a better result is unrealistic and counterproductive. Such social structures strongly reinforce, institutionalize, and perpetuate abuse of power, suppression of initiative and cooperation while creating an environment of fragmentation, distrust, backstabbing and hostility.

In the new Paradigms, peer-based decision-making will predominate in the absence of hierarchical command structures. We can anticipate that there will be an initial adjustment period, a learning curve as citizens conditioned and adapted to functioning in hierarchical paradigms learn to re-orient, make decisions and interact in a peer-based framework. Many may become discouraged at first as they struggle to master the skills and responses necessary to function optimally in the new Paradigm. As with all new beginnings, this is expected. We need to be patient with ourselves and with each other as we learn to make decisions and function as equals with no command structure.

These skills are learnable and can be mastered. The benefits of doing so include vastly increased job satisfaction, empowerment of individuals, fostering of a strong sense of teamship and mutual support, greatly increased efficiency and productivity as pride of workmanship and sense of community replace fear and intimidation as motivators.

All of us will need to learn effective communication skills. We will need to learn how to listen to each other with sincere intention to truly understand each other’s input. We will need to learn how to work in concert to weave points of view together into the best attainable tapestry that integrates the optimal synthesis of the wisdom and perceptions of all participants. We will need to learn to develop a collaborative rather than adversarial approach in which we are not vying for whose idea comes out on top, who is right. Instead we will learn to work together to arrive at the best outcome.

In such paradigms, each member of the community or team is empowered to make their fullest contribution in every sense. We will all benefit from learning to listen to one another, and to speak up freely knowing that we will be listened to.

Such paradigms have been demonstrated to work more effectively than the hierarchical models that are dominant at this point in history. There will be no "boss" or "chief" to impose their ideas on all. Where there are two or more well-supported points of view about how to accomplish a goal, or about which goals to strive for, we may see the emergence of a modus operandi in which both approaches or ideas are tried in parallel and the results are evaluated by all participants with appropriate conclusions drawn. This will lead to increased innovation since lines of inquiry will not be suppressed arbitrarily.

Hierarchical paradigms rely almost exclusively on the perceptions, mental, and creative processes of the few at the top, while suppressing the creative and practical perceptions and contributions of all other participants. Suppression occurs in ever-increasing degrees as one descends to the lower reaches of the pyramid. All but those at the top are routinely discouraged or suppressed from contributing their ideas or innovations. They are customarily overridden by the decrees from those at the top of the pyramid. This results in stilted, severely limited, lopsided implementations of ideas that have not been sufficiently examined or challenged.

In the new Paradigm, every voice will be truly free to express itself and be heard to a much greater degree than is possible under capitalism. No one will be able to be threatened with loss of livelihood or living space for failing to fall in line by a petulant or bullying superior.

Hierarchical socio-economic social structures in the workplace and elsewhere are fundamentally inimical to and incompatible with a truly free, democratic community governed and operated by, of, and for the People for their universal benefit and well-being. Nowhere and at no time has this been more apparent than right now in the United States, where there are serious efforts under way at the highest echelons of the Pyramid to encode into law the "right" of employers to terminate employees for engaging in completely legal and harmless activities, even for their most intimate relationships pursued in private life unrelated to the workplace, simply because the CEO of the company disapproves or disagrees with it. Dictatorship is dictatorship. Tyranny is tyranny, regardless of whether it originates in a seat of government, the military, a religious authority, or the ultra-wealthy and heads of mega-corporations via their disproportionate influence on government.

In the new paradigms, after the initial learning curve, we will achieve a much closer approach to a free and democratic community and society than has yet been attained.

Universal free access to Internet and other telecommunications will be a natural development of the post-Transition community. All persons will have free, unrestricted access to wireless and wired telephone communication, the Internet, TV, radio, printed media, and any future communications channels. As discussed elsewhere in this writing, there will be no commercials or advertisements in any media content generated from inside post-Transition countries.

Of course, content originating in capitalist countries and societies will still have advertisements, but most likely these will rapidly cease to target audiences inside of post-Transition countries since a currency-free population who have free access to all goods and services will have little or no interest in buying goods and services for money. We will be a civilization where money will be obsolete.

In lieu of commercials, all members of the post-Transition community will be able to locate goods and services that they need via an easily accessible and navigable interface on the Internet, broadcast media and in print as well. Ground-breaking or paradigm-changing new developments, such as recalls, new technologies (as when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, the development of portable communications technology, the emergence of microwave ovens and personal computers, new medicines and more) will be posted on public service and information channels and sites along with weather alerts, news, and the like.

Post-Transition citizens will likely have little patience for commercial-infested content when they can access high-quality commercial-free content at will. Universal access to all communications media can be expected to stimulate an increase in public dialogue, artistic and philosophical expression, scientific and technological collaboration and innovation, quite possibly catalyzing a sustained Renaissance.

We do need to be aware, however, of the challenges and issues that these technologies introduce, regardless of which paradigm we live under. TV, video game and social media addiction, for example, are widespread issues in the modern technological world. These phenomena are likely to continue to be issues in the new paradigms. Likewise the trend among younger members of the community to allow their devices to replace, rather than supplement, real human contact, creativity, activity, and involvement in the physical world around them will likely remain an issue.

The solutions are neither simple nor easy to derive. We can anticipate however that the dramatically increased empowerment, mutual involvement, opportunities, vitality and interconnectedness of the life-affirming post-Transition culture will exert a stronger pull to re-engage than does the capitalistic culture with its default denial-of-life pattern of isolating, disempowering and dehumanizing its inhabitants. There will be no skillful advertising to induce young people to feel a “need” for more and more devices. The new Paradigms will not reinforce cynicism, the need to escape or withdraw, or feelings of hopelessness. This will most likely reduce the incidence and severity of these technologically-originating issues; but we will be remiss if we assume that the healthier paradigm will automatically erase all human problems and challenges.

Accounting, load balancing, inventory and resource management will shift from currency-based to reality-based, i.e. tracking quantities (how many KWh of electricity, gallons of water, tons of apples, etc.) that are present at any moment, how many are needed and where, where production needs to increase, where it can be dialed back, what can be stored as reserve, and how to manage instances of shortage in the most fair, practical and compassionate way.

For greatest efficiency and access for all, it would be wise for the common distributed information network to actively track need, consumption, distribution and production of everything from food to automobiles to computers to dental and medical supplies to shoes to electricity and water, in order to ensure that production is able to adapt to and anticipate real need and demand. As time goes on, more data will be collected and patterns will be identified. The longer this setup runs, the more efficient it will become as it learns from a growing data set.

This will also ensure that production is not driven to unnecessary levels far beyond actual need. As much as possible, it would be a good idea to maintain to-be-determined levels of stock, an optimized balance on hand, so that access is smooth and easy when needed, but not excessive. Once the population has been supplied with the goods they want and need, production will scale back to a low level needed to accommodate (hopefully modest or slow) population growth, children reaching age of independence, breakage, malfunction, immigration, etc.

Services will be tracked as well so that providers of services (doctors, carpenters, plumbers, technicians, etc.) and those needing those services will be able to find each other and coordinate. The aim here is not central dictatorial control as was practiced in the Soviet Union and is practiced now in corporations, but coordination, logistics and choreography among the various sectors of a complex national, regional and local Community in order to assure the greatest quality of life for all.

When actual practical or physical shortages do occur, they will be resolved collaboratively in the way that best serves the well-being of the community and the individuals comprising it, as analyzed and decided by the people themselves.

As mentioned elsewhere, we can predict that the work-week will be significantly shortened for virtually all inhabitants. There will be drastically less waste, once built-in obsolescence and hyper-inflated overproduction/overconsumption have ceased and products are made with longevity, serviceability, and upgradeability in mind.

Air and water quality will improve as destructive, polluting technologies are progressively replaced with more sustainable and healthy technologies. Landscapes will enjoy a dramatic decline in debris, trash, and litter.

Once arbitrary economic constraints are removed, we can also expect to see a return to the exploration of pure knowledge and probing of frontiers, including manned expeditions into space to explore the solar system and beyond, expeditions to the ocean depths, and the probing of the nature of the Universe and our own nature as human beings. No project will be quashed because it lacks profitable applications or is too expensive. This will generate unforeseeable technological and medical advances, as well as fire the human imagination and inspire/infuse the human spirit with a sense of optimism, excitement, and anticipation of the expansion of frontiers and discovery of wonders.

Under capitalism, the era of space and other scientific exploration for the sake of Humanity and the pursuit of knowledge was ended, subsumed into the stagnant and anemic development of marketable commodities: communications satellites, GPS, extremely limited space habitats. Unsurprisingly, inhabitants of capitalist societies have largely ceased to dream of new frontiers as they become increasingly driven by the programmed pursuit of the latest fashions and consumer goods, to the detriment of human relationships and the quality of life. The effects of the new Paradigms will be a breath of fresh air for that in the human organism and community that yearns to stretch metaphorical wings and soar across the Universe.