Chapter 27: Tourism

Tourism in its most common forms is one of the most destructive, disruptive phenomena to any community. Superficially, it appears to bring benefits. New businesses open up, tourists come with money to spend, and new jobs are created. A whole constellation of businesses, both legal and illegal, proliferates. At first, it appears like an overwhelming benefit. Usually it is only after a new resort or other tourist facility has been operating for a while that the local people begin to fully realize the damage that’s been done, though sometimes people and communities feel the harm early on. It’s not unheard of for whole local communities to be forcefully driven out of their homes, farms and businesses to make room for a new tourist enterprise. Often, especially in developing countries, people are displaced by simply bulldozing their homes, leaving them no choice but to flee. Almost none of the displaced people experience improvements in their lives. A very few may get jobs in the new tourist facility, but those jobs are almost always poorly paid and treated, and they become essentially servants of the tourists, their autonomy and way of life destroyed. Local ecosystems are almost always destroyed in the process of setting up an running a tourist resort, often irreversibly, causing escalating damage in ripple effects impacting neighboring and nearby biomes, in order to create a lifeless caricature of them for tourist consumption. The economic effects are no less complex and devastating. Tourism almost inevitably gives rise to a rigidly-stratified social structure in which the top of the hierarchy is occupied by the massive corporations and the tourists themselves. Below them are a very few local people who become the minor royalty – far below the ones at the top in wealth and power and dominated by them, but far above all of their peers, whom they treat as peasants and serfs. The vast majority of local people end up working long hours under demanding and demeaning conditions for sub-living wages, or else can’t find source of income at all. The cost of living skyrockets to adjust to what tourists can afford, putting it out of the reach of most residents. Imagine going from being an independent farmer, fisher, or artisan who wakes up one morning to a bulldozer bearing down on your home, to living in squalor in crowded, cramped conditions, working long hours and still unable to afford the basics of life. The hierarchy is fanatically enforced. Even in “developed” countries, where the socioeconomic impact is less severe, the cost of living in the area hosting a tourist resort always inflates beyond local people’s ability to afford. Tourism has gotten so out of hand that even Mount Everest is often so crowded that climbers actually have to wait in line to reach the summit, like waiting in line for a ride at Disneyland. The presence of large numbers of tourists, who are unfamiliar with the local situation, inevitably damages the surroundings in a wide range of ways. Skills and occupations that for generations been a good living and part of the culture and economy, quickly disappear as they have no niche or place in the new tourist-centered economy. Of course, where there’s money to be made, a whole host of parasitic industries pop up like mushrooms after a rain, including everything from souvenir shops to prostitutes and pimps, to drug sales, a mixture of legal and illegal businesses. Tourism in effect is to a community roughly as methamphetamines or crack cocaine is to a human body. At first it seems invigorating, but over time it becomes devastating. The damage is generally irreversible. In the new synergistic, symbiotic, empowering paradigm after the Transition, tourism will change fundamentally. It’s a positive thing and natural for people to want to travel, to experience different environments, cultures, and customs and learn from them as well as enjoy them. The current form of tourism doesn’t really accomplish this, however. Tourists are given a scripted, stylized, watered-down caricatured representation of local culture and nature. A Hilton in one part of the world is not much different from a Hilton on the other side of the planet. In the new paradigm, how we do tourism will change completely. Fortunately there are already some examples of different models of tourism for us to learn from. Israeli Kibbutzim and Moshavim offer tourists the experience of working and sharing in the life of the community for extended periods, with historical and cultural events and tours included. It is not a separate, artificial, luxury-oriented resort or an elite separate reality. We can also look at programs like Cuba’s Venceremos Brigades, the U.S. Peace Corps and Vista programs, Doctors Without Borders and others, in which the “tourist” experiences a mutually symbiotic relationship with the members of the community, contributing to it through one’s work while being accepted into the authentic life of the people. Nobody is exploiting anybody. Nobody is profiting off of anybody at someone’s expense. The experience strengthens the community, rather than weakening it as most current forms of tourism do. Tourism in the post-Transition paradigm will be a rich and mutually-beneficial experience for both tourists and their hosts. It will no longer be a show put on for people with money by underpaid, exploited people struggling to survive in order to generate profit for the modern feudal elite. It will evolve into a rich, symbiotic avenue for human and cultural interaction and understanding, dialog and sharing of ideas and perspectives, and mutually-beneficial sharing. New, currently unimagined forms of tourism will also emerge in the new paradigm. For tourists from Transitioned, currency-free countries to countries still using currency under the current paradigm, there will be new challenges. We will have to get creative in creating social, diplomatic and economic protocols and interfaces between countries enjoying the new paradigm and those laboring under the current paradigm. The logistics will be worked out to mutual benefit. Tourists coming to Transitioned countries from countries under the current paradigm will be treated to a new experience. Once the world moves past initial uncertainty and fear of the unknown and realizes that new paradigm countries and their people are stable, honorable, respectful, and safe, people will be curious. For one thing, their visit will not cost them money. All facilities, meals, transportation, culture, entertainment and everything else will be freely there for them as it will be for citizens and residents. Instead of luxury, artificial simulations of the local culture and nature, and subservient bellhops, maids, cooks etc catering to them, they’ll experience authentic interaction, participation, and immersion in the local culture, nature and people. They’ll be warmly received, and will see first-hand the rich, fulfilling, mutually-empowering thriving life in the new paradigm. Most will be favorably impressed. They’ll return to their countries sprouting the seeds of yearning for the same degree of freedom, empowerment, symbiosis, and thriving that they experienced on their vacations. Their friends and families will have questions. Their experiences in the new paradigm will make them ambassadors and advocates for the new paradigm, laying the foundation and creating the igniting sparks for Transitions in their own societies in their own countries. The most precious souvenir that such tourists will bring home is the new awareness of what is possible and how to achieve it. During and immediately after the Transition, the world and many in the Transitioning country may have fears and uncertainties, since many revolutions have, tragically, involved bloodshed and violence. Many won’t know what to expect. It won’t take long, however, for people to perceive the integrity, stability, principles, transparency and viability of the new paradigm. In addition, we can expect there to be negative, defamatory and fictitious propaganda against the Transition, put out by the current modern feudal lords and their enforcers and apologists. This will lengthen the apprehension of those lacking direct experience; but the new paradigm, and the people operating according to it, will speak for themselves in their actions, words, and the ways that they interact with other people and countries. The realities of the new paradigm will ultimately overcome and break down such apprehensions. For countries Transitioning to the new paradigm, tourism will become a major avenue of diplomacy and relationship-building in the world. Our international relations will undergo major changes as well. Some countries still operating under the current modern feudalism will be apprehensive or angry that countries in the new paradigm will cease to be “markets” to be exploited for profits. But the people who visit well see that life in the new paradigm is safe, sane, free (in every sense), more harmonious, and empowering. They will see the win-win dynamics in everyday life. A natural question is, how will citizens of Transitioned countries visit and function in countries still under the modern feudal paradigm? The solution to that will take great research, thought, and creativity. As we develop mutually-beneficial new trade agreements with such countries, there will be opportunities to craft mechanisms and to acquire foreign currency, which could be held a pool in very limited-function bank-like agencies for very specific occasions. When a citizen of a Transitioned country travels to a pre-Transition country, accounts will be created for them for the duration of their trip, with funds sufficient for their stated travel plans. When they return, the account is closed and any unused funds return to the pool. We will need strict laws, quotas and mechanisms in both points of entry or exit and in shipping channels to prevent ambitious members of current-paradigm societies from grabbing items freely available in the new paradigm to sell them for money in their currency-addicted country. While tourists are here, everything will be free for them, just as it will be for citizens and residents. When they leave, they will be reasonably limited on how much they can take out: perhaps a few items but not quantities clearly meant for sale. Those products, being generally superior to products produced under the modern feudal paradigm, will also be ambassadors and advocates. International travel will pose unique challenges. All modes of international travel based in Transitioned countries will be free for citizens and permanent residents, in both directions. Foreign nationals from countries still using currency will be charged at the lower end of the scale for both ingress and egress, but will travel for free within the host country. These funds can be added to the foreign travel pool for residents. The new incarnation of tourism will enrich both tourists and host communities, and will act as a medium for expansion of the principles of the new paradigm from country to country, like the spread of a new technology or artform.

PART 2: TREATMENT