There is homelessness while banks destroy homes they cannot sell. There is hunger while restaurants, grocery stores and individuals throw away 100 BILLION pounds of food a year in the US alone. There is sickness, while pharmaceutical companies make billions selling a drug that costs pennies to make. There is ignorance, while educational institutions profit by selling the future.
There are enough resources available right now to feed, clothe, house, educate, and provide healthcare for every man, woman, and child in the world and yet we do not. Why? Does providing these things for all, take from the elite more than they should have to sacrifice? Does the desire of the wealthy to be more so outweigh the needs of the poor? Cannot these basic human necessities be provided for without crushing innovation and ambition? Need socialist safety nets and capitalist expansionism be mutually exclusive? More importantly, does not everyone, the wealthy included, benefit from a better educated, healthier and happier society? Was Einstein born wealthy? Did he die so?
In a world where man lists computers, skyscrapers, and railroads as his greatest accomplishments these inequities will always exist. It is embracing the quantitative that blinds us to the value of the immeasurable. Only when man learns to hoard the insubstantial with the same greed he currently reserves for the mundane; to value equal rights and equal opportunity, to value the common good, the common wealth, and the common health as highly he does his own ambition will mankind truly be equal, will we be a truly great society. No great pyramid or giant skyscrapers will be so valued by our children as a healthy planet populated by the just and educated.
Some would claim that what I propose is a utopia. It is not possible. A few hundred years ago people would have said the same thing about the US and the changes it has wrought on the world. There is no doubt that human rights are at a historical high, but we still have far to go. By standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before us we can see beyond the next horizon. We can attain that which was beyond our reach only a couple generations ago. Yesterday it was a utopia. Today it is just math.
