Often we have thought: Could there be a simple, straightforward solution to all our problems? Are not the problems of the world at large interconnected to our personal problems, somehow? Could there be a single solution to all the problems we face, from the global, international level, down to the individual, personal level? Does not all problems have some common, yet undiscovered source? Well, the answer, fortunately, is yes. All problems we face globally and personally can be traced to a single source: Birth into poverty. And here is the solution to combat it: Ensuring birth into financially secure environments through a legal requirement of basic financial capability to become a parent. The automatic spin-offs would be:
1) A quality standard of living for the next generation through ensuring essential economic standards,
2) Containment of population growth below the poverty line,
3) Elimination of poverty and unemployment by ensuring appropriate, though expensive education for the skills in demand,
4) Prevention of overexploitation and extinction of animal and plant species by tying the human birth rate to the existence of natural resources,
5) Greater equality and justice due to elimination of poverty,
6) Drastic elimination of diseases through improved healthcare and sanitation,
7) Drastic reduction in crime due to better security for oneself and reduced exposure to crime,
8) Stable environments due to improved financial capability to switch to non-polluting lifestyles,
9) Decline of internal and external conflicts in a nation due to lesser discontent,
10) An impetus to scientific and technological progress from increased leisure time and better research capability.
About 10,000 children die each day of curable and preventable diseases. If that is the state of the world we live in, we honestly cannot expect justice and fairness. We will live in fear and hatred of one and another. If the world allows innocent children to die in such large numbers each and every day, can we feel safe? Can we be truly happy? If that is the fate of innocent newborn children, how much worse a fate should we be willing to accept? No one can say. Only thing that can be said is that the world of today that humanity has built through the ages is unsafe and cruel. And we can go nowhere else. We cannot escape. The only option we have is to face the situation squarely and end the most cruel and disquietening event that happens everyday: the death of 10,000 children due to their birth into environments incapable of supporting human life. By ensuring that human beings are not born into circumstances where they cannot be adequately provided for.
To become a pilot you have to undergo training for years. To become an engineer, a doctor or a teacher, you cannot escape the same. But in the entire history of mankind, to become a parent has never required qualification. Just imagine if the pilots piloting the planes we travel in needed no qualifications – a pilot’s license. Just imagine if the doctors we seek advice from, to treat our diseases and keep us healthy needed no qualification – a medical degree. Just imagine if the parent who conceives and raises a child needed no qualification – the ability to provide for that child. Now, that is something we don’t have to imagine. That is right before our eyes. The result of that is the world we live in and the consequences we’ve faced throughout the centuries. They are the consequences of not requiring basic financial capability to become a parent, leaving the child, the family, the society and hence the whole of humanity unbalanced and ill-secured.
I bring to you the news of earthly salvation.
An answer to all our problems.
We do not have to live in or be witness to poverty.
We do not have to live with or be witness to unfairness.
For this to happen, basic financial capability must be made a legal requirement to become a parent. This requirement ensures that no child is born into poverty.
This requirement ensures that no child is denied food and water.
This requirement ensures that no child is denied shelter and healthcare.
This would diminish the need for government aid in the form of food, shelter or education.
This would diminish the probability of exposure to crime and hence crime itself.
This would free up more revenue for the government to enforce law and order.
This would free up more revenue for the government to improve infrastructure.
This would free up more revenue for the government to use on research and development.
Most importantly, this would proportionate births to the money generated by existing natural resources, hence preventing overexploitation and extinction of animal and plant species.
Absence of poverty would make this world a paradise.
Absence of disease would make this world a paradise.
Longer lifespan would make this world a paradise.
Stable environments would make this world a paradise.
Only if basic financial capability is made a legal requirement to become a parent, hence ensuring that children are not born into poverty, consequently guaranteeing the self-sufficiency of one and all.
Message of the Perfect World is about a new, child-centric approach to solving the problems of the world. We can prevent the seeds of the problems of the world from being sown in children and hence eliminate the problems forever.
The problems of environment, war, regional conflict, injustice and poverty have remained for too long on this planet. Because of these problems, the majority of us now live below acceptable human standards. If we had set a standard of human living and abided by it, we could have prevented these problems.
We can set and abide by a basic standard of human life most effectively by ensuring that humans are not born into poverty. If we do it now we can prevent further multiplication of these problems.Requiring by law, a predetermined level of basic financial capability to become a parent will ensure that children are not born into poverty. This would make it more likely that they can buy medicines in case of disease, live in sanitary conditions, are less likely to go hungry and shelterless and would have access to better quality education and information.
As the proportion of the poor decreases, the government will not have to provide cheap transport, subsidized goods, free education and free healthcare. Money saved in this manner could be used instead to improve infrastructure and enforce law and order.
As the proportion of the prosperous increases, more people will be able to afford environmentally friendly resources and technologies. This would lead to a gradual decline in the number and magnitude of floods, famines, droughts and earthquakes. Before every child is born, it will be ensured that it will have the necessary natural resources required to support it through ensuring that it is born into a minimum level of financial capability. There will be no need to encroach upon or overexploit animal and plant habitat. We can then continue our progress without causing a threat to our own survival or to the survival of other species.
A newborn child cannot earn the money needed to stay alive. We must therefore ensure that its parents have the required money before it is born. If we take care of the basic block of society, namely the child, we can make whole societies fair and secure.
To drive a car you need a license. To drive an airplane, you must be a pilot. To build a house you must be an engineer. To treat diseases you must be a doctor. But to conceive, deliver and raise a child you need not have any qualification. What happens if people do not need a license to drive a car? Car-accidents. Injury and death. What happens if people who are not engineers can build houses? The house comes down. What happens if people who are not doctors are allowed to treat patients? The patients die. What happens if people who cannot provide acceptable living standards for their children are allowed to have children? The majority of the human race will live in unacceptable living conditions.
People can do whatever they like, as long as no one is put at involuntary risk. But bringing a new human being into this world does put everyone else at involuntary risk if the person responsible for bringing that child into the world cannot provide for that child by himself. He would have no option but to take from others’ means of survival to provide for the child. Every human right can be exercised only as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others. Bringing a new human being into the world when one cannot provide a healthy and competitive living standard for it puts everyone else at involuntary risk. To provide for the new child you are forced to borrow from others and hence lower others’ living standards since you cannot provide for it yourself.
Parents who do not have the financial capacity to support their existing children must therefore be periodically identified and given a timeframe in which to attain the required financial status. If they fail to attain the required status in the given timeframe, they should be prohibited by law from having any more children until the financial status required is attained. Imprisonment for either parent for a number of months or some other legal penalty should be implemented if they have any more children without attaining the basic financial capability required. A child's future right to food, shelter and education is infinitely more important than its parents' immediate right to reproduce. This law may or may not be respected and obeyed at first, but if well enforced over time, it will prevent children from being born into poverty. It will secure the basic rights of every child to be born and hence the rights of every future adult in a reasonably short span of time. It promises humanity a clean break from poverty and all associated evils.
The human race is facing various threats to its existence today. Our societies try to secure the rights of the adults. We need to realize that we cannot hope to provide for every adult unless we can first provide for every child. If defects remain in the treatment meted out to children, defects remain in human beings and hence in society. We need to realize that a fair and secure childhood is the right of every human child. That ensuring a fair and secure childhood for all is the secret to securing all basic human rights.
Parenthood Financial Capability LawA certain degree of basic financial capability is required to become a parent.
The fact is that basic financial capability is a requisite for parenthood so that children can have a secure and fair childhood. But since people do not always take this into consideration before becoming a parent, and since this lack of consideration has ultimately resulted in the unfair and unjust world of today, the law ought to require it.
There’s no way to be absolutely sure that no one drives without a license, but that doesn’t stop us from enacting laws requiring people to have a license before they drive. There’s no way to be absolutely sure that people do not practice medicine without a doctor’s degree and there are many quacks who pass off for doctors, but that still does not stop the law from requiring a doctor’s degree in order to practice medicine. There is no guarantee that people who do not have basic financial capability will not become parents, once we enact the PFC law, but that should not stop us from enacting the PFC law. We cannot completely ensure that people who cannot support a child practice birth control or contraception, but that is no reason for the law not to require them to do so until they have reached the basic financial capability standard required by the law.
To conceive, deliver and raise a child you need not have any qualification. You do not need the qualification of basic financial capability, which is why poverty exists in the world. You do not need education, which is why ignorance exists in the world. You do not need shelter, which is why the homeless exist. You do not need health, which is why disease exists. You do not need food, which is why hunger exists. You do not need drinking water, which is why unquenched thirst exists.
The logical corollary of the PFC law would be preventing 1 billion poor people who exist today from having children. This may seem unethical at first, but it is not. The poor are also prevented from having nutritious food, clean drinking water, a comfortable shelter and a competent education, which undoubtedly, are more important rights. Isn’t allowing that to happen more unethical? When neither they nor we can secure for them their basic rights of food, shelter and education for their survival and personal growth, neither they nor we would be able to provide the same for their child to be born. We are unable to secure their basic rights of survival, of food, shelter and education because of an indiscriminate use of the right to reproduction. Once it is ensured that more important rights like the right to food and shelter will not be affected by the exercise of the right to reproduction, the latter can be exercised freely. Therefore, we ought to withhold the right to reproduction till the more basic rights concerning survival, of food and shelter are secured. The former is not only hindering the latter, but also far less important than the latter and therefore ought to be effectively put on hold till the latter is fulfilled. Indiscriminate use of the right to reproduction has proven to be and is disastrous for oneself and for society. The PFC law does not take away the right to reproduction, it merely postpones the exercise of it to a more favorable time in view of the well-being of oneself, one’s child to be born, the sustainability of one’s society and the sustainability of the human race, all of which will be threatened otherwise.
The PFC law requires that humans be treated with a minimum degree of respect, beginning from childhood, by ensuring that they are not born into poverty and do not have their basic rights of food, shelter and education violated. The higher the PFC basic financial capability requirement, the more basic rights we can secure for the newborn child and the more effectively the PFC law is enforced, the more of humanity as a whole will have their basic rights fulfilled.
The earlier we accept the PFC law, the fewer sufferings the world will have to undergo. As soon as the PFC law is implemented, a sense that human value has been secured will descend upon people. A sense that no one in his or her country is born into inhuman conditions. Everyone will feel that for the first time in history, the value of the human being has been secured.
Simple. We are human beings. We can’t be born in slums. We can’t be born in crime-infested, hostile neighborhoods. We can’t be born in disease-infected, unsanitary environments. We can and should only be born in financially secure environments, which can take care of our health, food, shelter, education and protect us from both the influence and effects of crime, violence and pollution.
Would it have been fair to you if you were allowed to be born into a slum and hence denied all the comforts of life that we now take for granted and have taken for granted all through life? Would you feel that you have been treated fairly, with respect and dignity deserving of a human being?
If we want to build a perfect world, we must realize that it means that we are not forced to do the things we do not want to do. That is akin to slavery. Most of us work five days a week. For what purpose, to sustain our lives? Doesn’t it seem foolish that one has to spend the major part of his short life earning it? We are born and then we have to work to keep living. Better to not have been born at all, in a sense. It’s like society asks us: Who asked you to be born? If you want to live, work. Or you will not be allowed to live. Our answer should be: "Why did you make me born if I have to work to live? Was I born to work? Is that the meaning of my life? You will let me die if I don’t work. So, my only value to the world is what work I can do for it. Whether I believe in the work or it’s consequences or not does not matter to you in the least. I’m just another brick in the wall.”
Are we preparing for the coming generation? Now, that is a question we cannot ignore. But we do ignore it. We are aiming for longer lifespan and spending billions of dollars trying to find new ways to avert death, which means that the coming generation will not replace us but will coexist with us. It means that we better die or kill them or find a way to satisfy both of our needs. If we do not prepare for the coming generation, either they or we or both will live in inhuman conditions, because we haven’t prepared human living conditions for them. Or they will try to snatch the human living conditions from us, in order to survive.
War is imminent if we do not prepare for the next generation.
Chaos is imminent if we do not prepare for the next generation.
Widespread crime is imminent if we do not prepare for the next generation.
Epidemics are imminent if we do not prepare for the next generation.
Unfairness and injustice will be rampant if we do not prepare for the next generation.
The child working in a hotel and the old woman begging on the street – what’s common? They are weak. Our societies, built on the principle of the survival of the fittest, does not protect the weak. Instead, it gives preference to the strong. Those who are protected are those who do not need protection at all. If this remains the case with our societies, we will see more child labor in hotels and more old women begging on the street, who are disowned by families that can’t support them. It does not end there. The fact that parents are not required by law to have basic financial capability to produce offspring will leave society unbalanced and humanity insecure. You will live in a world where the weak aren’t protected. Any moment that you, yourself are weak, you will be met with indifference instead of help by the society, which disowns its weak. The world has use for you only if you are strong and cannot be bothered with you if you are weak. The reason being that, at present the world does not have the resources for all the weak.
The world needs strong people who can give something, not weak people who take something. That is tolerable, but when the world fails to let the weak people take just the bare minimum required to sustain their life and live with basic human dignity, then a standard of human living must be set, below which no human being is allowed to be born. If we ensure that people are not born into environments where their basic needs cannot be met, then no one is born into an environment that cannot support him. And therefore he or she does not have to work when a child or beg when old. The higher the basic financial capability into which a person is born, the lesser laborious or unfair is the work he or she has to do all through life, the lesser are the chances of unfair treatment being meted out to him or her.
We are now faced with a choice: To let the majority of mankind be the instruments of propagation and maintenance of an unfair and unacceptable way of life or to set standards that are human for all humanity and to set them in stone. Only when the bad standards propagate to us do we care. But is that wise? It requires far fewer resources to protect everyone if it was first made sure that there were enough resources to protect them before allowing them to be born. Don’t allow anyone to be born unless we have the resources to give him/her a fair life. If not, doom is coming. Overpopulation and consequent horrible living conditions will choke humanity and leave it gasping for breath. Let it not happen. Let us not allow it to happen. All our worries would vanish if we would just put children first. Nobody should have to accept a standard of life lower than a standard that is agreed upon, internationally, as fit for a human being. As much as possible, every human being, until he or she can survive on his or her own should be given the greatest freedom of choice and tightest protection from outside forces and influences that inhibit his or her growth in any manner, whatsoever. It is the weak that we have to protect and not the strong. Parents should not be allowed to mould their children into whatever they have in mind. Rather, if every human being is to be the master of his or her own destiny, children should be allowed to make free choices regarding their future independent of all outside influences, including parental, as much as possible.
A human being can be born anywhere - in slums or in a well-off family. You and I could have been born in the slums instead of in well-off families. Every child born in the slums could have been born into a well-off family. There is no law that ensures that such a thing happens. A law upholding very high standards of living may be impossible now, but one upholding commonly accepted living standards is not. Presently there is no law effectively protecting the human right to live like a human being, with basic decency and self-respect. If we can’t give that to every human being, then we shouldn’t allow the birth of humans where we can’t give them the respect they deserve and the basic amenities they need to survive. If we can’t afford to keep five pets at home, then we’ll keep just one, rather than let one pet live healthily and comfortably while the others go hungry and diseased, dying slowly. Similarly, let’s not have any humans where we cannot provide them with what they need to survive. This is a universal truth: As quantity increases, quality decreases. As the quantity of human beings increases, the quality of their freedom, of their food and shelter, of their education, of their very life, undoubtedly decreases. And the world population is rising steadily.
In today’s world, the value of everything is secured; the value of things go up and rarely goes down. But the value of a human being does the opposite. A certain standard must be met to acquire anything but a human being, which is why human beings are not treated with respect and fairness. Appearances can be deceiving. The child, innocent and helpless, though he seems he is, possesses our salvation. To secure him would be to secure the whole of mankind. Safe child, safe world.
We have spent billions of dollars both on space exploration projects, on building military arsenal and on thousands of scattered projects to help the disadvantaged. Spending all that money instead on the PFC law is the need of the hour, because the PFC law holds much more potential for the good of mankind.
If we really want a way out, we must not let the next generation come into existence unless a life of dignity awaits them. We must disallow the possible birth of a child unless its parent has the required money for the child's well-being and welfare. This would secure the child's basic needs and hence his or her well being to quite an extent. The inescapable inequality with which man has lived for all these millennia is all too easily ignored and forgotten. Mankind is different enough among itself without adding any inequality based on economic states.
CHAPTER II
Setting new standards
There have been horrible events in history. Unspeakable acts of terror and degradation not by nature on man, but by man on man. Evil is produced by an imperfect society. The more imperfect a society is, the more evil it has. Whenever a man has to degrade or humiliate himself, the flaws in the whole society is magnified for all to see. That society, which allowed a disgraceful act to be committed on any human, has before it a testament to its shortcomings and an alert-alarm for the whole society to wake up to a serious flaw in itself. Rather, it dismisses such events as unavoidable. To preserve the dignity of man is the ultimate aim of any institution. Through fulfilling basic needs, through securing basic rights, through providing growth opportunities and through every other service rendered by all of society’s institutions, we are preserving the dignity of man. We ought to be, but are we? The man is subjected to the institution and the institution has grown in dignity while man himself, for whom the institution was created, has diminished in dignity and has become a helpless pawn in the hands of institutions.
We have lost our focus. We have lost sight of the reason for the existence of all of society’s institutions. We have lost sight of the reason why we created these institutions. The reason is to preserve the dignity of man. Not to secure basic rights. Not to fulfill basic needs. Those are just tools that help us preserve the dignity of man. We ought to look around once in a while and see if the dignity of man has been properly preserved. Our aim is to ensure that no one is treated without human dignity by man or by nature, not for a single moment. That is the aim we had when we created the first society. The comparatively infinitely small populations of those societies did not require much thinking about the laws of society which are much more important today. Today we have a population explosion facing us and with it comes a need to alter the laws of society to suit the changes. But as we make drastic changes, if we do, we need to keep in mind the aim that we ought to have, the aim of preserving human dignity, of not letting any factor, man-made or natural to devaluate it.
So, that is our fault. The reason for the imperfection in our societies. Our aim ought to be: The preservation of human dignity. Injustice injures human dignity. Inequality flabbergasts human dignity. We ought to secure human dignity. And for that we have no choice but to ensure human birth into dignified conditions. Only later can we ensure human life in dignified conditions. When the majority of births in the world are in undignified conditions, as is the case today, we can never hope to truly ensure a life of human dignity for them. We cannot ensure a fair, secure and therefore dignified life for the people already born and brought up in conditions otherwise, especially when they are not only the majority, but also the most rapidly multiplying section of humanity. The solution is not a cure but a prevention.
To take care of every nook and cranny on earth and to see to it that unfairness, injustice, abuse or exploitation does not creep into the minutest spaces of our planet would be heavenly. It is not an ideal. It is more than that which has to be aspired for, it is what ought to be. And if it is not, it is our failure, gross-neglect and incapacity as human beings that we have allowed the worst to be the standard.
We did not set a standard and therefore the standard has dropped so low. We did not set the standard in the right place or for the right thing and we did not set it forcefully. The right standard for the right thing set mightily will clear out the ills we face today as part of a human race on the road to doom. However right the standards are, or how forcefully it is effected would be futile if it is not for the right thing. Today, we have centuries of expertise and technology to have the right standard and to enforce it effectively, but we are effecting it in regards to the wrong thing. The thing that is in danger today, that which we are trying to protect, is ourselves. Our survival shouldn’t be at threat and we know that we are failing to protect the survival of all today. Therefore, the only option is to allow only as many of us for whom the right standards can be effectively enforced. The thing we need to set standards for, is ourselves. The standard we need to set is the standard of good living. No one of our race should be allowed to be born into a place where the standard of good living is absent.
Elections could be used to decide the level of basic financial capability required to become a parent. Options could be: None, $500, $10,000, $15,000. Such elections could be held every 2 years or so, so that people have a chance to determine or reassess what standard of living their children should be born into and brought up in, according to varying economic and social conditions. Now the people can not only decide who rules them but also their own future living standards. Ultimately, that is what democracy and elections are for. So that people would decide who can give them a safe and acceptable standard of living. The people’s judgment of the election candidate’s ability may prove to be right or wrong, but through the entire bureaucracy and government machinery under the election winner, the final effects of their choice is hardly ever what they had thought would be. If people decide the minimum standard of living they wish to be born into, they are deciding their minimum standard of living, if not for themselves, then for their children. They are deciding both the living standard of their children and the general living standards surrounding their children.
So there ought to be two elections. One to decide the standard of living during childhood and hence the future n
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