This is a letter sent to the Obama transition team in december of 2008. I've decided to publish it here as well - because I would like to share the insight I had, with a wider audience.

A luxury-based economy.

There is a serious problem in our economic system which is ingrained in all the Western nations. The problem is that our economies and market forces are largely guided by the fact that people spend money on what they need, and spend a lot less money on what they want. This means that there is more money in jobs which are boring and tedious, and unfulfilling. People work their whole lives at the auto factory, or at the coal mine, or at the pulp mill. Meanwhile those who set about trying to make music, or create film, or do performing art, or write for a living barely scrape by. So, ironically the things which make our world a great place to live are things which people don't support with their money.

There is a way to change this whole dynamic. And that would be for us in our communities to set up a system whereby certain needs are taken care of for free. One area where we have already accomplished this is clothing. Given the incredible expansion of manufacturing overseas in the past several decades, today anyone with a good eye can pick up things here and there over time at thrift stores and garage sales... and her or his clothing budget can be next to nothing. The other two main needs which I would like to see met in a similar manner are food and housing.

If everybody had their basic needs met for free - they would have time to spend developing new skills, and they would start working in trades doing what they were most fond of doing, and spending their money on all these things which are considered luxuries, today. They would travel, they would buy electronic equipment, they would purchase books, they would go to ballets, and operas. In this manner, the economy would shift from a needs-based economy to a luxury-based economy. And everybody in the country could spend their lives working in professions which were much more fulfilling and exciting - and which gave their lives meaning.

Now, I don't think explicit government-socialist programs are the most efficient way to create this kind of a change... although that might work to a certain degree. It would better to think about how our society could accomplish these things from the bottom up rather than the top down. The way forward would be to gather people from agriculture, and those who are landlords and ask them what they think could be done to achieve these goals.

I hope this idea isn't brushed off by the person who reads it as being hopelessly utopian. I think that anyone who is an elected representative of the people should be thinking about ways to see that the people are nurtured better. It's unfortunate that the left-wing over the past several decades has allowed its ideals and agendas to be conflated with the policies of such nations as the Soviet Union. There's a vast difference here. A good metaphor for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his policies would be a gardener who goes about giving the plants their basic needs - water, sunlight, and fertilizer... and who in this way helps each plant to grow up and bear fruit, and become what it is according to its nature. The soviet union, and to a lesser degree China, are countries where the gardener goes about tying up each plant and trying to get them to grow in ways which are against their nature.