A Perfect World

Suppose we lived in an imaginary world where resources were in some sense infinite. Only by desiring something we would obtain it immediately. If you wish a house with a swimming pool and a big garden it will magically and instantly appear in from of you only by simple thinking on it. If you wish to have your preferred meals served on your table you only have to wish it. But suppose also that there were only two restrains to which you were subject: you can´t magically create or destroy other humans and you can´t automatically improve your own sets of skills and talents. What would happen in this kind of ideal world? Would everybody live on their own planets with all kind of amenities but isolated from the rest?

In order to address such a complicated question it’s necessary to distinguish two types of actions in which the habitants of such a universe will be engaged. The first type could be called personal actions and the second are collective actions.  Personal actions will only require the participation of the individual interested in that particular action. For example if you wish to have an incredible car and drive it across an empty street at very high speed you will be engaged in a personal action. In the opposite sense, if you would like to teach something and someone else would like to learn it from you, both will commit a collective action. Which will be the role of collective actions in this rare universe?

It´s a clear fact that we need each others. We like to talk to someone else, have the need to love, to teach students, to learn from teachers or to have fun with friends.  In all these cases we should note that we will have to compete with other people´s skills in a similar way it occurs in our present world. The winners of such competition will be the most social-skilled persons and they will have the chance to accomplish their collective needs with the persons they want. The losers will face three main choices; they can turn into another kind of collective actions, accept to fulfill their social needs with fewer persons or initiate violence against the winners. Although there will be people more skilled than others it´s not clear who will win the eventual wars or conflicts that may occur because nobody will more skilled than the whole rest. This brings us to ask whether power could be concentrated in a few persons or whether concentration of power is indeed a consequence of limited resources.   

Therefore, in order to avoid the terrible consequences of the conflicts that might occur, it´s possible that a market around collective actions will appear. Every market needs a mean of payment and thereby currency will also exist in this imaginary world. People with money will be able to pay for collective actions and those who receive the payment will be richer in order to acquire other collective actions. By this way rich and poor will also have to coexist. Their form is going to be very different because they will have everything they wish except collective actions.

Following the entangled logic of all this reasoning we can observe that this imaginary world won´t be too different from the present because competition, hate and poverty will exist in both worlds. Here one might argue that by eliminating the two imposed restrictions it would be possible to achieve a perfect world where everybody will be happy and fulfilled. In such a world everybody will be similar to a god and, at the same time, there will be no good because everybody will be equal. Is there any way we can imagine the Utopia from Thomas More?