The Capsules Camp: Solutions To Providing Free Shelters
Chinese have a saying. The 4 most important things (in no particular order) are, clothes, food, shelter, and mobility. I have pointed out some possible (and sustainable) solutions to providing free food in my previous article, yet free food alone is not enough. In order for anyone to really feel worriless about their lives, free shelters must be provided in conjunction of free food.
Back in the days, Malaysia used to have a lot of these in our playground, probably slightly smaller than the one shown in the pictures. They would stack 5 or 6 of them into 2 or 3 levels, and let the kids climb up and down of it. Frankly, it was one of my favourites as climbing the often very smooth surface of the huge pipe was super challenging for a short kid like me. These days they are no longer a common sight in the playgrounds, but we can use it for something better. :)
I want to show you the picture of the sewage pipe in action because, I believe it would be the answer to providing free shelters. As you can see from the picture, someone converted the sewage pipe into a very nice bedroom. Not just any bedroom, it's actually a hotel room of Das Parkhotel in Austria. You can have a look at their website here.
I know you must be wondering, "no way we are going to provide such a nice shelter for those lazy homeless bums", okay... maybe not like a hotel room. But we don't need the beds and the furnitures. Even at its very barebone, which is pure concrete, it's fine as it is. People want a shelter as a mean of escaping from the rain, hiding from the chilly wind, and basically just a safe place to sleep in.
The sewage pipe in the picture is slightly larger than the version I have in mind. For a slightly smaller version, it should be no larger than a single bed. Now imagine stacking 20-40 of them together, in say 2 to 4 levels, It would be a fantastic free shelter to the desperates to sleep in. No it doesn't have to have beds or furnitures. No it doesn't even have to be comfortable. But for the homeless, it would be godsend regardless.
Now if we extend these sewage pipes into multiple stacks, we get a camp. In fact, all these sewage pipe stacks don't take up a lot of space. Anyone's house area could easily accommodate a few of them. And so we can easily house a few hundreds people today just by building a few of these camps! Complete it with a huge roof covering all the sewage pipes, and maybe public toilets too, and finally some police guards for peacekeeping, we have just taken care of all the homeless people you may have in a city!
I would have called it the sewage pipes camp if it doesn't sound that awful, hence I prefer to name it the Capsules Camp as it is more pleasing.
The catch with every capsule is that, it doesn't have an ownership and it will not be allocated in that sense. Every night, anyone can drop by, grab a capsule and just rest in there for the night. This is obviously to prevent hoggers from wasting any capsule spots. But the long term effect is that, you may travel from cities to cities and just check into capsule camps, and you would not have to worry about any accomodation problem.
Now if one does not have to worry about food and accommodation, I bet half of the population would spend their time doing things that truly matter to them. A whole new era of spiritual awakening will slowly take place as people no longer find satisfaction in blindly performing tasks for capitalism. Essentially, more and more things will be converted into free exchange where deeds are rewarded by gratefulness, and the world would be such a wonderful place!
Note: I really should blog more often lol. Getting a little rusty writing articles like this.
How To Implement A Free World In Such A Money-Orientated World?
Following my previous articles on how wonderful the world would be if everything is to be free, while many have agreed that it would indeed be fantastic, much doubts were left unanswered as it is perceived as being too idealistic. How is it possible for a world totally dominated by money to slowly switch into a moneyless world?
In this article, I am going to address that concern. However, I would assume the role of being the president or prime minister of a country with the power to initiate the necessary changes. It is unfortunate that in this particular case, what a normal civilian can do is only to urge their leaders to implement such changes. It's definitely easier to start a revolution when you are a man of power. So bear with me, while I know that not everyone gets to be the leader of a country, it is necessary to address the implementation from the position of a leader.
In my previous articles, I have mentioned that it should all start from free food and free shelters. We need to guarantee the survival of every single human being in the country before we can move on to the next level. Unless that the people is no longer insecured about their own survival, any further advancement is doomed to fail as this fundamental problem will continuously re-surface and jeopardize any efforts that we are going to push forward. Unless people's survival is guaranteed, people will continue to live with a scarcity mindset, and with that comes tremendous fear and greed. Such fear and greed misleads people to consume everything they get to lay their hands on. And if everything is free... they would consume basically everything too. So such a concept would not work until everyone's fear is to be removed permanently.
Hence, it is very important that we first discuss on how to provide sustainable solutions to offer free food and free shelters. Only then through cementing a solid foundation, that we would be able to implement other changes one by one, and eventually converting the entire world for good into a free world! In order to provide free food, I was thinking in terms of utilizing resources that a country would already have, but hasn't been maximized. The first thing that comes to mind is... The prisoners!
You see, surely prisoners can be more useful than just sitting in a cell doing nothing all day long. Sure we are punishing them, but as a matter of fact what we are really doing is punishing ourselves by wasting all our tax money feeding such "useless" people. Why not make them useful? Make them farm for the rest of the nation! They would then be the front line providing free food for the rest of the nation who really needs it! I mean it's ridiculous isn't it, that we guarantee the survival of criminals, but not innocent people on the streets who are trying so hard to live their lives!
Yes there are definitely people who have committed first class murder etc, and are definitely not advisable to allow their hands on any items that can be used as a weapon. However, surely there are also people who committed a much lesser crime. People who stole, who conned, who smuggled drugs, who did a lot of the illegal activities but not necessary dangerous. Give them a hoe and make them start farming!
It is not that hard to allow prisoners to farm. Mark a gigantic area to be used as a prison farm, divide them into much smaller sections so that each section would have only a few prisoners at max. Better still, if security is such a concern, make it one person per section. Give them a hoe and nothing more, collect the hoe back at the end of the day. Make sure nothing gets smuggled into the prison and creates problems. We could even use a metal detector just to make sure that no pieces of metal are carried back into the prison.
Farms are basically wide open area. A few towers around the farms would make it very easy to monitor everyone's movement. Obviously it would be fenced up properly preferably with multiple layers as a security measure. Such security measures are easy to implement, and it's easy to make sure that the prisoners don't escape with proper planning.
So yea, we can then turn these non-constructive human resources into something very productive, and beneficial for the rest of the nation. Besides, I am pretty sure the prisoners would be more than happy to farm for the nation because seriously, it is so boring sitting in a cell doing nothing all day long. We don't need to actually experience that to understand how bad it is.
All the different vegetables could then be transported nationwide, to be either given away raw or to be cooked as vegetarian food and serve all the starving people out there. There are people who don't eat pork or beef due to their culture or religious beliefs, so vegetarian food would be suitable for people from all sort of backgrounds. Plus, it is a lot easier to just focus on farming, then also feeding live stocks.
Now by mobilizing enough prisoners, we would be able to provide a huge amount of food to the country. We might not be able to feed the entire nation just yet, but such huge influx of food would force the price of the food to drop significantly. We would actually force a lot of farmers to be out of jobs. So it's definitely a problem that we need to address in another article. However, in this article, let's focus on providing free food.
Prisoners will definitely be able to farm and provide a lot of free food. But since they can't provide enough for the nation, we need more people. Another resource I can think of, is to implement some sort of farming program for all schools. It's of tremendous values to the kids to learn how to farm, while also contributing to the society by providing free food. How awesome is that! I mean seriously, why teach them history, geography etc, when what matter the most is their basic survivality? If they are not taught about money, at least they should be taught about farming right? Because if you know how to farm yourself, even when you are broke, you can live on your own plantings for a while. That was how the poorer civilians lived in the old days, by being self-sufficient. I see no reason for the knowledge to be outdated today.
Finally, we can also mobilize the armies to be involved in farming. In our current world, what do armies do usually anyways? March and march and march? I don't think they do much really. It's a peaceful world and most armies around the world never get deployed. So perhaps it's better to have them dedicating a few days in a week to farming and contributing back to the nation in a more meaningful way. Plus farming is physical work! I think the armies would love training their soldiers with meaningful physical work!
So, with the huge amount of prisoners, school pupils, and even the armies, I think we would have more than enough free food going around the nation. All without adding any extra costs to the country. The lands used would most likely be unused government's lands, and hence it still virtually costs nothing to convert them into farms.
Next, we still have to address the free shelter issue. I suppose I will do that in another article since this is getting too long. :)
The World Is Fine Even If Everything Is Free
This article was first written in my other blog. It is re-published here under my very own permission. :)
Received some feedback on my previous post of "What if everything in this world is free?", just thought it would be interesting to discuss others concerns. Afterall if the system I propose is full of flaws, what's the use to go pursue it any further right?
The comment that I am posting here is posted by cheong, whom I believe is one of my primary school mates but :x Not too sure. Either way here it goes.
I salute you for your nice thoughts and suggestions on these free stuff for the people, the society and the world. Everything looks like possible as you wrote. I do agree with you for all your points.
Thank you. :) Hope you find it as an inspiring read.
hmm..can i voice out mine?
Yea sure go ahead!
If everyone owes a ferarri, wants to go out for countdown on 31/12, do u think everyone can get a parking place? how about traffic jams? U might be saying, ppl now having everything for free, so they will bulid better roads, paths, highways, parking lots because they'll contribute their best ideas of roads design to the society since everything is free..
First I would like to point out that, the system is definitely not without flaws. It is not perfect. Situations like the ones you mentioned is definite probable shall we convert the society structure into a free-for-all system. But I would like to ask in return, how would you deal with such situations if you know that where you will be driving to, is gonna be freaking jam and without parking space?
This isn't quite a free-society-only problem, so the solutions are already apparently in the existing world. Yup, you got it right. You don't drive. Will there be any sort of public transports? I would like to think so. But I can't tell you for sure because I am proposing a system, not creating a game. So I don't have every control on how the new society would like to reform itself. Would there be volunteer bus drivers doing community services? Will enthusiasts build train systems for the public? Will there be helicopter taxis that get you anywhere for free? Or maybe we will just all cycle because enthusiasts might not build enough cars for everybody. And they don't care because they don't sell the cars. They are just making it for fun.
So I suppose I came to another interesting point to delve into. If everything is free, would there be enough supply to satisfy the demand? People would build things just based on what they want to do. If you want something, say a car... You would need to ask for a favour. So is it very easy to get that many Ferraris on the street? I think no. When you are asking for a favour, you better have very convincing reasons of why you want a Ferrari. A good answer would be like, I am passionate about driving and I want to go into F1! A bad answer would be like, I just want to go around and pick up chicks. However, I foresee a bloom of DIY revolution, where information and technologies are so freely available, everyone can build their anything. I suppose when you go to a spareparts warehouse and you ask for free parts, they ask why? An answer that you are building your own car is rather acceptable.
But it would be inaccurate to say that a free society would have better everything, roads, highways, parking etc. It will only have better everything if the society deems that such things are required. Take note that to build any massive infrastructure, you need to mobilize a lot of people. Unless enough people are convinced that they are using their time for the betterment of the society, it's unlikely that people will spend their time fulfilling others agenda for no reason. They may be free, but they are not without other things to do too you know.
One thing though I know would be better is that: everyone would be happier not needing to worry about money and their own survival.
If everything is free, then there will be no control and quota on everything, everywhere. Everyone wants to stay in a big house with nice sea view or mountain view. Definitely the earth doesnt have enough place for each and everyone's dream.
I have briefly touched on the big house issue in the previous post. Similar to wanting a car, to build a big house, either you do it yourself or you ask someone else to do it for you. The bigger the house is, the more people you will need to ask a favour from, and the more justified you have to be. Again, why would people waste their time just to satisfy your ego? You offer zero compensation for their time you know? So the only other alternative would be, you build yourself. A big house, just you and your few family members? It's not going to be easy. You might just give up trying after going about it for a few years.
As for living in a nice sea view or mountain view. You do have a point. I am able to point out that, given the lack of developers strengthening the slopes of mountains, it may be a very bad idea to build a house up there yourself, but sea view has none of these nature disaster problems so it's a little tricky. Would everyone want to move to have a nice sea view? I definitely agree that a lot would. A lot wouldn't too. Living by the sea, you smell very bad, and everything in your house just rust so much faster. So it has its own share of problems too.
Yet it would be interesting to see how the free society would adjust to such change. Granted, if enough people want more sea view or mountain view houses, I am confident that they will either extend the shore lines themselves, or build one entire mountain if they have to. Afterall it isn't news that we have many man-made islands now right? How hard is it to construct a mountain since it's really, just moving all the dirt you dumped into the sea, onto the ground.
I love to become a fashion designer, everyone can wear nice clothes, dresses for free. Who will be the one going to sew? The one that loves sewing?? how many ppl loves sewing? 100,000 wants to become designer to design the best dress ever to billions of ppl in the world. We definitely need more than 100,000 people to do sewing. So, who gonna do this dear Ben? haha..
This scenario is very similar to my rubbish collector argument previously. Given that there is a job that no one is willing to take it up on, it would be perceived very highly by the society itself if someone volunteerily take it up. It is the so-called honour points that you get to score and add onto your reputation if you are willing to take up the unwanted tasks. Same person does not need to commit himself or anything. Just on and off volunteer would be enough. Afterall there are so many people in the society, there will be sufficient man power to deal with things. The thing with charity or volunteering work is that, people don't do it all the time. Not everybody flies to Africa and lives there to save the people you know. But going in there once in a while is already thought very highly by everyone around you. So there are definitely, advantages in doing such work.
Sooner or later, the society may have a minimal expectations of everybody. This could be unwritten expectations that everybody should at least get into some volunteering work. Then due to community pressure, more and more people might take up all these unwanted jobs.
What I would like to point out is that... You see in Malaysia, rubbish collectors are done manually. It would be hard to imagine why anybody would volunteer for such shit work right? You need to smell and grab the plastic bags full with rotten smell to dump. But in Australia, such work are done semi-automatically. That is, you get a rubbish truck with a mechanical arm. The truck driver stops in front of your house, extends the mechnical arm to grab the trash bin and dump it at the back of the truck. All work is done while the truck driver just sits comfortably in the air-conditioned truck sipping his morning coffee.
Now here is a few points to consider. Firstly, In Malaysia, a rubbish collector truck has like 1 driver plus at least 3 other collector. In Australia, just one driver is enough. So the amount of people needed is minimized greatly. Secondly, what stops Malaysia from getting the same mechnical truck that Australia uses? Money and tax, which is technically another form of moeny anyways. If everything is free, can Malaysia get it too? Hell yea. Finally, given enough people not wanting to perform such work, do you think human beings are not capable of designing something to perform the duties? For one, we could have rubbish collector robots. Or maybe we would have a rubbish sewage, automatically sucking all your rubbish away? What stops all the innovations from being implemented? Money! If there is no money in anything, people wouldn't even bother researching anything!
But coming back to your sewing questions. Yes fashion designers do sew their own clothes, they might be the ones that "love to" sew that you were talking about. The rest would likely to be volunteers sewing on and off as community service. Again, since all of these are done for free, I don't think that you suppose to get a new shirt every week. Everything is exchanged based on good will, and being greedy is not part of good will. However though, you are always welcome to DIY and sew your own clothes.
But, I truly feel happy for you to have such a big dream and feel great to have a friend like you.. hahaha..buddy..
Lol. It is really just a theory I have in my mind that I thought I would share any see what others think about it.
What If Everything In This World Is Free?
This article was first written in my other blog. It is re-published here under my very own permission. :)
What if everything in this world is free? What if money doesn't exist, how will the world be like? Would it be a better place for all of us? Or would all of us be so superbly lazy?
To start, let's start with something basic and vital, food.
What if all food are free, that you can just go into a restaurant or canteen to request for any food you want to eat? Note that you would be requesting but not ordering, because hey, you are not paying for your food. If it's free, and people can't make money out of it, who do you think would cook? People who love to cook. Then you get all the best-est food in the world paying nothing for it. Since food is free anyway, basic survival needs of all mankind are guaranteed, you won't have crap chef cooking crap food conning crap customers to make a crap buck anymore.
But to look further, because now that the basic survival of mankind is guaranteed, it affects the society in an unimaginable way. First robberies, burglaries would be reduced tremendously. If you have no problem eating, even if you have no money, sleeping in a sleeping bag in the park or something isn't really that bad. Many people do desperate things during desperate situations, and feeding everyone free would eliminate them. Seriously if one person is going to die starving, does he even care for your wellfare? If police shoots him dead, better for him. It ends his endless struggle for food.
However, let's us just bring back the focus a little bit. If food is to be free, then the food supplies have to be free too right? How are the farmers, fishermen etc going to survive? Well farmers can basically work for free if they want to, but fishing involves some heavy machineries that cost a lot of money! Now it is not so much about mechanics not working for free, but heavy machineries require industrial grade equipments, which require other industrial grade equipments to produce. It's a huge chain of industrial age products there.
Now because if food is free, and that everyone does not have to worry about their own survival, everyone would only do what he/she loves to do, which in turn would make him/her the best in the field. So you will get the finest mechanics to make the ships, equipments and other machineries for you... for free. Still, industrial grade equipments don't come cheap. The process is complicated and usually are only viable for mass production, or at least to sell to companies with a lot of money. How can we bypass this to make everything free?
First, perhaps the mechanics can stick with making smaller boats, or refining some carpentry tactics for boat building. Second, I suppose if you want to eat meat or fish, it is possible to go grab them yourself? Fish yourself, or kill a pig yourself. There would be dedicated pig farm or fish pond for people to get their meat free of charge! And it doesn't matter to them because they either love doing it, or have nothing better to do since they don't have to worry about food now. Or perhaps, the final possible solution is that, since companies really don't exist for profits anymore, they wouldn't mind spending sometime designing and developing ships free of charge for people that truly wants them. The fishermen, the sailors, the adventurers, the every other ding dong!
But if everything is free, wouldn't all of us want to hog on everything we can lay our hands on? You asked. Free laptop, free iPhone, free helicopter... FUAH! But here is the thing, when you know that they are always free, and are always available there, you wouldn't quite bother to go all the way out and hog on things that you don't truly need right? Hell even if I give you a free helicopter, you will be thinking where the fuck do I park this thing? Or how the hell do I maintain this thing? You might just want to fly the helicopter once in a while and don't want to care about the problems of maintaining one, maybe you will just park your helicopters with the trusted free mechanics in the the air field. You probably wouldn't even care about other people using it or breaking it because hey, it's free. And if someone got the latest model of helicopters, they would park it at the air field too, and wouldn't care who flies it, I bet you would be so willing to share your helicopters now with the others.
Anyway, for items like free mobile phone, free laptop etc... Well if you are using it all the time then by all means go use it. There isn't really a need to share things because they are free. But when you do not want to use them anymore, maybe new models come out or something, surely you will be more than happy to give them away for free again right? Now some hobbyists could perhaps develop something special from all these old technologies. Did you know that Google's massive success lies mainly in its innovative capabilities to run on cheap computers parallelly? Whatever that they are doing since decade ago, is now the IN thing. Cloud computing is the way to go baby! So yea, someone out there could develop something super awesome out of old technologies, it will then become the latest technologies once again!
But what about houses and land and everything? Well sure people will build it for you for free, but humans are ultimately humans. If you want to build a whole mansion, you better have the convincing power to convince enough people that you need that much space and that they should do it for you. Too huge and people would think that it's a waste of their time doing things for you because you are just plain greedy. And no people don't care about what you use to bribe them since everything is free! There is nothing that they cannot get without your help! Even lands are free and you are free to build your house everywhere you want!
You may be thinking, if lands are free also, wouldn't people just fence up a huge area and call it their own? Maybe some will. But what's the point of living in such isolations? Wouldn't it be nice for people to live closer to each other? Plus it might be a maintenance nightmare if you have too huge of a yard. Think of all the grass and trees and animals roaming in your garden? Snakes in particular ewww. I wouldn't mind a nice cozy small house with everything that I ever need, because I know that if I ever wanted a bigger house, I can get it anytime... and it's again... FREE.
How about cars? If people can get cars for free, wouldn't everybody go for Ferraris? Well if that's the case just let there be only Ferraris la! Who cares about sedan or mpv when everybody can drive a Ferrari for free right? Then all these car enthusiasts would band together to create the best-est car every other day... for free! Because they love to do it and because they don't need any money.
How about government then? No money no tax no government? Why need a government when everybody can get everything for free? Do you think people would go around robbing people and murdering people? Even prostitutes would be free just because they enjoy having sex with strangers (at least from what I see on Adultfriendfinders.com, there are already a hell lot of them)! Burglaries, robberies, rapings would be reduced to a non-existant number. Murders well... I don't see why people would have clashes and end up killing people when they can have everything for free. I mean, there would be no ego clashes at least because everybody can have a Ferrari if they want to. Everybody would be thrilled working on what they are passionate about on a daily basis, they wouldn't even be upset enough to drink beer and act stupid afterwards. And since government at the present day is very much about maintaining the economy of the country, who cares about economy nothing costs anything anymore? There is practically no more economy!
You ask, surely for things like basic maintenance of the environment and rubbish collections etc would still require people to execute? You can have healthcare etc all for free, but who are going to be dumb enough to be willingly to collect rubbish for you for free?! And I reply, since that now everything is free... The only currency would be honours. People who would collect garbage for free would be perceived as honourable and be thought highly by their society. Everybody can use a little bit of praises and reputation eh? Plus it is just similar with current charities, to be doing a community service to give back and benefits the community that they are living in. So again, why need the government again?
My point of bring this all up is that... We could very much live in a utopia tomorrow if we all decide to in this very moment. It is very possible for everything to be free. We can then all live in a worriless life tomorrow onwards. Okay maybe not immediately, but if I am the leader of a nation, first thing I would do is to offer free meals to everybody! That would set off a chain reaction of free stuff through the nation and it would be awesome. There will then be free fish pond, free farms... and eventually free phones, free laptops as more people gain free time and spend their time developing what they love to do... And eventually free heavy machineries would be offered. Then the last obstacles of a free world will be eliminated, and an advanced society will thus take shape.
Shall we make everything free?