> The definition of Utopia is “a perfect political and social system.”
> Let’s say a utopian world is impossible, for this to be true I need to
> satisfy the following things:
> The effectiveness of political and social systems will decrease over
> time.
> Or
> The effectiveness of political and social systems will stay exactly
> the same.
> My problem is, I’m having difficulty remembering a period of time that
> has offered a more effective political and social system than we have
> now.
[SNIP]
Yak, I fear that you are about to be blasted for heresy. Many of our
fellow participants seem to spend a great deal of time complaining
about how bad thing are. I personally agree with you that the current
system in the U.S. and in the world as a whole is better than it has
ever been and is steadily improving in most ways. It's
still far from perfect, and I even agree that some of the problems
addressed by our fellows are real and need attention. However,
the current system is IMO very likely to sustain itself and us for
long enough for us to achieve technological breakthroughs that
will render the system irrelevant. (i.e., the "singularity".) If this
is the case, The system is good enough to achieve iits last
purpose, and it's a waste of time to mess with it except perhaps
for minor fixes. Radical modifications tend to have big up-front
costs with fairly long-term payback. I feel we should spend
our time on attempting to advance the technological breakthrough.