Utilities
Ministry
The Utilities Ministry is
responsible for providing
utilities, but they don't determine what
the
utilities are. For example, the Security Ministry designs the security
system, and if the Utilities Ministry approves of their design,
then the Utilities
Ministry is responsible for creating the businesses that manufacture,
install, and maintain the
cameras, cables, or whatever was specified for
the system.
Likewise, the Neighborhoods Ministry designs the city structures and
transportation systems, and the Utilities Ministry creates the
businesses that manufacture, install, and maintain the equipment to
deliver electricity, water, and other services throughout the city.
The Utilities Ministry is responsible for creating businesses that:
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Provide water for
drinking, irrigation, and businesses.
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Process sewage and
wastewater.
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Provide
electricity.
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Collect and
recycle trash.
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Distribute fuels,
such as diesel, methane, and alcohol.
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Provide the city
with a security system.
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Provide the
city with the Internet, television, a telephone network, and whatever
other communication system the city needs. |
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If a
ministry requests a
local GPS system in order to provide extreme location accuracy for such
devices as drones, autonomous vehicles, and robots, the Utilities
Ministry provides it.
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The city needs redundancy with utilities
Instead of providing a city
with only one facility to
generate electric
power or to treat sewage, the Utilities Ministry must have at least two
facilities, each of which has the capacity to handle the entire city.
That will enable one of the electric power generators to provide
electricity for the entire city when one of the duplicates needs
maintenance, repairs, or upgrades.
Furthermore, the redundant utilities should be located in different
areas
of the city, rather than placed next to one another, in order to reduce
the chances that a disaster, such as a tornado or earthquake,
destroys both of them.
We need checks and
balances on the Internet
The democracies and free enterprise systems do not provide the Internet
with any supervision. As a result, it is disorganized, and it probably
contains more worthless information than useful information. It also
contains a tremendous amount of deceptive, manipulative, and dishonest
information from government officials, businesses, crime networks, and
Jews.
The Internet requires a lot of electricity, labor, and advanced
equipment, but no culture has any concern about wasting their labor and
resources on the storage and distribution of worthless and deceptive
information.
For example, as of December 2024, there are 4.3 billion
YouTube videos, and there are other
businesses providing video services, also, such as Facebook and
BitChute. However, the most popular YouTube videos are music videos for
young children,
which means that the adults who provide the Internet to us are putting
most
of their labor and resources into providing entertainment to children.
The free enterprise system puts us into competition to make money, and
this results in most people accepting jobs with no concern for whether
they are doing something useful for society or themselves, or whether
they are wasting their talent by providing private jets for billionaire
criminals, or designing advanced computer systems to distribute silly
music videos to children around the world, or performing Brazilian Butt
Lift surgeries.
Since every culture provides citizens and organization with secrecy,
there is no online
database to show us the current consumption of electricity, hard
disks, or other resources by
YouTube or other businesses, but this
estimate is that YouTube
consumes 244 terawatt
hours of electricity every
year.
Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, used
15 gigawatt hours in 2023, and
that amount has been rising every year.
This constitution eliminates secrecy for both people and organizations.
Businesses cannot keep anything a secret because every business belongs
to the city, and the city belongs to the people.
Businesses are public
organizations, not private organizations, and so they must provide all
of
their technology to the public, and allow everybody to know how they
operate.
Everybody has the right to know how many employees a business has, who
the employees are, how much electricity the businesses using, what the
business is doing, and all of the other resources they use. This will
allow
everybody to pass judgment on which businesses are not providing enough
of a benefit for the labor and resources that they require.
The Efficiency Ministry of the Quality Division will use that
information to determine which
businesses should be altered or terminated, and which ministers or
executives should be fired. The citizens are also encouraged to post
their suggestions on how to improve the businesses. The Utilities
Division should also do this.
For an example of what the Utilities Division could do, they could
reject a request from YouTube to provide an additional data center.
They would justify their rejection by pointing out that their analysis
of the videos shows that most of them have no value to the human race
or the future generations.
They would point out that most of the videos are entertainment for
children, and that most of the videos from bloggers are of ordinary
people having ordinary conversations. They would also complain that
most of the videos are in high resolution, which requires a tremendous
amount of storage and bandwidth.
The Utilities Division could demand that the blogger
videos be
deleted after some period of time, such as five years, and that the
bloggers who only speak to a camera be restricted to a low resolution
or
be audio only.
If a person wants to create a video that is saved for the future
generation, then he would have to put effort into creating a video
that would classify as a "documentary", rather than as a "blogger
video".
They could also complain that children should be doing something else
during the day rather than sitting in front of a computer and watching
music videos.
The Utilities Division could also suggest that the videos that children
watch repeatedly be saved on local hard disks at the schools or
recreational center so that they don't add a burden to the Internet.
The Utilities Ministry could also reject a request to expand a
social media businesses, or create another social media business. They
could suggest that all of the social media systems be simplified
into one system, rather than having X,
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the others, all of which are
essentially duplicates of one another.
By rejecting requests to expand YouTube or social media, they will
force a discussion
about the issue. That will be a better situation than what we
have today, in which there is no discussion about the future of the
Internet, and every person, organization, and government agency is
doing
whatever
it pleases with no regards to the consequences.
Another option that the Utilities Ministry has is to recommend shutting
down the social media sites except during lunch, evenings, and weekends
in order to save electricity and other resources, and to prevent people
from using those services when they should be sleeping, working, or
going to school.
The free enterprise system causes businesses to design the Internet to
do whatever brings them the most profit, but this constitution gives
the government total control of the Internet, and they are required to
design it according to what is best for the human race, not according
to what people or organizations want. This allows them to control the
information that is on it, and the hours and days that individuals and
organizations can access it.
Some of the companies that are providing the text-to-image software are
censoring some of the images, and they have the freedom to create their
own censorship policies, and the freedom to keep their policies and
reasoning a secret.
By comparison, if the Utilities Ministry decides to censor the images,
they have to explain what their censorship policies are, and they must justify them by showing that society
benefits from them. For example, they could censor the images of
sexually titillating women on the grounds that the lonely and sexually
frustrated men are wasting their time and society's resources by
generating thousands of those images every day. In that case,
they censor images to force the men to do something more productive
with their lives, rather than censoring images to deceive people, or
to eliminate their competitors or critics.
We need an accurate utility map
Since the Economic Division is responsible for building the city, they
will know the location of everything that is underground, such as
drainage tunnels, sewers, transportation networks, electric power
lines, and other utilities. They will also know the location of every
structure on the surface of
the land, such as the apartment buildings, office buildings, factories,
bicycle paths, plazas, foot paths, ponds, swimming pools, ponds, and
canals.
Therefore, the Economic Division is required to maintain an accurate
map of everything
in the city, and keep it in the City
database so that everybody has easy access to all of the details of the
city. The Utility Ministry is responsible for the utility lines in that
map.
Although every nation already has these types of maps, they are
scattered around haphazardly, and some of them are inaccurate. For
example, a few years ago the electric power
company sent a team to replace a power line that was crossing under a
small, concrete lined creek at the end of my street. The map that
described the
power line said that it
was within a conduit, but after they turned off our power, cut the
electric power line, and began digging in the area, they discovered
there was no conduit. The
result was that it took them two days to
replace the power lines, which caused everybody's frozen food to become
warm.
The utilities are buried in my neighborhood, but the electric lines are
not
protected by metal or plastic conduit. Neither are the telephone
lines or water pipes. The wires and pipes are just buried in the dirt
about 1 meter deep,
mostly
under the sidewalk.
I began having trouble with my telephone line sometime
around 2007. It was a landline from Verizon, so I called Verizon, and
they discovered
that there was some type of corrosion or break in the cable a few
meters from my
house. They ran a temporary telephone cable through several of my
neighbors' yards, along their fences, and into my house, and said that
they
would fix the problem "soon".
It took about two years, and several phone calls before they finally
sent a crew to dig up the sidewalk and fix the problem. In the process
of digging up the telephone wire, they accidentally broke the water
pipe that went into my neighbor's home because that pipe was not
protected, and they didn't know it was there.
One of the people in my neighborhood dug a hole about a meter deep to
plant a tree next to the sidewalk, and they encountered the electric
power and telephone
wires for their street, but there was no conduit to protect them. It
was not under the sidewalk. It
was just luck that they did not cut through the wires.
A lot of people have accidentally cut through utility lines. The
democracies and free enterprise systems don't have authorities to
ensure that the government agencies and businesses are maintaining
accurate maps of utility lines, or whether they are installing the
utilities
correctly.
The Utility
Ministry must maintain an on-line map
of all
utilities rather than tell us to call before digging.
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Since there is no map to show us where utility lines are, there are
signs scattered throughout the USA to inform us to call
811 to find out if
there are
any utility lines in the area.
It is more efficient and sensible for the Utility Ministry to
maintain a on-line map on that shows the location and depth of all of
the utility lines.
It would be even more convenient if we could use our voice and a cell
phone to ask the city computer if there are any utilities in the area
that we are at. If the phone has a GPS receiver, the city computer
would know our exact location, and be able to respond to us with a
verbal answer, and display a map of the utility lines in the area.
Google has a map that allows us to view the terrain, streets,
wildfires, bike paths, automobile traffic, and air quality, but not
utility lines, underground transportation lines, limestone areas that
have potential sinkholes, or other potential dangers.
The US government declared
April as the "National Safe Digging Month" in order to encourage us to
be more aware of the underground utility lines, but that is as idiotic
as declaring October as the "National Pedophile Awareness Month" to
encourage
children to be more aware of pedophiles. Our government officials
should experiment with methods to reduce
and prevent problems, not
promote the buyer beware
attitude.
Transportation Ministry
The Transportation Ministry
is responsible for creating the businesses that manufacture, operate,
and maintain the transportation systems for the city, but they do not design any of the transportation
systems. Instead, the Neighborhoods Ministry is responsible for
designing the systems, and they post their requests for what they want.
This allows the Transportation Ministry to reject a request.
The three categories of transportation that a modern city is likely to
have, and which the Transportation Ministry is responsible for are:
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Trains for people and freight.
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Industrial boats,
canals, and harbors.
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Airports.
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The Transportation Ministry is not involved with the production of
vehicles for the use by
businesses, such as
tractors and forklifts, or for the recreational of citizens,
such as electric scooters, bicycles, and kayaks.
The Construction Ministry manages the businesses that handle difficult
construction tasks, such as digging tunnels for trains, so
the Transportation Ministry will have to occasionally request their
assistance. This allows the Construction Ministry to reject requests,
providing further checks and balances.
This constitution advocates the underground transportation system
described in this
previous document. in which the cars are small and autonomous.
( The
text-to-image and software doesn't
understand the concept, but the images
below might help you imagine it.)
 The image above would be
one of the capillary terminals,
although there would not be any plants growing in the
terminals.
The terminals in different neighborhoods would have different
architecture to prevent monotony, and to make it easier to recognize
the neighborhoods.
 The cars would also be
visually different according to their purpose so that we
could quickly
recognize which of them are made for one or two people; which are
designed to carry four or six people; and which are intended for
carrying lots of cargo.
Since the capillary terminals are accessible from elevators within
every neighborhood, we do not have to walk outside to get to one of the
terminals. Therefore, when we are traveling only to get from one
building to another, such as going from our home to work, a restaurant,
or a music concert, we do not need raincoats, umbrellas, rubber boots,
or any other type
of weather
protection.
This allows us to travel anywhere in the city while dressed for
work or social affairs.
A person would need weather protection only if he plans to go outdoors.
However, since the city provides umbrellas, raincoats, snowshoes, and
other types of
clothing and equipment for free, a person who wanted to take a walk
outside in the snow or rain could stop at one of those stores to pick
up a raincoat or a goose down jacket, and then go outside.
When he is finished being outdoors, he would give the equipment and
clothing back to the city, and get back onto the transportation system
in his ordinary clothing.
Although that situation would seem bizarre in a free enterprise system,
the city of Kastron is essentially a gigantic mansion. Every
neighborhood is analogous to a room in the mansion, and the
transportation system is analogous to hallways within the mansion.
Therefore, a person who picks up a raincoat or waterproof boots as he
leaves a subway station is analogous to a person in a mansion stopping
at a closet at the front door to pick up a raincoat or waterproof
boots, and then going outside. When he returns to the mansion, he puts
the raincoat or boots back into the closet.
In the image below, the people pick up and return winter coats as they
enter and exit the building.
 Other stores would have
bicycles, snowmobiles, sleds, volleyballs, and other recreational items
that people would borrow. We could borrow clothing and recreational
items from any of the stores
of the city, and at any time.
That option would not be possible in any existing nation because there
are
too many low-quality people, but by setting higher standards for the
people in Kastron, we would be able to share items without destroying
them, and we would put the dirty clothing and broken recreational items
in the
bins for cleaning or repair.
Some of the clothing items would not need to be cleaned after use, such
as the winter coats. Although many people today would be frightened to
wear a coat that several other people have worn without being cleaned,
that fear seems to be due to our fear of the unknown, not because there
is a danger to doing it.
Unless a person is so sloppy that he leaves mucus or food on the
jacket or in the pockets, wearing a "used" jacket is exposing us to
less
filth than sleeping in a hotel room, or traveling in an
airplane. Breathing the atmosphere also exposes us to a lot of
dangerous things.
We are already accustomed to sharing restaurant
chairs, tables, plates, and glasses, and children who grow up in a
culture in which certain clothing items are shared will not have a fear
of doing it. Of couse, until we actually experiment with this concept,
we cannot know for sure if we can do it. Our emotions might make us too
uncomfortable to share clothing without washing the items after every
use, which
would be a waste of time and resources.
If we cannot share clothing,
then everybody would have their own personal winter coat and
other items, and we could have a garment conveyor system
at the base of every apartment building to keep those items. As we
leave our apartment building, we take the items we want, and we return
the items to the conveyor system when we enter the building. That would
eliminate the need for everybody to have large closets in their home.
By making the conveyor systems voice-activated, we would request what
we want with our voice, and the conveyor system would recognize who we
are, and know which item to give us.
Factories Ministry
The Factories
Ministry is responsibility for creating the businesses that
require large or complex equipment and processes to produce items. In
the English language, these are often referred to as " heavy
industries". The
Economic President makes the arbitrary decisions about which items are
produced by the Factories Ministry, and which are produced by
the Manufacturing Ministry or other ministries.
As with all of the ministries in the Economic Division, the Factories
Ministry does not determine what
they manufacture, or the design
of the items that are
manufactured. The other divisions of the government make those
decisions and post requests for items to be
manufactured. For example, the Utilities Ministry needs large pipes for
water and
sewage, and they will request what they need from the Factories
Ministry.
The Factories Ministry is expected to pass judgment on whether the
requests are best for society. They must ignore what the public and
businesses want and try to reduce undesirable jobs to a minimum, and
avoid producing products that do not truly improve our lives. They also
do not have to be concerned about producing products for people and
businesses with different levels of income. Instead, they produce
products for the city.
For example, in a free enterprise system, the businesses that produce
machines for farmers must make them affordable to the farmers, and this
results in the businesses producing a wide variety of machines at
different prices. This requires a lot of factories to produce a wide
variety of machines, and it causes farmers to have machines that they
can afford but which are not the most productive for them.
Since this Constitution puts the farms under the control of the
government, it is idiotic to produce a variety of farming machines at
different prices. It is more sensible to produce only advanced
machines, including
autonomous and remote-controlled farming equipment.
Furthermore, it might be better to make some of the machines smaller so
that they can be mass-produced efficiently. For example, some of the
machines that plant seeds and harvest crops do so in strips that are 20
meters wide. Those giant machines are useful when a farmer must drive
the machine because it allows him to be more productive, but when the
machines are autonomous, they can run all day and night, so they don't
need to be so large.
Therefore, it might be more beneficial to make some of the machines
smaller so that they can be mass-produced on assembly lines that are
more automated, which reduces the undesirable factory jobs. Making the
machines smaller also results in the components being smaller and
lighter in weight, which makes it easier for people and machines to
perform maintenance on them. It is also faster and easier to transport
the smaller machines from one farm to another.
Instead of having a lot of humans operate giant machines to plant seeds
and harvest crops, we could have a lot of smaller, autonomous machines
do the work for us. The farmers would supervise the machines, rather
than drive them.
A small,
bucket wheel excavator
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Another method of reducing the undesirable jobs is to switch to
different types of machines, even if they are more expensive.
For example, if small bucket wheel excavators, as in the photo
to the right, can remove dirt faster than backhoes and other machines,
or if they are easier to automate, then they should be used instead,
even if they are more expensive.
The decision about which machine to use should be based on the effect
that has on human life, not on the expense of the machine.
One way to make that determination is to imagine that there are two
identical copies of a city, except that one city is using one type of
machine, and the other city is using another machine. We then compare
the cities to determine which city provides the people with the most
pleasant
lives.
For example, if the bucket wheel excavators are more expensive to build
and maintain than the backhoe machines, then the city with the bucket
wheel excavators will require more people to work in the manufacturing
and maintenance of the excavators. However, those jobs might be less
monotonous than operating backhoes, or the bucket wheel excavators
might accomplish the jobs much faster, in which case the people would
have a better life in the city with the bucket wheel excavators.
The goal should be to eliminate as much undesirable labor as possible,
and to provide as many people as possible with jobs that they enjoy. If
you are unfamiliar with the equipment and labor involved with moving
dirt in order to construct a building, here is a video
about moving 20 million cubic yards of dirt in South Carolina to create
a factory.
There are a lot of jobs that are being done by people
because developing a machine to do it would require a lot research and
development. In a free enterprise system, profit comes ahead of human
life, but this
constitution considers human life to be more important. Therefore, the
ministers can justify developing a machine if it reduces some
of the undesirable chores. For example, none of us want to spend our
life
picking avocados, removing weeds, or cleaning windows, so we should
develop machines to do
that.
Likewise, nobody enjoys trying to eliminate mice and rats from
our cities, and putting poison around the city is dangerous for humans
and animals. There are lots of businesses involved with developing and
manufacturing various types of traps, but despite all of the traps and
poisons, the rodents are everywhere in our cities.
Therefore, the ministers would be able to justify funding the
development of a
robot that can use infrared cameras to identify the
mice and rats, and then kill them with some type of projectile, laser,
or electric shock. After killing a rodent, it would pick it up with a
mechanical arm, drop it into a canister for disposal, and then search
for
the next rodent.
The ministers could also justify developing drones to eliminate the
excess
pigeons, sea gulls, and crows.
To avoid having projects rejected by the Factories Ministry, the
engineers can post proposals
rather than requests.
This allows the engineers to get constructive criticism without ruining
their reputation. For example, the Factories Ministry can provide
them with advice on how they can modify the item so that it uses
existing manufacturing facilities, or use existing components, or
reduce the number of undesirable jobs that are required to produce or
repair it.
One of the problems of a free enterprise system is that engineers are
designing products primarily to be visually titillating to the public,
and this results in items that are difficult to manufacture and repair.
For example, automobiles are designed so that almost every bolt is
hidden.
Likewise, washing machines, ovens, and refrigerators are
essentially smooth rectangles of steel sheets, which makes it difficult
to repair them.
Furthermore, the engineers don't care about using existing components,
and this has resulted in thousands of trivial variations of V-belt,
bolts, lightbulbs, fuses, batteries, battery chargers, camera
lenses, and other components. This results in excessive numbers of
factories and warehouses, and it adds a burden to the people involved
with maintenance.
The Factories Ministry is required to look for ways of reducing the
number of components, and to reduce maintenance labor. They are
expected
to help the engineers choose from existing components, even if the
component is
not ideal for the product.
They must also pressure the engineers into designing products that are
easy to manufacture and maintain, which will result in products having
a steampunk appearance. For example, the machine in the image below
could be an air cooling, heating, or filtering device for the entire
building, and placed in a
corner of a lounge room with all of its components exposed, rather than
hidden in a cramped utility room.
Although the exposed
components
would be upsetting to
people today, the children who grow up in that environment would regard
it as "normal", and some of the children would likely consider those
devices to be fascinating. By attaching a barcode to the items, the
children
could access information about how the machine works, and
what
is inside of it.
One of the reasons that
engineers are hiding mechanical devices and components is
to prevent irresponsible and mentally ill people from being injured by
the machines. However, this Constitution requires
raising standards for people. The government officials and engineers
must design the city, its culture, and the products for the City
Elders, not the people who are too mentally incompetent to be
responsible with modern technology or our modern social environment.
Research Ministry
The Research Ministry is
responsible for
operating the research laboratories, but they cannot determine what the
research programs are. Instead, they approve or reject requests for
research
from other ministries.
The ministers who propose
research programs that are regarded as
unrealistic or useless will hurt their reputation, and the ministers
who authorize
research projects that are later determined to be a waste
of labor and resources will do even more damage to their reputation.
For example, a minister who requests a
research project
to terraform Mars, or a project to sprinkle some white powder on the
moon to increase it brightness, should be regarded as incompetent, and
a minister who authorized
such projects should be considered even more
incompetent.
It might be sensible for the people in the distant future to
terraform Venus or increase the brightness of the moon, but we don't
have the technology for such projects.
Everybody has a different idea on which research programs are useful,
and the democracies and free enterprise systems give every business and
government agency the freedom to authorize whatever research program
they please. Everybody is
also free to conduct research programs in secrecy, and be deceptive
about them.
We will get more useful research projects when we let a government
agency make the arbitrary decisions about which project to authorize,
and when we eliminate secrecy and require the officials to post their
requests for projects, and explain their decisions.
The democracies and free enterprise systems gives us the research that
we want,
but
that is not necessarily the research that we benefit from. For example,
there has been lots of research into insecticides and herbicides, but
how beneficial has that been? The insects and diseases adapt to our
chemicals, which results in us poisoning ourselves and the Earth. We
might have benefited much more by putting all that technical
talent and resources into developing better farming techniques,
greenhouses, and methods of using nature to
control the pests.
There have also been research programs into developing supersonic passenger
jets, supersonic private
jets, giant yachts, space tourism,
and other "luxury" items, but the people who develop and produce those
products are wasting their life,
and the wealthy people who believe those luxuries are giving them a
better life than the rest of us are fooling themselves.
Physicists are also wasting enormous amounts of technical talent and
resources on atom smashers, "dark matter", " ultralight
dark matter", quarks,
and microscopic wormholes.
Their research projects never produce any useful knowledge or products,
and many of their theories are contradictory.
For example, they claim that
the universe has
been expanding from a single point for 13.8 billion years, and that it
has expanded to a radius of 46 billion light-years, which means that it
has been expanding faster
than the speed of light, which they claim is impossible.
It is acceptable for us to discuss
dark matter and wormholes, but funding a research program to find dark
matter or wormholes is as idiotic as funding a research program
to find a fountain of youth, unicorns, or heaven.
Scientists should investigate
the universe and discover
knowledge, not try to find evidence to support their fantasies, because
it is easy to find evidence
for a fantasy. For example, volcanoes could
be used as evidence that there really is a hell deep in the earth, and
that the evil people are living in extremely hot conditions.
Likewise, each of us can find evidence to suggest that we are experts
on raising children, marriage, abortion,
drugs, and Nazis.
The Research Ministry must pass judgment on which research programs to
authorize, and that requires they be able to make intelligent decisions
about what research will truly be beneficial to us.
These will be arbitrary
decisions, so we cannot expect people to agree on what the research
projects should be. Therefore, we must be very concerned about who
becomes a government official. We cannot behave like apathetic sheep
who become submissive to whoever gets into a leadership position.
Ministers must consider
the quality of life
Every existing culture refuses to acknowledge the evidence that our
genetic characteristics allow us to live for only a few decades. This
results in us putting a lot of resources into research
projects to prevent elderly people from suffering and dying from
dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and old age.
The scientists who are trying to prevent deterioration from old age,
and the businesses that are providing healthcare to the elderly people,
are not
helping many of the elderly people. Instead, they are causing a lot of
elderly people to suffer from surgeries,
chemotherapy, and drugs that have terrible side effects.
Furthermore, a lot of the family members and healthcare workers also
suffer because they have to deal with elderly people who have developed
irritating behavior as a result of brain damage,
pain, boredom, or loneliness.
 Every culture is
refusing to acknowledge that we start deteriorating
rapidly after the age of 50 or so, and that we will die a few decades
later.
Every culture is encouraging us to try to stop the death of
elderly people through drugs and surgeries. Every culture considers the
death of an elderly
person to be sad. Every culture is concerned with the quantity of years
that a person lives, rather than the quality
of his life.
Many cultures also promote the hypocritical
belief that we will go
to a wonderful heaven when we die, in which case they should welcome
death, but instead they consider death to be a sad event.
The only way for each generation to have a longer and healthier life is
to maintain a
database of everybody's life, and restrict
reproduction to the people whose ancestors have had the most
healthy and long lives.
That requires eliminating secrecy and collecting detailed data about
everybody's life. It also requires people who understand that a person
who lives longer than another person does not necessarily have a higher
quality body. His longer life
might instead be because he has a higher quality mind which allowed him
to make better decisions about his meals, alcohol consumption, physical
activities, and sleeping habits.
It is sensible to have some
research of the medical problems of elderly people, but most of our
technical talent should be restricted
to projects that will benefit children and younger adults. We must
acknowledge the evidence that elderly people have only a few more years
of life, and there is no point in wasting our resources in a futile
attempt to stop their rapid deterioration and death.
One of the purposes of the Research Council
in the World Government is to provide checks and balances for the
research programs of
the cities. Our emotions want us to put a lot of effort into preventing
the death of elderly people, but that is a waste of resources.
All of us would have had a much better life today if those resources
and technical talent had been put into researching nutrition,
allergies, lectins,
sugar, oxalic
acid, and other health issues. That type of research would allow us to
improve our health while we are young, which in turn will cause us to
be healthier when we are elderly.
These concepts also apply to the attempts to keep sickly fetuses and infants alive. We have such strong
cravings to take care of babies that we will go to extreme lengths to
perform surgery on fetuses, split Siamese twins, and give tremendous
medical care to an infant whose heart is outside of his rib cage. We
should be more concerned with the quality of everybody's life rather
than trying to save every creature from death.
It is sensible for animals to put a lot of effort into taking care of
their babies, but as our technology improves, it becomes increasingly
idiotic to for humans to do so. It causes every generation to have more
miserable, lonely people who hate themselves and are envious of healthy
people.
It makes sense to investigate Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis,
and other health problems, and it makes sense to investigate the
concept of controlling fusion, but after a certain number of decades without any success, we
should consider the possibility that we don't have enough knowledge to
solve those problems. We should reduce the labor and resources that are
going into those difficult tasks, and get involved with projects that
have a greater chance of success, and offer greater benefits.
There are some health issues that we can make progress with today, such
as improving the tests to determine which foods, pollen, and
other items
each of us is allergic to, which will allow all of us to reduce our
suffering from allergies.
We would also improve our lives by researching which medical problems
are inheritable and which are environmental, and using that
knowledge
to make better decisions about who should reproduce, and how to alter
our environment to improve our health. If we can figure out which
chemicals are harming our health, we will be able to improve the health
of everybody, including elderly people.
It is difficult to judge research
proposals
The people who request a research program are required to explain how
it will benefit the human race, and the Research Ministry can reject
proposals that they don't believe are beneficial enough. However, each
of us will come to different conclusions about which research programs
are beneficial.
For example, the editors at Popular
Mechanics believe that the project to find Noah's Ark is sensible
enough to promote
in their magazine. They also believe that it is sensible to promote
a television program from the History channel that investigated the claims
that the Skinwalker Ranch has been visited by space aliens, and that
there are ancient Native American rock formations that depict
" interdimensional portals".
In order to get more sensible research programs and documentaries, we
must do a better job of determining who is better at thinking.
The existing school systems consider a student to be superior to the
otherd if he excels in math and memorizing information, but that
doesn't tell us anything about the student's intelligence, honesty,
responsibility, or mental health.
In order to provide more useful analyses of a person's mind, we must
eliminate secrecy and maintain a database with details of everybody's
life. That will allow us to analyze what a person has done during his
life, and compare his behavior and achievements to that of other
people. This will allow us to pass judgment on who should find a
different job, who is qualified for leadership, and who is a potential
danger to society.
The staff at StudyFinds provides an example of people whose
intelligence is inadequate for journalism. They wrote this
summary of this
research document, and they gave it the title:
Indulging your sweet tooth could
lead to depression, surprising study reveals
The people who conducted the research did an analysis of the food
preferences of a group of British
adults, and they noticed that the people who ate the most sweet foods
were the most likely to have a problem with depression. The staff at
StudyFinds interpreted that observation as evidence that eating a lot
of sweet foods " could lead to
depression".
This is just one of many times that journalists have misinterpreted a
scientific document. In some cases it is because the journalists don't
have the knowledge or intelligence to understand the scientific report,
but in some cases it is because they deliberately distorted the
report in order to attract people to their document, or to promote a
particular product or concept.
No culture yet has any concern for whether information is accurate or
honest, but this constitution requires the people at StudyFinds to be
regarded as producing an invalid
analysis of a research document. They
would have to improve it or delete it, and they would have a failure
listed in their
database entry, which would increase the chances that they lose their
job as journalists.
The people at StudyFinds probably produced that inaccurate document
as a result of their resistance to the concept of genetics and
evolution. Specifically, they might want to blame depression on our diet, rather than on genetics. This is similar to how we
prefer to blame drug addiction on the people who sell drugs rather than consider that
the people who want the drugs have a defective body and/or
mind.
If it is true that people who eat a lot of sugar are more likely to be
suffering from depression, it is not because
the sugar caused them to
become depressed. Although it is conceivable that eating excessive
amounts of sugar can damage our brain in a manner that results in
depression, it is more likely that the reason people with depression
are eating a lot of sugar is because they are suffering from their
depression, and they have reacted to their misery by searching
for ways to
make themselves feel better, and one of the easiest, simplest, and
least expensive techniques is to titillate
ourselves with sweet foods.
This concept can be seen with alcoholics, hoarders, people who
get involved with risky sports, and people who are struggling to become
wealthy or famous.
Many alcoholics, for example, seem to be suffering from a
mysterious mental problem, such as bipolar disorder, but it is not
because the alcohol created the mental problem. Rather, they were
attracted to the alcohol because
of their mental problem. Although excessive alcohol consumption can damage
our brain, there is no evidence yet to make the claim that " drinking alcohol can lead to bipolar
disorder".
Likewise, all of the billionaires and famous Hollywood celebrities seem
to be suffering from mental disorders, but it would be incorrect to
claim that " Becoming wealthy
and famous can lead to mental illness".
Many of the Olympic athletes have ADHD or other mental problems, but it
would be incorrect to say that " Becoming
an Olympic athlete can lead to mental illness".
A lot of the Christian church officials seem to be homosexuals or
pedophiles, but it would be incorrect to make the statement that " Becoming a church official can lead
to homosexuality and pedophilia."
When I was a child, we were warned that we should not smoke marijuana
because that can cause us to get involved with other, more dangerous
drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. However, a more sensible explanation
for why many people who smoke marijuana also get involved with other
drugs is because they are suffering from a mental or physical disorder,
and when marijuana failed to stop their suffering, they experimented
with
other drugs.
To complicate this issue, the environment can cause us
to be miserable. For example, if a person with a healthy body were to
eat more sugar than his body can deal
with, he will suffer from
diabetes, just as if he had a defective pancreas. His high blood sugar
levels would cause him to feel miserable. In that case, his diabetes,
and his miserable feelings, would be environmental
rather than due to a genetic disorder, so he could fix the problem by
making better decisions about how to live.
When we are unhappy, we look for ways to make ourselves feel better,
but if we do not have a good understanding of these issues we might get
involved with worthless or detrimental activities. For example, a
person who is suffering from high blood sugar levels might react to his
misery by
titillating himself with sweet foods, thereby making his problem worse.
Or he might try to mask his misery with alcohol or other drugs, or
titillate himself with with pornography, shopping, or dangerous sports.
One of the easiest ways to make ourselves feel better is to titillate ourselves, such as imagine
that we
are important. This can result in a person believing that he is one of
the most talented, educated, and intelligent people, which will
make his life worse by causing him to become even more arrogant.
 A person
might also titillate himself by believing that he is a hero who is
protecting the world from sexists, racists,
anti-Semites, climate change deniers, pro- or anti-abortion people, or
meat eaters.
Those people can make their life worse by getting involved with
worthless or destructive activities, and by irritating other people
with their "heroic" behavior and lectures.
People who are perpetually unhappy
because of physical or mental disorders tend to waste their entire life
looking for happiness,
which can cause a lot of problems for themselves and other people.
The children who are unhappy are troublesome to parents and a bad
influence on other children because they don't want to be responsible,
do chores, learn, think, or work. They want to find relief from their
misery, which can result in them trying to titillate themselves with
food or obnoxious, risky, or dangerous activities.
The unhappy people can also disrupt the operation of organizations when
they become
disillusioned with them. For example, they might get involved with a
job or activity that they assume
will be exciting, but when they notice they are still miserable, they
quit and get involved with another job or activity, and then repeat the
process.
The unhappy people cause themselves and society even more trouble if
they assume that their misery is coming from other people,
corporations, foreign nations,
discrimination, racism, sexism, or poverty, and they react to that
false assumption by becoming angry
or violent with the people or
organizations that they assume are ruining their life.
Unhappy people are analogous to broken gears in a transmission, so we
need to
eliminate secrecy, observe everybody, and pass judgment on their mental
characteristics. Although nobody is perfect, we need to identify the
people with significant problems, and help them realize that
their problems coming from inside of them. That will help them deal
with their problem in a sensible manner, rather than searching for
happiness or becoming angry. It is detrimental
to ignore the unhappy people, feel sorry for them, or pander to them.
It is especially detrimental to let the unhappy people get into
influential positions. This is happening all around the world because
many unhappy people make the mistake of assuming that they will enjoy
life if they can become wealthy and famous, and so they struggle, and
often cheat,
to achieve their goal of becoming a government official, Hollywood
celebrity, or billionaire.
Some of the unhappy people make the mistake of assuming that they can
find excitement through unusual sex acts, such as sex
with children, orgies, sex with animals, and sex that has been enhanced
with drugs such as amil nitrate.
It is unpleasant to tell somebody that he seems to be suffering from
some type of problem that is causing him to be perpetually
miserable, and that he must find a way to deal with his misery in a
sensible
manner, but we must do it. It
is idiotic to allow the unhappy people to torment themselves and the
rest of us. If they cannot deal with their problems in a sensible
manner, they need to be put on restrictions or evicted.
We also need to pass judgment on who is doing their job properly. It is
unpleasant for us to tell somebody that he doesn't have the
mental or physical characteristics necessary to be a journalist,
scientist,
government official, engineer, farmer, technician, factory worker,
doctor, or whatever job
he wants, but we must create a
functional team. That requires ensuring
that everybody is taking a job that they can do properly.
The people who cannot accept their particular limitations, take a job
that they can do properly, and become productive team members, are like
dirt in a transmission. They must be evicted.
It is idiotic to let crude
people degrade
our lives. Everybody must be able to accept what they are, and without
being envious, angry, or bitter.
Food Ministry
The Food Ministry is responsible for
creating the farms, ranches, fishing operations, food processing
businesses, and food distribution businesses, and selecting the
executives to operate those businesses.
Each executive is responsible for managing his particular food related
business, but the executives cannot
decide which foods to
produce, or the quantity. The Food Minister tells them what to produce,
but he doesn't make that decision, either. Instead, the Meals Minister
in the Health Division decides what type of foods to produce in order
to provide people with a variety of healthy meals.
The Meals Minister sends his requests to the Food Minister, and the
Food Minister either fulfills the request, or complains that he does
not have the appropriate equipment or farms, or that he considers the
request to be unnecessary or stupid. If the ministers have trouble
compromising on what to do, the presidents must resolve the issue.
The Meals Minister determines the quantities of the foods that the
farmers to produce according to the
city's historical consumption of food. This allows the city to
produce only as much food as needed, thereby reducing wasted food,
labor, and resources.
It will be practical for the Meals Ministry to request specific
quantities of each food item because the city population is held at a
certain level, and because all of the food is delivered to restaurants rather than to stores
that provide food to individual citizens to take home to their own
kitchens. Since the restaurants are encouraged to plan their meals
ahead of time, like the restaurants at a retirement center or a Navy
submarine, they are able to provide meals without wasting food.
A small amount of food is delivered to stores that provide the citizens
with
food for picnics, but the
Meals Ministry can require people to make arrangements for picnics at
least a day in advance, so they will know how much food to deliver to
the picnic stores.
In addition to providing food for people, the Food Ministry creates the
businesses that provide food for the animals in the city, such as
the animals on the farms and in research laboratories. However, they
can make the decisions about which foods to produce for the animals,
and the quantity.
Fresh foods are delivered when needed
Some foods are available fresh only certain times of the year, such as
apricots and cranberries, and some foods are so difficult to produce
that we cannot depend upon a consistent quantity, such as certain types
of mushrooms.
Since the Food Ministry must produce only as much food as necessary,
they must maintain a database of the foods that are available, and
which should be available during the next few days or weeks, so that
the restaurants can plan their meals ahead of time
by at least a few days.
For example, when the farmers are getting ready to harvest apricots,
the Food Ministry will edit the entry of apricots to show that there
will be a particular amount available during the next few days. That
will allow the restaurants that
serve fresh fruits to plan their use of apricots several days in
advance, and arrange for a certain quantity to be distributed to them
on the days that they want them.
The restaurants that serve fresh fruits are prohibited from offering
menus, and they must require customers to make reservations at least a
day ahead of time so that the farms know exactly how much food to
distribute to those restaurants. That will allow their customers to
have fresh fruits
without any waste. It is similar to the just-in-time or " lean
manufacturing" concept that some factories follow.
People can make reservations at a restaurant through a phone or
computer, and
eventually by telling a robot. The reservations would go to the City database so
that all of the restaurants and people have access to them. There is no
secrecy, so everybody will be able to see who has reservations at which
restaurants, and what the restaurants are going to be serving. That
creates an environment that is similar to that of a large family in
which everybody what types and quantities of foods are in the kitchen.
Although allowing some restaurants to require reservations at least a
day in advance will put a limitation on our freedom to do as we please,
it provides benefits that outweigh the disadvantages.
The people who don't have the ability to choose a restaurant one day in
advance can choose a restaurant that doesn't require reservations.
We should also consider that the people who cannot make a reservation
for a restaurant
one day in advance should be regarded as too crude for our modern era,
in which case they would not qualify as a City Elder. Those people are
analogous to people who we invite to dinner the next evening, and they complain that
they cannot make dinner plans so far
in the future.
Farmers are not responsible for natural disasters
In a free enterprise system, a farmer can suffer tremendous financial
problems from natural
disasters, such as droughts, aphids, hailstorms, and excessive rain.
This concern causes a lot of farmers to use pesticides,
herbicides, vaccines, and antibiotics to reduce the destruction of
their plants and animals. It also results in farmers paying a lot
of money for insurance.
To improve this situation, this Constitution regards the executives of
the farms, ranches,
and other food
related businesses as employees of
the city, and no
employee is responsible for natural disasters.
If a farm has a crop failure because of the farmer's ignorance or
incompetence, then he risks being fired, or demoted to an apprentice,
but if a crop fails for reasons beyond his control, such as a
hailstorm, he is not
responsible.
Human health is more important than
profit
This constitution gives human health a higher priority than profit.
Therefore, the Food Minister is required to ensure that the farmers
are using the minimum possible amount of poisons and antibiotics. The
Food Minister is permitted to risk natural disasters in order to make
the foods
healthier.
This can result in occasional reductions in food production, but we
should accept that as a side effect of living on the Earth, rather than
react
by increasing the pesticides and antibiotics. If the natural disaster
creates such a severe reduction
that there is a shortage of a particular food product, there will be
plenty of other foods. We will not
become hungry. Our modern technology gives us the ability to store
foods in warehouses and freezers, and we can import foods from other
cities.
Farmers in the free enterprise systems are using lots of pesticides and
other chemicals because of the fear of financial problems, not because
we will go hungry if there are natural disasters. To rephrase that
concept, all of the nations are poisoning their food supply
because of their free enterprise system,
not because we are in
desperate need for food.
Every nation is also wasting a
lot of food by giving
people the freedom to make their own meals, and by making restaurants
pander to consumers rather than plan meals ahead of time. Centuries ago
the free enterprise system was a sensible way of producing food, but
today it is extremely inefficient, and it is causing the destruction of
the environment and the breeding of insects into poison-resistant
creatures.
The Food Minister cannot
pander to the public
One of the responsibilities of the Food Minister is to reject requests
for foods that have no
value to us, or which are potentially unhealthy. For example, the
yellow food dye, tartrazine,
is prohibited in some nations because some
people have allergic reactions to it, and scientists are still not sure
about its effect on our health. However, the US government is more
concerned with pandering to businesses and citizens than in maintaining
health and ensuring products have some value to us.
The Food Minister, by comparison, is required to ignore the desires of
businesses and
citizens, and make decisions that
are best for society. This allows them to reject requests for foods
that people want but have no
value to
us.
For example, if there is a type of margarine that is a healthy
alternative to butter, there is no benefit to adding a yellow dye to it
to make it look similar to butter. The reason businesses are putting
yellow dye into margarine is because humans are still so similar to
animals that we are frightened of anything that is different from what
we are accustomed to, and businesses in a free enterprise system pander
to the desires and fears of customers, rather than provide guidance.
The Food Ministry is required to ignore what the public likes and
dislikes, and make decisions that are best for society. For an example
of what they could do, they could restrict food coloring agents to
those
that have a lot of evidence for being safe, and restrict them
for making decorative meals,
rather than to pander to the fears of consumers.
Restaurants Ministry
The Restaurants Ministry
supervises all
of the
restaurants. Each restaurant is an
independent business, and there is one executive in control of
each restaurant. Each restaurant belongs to the city, and
everybody who works at a restaurant is a city employee.
This Ministry selects an executive for each restaurant, and the
executive selects his employees. As robots become more advanced, the
executive
will be able to select from the available robots, also.
Restaurants must be available every day, but nobody has to work every
day, so a lot of the employees and executives will work on a part-time
basis. Some people might choose to work only one evening a month, and
there might be some people who want to work only during certain
holidays.
It would be difficult in a free enterprise system for people to work
only one day a month at a restaurant, but this Constitution requires
the ministers to look for ways of providing as many people as possible
with jobs that they enjoy doing. Therefore, people can take part-time
jobs that are as seldom as one day a month, or only during holidays.
The concept of a person working at a restaurant one day a month is
similar to how parents allow one of their children to help with the
meals once in a while, but they do not require him to do so on a
full-time basis.
A free enterprise system gives everybody the freedom to set up a chain of restaurants that are
virtually identical in appearance and food products, but the
Restaurants
Ministry is the only group authorized to create restaurants, and they
are required to make each restaurant unique. The
executive of a restaurant can operate only the restaurant he is
assigned to. He
cannot create or supervise additional restaurants.
The executives who work full-time at a restaurant will
choose the decorations and ambiance for their restaurant,
whereas those who work part-time must share a restaurant that the
full-time executive has decorated. If a particular restaurant doesn't
have any full-time executives, and all of them are part-time, then the
Restaurant Ministry will choose the decorations for the restaurant.
The concept of businesses sharing buildings and
equipment is described in more detail here,
and in some previous documents,
such as this.
Since the city has a fixed population, the city will have a
fixed number of restaurants. Therefore, a person who wants to become a
restaurant executive must apply for the job, and he must wait
for an executive to quit or be replaced.
When a person is hired to be a restaurant executive, he can continue
providing the meals that the previous executive was
providing, or he could ask the Meals Minister if he can produce a
different type of meal.
If the Meals Minister believes that there are already enough
restaurants producing the type of meal that an executive wants to
create, then the executive has to either
wait for one of those
restaurants to become available, or he has to produce some other type
of meal.
The Meals Minister must ensure that the restaurants are providing a
variety of meals. This requires him to tell the restaurant executives
what type of meals they can chose to produce, rather than give the
executives
the freedom to produce whatever meals they please. For example, there
might be a
lot more people who want to operate a pizza restaurant than the city
needs.
In a free enterprise system, the people who want to operate a pizza
restaurant have to compete with one another for customers, and they
drive
the excess businesses to bankruptcy, which is wasteful and creates an
unpleasant environment.
The Meals Ministry can improve upon this by making the people who want
to become pizza executives wait until one of the existing pizza
executives is fired or quits.
Each executive has the freedom to operate his restaurant has he
pleases, but he must follow the guidelines for meals that are set by
the Meals Ministry. Furthermore, the Dining Ministry can prevent him
from
having activities that they disapprove of. For example, if the Dining
Ministry considers Wet T-shirt Contests or Food
Eating Contests to be unacceptable, then the restaurant executives
cannot offer those activities.
None of the executives own anything in the restaurant. The city owns
all
of the land, structures, refrigerators, freezers, ovens, and furniture.
The full-time executives can choose their furnishings and decorations
from the
warehouses that the city provides for the restaurants, and they can
also get
decorations from the arts and crafts clubs. If they decide they no
longer want some furniture or decoration, they give it back to the city.
One of
the purposes of forcing people to eat at restaurants rather than
their home is to provide people with healthy meals in an efficient
manner. Therefore, the restaurant executives are judged according to
their effect
on society, not according to how many customers they attract.
Unlike a free enterprise system, the executive of a restaurant does not need a lot
of customers. He only has to provide healthy meals in an efficient
manner. He must fill his restaurant with customers so that he does not
waste the dining room, so
if he can only attract a few dozen people, then he is given a small
restaurant.
If an executive can
attract only 20 customers one evening
each month, he would be restricted to operating a restaurant one
evening a month to serve those 20
customers.
All of the restaurants must follow the guidelines
for meals that the Meals Ministry has set, so none of them will
be able to use "tricks" to
attract customers, such as by using a lot of sugar or MSG.
The Restaurants Ministry must
regularly replace the worst performing executives so that
other people can have the opportunity to test their talents.
The Restaurants Ministry must collect information on the meals
so that they know how much of each type of food is used by the city
throughout the year,
and they use that information to work with the Meals Ministry of the Health Division, and with the Food
Ministry of the Economic
Division, to plan the foods and quantities for the farms to produce.
They also keep track of how much food the restaurants waste, and why it is wasted,
and look for ways to reduce the waste.
Maintenance Ministry
The Maintenance Ministry
is responsible for all of the janitorial and
maintenance requirements for the city.
Although everybody is expected to clean up after themselves, a city
will always become dirty and need maintenance, and the Maintenance
Ministry is
responsible for all of the cleaning and maintenance chores that other
ministries are not handling:
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Trash
They manage all of the trash collection operations,
recycling operations, sewage operations, and toxic trash from
hospitals, factories,
and research laboratories. They also determine the policies for
trash, such as how organizations and citizens must separate their
trash.
The citizens are required to meet high standards, so this Ministry can
require people do a better job of separating trash than what is
possible in a nation with lots
of irresponsible, mentally ill, and stupid people, such
as requiring citizens to put the used batteries in a trash container
that is restricted to batteries; the broken lightbulbs in a container
for lightbulbs; and the broken memory cards and other electronics in a
container for electronics.
Since all of the material wealth is free, people will not be purchasing
items on a routine basis, so nobody will have to continuously dispose
of packing materials and broken items. And since everybody gets their
meals from restaurants, there will be no food waste or food packaging
to dispose of.
There will be very little trash coming out of people's homes, so it
will be easy for people to do a better job of separating the small
amount of trash that they produce.
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Maintenance
of public items
Since all of the material items are free, the Maintenance Ministry
handles the cleaning and maintenance of all of the free items, such as
the cameras, computers, phones, drones, bicycles, rowboats,
snowmobiles, and school equipment.
They maintain and clean all of the apartment buildings, office
buildings, windows,
elevators, escalators, public
bathrooms, restaurant equipment, city plazas, swimming pools,
recreational facilities, schools, bicycle paths, and walkways.
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Gardening
They are responsible for maintaining all of the parks and
gardens, the gardening equipment, and all of the vegetation, trees,
creeks, ponds, fountains, and other
things in the city parks. |
The Maintenance Minister is judged
according to how well he can find ways to
reduce the undesirable labor needed for this Ministry. His goal is to
maintain
the city with the least amount of labor and resources as possible.
Although the Maintenance Ministry cannot redesign the city, they should
provide suggestions on how do redesign the public bathrooms, windows,
factories, office buildings, and other structures to make them easier
to clean and maintain. They can also make suggestions on how to improve
mops, vacuum cleaners, and other equipment that they use for
maintenance.
They can also post requests for what they
want. For example, they can post a request to develop a robot that can
deliver new batteries and lightbulbs to homes and organizations, and
take the used items to recycling centers, in order to prevent people
from having to deal with that chore.
If the Products Ministry considers such a robot to be a sensible
project for the city, they would develop a proposal to develop that
robot. The Research Ministry would then decide whether they have the
labor and resources to do it, or whether the proposal should be
modified.
The computer programmers in the Research Ministry might
reject the proposal and recommend that it be modified so that all of
the batteries and lightbulbs can be given barcodes so that the robots
can more easily identify them. They might also recommend that the
lightbulbs and batteries be redesigned to have certain shapes to make
it easier for robots to pick them up, or easier for the recycling
centers to process.
By making all of the ministries posts requests for what they want, and
giving all of them the option to reject requests, the ministries are
forced to analyze one another's suggestions and complaints, and
compromise on projects. The ministries will be competing to improve the city, rather than appease consumers. This
will give us better leadership, which in turn will give us better
products, software, recreational activities, holiday celebrations, and
other culture.
For another example, the
Maintenance Ministry can reject the proposals for autonomous
lawnmowers that mow randomly, and suggest that the mowers operate
similar to
CNC machines. A CNC lawnmower would allow the maintenance employees to
mow lawns simply by identifying the boundary of the area to mow, and
the mower would mow the grass in a much more efficient manner than the
random mowers.
A fleet of CNC lawnmowers, edge trimmers, weed pullers, and
other
gardening devices could start operating late at night, and stop early
in the morning, to avoid bothering people. They would be high quality
machines that are quiet.
The CNC lawnmowers
would mulch the grass clippings rather than
discard them in the trash. Eventually the lawnmowers could be given
cameras
and arms so
that they can
pick up and move objects in the grass.
I wrote
in 2009 that I would create a video to show how easy it is to define an
area
for a CNC
lawnmower, and I finally found the motivation to do it. Here it is.
That video shows the concept of drawing a boundary around an area to
mow, and
specifying "islands" within that area to avoid. That concept also
applies to the
weed removal robots. Specifically, we would create a boundary that
shows the robots where to remove weeds, and within that area we draw a
boundary around the plants and trees that we want the robot to
treat as "islands" to ignore. The robot would then remove the
weeds within the boundary while ignoring everything in the islands.
By providing the weed
removal robots with a database
of photos of plants, they would be able to identify the
plants to remove. That would allow them to travel around the city and
remove certain plants from the flowerbeds without destroying the
flowers.
 Larger, more powerful
robots could remove the small trees and branches that are outside of
the boundary that was specified for each of the trees.
A smaller, or different
type of robot, could remove the weeds or trim
the plants within the islands.
This concept is being used with CNC
milling machines and wood routers. Specifically, a large tool is used
to remove large amounts of material quickly, and then the machine
switches to a smaller tool to do the more delicate work.
Construction Ministry
The Construction Ministry
is responsible for creating and renovating
all of the structures in the city. After a city has been built, this
ministry won't have many construction projects because the city is
not permitted to grow in population, but they will have to occasionally
replace, renovate, and fix the damaged or old
structures, and update structures to fit changes in technology and
culture. Some of the structures that they are responsible for are:
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Train
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Apartments,
offices, factories, restaurants, warehouses, farms, and greenhouses.
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Paths
and storage areas for recreational vehicles, such as bicycles and small
electric vehicles.
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Parks,
gardens, swimming pools, and animal parks.
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Facilities
for pedestrians, such as plazas, foot paths, bridges, and moving
walkways.
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Large,
autonomous machines would make it easier to build new cities.
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The section that described the Factories Ministry pointed out
that it
might be
beneficial to reduce the size of some farming machines, but with some
of the
earthmoving equipment, the opposite might be true.
Specifically, it might
be useful to have some gigantic
earthmoving machines so that the
machines have the size and strength to move large rocks and hard dirt.
The earthmoving equipment should also be automated as much as possible.
Instead of having people drive bulldozers, backhoes, and dump trucks,
the ministers should fund the development of CNC machines that can run
autonomously and by remote control.
A person should be able to draw a map to show where to dig a foundation
for a building, and the excavating
machine should do the digging by itself.
The excavating machines would fill autonomous dump trucks, which
would dump the dirt wherever the person specified, such as to create
some
artificial hills in the city parks, or to create artificial hills on
the outside of the city to reduce the wind
blowing through the city.
The Standards Council restricts a lot of radio
frequencies for the control of
autonomous machines and robots so that the machines can have higher
powered radio transmitters to allow them to be operated at a greater
distance than what is possible in the world today.
That will allow people to control and monitor the autonomous excavating
and other machines from be comfortable office building, rather than in
a portable container that is located near the construction zone.
We should not compete to have the tallest
building
One of the responsibilities of the Construction Ministry is to provide
some checks and balances on the Neighborhoods Ministry and other people
who are involved with designing the city's buildings, transportation
systems, parks, and other facilities.
One of the problems that is occurring in the world today, and which the
Construction Ministry can help to prevent, is the competition to have
the tallest
building. That is a detrimental
competition because those extremely tall buildings are a waste of our
resources, and nobody benefits from them.
That competition is as wasteful and idiotic as calculating the largest
Mersenne prime number. Luke Durrant spent
about $2 million of his own money to set the world record, but that was
not truly "his" money. He spent our money to
calculate that prime number, and we did not benefit
from it.
Nobody is truly an individual who is making "his" own money. We are a
member of a team, and the people
with more money are simply taking more from the team.
Whether it is sensible or fair to allow some people to take more wealth
is an
arbitrary decision, not a right or wrong issue.
The people who are capable of making more money in a free enterprise
system believe that they deserve more money, but their ability to make
money comes from their genetics, and not necessarily beneficial
genetics. Some of them are anti-social, neurotic, or dishonest.
A person who inherited low-quality genetics, or less of a desire to
make money, doesn't deserve less money than other people, unless we
want to make that arbitrary decision. This constitution promotes the
philosophy that all people deserve to be treated equally.
Rather than create classes of people with different levels of material
wealth, we should restrict reproduction so that each generation has
fewer people that are unable to contribute equally, or who demand
special treatment.
Construction projects must
be beneficial to society
The Construction Ministry is required to authorize only the projects
that are beneficial to society.
They cannot authorize a project simply to set a world record, or to
appease some business or individual.
Most buildings should have more
than one floor so that there is a lot of land available for swimming
pools, parks, plazas, bicycle and
foot paths, and creeks, as in the image
below, but the Construction Ministry must make intelligent decisions
about when a building is so tall that it's disadvantages outweigh the
benefits.
The Construction Ministry
must judge construction projects according to the benefit to the lives
of the people, not according to what we find emotionally titillating.
This requires passing
judgment on how easy it is for people and furniture to get into and out
of a building; what the view will be like from the windows; how easy
the building is to maintain; and how long its life will be.
The text-to-image software
creates unrealistic cities, but these images might help you
understand the concept of a city that consists of neighborhoods of tall
buildings that
are surrounded by nature.
This type of city will be
very quiet and clean because the transportation system is underground.
It will provide us with easy access to nature, and since every
neighborhood must be unique, we will have a wide variety of visually
different buildings, parks, plazas, foot paths, bicycle paths,
and swimming areas.
Furthermore, by putting the transportation systems
underground, we would be able to enjoy
the snow and ice during the winter, rather than suffer injuries and deaths.
By putting the utilities underground, we don't have to fear having our
electricity cut
off during storms, or being electrocuted
by broken electrical cables.
By providing the city with lots of elevated
foot paths, we would be
able to walk through the parks and
over the icy ponds and creeks without ruining the beautiful display of
snow and ice on the ground.
 The paths could be made of expanded
metal so that autonomous snow removal machines could drive along
the paths to push the snow through the holes, which puts it under the path rather than around
the path. At other times of the year, the expanded metal would allow
the rain and sunlight to pass through to the grass, bushes and trees
below.
Mining Ministry
The Mining Ministry is
responsible for operating whatever mining operations the city has, such
as mining coal, iron ore, or natural gas. If a city doesn't have any
significant natural resources, then this ministry could be eliminated,
and the few mining operations could be given to the Utilities Ministry
or the Chemicals Ministry.
The ministers are required to support the development of machines to do
as much of the mining and processing as possible so that people don't
have to work in the mines. Also, the machines would be able to remove
more of the ore, and get into areas that are too hot or dangerous for
people.
Chemicals Ministry
The Chemicals Ministry is
responsible for producing all of the chemicals that the city needs,
such as gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, acids, baking powder, plastics,
clothing dies, and paints.
Software Ministry
The Software Ministry
produces all of the software that is so complicated that it requires
teams of people, such as the software to operate the trains, robots,
airport, telephones, CNC machines, and security cameras. They also
create all of the software that people use.
Many people use
inappropriate software
All adults are able to understand the concept that hammers,
screwdrivers, crescent wrenches, and other simple tools are useful for
certain operations but not others. As a result, everybody selects a
tool that was designed for the particular problem that are trying to
solve. For example, a person does not
use a screwdriver to remove a hex
bolt.
However, a lot of people have trouble understanding how this concept
applies to computer software. For example, a CNC machine tool dealer
told me that there have been many times when he showed a customer of
his machines how the MillWrite software can allow him to do certain
tasks much faster and easier than the software that they were currently
using, such as Mastercam, SolidWorks, and Fusion 360. His customers
often had trouble understanding that those CAD/CAM systems were
designed for complex 3D surfaces, and that it was frequently much easier and
faster to
use MillWrite when they were creating
2D shapes or engraving a part number.
The machinists also put up resistance to using MillWrite because they
spent a lot of time and effort learning those complex 3D
CAD/CAM systems, and they did not want to learn another system, even
though MillWrite is much easier to learn. Therefore, they would often
waste a lot of the company's time doing a job that could have been done
much faster if they had been more willing to learn a new skill and
choose the appropriate software. However, like most employees, they did
not care about wasting time. They were doing the job for money, not because they enjoyed it,
or because they wanted to contribute something of value to society.
Software must have honest descriptions
In a free enterprise system, one reason that people have trouble
choosing appropriate software for a particular task is because
businesses
tend to deceive customers into believing that their software is so
versatile that they don't need anything else. Businesses resist
identifying the limitations of their products, and they especially
resist identifying which of their competitors has a product that is
better suited to certain tasks.
This constitution changes that situation dramatically. All of the
products belong to the city,
not to any of the businesses. Therefore,
all of the descriptions of the products must be designed according to
what is best for the city.
Every product description must be an
accurate and honest description of what the product was designed for,
and some products should identify the products that are better suited
to
certain tasks. For example, a description of SolidWorks might look like
this:
SolidWorks CAD/CAM software
Purpose:
• Creating 3D objects
and surfaces.
• Producing CNC programs for 3 to 5 axis milling machines.
• Producing STL files for 3D printers.
• ... etc. ...
Limitations:
It is not intended
for architectural drawings, engraving, inlays, stamps, staircases,
chain sprockets, or two-dimensional machining. For those tasks,
consider using ...
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Businesses cannot claim to have "the best" of something
In free enterprise systems and democracies, businesses and citizens are
constantly competing to have "the best" of something. For
example, the people who create the rules for soccer boast
that they have
the best recreational activity; a lot of citizens and restaurants boast
that they have the best recipe for pizza or chocolate cake; and
many software businesses
boast that they have the best software.
The attitude that certain things are
"the best" is a destructive attitude because it prevents us from
enjoying
the variety of life, and it can prevent us from using the appropriate
tool for a particular task.
For example, if a person believes that a certain
tool is the best, he might end up using that tool for a
task that some other tool would be more appropriate and efficient. That
will result in him wasting his time, and possibly causing himself
unnecessary frustration and confusion, and possibly break the item or
the tool.
Instead of businesses competing to produce "the best" software, they
must create
different variations of software for different purposes.
For example, there are several businesses producing text-to-image
software, and each of them creates slightly
different images from the
same text prompt. Instead of competing to create "the best"
text-to-image
software, a more
sensible and productive attitude is for them to create different
variations of the text-to-image software so that we can create
different types of images.
The NightCafe software provides us with the option of choosing a
"model"
and a "style". We could take this attitude even further by making some
text-to-image software specialized for specific tasks. For example:
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One business could
create a variation that creates images that
follow the rules of physics so
that the images are realistic enough to be used for designing swimming
pools, chairs, tables, and doors.
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Another business
could create a variation that is more artistic
in order
to give us ideas that we would otherwise never have imagined, and which
we could use for decorative artwork.
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Another business
could create a variation that creates images of the past, rather than
the
present or the future, for historians
who want images of medieval life,
dinosaurs, and prehistoric tribes for historical documents and videos.
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Robots should have emotions
There are some fictional movies and books in which robots are given
emotions that results in them developing a hatred of humans, but we
should not be
afraid of designing robots with emotions. Instead, we should look at
nature and give robots the emotions that have been beneficial to
animals
and humans. For example:
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Robots should be lazy.
Animals have an
inherent laziness that causes us to look for ways to do
tasks in an efficient manner. Therefore, by designing robots to be
"lazy", they would analyze their tasks and look for a way to do it by
moving fewer of their arm and leg components, and using less energy and
time. This will allow them to find a way to accomplish the task with
less time, movement, and energy.
For example, one of the PBS documentary (Episode 2 of
Nature's Great Race) shows caribou migrating in Alaska during
the winter. Since it is difficult to walk through deep snow, they
follow the path of the caribou in front of them, but the caribou do not
understand that they are being efficient. Rather, they notice that when
they walk along the path of another caribou, their muscles are not
bothering them as much.
Animals are designed to avoid physical exertion, so our muscles send us
an unpleasant emotional feeling when we use them, and the more work we
do, the more unpleasant that feeling is. This causes us to look for
ways to accomplish a task with the least amount of physical effort.
Likewise, when birds are flying, they notice that they can keep up
with the other birds with less muscular irritation when they are in
certain locations. This results in them frequently forming a "V"
formation, but they have no
understanding of what they are doing. They are simply looking for a way
to reduce their physical effort. That formation also allows them to see
the other birds without colliding with them.
By designing robots to notice when they are using less energy and time,
they can also become more efficient in their tasks.
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Robots should dislike noises.
By having the robots keep track of the noise that they and other
machines make, they will notice when their own components, or another
machine, is making more or different types of noises, which would let
them know that they or the other machine needs to be serviced. By also
designing robots with
stereo microphones that can identify the location of a sound, they
would help the
technicians figure out which component needs servicing. Thermal cameras
would also be beneficial.
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Robots should have a slight OCD problem.
By having robots
"like" items that are arranged in geometric patterns
rather than scattered randomly, they will want to arrange items on
shelves in a orderly fashion, rather than at random. They will also
want to pick objects up that have fallen onto the floor and put them
where they belong. Eventually robots will be able to sense odors in the
air, which will help them identify items that are starting to overheat
or leak.
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Robots should feel pain.
By attaching
pressure and temperature sensors all around a robot, it will become
aware of when it is touching something, and whether it is near
something that is hot or cold. The information from those sensors would
allow a robot to "feel pain".
For example, when it was touching something hot, or when the pressure
sensors registered a high pressure, it could react quickly, as if it
was in pain, by trying to figure out what it is in contact with, and
what to do to protect itself.
By comparison, when it sensed something that was not dangerous, such as a human hand
or the leaves from a bush, it would not "feel pain", so instead of
reacting quickly, it would analyze the situation to determine if it
needs to do anything.
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Manufacturing Ministry
The Manufacturing Ministry
produces most of the material items in the city. One of their
responsibilities is to pass judgment on whether they are requested to
produce a product that is truly beneficial to us.
For example, if the Products Ministry requests the production of some
mechanical wrist or pocket watches, the Manufacturing Ministry should
pass judgment on whether the benefits of mechanical watches outweigh
the disadvantages of producing and maintaining them.
The Manufacturing Ministry is also expected to pass judgment on when
they are producing an excessive number of variations of a product. For
example, it is beneficial to produce a variety of bicycles of different
sizes and types so that people of different ages and physical abilities
can find a bicycle that is comfortable, and fits the type of recreation
they want.
It is also beneficial to produce a variety of different types of
clothing items and furniture so that everybody can find items that fit
their particular body, and to provide some artistic variety in order to
prevent monotony.
However, we do not
benefit by producing hundreds of trivial variations
of garlic presses,
laundry detergents,
V-belts, vacuum cleaners, and other devices that are tools rather
than artistic or personal items. Therefore, the Manufacturing
Ministry should be finicky about producing additional variations of
tools.
The Manufacturing
Ministry can be more generous with artistic and personal items, but
they need to pass judgment on when they are producing excessive amounts
of those items. For example, in the free enterprise systems,
there are a lot of business involved with producing plants and
flowers for people to give as gifts, but according to several surveys,
those are the most unwanted
gifts.
Producing those flowers and plants requires a lot of greenhouses, land,
fertilizer, and other resources, and a lot of labor and resources to
pick, package, and
ship them around the world. The Manufacturing Ministry must pass
judgment on whether the benefits of a product compensate for the labor
and resources involved with producing, shipping, and recycling it.
The Manufacturing Ministry must also consider who benefits
from the product. Their primary concern is improving the lives of the
City Elders. For example, it is unlikely that the City
Elders will benefit from mechanical
wristwatches or chicken
flavored lickable
wrapping paper.
Manufacturing should occur
in tall buildings
Aside from a few cities, such as Hong Kong and Manhattan, manufacturing
tends to occur in buildings that have only one floor, which requires
them to consume a large area of land, which in turn causes the city to
be spread out over a large area, which in turn requires people spend a
lot of time traveling to get to and from their jobs.
As discussed in the section about the Construction Ministry, in order
to provide more land for the people, and to reduce transportation time,
the Economic Division must design the factory neighborhoods as clusters
of tall buildings.
The businesses that need heavy equipment or produce
heavy products are put in the basements and the ground floor, and the
products that are lighter in weight and can be produced with
lightweight equipment are at the higher levels. The tops of the
buildings would have the offices, restaurants, and lounge rooms.
In the
cities with cold winters, the factories that need cooling could use
water from large, free-form swimming pools, such as the pool in
the image above, so that people can benefit
from the waste heat. The waste heat could also be used to keep the foot
paths free of snow and ice, or provide warmth for greenhouses.
One of the crops that would benefit from sealed greenhouses are figs. I created this video to
explain it.
Although that would make
the figures more expensive, as many documents have pointed out, we need
to put some serious thought into why
we bother to live and work.
Are we living in order to serve Jesus, Prince Charles, or the
billionaires that run our businesses? Is our goal to be as efficient as
possible? Or do we want to enjoy our lives, nature, other people, and
foods?
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