We Have Enough. What We Don’t Have Is the Will to Redesign.
Here is the thing we are not supposed to say out loud:
We already have enough resources to account for every human being’s basic well-being on this planet. Enough food. Enough knowledge. Enough productive capacity. Enough technological sophistication to manage our existence in a way that could support a long-term future for most people.
The problem is not scarcity.
The problem is that our politics is dominated by a small group of people who are deeply unwilling to consider redesign.
Not because redesign is impossible — but because it would require them to take a haircut.
The Bunker Problem
When faced with systemic collapse — economic, ecological, social — a certain class of people reliably chooses fantasy over redesign.
They build bunkers in Montana.
They buy islands.
They fantasize about Mars.
These are not serious solutions. They are escapist narratives for people who believe the system is failing other people, not them.
What’s striking is not that these ideas exist — it’s that they’re treated as more plausible than rethinking how we organize work, care, education, and security on Earth.
Redesign would require:
redistributing risk
revisiting extraction
letting go of instruments built for a very different era
Escapism lets you keep everything you have.
The 80-Year Trap
Many of our core economic and political systems were built roughly 80 years ago — under radically different conditions:
a younger population
cheaper housing
lower education costs
a narrower definition of work
and far less automation
Those systems were never designed to carry this much complexity, longevity, or inequality.
Yet instead of asking whether the design still fits reality, we cling to the mechanisms as if they are sacred.
We argue endlessly about inputs — immigration, retirement age, benefits eligibility — while refusing to interrogate the structure itself.
Why Immigration Keeps Hijacking the Conversation
Immigration debates are not actually about borders.
They are about labor — and our inability to talk about labor honestly.
We keep getting dragged into arguments about who should be allowed to work, rather than why so much work is:
underpaid
insecure
incompatible with caregiving
or structured in ways that burn people out by midlife
Immigration becomes a proxy battle because it allows us to avoid asking harder questions:
Why are essential jobs not dignified?
Why are wages disconnected from productivity?
Why does survival require constant participation in a market that no longer meets human needs?
As long as we argue about immigration, we don’t have to redesign labor itself.
Retirement as Emotional Blackmail
Retirement functions the same way.
Older people are understandably terrified of change — because their security is tied to fragile financial instruments, pensions, and portfolios that depend on the system staying exactly as it is.
That fear is real. But it is also weaponized.
People who live in the “imaginary money” world — where wealth is abstract, mobile, and insulated — trade on that fear to block reform. They frame redesign as a threat to retirees, knowing full well that:
basic care guarantees would reduce that fear
decoupling dignity from market performance would stabilize lives
and security doesn’t actually require endless extraction
Meanwhile, many current politicians are themselves deeply invested in their own retirement portfolios — financially and psychologically.
It is very hard to imagine a different future when your personal exit plan depends on the current one holding.
Extractive Policy as the Default
So instead of redesign, we get extraction:
work longer
cut benefits
suppress wages
increase precarity
outsource care
and call it realism
We treat education, healthcare, housing, and rest as costs to be minimized rather than foundations to be secured.
We manage decline instead of building capacity.
The Insanity We Refuse to Name
What is actually insane is not the idea of redesigning systems to meet human needs.
What is insane is believing that:
an endlessly extractive economy
managed by aging systems
defended by people planning their own escape
…will somehow produce stability.
We are clinging to mechanisms that no longer serve us because they still serve a few people very well.
A Different Starting Point
If we started from the premise that:
every human life has inherent dignity
basic care is a collective responsibility
and work should serve life, not consume it
Then many of our “unsolvable” problems would look very different.
Immigration wouldn’t be a threat — it would be part of a coordinated labor and care system.
Retirement wouldn’t be a cliff — it would be a transition.
Education wouldn’t be debt — it would be infrastructure.
The barrier is not feasibility.
The barrier is imagination — constrained by people who benefit from the world staying broken just long enough for them to get out.
