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C00002 00002	future[f88,jmc]		How we can live in the future
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future[f88,jmc]		How we can live in the future

1. Rebuild the cities.  They should be rebuilt for high density
of population but with large rooms and apartments.

2. Preserve individual transportation.  Use at least two levels,
a lower level for vehicles and a higher level for pedestrians
and bicycles.  The pedestrian level should be safe enough so
that small children will be safe alone.

3. Achieve a high level of personal security.  Anyone should be
able to walk anywhere safely.  Everyone wears a locator, and
there are TV cameras everywhere.  Signals from both are encoded
by public key cryptosystem onto tape.  The tape can be examined only
with a decryption key available only via court order.  The cameras
on ``public places'' go into the public datanetwork, so that anyone
can look at any public place at any time.

4. Give everyone a minimum income sufficient to live on --- though
not well.  For society to afford this it is necessary that food,
housing, basic transportation, standard health care and bureaucracy
all be done very efficiently.  The goal is that a minimum income
can be provided at a cost of one tenth of the average income.
The minimum income is automatically transferred to a bank account
usable by cash card.  No social workers are involved in distributing
the minimum income.

Perhaps greater contentment will be achieved if the minimum income
can be made to increase with age.  This will give a sense
of progress to everyone --- even those who don't get a sense of
accomplishment.

\noindent How happy will we be?

	We will be as happy as the lower level rich are today.
To the extent that a person's happiness depends on comparison
with others, the average person will be no happier than the
average person today.  Therefore, we should use the situation
of those rich people who know plenty of richer people to make
our comparisons.  Probably we should consider people who have
inherited their wealth rather than earned it.  The latter have
a sense of achievement that the former may lack.

	My guess is that the people who have inherited a
moderate fortune are moderately well off psychologically
on the average.