How would you make the world into a Utopia?

Let’s assume that you’ve just been elected World Leader with full executive, legislative and judicial powers for a lifelong term.

Let us further assume you’re a benign dictator and not an evil one (I know evil is more fun but just bear with me here) .

What steps would you take to make this world as close to your vision of a Utopia as possible?

You wouldn’t have any magical powers or anything of the sort. Let’s just say all the leaders of all sovereign nations will now obey your directives.

What would you do and why?

First, I’d get Ecuador to give me the Galapagos Islands and build some decent infrastructure and a concert hall.

Third, I’d make the world governments send a few hundred of the greatest living… scratch that.

Second, I’d look up the plural form of “virtuoso” in a dictionary so I don’t sound like an ignoramus.

Third, I’d make the world governments send a few hundred of the greatest living virtuosi (and whatever support staff is required for them to live comfortably) to the islands.

Fourth, I’d have live concerts daily for the rest of my life.

Fifth, I’d tell the governments to fuck off. It is my utopia, after all.

A serious reply wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Make that Second. It’s late.

I would change the policy of deficit spending and national debt. Turn it around and create a policy of budget surplus and national capital instead. In time, responsible fiscal policy would completely erase the national debt and once we have enough to establish a national trust, I would eliminate all taxation completely and prove Ben Franklin wrong. Nothing is certain but death and taxes, indeed! My government would run off the interest and dividends earned from the nation’s assets. Constitutional amendments would need to be put into place to protect the national treasury for all posterity.

Well, the biggest problem with creating a Utopia is that many people are stupid and/or just plain mean. Thus, I would start large scale programs towards genetic engineering; once it is perfected, then it shall be introduced en mass to the populace, so that all of the future generations will be much smarter AND have a much nicer personalities.

RandomLetters has it right. We need some serious research into genetic and behaviour engineering. After that is done (according to my specifications of course) Utopia will follow by itself.

My utopia isn’t your utopia, and if I’m benign, meaning I’m at this to do well for the largest population possible, I think I’d want to take a class with Havelock Vetenari as teacher.
For those unfamiliar with Pratchett (are there any left on the SDMB?), that means doing as little as possible and letting people get on with their own lives.

Not quite, Gaspode. You also have to clamp down on those who actually do run things, so they do as little as possible, as well.

  1. Get rid of all religious fanatics. Let them work in #2 mentioned poor countries.
  2. Raise taxes in the rich countries, get food, medicines, infrastructure and the means of keeping their country healthy, to the poor countries.

But first things first: #1.

Will never happen, though.

I’d impose a new form of socialism with the goal of closing income and quality of living disparity across the globe, invest a lot more funding into medical research, and promote religious tolerance at school-level. In fact, I’d have an entire reform of the global educational system as a means towards closing disparity - at the low levels, teaching tolerance and cooperation, and capping it off eventually with chosen vocational training in high school and junior colleges.

My form of socialism would include medicare and welfare programs, government work programs, semi-nationalized industries, and communist structure at low (company and city) levels with federalist structure at higher levels. I’d leave most of the nations intact as states with representation in a world parliament system.

This, of course, would require higher taxes for currently capitalist nations, but the tradeoff is lowering worldwide disparity.

Bring all hate groups together, for mandatory music and weed sessions. If you fail to respect others, repeat.

Nah. I’d set up a committee the Guild of Bureaucrats, the Guild of Union Officials and the Guild of Political Blog Writers to make policy of how things should be done in a future utopia.
:evil grin:

[ol]
[li]I’m going to need a large and powerful army to pull this off, so step one will be to create my military.[/li][li]I’m also going to need a not-insignificant amount of land, but I believe I can get this through non-violent means.[/li][li]I advertise to all the countries of the world that I am willing to take their crazy utopian types from them. In exchange I need enough land to run my nation.[/li][li]I divide the utopianists into many different groups by ideology, and give each group a piece of land proportional to their size.[/li][li]I permit each of the groups (I suppose I will call them States) to run their State as they please, with the following qualifications:[/li][ul][li]All states must pay taxes to me to pay for the upkeep of the military, the intelligence services, etc. []All states are to be strictly non-violent (no purges or witch trials or anything similar). All violent uprisings will be dealt with by my army. []All civilians have the option to choose which state they want to live in. Travel and trade will be permitted.[/ul][/li][li]I maintain a close eye on each of my states, and allow utopian natural selection to take place. I reserve the right to intervene if things get out of hand. [/li][li]If new utopian ideas emerge and gain enough followers, they will be allowed their own land when a sufficient amount of land becomes available.[/li][li]Sit back and watch the fun![/li][/ol]

Energy. We need a genius for a breakthrough to cheap and abundant (and, of course, non destructive) energy. One Einstien, one Mozart, a Feynmann would do it, the hints are all over the place.

Of course, if we fail to halt the pandemic of Cognitive Dissonance, all of this will be for naught…

As far as I can tell, there is no possible way to be both a benign dictator and establish a utopian world order. Hence, your question, as posed, is an insoluble paradox. In brief, there is, ironically, no moral way to compell the peoples of the world to desist destroying themselves.

The Claudius Paradox. A wise and benificent emperor is ultiimatly worse than an evil one.

I can’t see a way to do it without the ability to change the nature of man, because all human systems eventually(if not immediatly) get corrupted and abused. Trying to enforce a Utopia would easily become a dystopia (1984 seems like a good example).

The only way I can see to create a utopia is to get rid of all people, but as you can see, it rather defeats the purpose(not to mention implied ethical issues doing so).

That is why I suggested putting large investments into genetic engineering, so that you could change mankind’s basic nature; of course, that research would take decades to pay off, so in the mean time, I would put the hammer down corruption and bad government world-wide, and basically run things with a mostly free market system, though with large basic infrastructure investments (good roads & schools everywhere), and save in taxes by cutting military spending; if I control the world, I only need enough forces to keep down crime and rebelious groups.

Well, Random, I would question weather it’s even possible to improve the nature of man using genetic engineering. I can see making men smarter, stronger, healthier, etc, but I don’t think you can elimite greed, corruption, and such , by tinkering with their genes. I would think that would be something along the lines of moral/ethical character.

I agree with HPL. Genetic engineering for physical characteristics is almost certainly workable, but I doubt that human vices can be destroyed without turning civilization into an insect colony, destroying all the positive aspects of human civilization. Your best bet is to try to channel our vices towards a positive goal.