Kanaye Nagasawa: A samurai who changed California
Mentioned by the article:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Transcendentalism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Transcendentalism</a><p>This notion of freedom resonates with me the most. I want to live in a society where basic needs are met through automation, so that people can spend the majority of their time following their calling and finding meaning. Less than 2 hours per day should be spent working towards survival, or else our tech offers little benefit over living in a hunter-gatherer society.<p>Concretely, that would look like:<p>* Robots pay taxes - not people, to be used for UBI<p>* No taxes on necessary commodities like food, high taxes on luxuries<p>* Taxes on unearned income would always be higher than on earned income<p>* Labor performed on process not application, so maintaining the things that make the things<p>* Profit on another&#x27;s labor would either be considered inappropriate or taxed highly: at or near 100%<p>* Unsustainability would be suspect, as it runs counter to the cultural goal of providing for all people forever<p>* Injustices which impose burdens on people doing the most spiritually significant work would be targeted first: no penalty for being a parent, teacher, nurse or other caregiver<p>There&#x27;s probably a lot more to be said about this. I feel that the powers that be seem to be doing everything they can to prevent progress in this direction. Specifically, the wealthy and powerful seem to be doing nothing to help makers and inventors, they just hoard the money and put it towards whatever satisfies their ego.<p>So we all work longer and longer hours to build bigger houses and buy more expensive vehicles to create profit for billionaires. We don&#x27;t invest in trusts that would pay the living expenses of self-sufficient communities of tiny homes with hydroponic gardens and solar panels and such.