Constitutional Law

Poverty Is Wholly Preventable And Escaping It Should Now Be Considered A Natural Human Right

My generation has a chance to completely wipe out poverty, but the result will be not achieved by a statist, communist method, and neither will it come from a conservative ‘deserving only’ system.

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The argument that we can eliminate poverty will probably sound far-fetched to many. Yet, current data can already demonstrate that, as a species, we are on a way towards achieving this result. In the last 25 years, a billion people escaped from extreme poverty. That is over a 100,000 people escaping extreme poverty every day, for a quarter of a century steady.

Although this hopeful description of progress is contested, it seems impossible to deny that circumstances for the poorest human beings on earth have improved significantly over a relatively short period of time. Why can we not expect or desire that this progress continue at a rapid pace where in 50 years poverty is largely, if not completely, eliminated?

The only thing that is certain is our current economic and technological realities allow for universal human progress to rapidly improve exponentially no matter how great our population expands. Current technology already grants us access to near-Earth resources. This means, the human struggle over limited resources that has plagued our species with internal conflict from the beginning is over.

Don’t believe me?

Already human institutions such as my alma mater, The University of Arizona, have launched autonomous reconnaissance missions to asteroids that map, sample, and bring back material. Starting today, this process can be endlessly replicated to discover in space every manner of material humans value such as water, gold, platinum, iron, oxygen, and hydrogen in quantities never before seen and possibly imagined. The raw materials can then be mined, processed, and used to build space habitats to create endless gardens or factories. Perhaps most importantly, the need to exploit limited Earth resources would end, thereby removing the great human burden being currently imposed on Earth ecosystems and effecting the climate in negative ways.

Let me be clear, I am not a naïve optimist. Bringing about this reality will take time and effort. But the payoff is quite literally limitless. Moreover, given the value of information to human beings we will continue human advancement. The “train is already out of the station” so to speak, “and there’s no brake to pull.”

Indeed, in near-Earth space one can easily visualize how the best aspects of capitalism will be utilized to lift humanity into a new age. Capitalism operates best when markets are allowed to continually grow and expand. This is in part why a capitalist system has been so successful (for some), here in the United States. This country began with 13 colonies and followed with continual territorial and population expansion for the next 200 and counting years. Of course, this expansion came at the great conquest and exploitation of human labor, including enslaving whole civilizations and generations of human beings. An unfathomable wrong yet to be fully acknowledged, appreciated in the scope of barbarity, or morally corrected.

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In space however, exploiting human labor as it has traditionally occurred here on Earth to great suffering makes no sense as machines can do the same tasks cheaper while human spaceflight remains extraordinarily expensive. Very soon, if not already, we will possess the ability to “design the machine that can build the machine that can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials.”  In other words, in the relatively new future human drudgery can end entirely, even to gain the necessities to live what we would call now a luxurious life.

It is fundamentally important to understand the point I am trying to illustrate here is that this limitless reality is certain to come soon. The only question is will all human beings have access to limitless reality.

In part, standing in the way is two traditional human faults. One is the stubborn impulse to believe that deserving has something to do with it, when it clearly doesn’t. Being born into wealth and limitless opportunity is a reality for some now regardless of whether they are deserving of it or not. And I don’t mean to criticize or lament this fact, I mean to celebrate it and expand it. Because this same exact circumstance at birth can be assured for every single human being in the near future without requiring the horrific human exploitation of the past. The moral case for such an outcome for every human being is self-explanatory. As Thomas Paine illustrated hundreds of years ago, it is of no Common Sense to exalt only certain human beings at birth “above the rest, and distinguished like some new species.”

On the other hand, neither will poverty be eliminated in the near future from a statist, communist, Marxist method. To me, the question of whether a state-run economy or a capitalist one is better for human flourishing has been answered, and we, the United States, won. Our system of capitalism, unfettered by market limitations in space, can produce and encourage the creation of more resources than every other human system. We shouldn’t want to go forward without it (though I suspect like all Americans I can suggest improvements). And again, this can be done without exploiting fragile Earth’s ecosystems and human labor.

If turned to space, capitalism could be unleashed into the limitless market it was always designed for. This would mean the end of human poverty, and we have the technological and intellectual ability to begin implementation of this result, now. What’s needed is collective human will, working within an effective economic and moral system which the United States can provide.

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But because our collective will, economic, and moral systems here can so often fail there are no doubt many who might accept everything I say above as possible yet deny that utopia is imminent or even conceivable. One can forgive this view given that for all too many, human evolution has only produced horrific realties that have never been fully recognized nor corrected. However, if you are realistic, you simply cannot deny that progress is occurring and that we can and should in fact demand much more in the future. The biggest obstacle I foresee is simply convincing people of this.

Tyler Broker is the Free Expression and Privacy Fellow at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. His work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review and the Albany Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

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