Houston, we have a solution.

Hey Houston, I need to ask you for a favor. Before I make the ask though, I figure it's appropriate to give you some context.

I was born and raised in Houston, and have lived here most of my life. I left for undergrad in Boston and lived in New York for about 6 months before I couldn't stand it any longer, moving back at the beginning of 2017. Since then, I tried to start a telehealth company that brought together therapists, nutritionists, and personal trainers in an attempt to address the growing levels of chronic illnesses and comorbidities in the developed world. This venture ended up failing when I that even if I did somehow manage to create the perfect app to assist conscious behavior change across a population (which is already pretty much impossible without significant financial resources), it wouldn't resolve any of the other systemic problems were seeing today.

How are most people supposed to afford a therapist when they charge $100-$200 an hour? Working full time at minimum wage won't cover that. Heck, even for individuals in the middle of the income spectrum (median at $36K annually), a long term relationship is likely unaffordable. And to successfully tackle obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and poor self-esteem in a single individual, a person needs to contract a mental health specialist, a nutritionist, and a exercise coach. If most of us can't afford a single piece of that, how are the people who are most vulnerable going to afford all three?

And that's just the healthcare problem. We still have exponentially growing levels of pollution, inequality (economic and social), carbon emissions, and corruption, and no app is going to solve those problems. The recognition of my powerlessness in the face of these challenges triggered a second major depressive episode which lasted until a month or so ago. I'm not totally out of the woods yet, but I feel more empowered and mentally stable/healthy than I have in a very long time.

Since the beginning of this second depressive episode I've spent my time and energy doing a lot of therapy, working part time jobs to sustain myself, and imagining a solution to the impossible problems that we face as a society. Because like it or not, we're all part of a global civilization, one that has near instant communication, and all of us are going to suffer as a result of the problems we failed to address 20 or 30 years ago. So unless your geriatric or have a net worth of at least 8 figures, life is going to get exponentially worse for you over the coming years.

And I'm in that boat with y'all, along with the rest of the 99.99%. I was born into an upper-middle class family, had a private education, studied business in college, and got a job valuing startups in Manhattan, right in front of that famous charging bull statue. My parents did everything they were supposed to, I did everything I was supposed to, and I'm still going to get fucked along with everyone I know because powerful people that came before me decided to ignore the long term ramifications of their actions.

But the most frustrating part of this whole situation is that I think I cracked it: I think I created a blueprint for a civilization that is objectively better than neoliberal capitalism – and that belief makes it impossible for people to take me or my proposal seriously. Because I'm a guy in his mid-twenties with little to no professional success who believes he's solved the biggest problem in human history. I mean, if this socioeconomic system is actually better for individuals, the species, and the ecosystem, then everything we know about this world is about to change; and that's kind of terrifying. On the other hand, if I'm wrong, and this system is not really an improvement over the status quo, then I've spent the past couple of years of my life chasing an impossible dream.

The way I see it, there are really three choices available to us when we find out the reality of the ecocide. (1) Denial, (2) delusion, or (3) acceptance. I've made it past the denial phase, and am hovering somewhere between the last two options. I was able to maintain the belief/delusion/hope that I can change the world for the best as long as I kept my work to myself, existing in a type of Schrodinger's dilemma where both saving the species and failing to do so existed simultaneously. I recognize now that this is probably not healthy, and so I'm writing this post as a form of sanity check.

Does this blueprint, which I call Uberism, have any merit in your personal opinion? So if you wouldn't mind spending 20 or 30 minutes thinking about this possibility, I would really, really appreciate it.

tl;dr: would you be interested in an alternative to the status quo?