On Jobs, Depression, and the Environment

So, a few prevalent issues in our society are a fragile job market (lack of resilient jobs, exposed by Covid-19), widespread addiction and depression (exacerbated by poor support/policy), climate change and a need for sustainable long term energy resources, one-dimensional agricultural supply chains (which are major emissions polluters and accelerate

climate change), and declining social capital (less close friends per person, fewer positive relationships with neighbors, family members, etc...all fueling the rise in depression). From a very high level, I feel there is a productive beginning to a solution to all of these issues tied in each other.

At the heart of this is the goal of making people happy and improving the quality of life (QoL) for everyone on Earth (non-exclusive to humans, everyone meaning ALL life). Widespread depression (western world focused, I'm not well versed on the rest of the world) and climate change are the two greatest threats to long term happiness to life.

Increasing humanity's QoL (both economically and emotionally/socially) can in large part be found in sustainable and meaningful work. Work that is meaningless, both to the individual and society, and lacks responsibility can be a harbinger of depressive symptoms. I would also make the conjecture that there is a strong correlation between jobs with fragile financial stability and those that are likely to be described as "meaningless" or "unfulfilling", especially as Covid-19 exposes the unnecessary redundancies in many white-collar professions as well. As the US is already largely a service economy, and many professions are undergoing radical change from better data management and AI, it seems logical that a greater portion of the population will have to find work in these unfulfilling segments that offer little financial security. How can we prevent (or avoid crashing in) this potential wave of depression and financial instability?

I think that much of the solution can lie in community farming (and potentially hunting, depending on the location and wildlife populations) and community energy projects. As a start, both require education of local residents, dedication and use of public (or shared private) land, retention of talent, approval of the communities in use, and potentially public funding to make them financially viable in the formative years. These solutions would provide long term jobs and meaningful roles within society, sustainable approaches to food and energy both economically and environmentally, and shared working/living spaces to help break the anti-socialization of our society.

Creating a decentralized web of production of these resources creates a much more resilient system. For energy, multiple municipalities creating power, each linked together to allow for excess supply in one location to meet excess demand in another, all linked to the greater grid, creates a much more secure power supply system that can be more responsive to demand changes, more resilient to local outages, and less risky as generation is distributed rather than centralized. The role of the utility company here changes from production and distribution to supply chain management, marketing and integrated distribution between sites. The jobs created by the continued procurement, production, installation and maintenance of community energy projects would be both financially secure and meaningful to society and the individual.

For agriculture, decentralizing farming would reduce the reliance on factory farms, increase ethical treatment of livestock, employ many members of the community in meaningful work, reduce emissions from factory farms, promote healthier human-environment relations, and put cheap,healthy food in markets where it is often inaccessible (poor income leading to poor diet leading to health issues leading to disease/depression/death). Like with energy, the role of markets here would be to smooth over supply and demand between markets on their excess produce (I don't think Massachusetts will be growing pineapple worth buying anytime soon). Sustainable jobs in food production, distribution, marketing and retail would arise in every community with a meaningful community farm.

Additionally, I think we could do well to shift more of early education to settings where kids have more of a chance to feel wonder and learn in environments they enjoy. I don't think there are many kids who wouldn't love to go and learn how to plant, raise livestock, live outdoors, etc. Weaving in real world skills and outdoors education into our traditional STEM education I believe would be tremendously beneficial. Not to mention maybe letting young boys run around outside and let off the energy they have from being young boys might reduce the ridiculous trend of medicating them for having lots of energy?

I think creating strong local markets that are interwoven and connected to the larger market is largely a solution to many of the aforementioned problems. Perhaps the cost of energy and food would increase in such scenarios, but I'd guess so to would local income, municipal tax revenue, and QoL of life in such communities. Remember, the goal of this whole game should be to improve cumulative QoL, not maximize net profit (this correlation leaves out so much of what makes life fulfilling).