The CEO of Earth

"It's small step for one man, but a giant stride for mankind". The first step on the moon definitely was an amazing moment, a tip of the achievement of a civilization. A highlight of the 20th century. But was the humanity splurging its resources on moon, and forgetting the masses? Many people think so - and constantly worry that the world is going down the drain.

When I was kid, we always had to write essays or prepare for elocution competitions with topics like "If I became Prime Minister of India". The simplistic view that everyone was supposed to take, rang hollow even then. "I will make food free for everyone, and help poor". Of course, the modern day politicians' promises aren't much different. Only as I grew older, I started realizing how complex the problem is for any ruler, let alone a democratic leader.

But let me invite you to keep the complexity aside and think with the same youthful exuberance and optimism. Imagine, what you would do if you were the ruler of the world in the year 1900. (the reason for the year 1900 is that we can compare what you would do against what actually happened) Or better still imagine that the earth was a corporation, every human being an equal shareholder, the bottom line is combined happiness of everyone - and you are the CEO of this corporation, again, in the year 1900. The board of directors is occupied by people like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha... all the good people you can think of, even though they are anachronists. You can hire and fire anyone.

What will you do? Give this quesiton a serious thought before you read any further.

Well, you will probably hire some good sociologists, economists and known humanatarians (if the board of directors is not enough!) and find out where we are. The picture they paint will be bleak. There is suffering all across, the average life expectancy is in 30s. There is no equality between men and women. Literacy % can be counted on both hands. Two thirds of the world population is enslaved by colonizing powers, famines and deseases are killing people at will by the millions. People are dying not just because of the lack of medicines, but because the lack of knowledge that a bit of sugar and salt added to water will save lives. Almost every woman sees four of her children die prematurely - and can hardly do anything beyond giving 6 to 7 births in her lifetime. If you tried to simplify the problems, it will be ill health, poverty and ignorance.

And you don't just want a short term solution. You want a long term solution. Something that will grow. And the other constraint is that you need to do this through the people.

But the situation is not all bad. You have all knowledge of centuries behind you. When Buddha says to you from the board of directors that all human suffering is through strife, you can say back to him that true, but the malaria virus that kills millions of children has nothing to do with the strife. Let's remove the external problems and then deal with the strife.

The more you look at the macroeconomic picture, you will realize that increasing happiness is a tall task. The only thing you can do is reduce the miseries, losses of lives and the hardship; give them basic education so that they can enlighten themselves, and give them longer life and freedom so that they can find their own happiness and contribute to others'.

The question actually is not how you would go about doing this, or how quickly you will be able to achieve it, but what will you try to achieve. The four things you will concentrate on and measure as your bottom line will probably be

1. average life span
2. average number of years of formal education
3. average wealth with not to unreasonable distribution
4. % people under democracy

If the world made progress on these major fronts you would have saved billions of lives, made each life stronger for longer, and given everyone more material wealth to add stability and fuel for pursuit of happiness.

You were not the CEO of the world in the 20th century. Mostly corrupt and power hungry politicians ruled through rumbling beurocracies all over the world. And yet through all this mess, humanity made amazing strides over all 4 key measures. We reached the moon too - but that's just gravy.