If I were king for a day, I’d end the blight of poverty

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/31/if-i-were-king-for-a-day-i-would-end-poverty

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Absolute power for a day. Really? Only one? OK, ban racism? Ban white privilege? Ban excruciatingly long medical adverts on American television? Ah, I have it, ban emails! But can a day really change anything? Would the next day not bring the banned item back with a bloody vengeance? Whatever, the chance to get in the way of anything destructive for no matter how short a period has to be worth it, right?

Over the past few years I have found my virulent hate for racism and its byproducts to have been surpassed only by my pained and fundamental objection to poverty, not only in its economic form, but its moral and spiritual manifestations as well. No matter how many left-leaning thinkers of the previous generation passionately and convincingly conflated notions of race and class, I would not have predicted this usurping of the major narrative driver in my life. But as I pass a homeless village on my way to work, or am approached by people asking for sums smaller than tips I leave in fashionable coffee shops, the spectacle of poverty haunts me.

I will not enter the realm of what moral poverty looks like, but I often wonder if history will judge us with regard to homelessness the way we judge the casual participants in the slave trade: those who lived with it and did nothing to bring about its end.

Economic poverty, be it in first-world relative terms or developing-world physical terms, is something we can all see and abhor. So what intervention could I make that would end this blight on our common humanity? In my current job as artistic director of an American theatre, I have been exposed to the power of interventionist philanthropy, found myself even envious of those who can really change environments with their social interventions.

So if I were absolute potentate for the day, I would gather the finest, most passionate thinkers, feelers and philanthropists in the world, put them together in the most comfortable and productive environment that power and riches could locate, and set them the task of finding a permanent, self-perpetuating solution to the inequality of wealth and opportunity across the globe. If they could not, I would use my absolute power to, genie-like, extend my day of power to two and then three, until we found what we were looking for. Oh dash, I think I’ve moved from leftie leader to rightwing dictator in a few hundred words. See what absolute power does?