THE HUMEM STATE

In today’s technological world, people are crucially dependent on a broad array of public and commercial services. These include the infrastructure that provides energy, transportation, food, water, and communication, and systems that promote health and security.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that without these basic services, modern life, as we know it, especially in densely populated urban areas, would cease to exist. An ongoing disruption of these services would cause widespread devastation, and any surviving populations would soon regress into primitive modes of subsistence. All other advanced services and technological progress are contingent on these basic services.

The set of what we deem to be essential services evolves over time. Often, as dependencies emerge, services that are at first considered optional become indispensable. Electric power, for example, began as an alternative option for lighting, but subsequently became vital for the functioning of most physical aspects of modern civilization.

With regard to their dependence on constantly progressing, technology-based services, humems are like ultra-modern, mutually interdependent city dwellers. Humems cannot exist and develop without an analogous, and often equivalent, set of essential services. In particular, they cannot subsist alone at all without a well-functioning technological infrastructure. And the set of basic services that they require will grow over time.

A state provides the physical and regulatory environment for the provision and exchange of services. A nation-state, which recognizes the welfare of its citizens as the ultimate reason for its existence, does this best for people. A humem-state, which recognizes humems as possessing intrinsic rights and considers their welfare to be the primary reason for its existence, establishes the environment best suited for providing humems’ basic needs.

 

Since humems are extensions of their human counterparts, many humem needs are extensions of modern human needs. Thus, the humem-state provides a myriad of practical and increasingly essential services for people via their humems. In present terms, these include personal data applications such as data aggregation, storage, access, utilization, maintenance, security, privacy, and monetization for the duration of a person’s lifetime and beyond.

The humem-state’s infrastructure is the structure that supports all other functions and services. This section highlights some of the infrastructure’s basic attributes.