Pompeii and Arcadia

My mental picture of Arcadia depicts what the ruins of Pompeii must have looked like when it was a thriving society millions of years ago. I picture the hustle and bustle of everyday life: people walking the streets gathering supplies for dinner, “Mom and Pop” shops running their small stores, and all people working in harmony towards the betterment of their town. But today, Pompeii no longer exists as anything more than skeletal remains. Because like Arcadian societies, Pompeii was “hopelessly Utopian”.

The backbone of Arcadia is decentralized nationalization, which is the dispersion of decision making governance closer to the people or governed body. It is a society biased towards “locally, self-reliant economics” and small, single proprietorships like those found in Pompeii. There is a constant goal of social and environmental justice, believed to be achieved through local and democratic control of the economy. But this completely unrealistic—the people of Arcadian societies are trying to live in dual worlds: one grounded in the belief of a non-GDP based economy, modest good consumption, and reverence for tradition, and the other nested in modern methods of communication, travel, and energy services.

As a society, they have imposed high taxes on what they deem to be “excessive wealth”, in order to keep all members of the society within economic equality. But this only leads to stifled economic growth caused by a reduction in skilled labor, specialty professions, and a decrease in imports. The actions that seem to establish a “fair” society will only cause the Arcadian town to slip behind modern advancements that better the human race, eventually leading to the same fate as Pompeii.