How we conned ourselves out of almost everything
We have global communication, global finance, global transportation, global commerce, global war, global weaponry.
In 1998, Bill Gates increased his fortune by US$18 billion. In Burundi, the average income is US$100. In a world where 90% get less than a tenth of the world-average pay per hour, where 50% get less than a hundredth of the world-average pay per hour, it is easy to see that the lowest Burundi pay would be less than US$18 a year. Therefore the global payrange is by a factor of one billion. A pay injustice factor of one billion.
To put it in visual terms. If pay justice was a swimming pool one metre deep, what we have is the water from that pool sucked up in a needle of water going up one million metres, 1000 kilometres. So that 90% of the water is in the thin needle of water, 90% of the water in the pool is drained, and 90% of the depth of the pool is between 10 centimetres and one millimetre.
Someone getting 10% more for the same work would be unjust. Someone getting twice as much for the same work would be very unjust. If someone working beside you doing the same work was getting twice as much, you would be very unhappy. We have people getting a billion times as much, a billionth as much.
All countries have departments of justice. Philosophy has known for millenia that justice is a cause of happiness. James Madison said bluntly that the purpose of government is justice. The saying that no state built on injustice can stand, is at least as old as the Romans. And indeed history knows of no state or empire built on injustice that has survived. Every empire has in the end been built on pay injustice and has fallen. Yet we have conned ourselves into pay injustice with a present factor of one billion.
Which is also an unhappiness factor of one billion. So we have the greatest opportunity for increase of happiness in the history of the world. The opportunity-for-happiness-increase factor is also one billion. As bad as the present reality is, that is how much better it can be.
Pay injustice is theft. Pay injustice is theft of the thing that is most important in people's lives. Pay injustice is theft of the stuff that is good for exchange into millions of good things, including all necessities. So pay injustice generates the most violence. Which causes the unhappiness. Thus we have also a violence factor of one billion. Pay injustice, violence and unhappiness have been growing for millenia.
How have we conned ourselves into so much unhappiness?
For thousands of years, we have been making an error. And many things in our nature buttress this error. If we can conquer this very deeply rooted, very well buttressed error, we can have happiness increase by a factor of one billion.
What are we doing, that is growing such super-astronomical pay injustice, violence and unhappiness?
Everyone is going after more. More money. No one is going after getting out no more than they put in by their work. If money comes our way, if money can be made to come our way, we accept it, with no regard for how much we have contributed to the making of that money by our work creating wealth. The pool of wealth is the sum of the wealth creation by work. If anyone, by any means, takes out more wealth than they put in, others end up getting out less than they put in. If we get a billion dollars, by lottery, inheritance, profit, or whatever, we all accept it. A billion dollars is a license to take out from the pool of wealth a billion dollars of the products of work. Where we have not put in a billion dollars of wealth by our own work, others have put it in, and do not get to take it out. Theft, violence, unhappiness.
Violence will grow even if pay injustice is not growing. The two sides will throw ever more powerful weaponry at each other trying to prevail. And pay injustice is evergrowing. Because money is power to make money. At a modest 5% interest, a billion dollars is extracting $50 million of workproducts every year for no work at all.
The ideal that everyone is thoughtlessly aiming at is maximum money for minimum work. We are grabbing as much of the cake as we can get. This is the socially acceptable norm. This is the socially admirable norm. This is the game in town. It might produce happiness if the 99% of people who end up with less than they put in would take losing gracefully. If the 90% who end up with between a tenth and a thousandth of what they put in would laugh about it. If the 50% of people who end up with between a hundredth and a thousandth of what they put in would be happy about it. But they are also playing the game, which is to get more. Everyone is aiming to get all of the cake, all of the products of work. Which means that everyone else is the enemy of our aim. Having no limit to our goal means having no limit to our warring.
We play the game with a range of intensity and energy. Some of us, nearly all of us, play the game to an extent, and then depart to the sidelines to enjoy the cake we have got hold of. But we all allow the game. And the game can spill over into the sidelines. The violence is ever-increasing, the violence is as mobile as people, the violence gets into wherever people get to. In the last 50 years, we have gone from being able to destroy a city, a dot on the globe, to being able to destroy all planet life. 60 times over. We see the game, of getting as much as you can, and we see the violence, getting close to the planetary limit, and we do not connect the two. If we can connect the two, we can decide whether we want to stop play.
We can decide whether we want to start trying to play a new game, the game of grabbing all that we have earned, of working out, as well as we can, the amount we have put into the pool and taking out the same. 99% of people would be getting between one and a thousand times as much out. Power would be far more equally distributed, and so democracy and freedom would be near-maximal. Every family working average hard puts in about US$75,000 a year by their work, so every family working average hard would be getting out about US$75,000 a year. Which would mean a far more vigorous economy, far more spending, far more employment, far more successful businesses, far more scientists, far faster progress, far less waste on war and crime, far greater stability, far fewer problems, a human environment far more free of violence pollution.
Do we want to change the game? Some people like going to war, for the booty, for the chance of winning, for killing. A lot of people like the cut and thrust of the game of grab-all, grab-as-much-as-you-can, and can avoid connecting the game to the violence. If they connect the game and the violence, they can put their hopes in avoiding the violence. Most of us find it easy to disbelieve in global extinction by nuclear winter. Most of us believe in the localisation of war, the avoidability of war and other violence. The hostage-killing won't happen when we are visiting the embassy, won't happen in our bank, on our flight. The suicide bomber won't visit our cafe, our bus, our street. Even people in Beirut can believe this. If we want to change the game, we will. If we don't want to, we won't.
If we want to change the game, it is easy to do so. Increasing the money supply by 1% a month and putting the increase equally into all accounts will gently decrease the overfortunes and increase the underfortunes. Will lessen the pressure of the strangulation of the economy. Will start to lift the global extreme fiscal depression. Making inheritance public instead of private will mean the 90% of world income that is now up the needle will shower down on everyone, over the next few generations, putting out the fires of starvation, terrorism and war. It will reverse the endless concentration of wealth which spells the destruction of all states. It will restore the dream of freedom from tyranny and warmongering. The swimming pool will fill again, and everyone can get on with playing happily together again. Super-giga-astronomical unhappiness will change to super-giggle-astronomical happiness. If we want it.
Wanting it requires unlearning all we 'know' in the present game. We have a whole library of beliefs which keeps us believing in the present game. The present game puts out a constant propaganda on what is truth, and we have been listening to this for thousands of years, so that the real truth, the truth that agrees with our own good sense, seems nonsense.
Our own good sense tells us that paying people for the gifts that mother nature has given them is paying people for nothing they have done. But for thousands of years we have listened to the voice of the game which says that getting paid for nature's gifts is one way to play the game of grab-all. And the fact that the net result is that 99% of people are financing this pay to individuals for nothing they have done is hardly allowed to be heard by us. Almost all of us are keen to exploit any gift we have, although only 1% benefit financially from this error, and although 100% of us are embroiled in infinitely mobile, super-penetrating violence, on the brink of atomic extinction, from this and other errors.
In business, we strive to maximise the gap between costs and price. The costs are the work efforts that go into the products. The price is the license to take out of the pool of workproducts. In other words, we try to be as unfair as possible, to grab as much as we can. We sometimes deplore others' great success at doing this, but we do it ourselves. Again, the fact that the net effect is that 99% lose financially, and 100% are embroiled in violence which is now approaching its planetary limit, does not deter us.
A person can legally buy land, wait while others build a city around it, or increase the infrastructure around it, making the land more valuable, and then collect the workproducts of others via the increase of value of the land, and, although our own good sense can see that this is money for nothing for the landowners, meaning nothing for work for others, meaning growing violence and unhappiness for all, we support or do not oppose this, for we are playing the game and hope to profit from that form of grabbing too.
The longterm, very steady increase of value of the stockmarket, which is a reflection of the constant growth of social infrastructure, which is produced by the whole body of workers, is netted by the 10% or so who have shares, and is netted in proportion to the amount of shares people have, and yet we do not oppose this legal theft and injustice, for we are playing the game too.
We feel a kind of justice in everyone's equal right to grab as much as they can, and so we bear the super-extreme injustice, violence and unhappiness fruits of this.
We know individuals are netting up to US$100 million per day, and this only excites us and spurs us to try to do the same. The less some have, and the more others have, both these things spur us to ambition and grab-all. The game is exciting, the game draws us in, the game is inherently self-accelerating. As for some football fans, the game becomes life, and they are excited to the point of killing. When football fans reach this stage, they are reined in, and perhaps spend their lives in jail. But the raid-the-money-pool game is too big for the police to control. The money game is all over the human race. The landlords oppress the peasants, may I be a landlord, is the universal cry. Is there enough will, enough sanity, enough lack of excitement to madness, to rein in the money game? For thousands of years, there has not been enough will. And now the game has accelerated itself to the highest degree of excitement to madness. And now weaponry can freeze everything.
There is payment for scarcity in our system. The banana crop fails in Australia, imports are forbidden, to protect the industry, and prices go through the roof. Payment for absence of bananas. Licenses to take from the pool of workproducts in return for absence of bananas. The grain crop fails, imports are refused, license to take out for not putting in. Subsidies are paid to farmers to not grow, in order to raise prices relative to the work done. The coffee crop in Brazil fails, and Brazil reaps a bonus. The rich close the country, grab up the rural land, force off the poor, the poor are forced into the cities, making labour cheap, making the poor put in far more than they take out. New technology is at first scarce, and so the owners take out billions in return for the scarcity of supply. They do not, as some people think, take out so much because they gave so much. What they take out is the difference between what they put in and what they take out. The price of computers comes down as more firms enter the field, and as supply meets demand, and this shows that the costs are low. If the early high price of new technology was because of development costs, there would be no big profits, there would be no IT millionaires and billionaires.
People are convinced that people should be paid for having qualifications. And many get qualifications in order to reap the legal right to take out more. But once a person is paid for studying, there is no reason in sense to pay them more for having studied. And all students are paid, for they do not live on air. Once students are fully and fairly paid for studying, there is no more reason, in sense, to pay them for having studied than there is reason to pay anyone more for having worked before. But people will be convinced that this sense is nonsense simply on the non-sensical basis that such sense is not the social norm. But then happiness is not the social norm either. We cannot assume that what we have been doing is sense. The argument in everyone's mind is that they have suffered studying, and they intend to be compensated for it as well as they can be, without limit. Without regard for the reality that taking out more than they put in means universal violence, accelerating. Means a 99% chance of being underpaid. Means a 1% chance of being immersed in an environment of 99% underpaid.
There are many reasons given to justify higher-than-average pay per unit of work. Gifts of nature, business risk, responsibility, experience, skill, qualifications, and so on. And these reasons are supported by everyone because everyone thinks they will profit from them. And the perfect unsoundness of these reasons is very hard for people to hear, to listen to and take in. Instead, 99% lose financially by them, and the 1% who gain financially lose by loss of environment. Everyone loses where it counts, in happiness. Obviously, you can make a community in which everyone works miserable simply by giving all the workproducts to one person. Everyone knows that maximal inequality, one person having everything, would be miserable, and yet we have 1% with 90% of world income, and no one can see what that means, and it is very hard for people to see it. The game blinds.
We want to pay people for experience, but experience is gained on the job, at no cost. But the weight of sense is a feather in the wind of the super-excitement of the game. We refuse to take in any sense that contradicts the game.
We accept the limitless payment of people for business risk, but business risk is risking a sprat to catch a mackerel for himself. There is no more sense in it than in paying the fisherman for risking his bait. And there is no way of measuring risk, nor of determining the proper payment per unit of risk if we could measure it. And we would have to start paying everyone for their risks.
So we are drowned in senseless beliefs, and senseless acts, thanks to the game. We have lost all respect for sense, and we have been so long divorced from sense, that sense is so strange to us that we cannot believe it can be true when we meet it. We judge sense by familiarity, as though the familiar has never been wrong.
Everyone knows the connection between pay injustice and violence, because everyone knows that violence and unhappiness would increase massively if a government committed the super-extreme injustice of taking 90% of income permanently off 90% of the population and giving it all to 1%. And everyone knows that violence and unhappiness would decrease equally massively if the government stopped doing this.
We have far greater pay injustice than this.
Would it be a bad thing if all the wealth in the world were redistributed equally among all? It would not be perfectly just, but it would be very, very good for every human being. Everyone's environment would be hugely better. Everyone's future would be hugely brighter. The swimming pool would be fun for all. Humanity would be united. Could love itself again. And humanity is perfectly free to do it. Where there is a will, there is a way. And yet, it seems unlikely that we will do it. It seems we will have contempt for anyone who tries to make us disloyal to the game.
What if the rich started confessing that wealth is useless for happiness, that wealth is bad for happiness? Fairpay buys all necessities, all major desires, and millions of smaller and smaller desires. There just isn't very much desire left for wealth to satisfy. There are only the very smallest, most marginal desires left to satisfy. And meanwhile, the danger of being wealthy amid poverty is extreme, and often fatal. The spots on the earth where you feel safe are very tiny. The Rockefellers behind electric fences, the queen in her palace, special secret places in the Bahamas, Stalin in his room in the Kremlin, penthouses with private lifts, limousines with bombproof floors, command centres deep in mountains. Ceausescu, Caesar, Hitler, Charles I, Marie Antoinette.
What do we want? What is our will?
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
100 times happier, part 4
How good is wealth, really?
Everyone wants a billion dollars. Everyone thinks it would be great to own a 400-foot yacht. But what can you actually do with a 400-foot yacht? You can feel good about owning it. You can stand, sit, walk on it. Drink, eat, talk on it.
What can you do with wealth? A lot of wealthy people apparently know that they can do nothing with it, because they spend most of their time playing the game of making more of it.
Is more money always better? Always proportionately better? Is there a point where more money starts being bad and getting worse?
Fairpay, which is US$75,000 per family working average hard, buys all needs, and millions of satisfactions, all the big ones and getting down into very small ones. The only pleasures left for more money to buy are the very very small ones.
With money, you can buy lots of clothes. But how hard do those clothes in your closet work to increase your happiness, your pleasure, your fun? You can feel that you are a superior, successful person because you own them. That is about it. But people can feel good about themselves many other ways.
You can have a more expensive car, but it can only transport you with slightly more pleasure than the car a family on fairpay of US$75,000 can afford. You can sit in a more expensive chair, but the increase in comfort and pleasure is insignificant.
You can own a castle, but again, with it you can only stand, sit or walk, drink, eat and talk, like other people.
You can have solid gold taps, but how much more pleasure do they give than the pleasure of the taps of a family on US$75,000?
You can drink $4000 bottles of wine, but how much more pleasure is there in it than in a $20 bottle of wine? Perhaps another 1% of pleasure.
You can have $70 million art on your walls, but how much pleasure can the greatest painting give? More pleasure per day than a good meal?
So the plus side of overpay seems to be extremely slight. The additional pleasures you can buy are all very small. Just the leftovers after almost all pleasures have been bought by fairpay.
On the other hand, the downside of wealth does not suffer rapidly diminishing returns. The downside stays proportional to the overpay. The bigger the fortune, the more attractive it is to thieves. Just like money in banks. Bigger banks have bigger vaults, because they need them, because their bigger contents attract bigger thieves, motivate greater efforts to overcome the security. Assassination, fraud, embezzling, golddigging, kidnapping, conquering, plundering, hostile takeovers, political dirty tricks, etc. Every empire has fallen. Every plutocracy has fallen. Every empire has power to protect itself, and yet no empire, business or national, has survived the constant erosion from the surrounding underpaid. The late Roman emperors were lasting only weeks or days. The so-called most powerful man in the world has been assassinated. At the very least, positions of privilege are maintained only with extreme unremitted lifelong vigilance.
So, with the upside suffering rapidly diminishing returns, and the downside running proportional to size of fortune, the benefits of wealth are very negative. Those who accumulate vast fortunes are often the most aggressive, so the fights among the superrich are the most intense, the most dangerous, the most exhausting, the most timeconsuming, the most often fatal. The royalty and aristocracy of France. The Roman emperors. Everyone in history who has reached higher positions of wealth and power.
So it seems clear that neither wealth nor poverty bring happiness. Why don't we try the middle, the way of justice, of fairpay, which will diminish the pleasure of the overpaid very slightly, increase their safety and companionship enormously, which will increase the pleasure of the underpaid enormously and increase their safety enormously?
Pay justice is surely clearly win-win-win.
Everyone wants a billion dollars. Everyone thinks it would be great to own a 400-foot yacht. But what can you actually do with a 400-foot yacht? You can feel good about owning it. You can stand, sit, walk on it. Drink, eat, talk on it.
What can you do with wealth? A lot of wealthy people apparently know that they can do nothing with it, because they spend most of their time playing the game of making more of it.
Is more money always better? Always proportionately better? Is there a point where more money starts being bad and getting worse?
Fairpay, which is US$75,000 per family working average hard, buys all needs, and millions of satisfactions, all the big ones and getting down into very small ones. The only pleasures left for more money to buy are the very very small ones.
With money, you can buy lots of clothes. But how hard do those clothes in your closet work to increase your happiness, your pleasure, your fun? You can feel that you are a superior, successful person because you own them. That is about it. But people can feel good about themselves many other ways.
You can have a more expensive car, but it can only transport you with slightly more pleasure than the car a family on fairpay of US$75,000 can afford. You can sit in a more expensive chair, but the increase in comfort and pleasure is insignificant.
You can own a castle, but again, with it you can only stand, sit or walk, drink, eat and talk, like other people.
You can have solid gold taps, but how much more pleasure do they give than the pleasure of the taps of a family on US$75,000?
You can drink $4000 bottles of wine, but how much more pleasure is there in it than in a $20 bottle of wine? Perhaps another 1% of pleasure.
You can have $70 million art on your walls, but how much pleasure can the greatest painting give? More pleasure per day than a good meal?
So the plus side of overpay seems to be extremely slight. The additional pleasures you can buy are all very small. Just the leftovers after almost all pleasures have been bought by fairpay.
On the other hand, the downside of wealth does not suffer rapidly diminishing returns. The downside stays proportional to the overpay. The bigger the fortune, the more attractive it is to thieves. Just like money in banks. Bigger banks have bigger vaults, because they need them, because their bigger contents attract bigger thieves, motivate greater efforts to overcome the security. Assassination, fraud, embezzling, golddigging, kidnapping, conquering, plundering, hostile takeovers, political dirty tricks, etc. Every empire has fallen. Every plutocracy has fallen. Every empire has power to protect itself, and yet no empire, business or national, has survived the constant erosion from the surrounding underpaid. The late Roman emperors were lasting only weeks or days. The so-called most powerful man in the world has been assassinated. At the very least, positions of privilege are maintained only with extreme unremitted lifelong vigilance.
So, with the upside suffering rapidly diminishing returns, and the downside running proportional to size of fortune, the benefits of wealth are very negative. Those who accumulate vast fortunes are often the most aggressive, so the fights among the superrich are the most intense, the most dangerous, the most exhausting, the most timeconsuming, the most often fatal. The royalty and aristocracy of France. The Roman emperors. Everyone in history who has reached higher positions of wealth and power.
So it seems clear that neither wealth nor poverty bring happiness. Why don't we try the middle, the way of justice, of fairpay, which will diminish the pleasure of the overpaid very slightly, increase their safety and companionship enormously, which will increase the pleasure of the underpaid enormously and increase their safety enormously?
Pay justice is surely clearly win-win-win.
100 times happier
100 times happier? Impossible? Possible. Very possible. If you are in a deep hole with no hope of rescue, you can be 100 times happier. We humans are in a deep hole.
Pay injustice causes violence, causes misery. We have super-extreme pay injustice. We have pay per fortnight from US$1 to US$1,000,000,000. Causing super-extreme violence, causing super-extreme misery.
Maybe you don't think this violence gets to you. Violence is localised, but it can pop up anywhere. Like lightning. And then there is violence pollution, the effect it has on your happiness knowing that there is super-extreme violence and misery out there, wandering about, striking suddenly. Feeling that this is the way the world is. Feeling that this is the way it will always be. Feeling that nothing can change it. Those feelings can't be good for your happiness.
We created super-extreme pay injustice, violence and misery. Therefore we can change it.
At the moment, governments write money into existence, give it to the banks, who lend it to people at interest. Writing the money into existence, increasing the money supply relative to wealth or workproducts, causes inflation. More money spread around over the same amount of wealth or workproducts, means everything costs a bit more. Means more people have to borrow from the banks. At interest. The repayments are greater than the loan. For house loans, maybe three times the size of the loan. So the government devalues your dollar, making you poorer, by increasing the money supply, by inflating the money, and then lends it back to you so you have to enrich them further by the repayments. So says Keynes, the great economist.
Why do I mention this? Because the same technique can be used for good instead of evil. If governments increase the money supply by say 1% a month, and put that money equally into everyone's bank accounts, it will automatically steadily smoothly quietly reduce pay injustice, violence and misery. It will reduce overfortunes, and increase underfortunes, reducing the anger at underpay, reducing the overpower of the overpaid, the super-overpower of the super-overpaid, reducing tyranny and increasing freedom and democracy, reducing violence and anger and increasing peace and friendliness.
How to get governments to do this, when governments are in the hands of the super-overpaid? Show governments the danger to them of super-extreme pay injustice, violence and misery. Violence gets everywhere. The super-overpaid have better security, but that is because they need it. And the best security breaks down. Richest individuals, nations and empires have all been attacked and defeated. Castles have fallen. Strongest banks have been robbed. The lives of the super-overpaid are full of anxious care, exhausting super-vigilance, justifying paranoia. The growth of war and weaponry has now suddenly jumped in 50 years from the power to destroy a city to the power to destroy all planet life. We suddenly learn that the use of 60th of the bombs we have will put up enough smoke to block out enough sun to drop the world temperature 25 degrees, three times colder than an iceage. Permanent global snowstorm. And pay injustice, violence and misery are increasing. Violence cannot keep on increasing forever without reaching the point where the violence will destroy all planet life. Even if all the atomic weapons disappeared magically overnight.
99% of people are now underpaid. So there is a 99% majority who want pay justice because it will increase their pays, and because it will destroy violence and human atomic extinction. And the remaining 1% will want pay justice because it will destroy violence, which reaches everyone, and human atomic extinction.
Therefore there is an almost unanimous human desire for pay justice. Insofar as humans are sane. But humans have been cursed by mother nature with many insanities. We all already want pay justice, in our sane part, but we will have to dominate and control our insane parts if we are to get what we want.
The insane parts are: denial, putting unpleasant things out of mind, putting our heads in the sand, leaving the hard realities to someone else to face, being irresponsible about our own happiness, not being realistic, not facing facts, cocooning ourselves in entertainment and hoping things will change without our mature input, kidding ourselves that violence and misery do not reach us, hoping unrealistically for the best, not getting down to work on our problems.
The problems are easily solvable, if we will nobly drive ourselves to look them in the face.
All we have to do is convince 4 billion adults that pay justice is good for us. Pay justice is very very very very very good for us. There are 4 billion adults to reach but there are 4 billion adults to do the teaching. If each one of us teaches just two people, everyone in the world will know in just 31 times the time it takes to teach two people. So the teaching can be done easily just by word of mouth. And there are all the communication means, and the talents of 4 billion adults to do the communicating. Look what communication was done with the film An inconvenient truth. By the efforts of perhaps just 100 people.
But there is a reluctance to embrace this far more valuable truth than the truth of that film. A reluctance hard to explain.
People seem to have a fatal attraction to pay injustice. Despite its misery and fatality. People seem to have a dislike of pay justice. Despite its tremendous happiness potential.
Is misery, disorder, vast deep unnecessary suffering, climaxed by extinction, the happiness of humans? Are we totally insane? Are we as insane as a person hitting themselves very hard with a hammer?
It is not hard to see that pay injustice causes violence. Money is good. Money is a joker good, good for all goods. Good for all necessities for life, for all desires, from biggest to smallest. So underpay is very bad, and having underpay makes people angry. People are slow to arise, but they have in the long run always overturned super-overpay.
Why are people slow to arise against overpay?
People identify with overpay. They think that if there is superwealth, that that means that they can be superwealthy. But the more super-overpay there is, the more super-underpay there is. People think that private wealth is public wealth. Whereas private super-overpay is public super-underpay. The pool of wealth is made by work. If some are allowed to take out more than they put in, others have to take out less than they put in. We have always allowed some to take out more than they put in. We have always been soft on wealth. We admire wealth. Our economic systems allow unlimited fortunes. Which is unlimited raiding of the pool of wealth. Bill Gates has been legally permitted to take out US$50 million a fortnight for every fortnight he has worked.
There is enough wealth in the world pool of wealth, of workproducts, for every family working average hard to take out US$75,000 a year. From which every family could, by saving US$25,000 a year for 40 years, retire with US$1 million. Instead, 50% of families in first-world countries have no net assets. Their debt is greater than their assets.
In order that 1% of people can be overpaid, can be paid more than the world-average pay per hour, can be paid up to a million times the world-average pay per unit of work, we have 50% of world families on less than 100th of US$75,000 a year per unit of work, 90% of world families on less than 10th of world-average pay per unit of work, 99% of world families on less than the world-average pay per unit of work.
Why are we doing this? It is not from thinking about it. It is from not thinking about it. Why are we reluctant to think about it? Does thinking hurt that bad? Thinking about it would quickly let us see that we don't want that. We don't want it because it puts enormous relative power in the hands of the few super-overpaid to run the world as they like, according to their obsessions and their super-over-selfesteem, using everyone as cattle, as cannonfodder. We don't want it because it makes 99% of people angry and violent. We don't want it because weaponry can now destroy everything living on the planet 60 times over, with global anger now super-extreme and growing. We don't want it because it makes 90% of people unable to contribute their talents and energies to the progress of science and medicine. We don't want it because it pollutes our world with enormous violence and danger, sufferings and tragedies, like wardeaths, concentration camps and genocide. And it pollutes our world with enormous quantities of untruth, lies and disinformation. And enormous quantities of uneducation and unnecessary ignorance. And happiness is totally dependent on truth, on realism and reality. And it is hard enough for we humans of finite intellect to get a grip on reality without the added obstacle of the disinformation generated by the war of overpaid and underpaid.
Pay injustice causes violence, causes misery. We have super-extreme pay injustice. We have pay per fortnight from US$1 to US$1,000,000,000. Causing super-extreme violence, causing super-extreme misery.
Maybe you don't think this violence gets to you. Violence is localised, but it can pop up anywhere. Like lightning. And then there is violence pollution, the effect it has on your happiness knowing that there is super-extreme violence and misery out there, wandering about, striking suddenly. Feeling that this is the way the world is. Feeling that this is the way it will always be. Feeling that nothing can change it. Those feelings can't be good for your happiness.
We created super-extreme pay injustice, violence and misery. Therefore we can change it.
At the moment, governments write money into existence, give it to the banks, who lend it to people at interest. Writing the money into existence, increasing the money supply relative to wealth or workproducts, causes inflation. More money spread around over the same amount of wealth or workproducts, means everything costs a bit more. Means more people have to borrow from the banks. At interest. The repayments are greater than the loan. For house loans, maybe three times the size of the loan. So the government devalues your dollar, making you poorer, by increasing the money supply, by inflating the money, and then lends it back to you so you have to enrich them further by the repayments. So says Keynes, the great economist.
Why do I mention this? Because the same technique can be used for good instead of evil. If governments increase the money supply by say 1% a month, and put that money equally into everyone's bank accounts, it will automatically steadily smoothly quietly reduce pay injustice, violence and misery. It will reduce overfortunes, and increase underfortunes, reducing the anger at underpay, reducing the overpower of the overpaid, the super-overpower of the super-overpaid, reducing tyranny and increasing freedom and democracy, reducing violence and anger and increasing peace and friendliness.
How to get governments to do this, when governments are in the hands of the super-overpaid? Show governments the danger to them of super-extreme pay injustice, violence and misery. Violence gets everywhere. The super-overpaid have better security, but that is because they need it. And the best security breaks down. Richest individuals, nations and empires have all been attacked and defeated. Castles have fallen. Strongest banks have been robbed. The lives of the super-overpaid are full of anxious care, exhausting super-vigilance, justifying paranoia. The growth of war and weaponry has now suddenly jumped in 50 years from the power to destroy a city to the power to destroy all planet life. We suddenly learn that the use of 60th of the bombs we have will put up enough smoke to block out enough sun to drop the world temperature 25 degrees, three times colder than an iceage. Permanent global snowstorm. And pay injustice, violence and misery are increasing. Violence cannot keep on increasing forever without reaching the point where the violence will destroy all planet life. Even if all the atomic weapons disappeared magically overnight.
99% of people are now underpaid. So there is a 99% majority who want pay justice because it will increase their pays, and because it will destroy violence and human atomic extinction. And the remaining 1% will want pay justice because it will destroy violence, which reaches everyone, and human atomic extinction.
Therefore there is an almost unanimous human desire for pay justice. Insofar as humans are sane. But humans have been cursed by mother nature with many insanities. We all already want pay justice, in our sane part, but we will have to dominate and control our insane parts if we are to get what we want.
The insane parts are: denial, putting unpleasant things out of mind, putting our heads in the sand, leaving the hard realities to someone else to face, being irresponsible about our own happiness, not being realistic, not facing facts, cocooning ourselves in entertainment and hoping things will change without our mature input, kidding ourselves that violence and misery do not reach us, hoping unrealistically for the best, not getting down to work on our problems.
The problems are easily solvable, if we will nobly drive ourselves to look them in the face.
All we have to do is convince 4 billion adults that pay justice is good for us. Pay justice is very very very very very good for us. There are 4 billion adults to reach but there are 4 billion adults to do the teaching. If each one of us teaches just two people, everyone in the world will know in just 31 times the time it takes to teach two people. So the teaching can be done easily just by word of mouth. And there are all the communication means, and the talents of 4 billion adults to do the communicating. Look what communication was done with the film An inconvenient truth. By the efforts of perhaps just 100 people.
But there is a reluctance to embrace this far more valuable truth than the truth of that film. A reluctance hard to explain.
People seem to have a fatal attraction to pay injustice. Despite its misery and fatality. People seem to have a dislike of pay justice. Despite its tremendous happiness potential.
Is misery, disorder, vast deep unnecessary suffering, climaxed by extinction, the happiness of humans? Are we totally insane? Are we as insane as a person hitting themselves very hard with a hammer?
It is not hard to see that pay injustice causes violence. Money is good. Money is a joker good, good for all goods. Good for all necessities for life, for all desires, from biggest to smallest. So underpay is very bad, and having underpay makes people angry. People are slow to arise, but they have in the long run always overturned super-overpay.
Why are people slow to arise against overpay?
People identify with overpay. They think that if there is superwealth, that that means that they can be superwealthy. But the more super-overpay there is, the more super-underpay there is. People think that private wealth is public wealth. Whereas private super-overpay is public super-underpay. The pool of wealth is made by work. If some are allowed to take out more than they put in, others have to take out less than they put in. We have always allowed some to take out more than they put in. We have always been soft on wealth. We admire wealth. Our economic systems allow unlimited fortunes. Which is unlimited raiding of the pool of wealth. Bill Gates has been legally permitted to take out US$50 million a fortnight for every fortnight he has worked.
There is enough wealth in the world pool of wealth, of workproducts, for every family working average hard to take out US$75,000 a year. From which every family could, by saving US$25,000 a year for 40 years, retire with US$1 million. Instead, 50% of families in first-world countries have no net assets. Their debt is greater than their assets.
In order that 1% of people can be overpaid, can be paid more than the world-average pay per hour, can be paid up to a million times the world-average pay per unit of work, we have 50% of world families on less than 100th of US$75,000 a year per unit of work, 90% of world families on less than 10th of world-average pay per unit of work, 99% of world families on less than the world-average pay per unit of work.
Why are we doing this? It is not from thinking about it. It is from not thinking about it. Why are we reluctant to think about it? Does thinking hurt that bad? Thinking about it would quickly let us see that we don't want that. We don't want it because it puts enormous relative power in the hands of the few super-overpaid to run the world as they like, according to their obsessions and their super-over-selfesteem, using everyone as cattle, as cannonfodder. We don't want it because it makes 99% of people angry and violent. We don't want it because weaponry can now destroy everything living on the planet 60 times over, with global anger now super-extreme and growing. We don't want it because it makes 90% of people unable to contribute their talents and energies to the progress of science and medicine. We don't want it because it pollutes our world with enormous violence and danger, sufferings and tragedies, like wardeaths, concentration camps and genocide. And it pollutes our world with enormous quantities of untruth, lies and disinformation. And enormous quantities of uneducation and unnecessary ignorance. And happiness is totally dependent on truth, on realism and reality. And it is hard enough for we humans of finite intellect to get a grip on reality without the added obstacle of the disinformation generated by the war of overpaid and underpaid.
100 times happier, part 3
100 times happier? Really?
See what you think after reading this.
If a government, or some other agency, committed the extreme injustice of taking 90% of income off 90% of people, and giving it to 1%, would violence and misery increase? Everyone will readily agree that it will. So everyone knows and believes the connection between pay injustice and violence and misery. Would violence ever-increase? Yes, because people would never start to put up with it, they would fight forever against such a thing. And in such an unfair world, everyone would steal from everyone they could. such an extreme injusticewould set everyone against everyone. Everyone would start playing the all-grab-all game. Would happiness decline by a factor of 100? Maybe. Certainly, society would be in massive extreme upheaval, with riots and massacres and assassinations. Police and army would have to be enormously increased. Relatively egalitarian Scandinavia has 2% defense costs. Extremely overpaid-underpaid Middle East has 50% defense costs. What do humans want?
When people hear the terms social injustice, wealth disparity, they are not very interested. They turn off. They don't think it affects them. Even if they suffer home invasion, or get caught up in and injured in a police chase of criminals. Even if they pay 1000s for security measures. Although they may be wage-slaves. Although they have to live cut off from all humans of different 'socio-economic' classes. Although their quality of life is tainted by fear and danger, war and crime, suspicion and avoidance of most people. Although 99% of people are underpaid, are financing the overpay and overpower of the 1%. Although they have to pay the ruinous health costs. Or can't afford them.
So taking 90% off 90% and giving it all, 81% of national income, to 1%, would have very dramatic effects on happiness. So stopping that will have very positive effects on happiness. For a start, it would make 90% of people 10 times better off financially. It would restore 81% of national happiness by restoring 81% of earnings to earners. For seconds, it would remove superpower of the 1% over all others. It would stop warmongering, cannonfoddering, and other cattle treatment of the 99%. It would enormously increase democracy, freedom, political equality. it would stop an enormous amount of crime, and stop enormous costs of crime in fear, destruction, deaths, law cases, legal costs, lawmaking costs, hospital costs, etc. So I think 100 is not too big a number to put on it.
We humans in the present world have worse pay injustice than the above extreme example. Therefore we can be 100 times happier.
We have been playing the game of all-grab-all for 1000s of years, and built up enormous stocks of pay injustice, violence and misery. We can be 100 times happier because we have made ourselves 100 times more miserable by playing this game to such an extreme point. We have built up a huge bank of happiness for ourselves. We have been saving happiness for 1000s of years. We can begin to spend it.
All it takes is explaining to 4 billion adults the sense of increasing the money supply 1% every month, and putting it all equally into every personal account, one per person of course. Which will automatically reduce overpay and underpay steadily and peacefully towards greater and greater happiness for all.
Where would the resistance to such a plan be? Only among the 1%. Those among the 1% who are incorrigibly attached to money and power. And those among the 99% who are incorrigibly attached to underpay and underpower. Irrational opposition to any change is not limited to the overpaid. Resistance would come from all those who prefer the fatal game to survival and 100-fold happiness for all. From all those who refuse to face the real high possibility, almost certainty, of extinction in the next century. Refuse to face it on the irrational grounds that extinction is unpleasant. And from all those drugged out on sand in the head. From the people who have made pretty pictures in their head and are watching them.
The problem is how to get people from pleasant fantasy to pleasant reality via unpleasant reality. We can't clean up the mess in the house if we can't face the fact of the mess.
But the solution is so easy. It is like merely having to press a button to tidy the house. We can dampen the game down to any level we like best. We can have the game without going so far as to murder 100 million overpaid and underpaid each year. We can finetune the game to the level at which we are maximally happy, with as much excitement and danger, and as much peace and friendliness as we like. Football fans go too far, and we restrain them.
Pay justice is a hugely undervalued stock. It pays huge dividends. Gigantic dividends. In every area of life, spiritual, emotional, financial, psychological. It is far and away the best investment of your time and money.
We have used our energies for 1000s of years to put money over our heads. Every family will have another US$70,000 a year if we pull the chain, and release all that on our heads.
If we just spread overfortunes on decease equally among everyone on earth, we will bring this shower of wealth and freedom and safety and friendliness on our heads.
The most one person can truly self-earn in a lifetime is around just US$3 million. Details of this calculation elsewhere. So taking all of estates except $3 million will be entirely just, will be returning stolen wealth, will be increasing pay justice. Just this one law, which will deprive no living person of overfortune, will bring this shower of happiness on our heads. Will establish peace and order forever.
The American dream of freedom from tyranny was based on prevention of wealth concentration. The founding fathers' plans to prevent wealth concentration failed. This one law, or the 1% inflation per month, will restore the American dream. The human dream of peace and plenty, freedom and goodness. It will destroy 99% of war and crime. Most or all so-called religious and racial conflicts are economic. Which you can see immediately from all the places in the world where there is religious or racial diversity without economic disparity, and there is no conflict there.
Which makes sense, because money makes almost all the difference, since it buys almost everything. All necessities of life, and millions of satisfactions, from biggest to smallest.
How much trouble do you want? You can have far less if you want it.
Do you want to travel your city and the world and always see happy, smiling, contented people?
Do you prefer peace to war?
Do you want to wave off your loved ones going off to war?
Do you want your loved ones or anyone to come home from war embittered and super-hardened?
Do you want to put into human hands the power to control millions of people into conquering your country?
A person with a billion can hire a million soldiers for 100 days at $1 a day. And they are doing so. With pay justice, one person would be hard put to hire one soldier.
How selfdestructive do you want to be?
How happy do you want to be?
See what you think after reading this.
If a government, or some other agency, committed the extreme injustice of taking 90% of income off 90% of people, and giving it to 1%, would violence and misery increase? Everyone will readily agree that it will. So everyone knows and believes the connection between pay injustice and violence and misery. Would violence ever-increase? Yes, because people would never start to put up with it, they would fight forever against such a thing. And in such an unfair world, everyone would steal from everyone they could. such an extreme injusticewould set everyone against everyone. Everyone would start playing the all-grab-all game. Would happiness decline by a factor of 100? Maybe. Certainly, society would be in massive extreme upheaval, with riots and massacres and assassinations. Police and army would have to be enormously increased. Relatively egalitarian Scandinavia has 2% defense costs. Extremely overpaid-underpaid Middle East has 50% defense costs. What do humans want?
When people hear the terms social injustice, wealth disparity, they are not very interested. They turn off. They don't think it affects them. Even if they suffer home invasion, or get caught up in and injured in a police chase of criminals. Even if they pay 1000s for security measures. Although they may be wage-slaves. Although they have to live cut off from all humans of different 'socio-economic' classes. Although their quality of life is tainted by fear and danger, war and crime, suspicion and avoidance of most people. Although 99% of people are underpaid, are financing the overpay and overpower of the 1%. Although they have to pay the ruinous health costs. Or can't afford them.
So taking 90% off 90% and giving it all, 81% of national income, to 1%, would have very dramatic effects on happiness. So stopping that will have very positive effects on happiness. For a start, it would make 90% of people 10 times better off financially. It would restore 81% of national happiness by restoring 81% of earnings to earners. For seconds, it would remove superpower of the 1% over all others. It would stop warmongering, cannonfoddering, and other cattle treatment of the 99%. It would enormously increase democracy, freedom, political equality. it would stop an enormous amount of crime, and stop enormous costs of crime in fear, destruction, deaths, law cases, legal costs, lawmaking costs, hospital costs, etc. So I think 100 is not too big a number to put on it.
We humans in the present world have worse pay injustice than the above extreme example. Therefore we can be 100 times happier.
We have been playing the game of all-grab-all for 1000s of years, and built up enormous stocks of pay injustice, violence and misery. We can be 100 times happier because we have made ourselves 100 times more miserable by playing this game to such an extreme point. We have built up a huge bank of happiness for ourselves. We have been saving happiness for 1000s of years. We can begin to spend it.
All it takes is explaining to 4 billion adults the sense of increasing the money supply 1% every month, and putting it all equally into every personal account, one per person of course. Which will automatically reduce overpay and underpay steadily and peacefully towards greater and greater happiness for all.
Where would the resistance to such a plan be? Only among the 1%. Those among the 1% who are incorrigibly attached to money and power. And those among the 99% who are incorrigibly attached to underpay and underpower. Irrational opposition to any change is not limited to the overpaid. Resistance would come from all those who prefer the fatal game to survival and 100-fold happiness for all. From all those who refuse to face the real high possibility, almost certainty, of extinction in the next century. Refuse to face it on the irrational grounds that extinction is unpleasant. And from all those drugged out on sand in the head. From the people who have made pretty pictures in their head and are watching them.
The problem is how to get people from pleasant fantasy to pleasant reality via unpleasant reality. We can't clean up the mess in the house if we can't face the fact of the mess.
But the solution is so easy. It is like merely having to press a button to tidy the house. We can dampen the game down to any level we like best. We can have the game without going so far as to murder 100 million overpaid and underpaid each year. We can finetune the game to the level at which we are maximally happy, with as much excitement and danger, and as much peace and friendliness as we like. Football fans go too far, and we restrain them.
Pay justice is a hugely undervalued stock. It pays huge dividends. Gigantic dividends. In every area of life, spiritual, emotional, financial, psychological. It is far and away the best investment of your time and money.
We have used our energies for 1000s of years to put money over our heads. Every family will have another US$70,000 a year if we pull the chain, and release all that on our heads.
If we just spread overfortunes on decease equally among everyone on earth, we will bring this shower of wealth and freedom and safety and friendliness on our heads.
The most one person can truly self-earn in a lifetime is around just US$3 million. Details of this calculation elsewhere. So taking all of estates except $3 million will be entirely just, will be returning stolen wealth, will be increasing pay justice. Just this one law, which will deprive no living person of overfortune, will bring this shower of happiness on our heads. Will establish peace and order forever.
The American dream of freedom from tyranny was based on prevention of wealth concentration. The founding fathers' plans to prevent wealth concentration failed. This one law, or the 1% inflation per month, will restore the American dream. The human dream of peace and plenty, freedom and goodness. It will destroy 99% of war and crime. Most or all so-called religious and racial conflicts are economic. Which you can see immediately from all the places in the world where there is religious or racial diversity without economic disparity, and there is no conflict there.
Which makes sense, because money makes almost all the difference, since it buys almost everything. All necessities of life, and millions of satisfactions, from biggest to smallest.
How much trouble do you want? You can have far less if you want it.
Do you want to travel your city and the world and always see happy, smiling, contented people?
Do you prefer peace to war?
Do you want to wave off your loved ones going off to war?
Do you want your loved ones or anyone to come home from war embittered and super-hardened?
Do you want to put into human hands the power to control millions of people into conquering your country?
A person with a billion can hire a million soldiers for 100 days at $1 a day. And they are doing so. With pay justice, one person would be hard put to hire one soldier.
How selfdestructive do you want to be?
How happy do you want to be?
100 times happier, part 2
People love the game of going out there and grabbing all they can. People love games. Games involve struggle, challenge, excitement, suspense, hope, the carrot of reward. So people accept the system of unlimited fortunes. The bigger fortunes are, the more they feel that they too can do the same. People don't connect the game with the world violence. But when everyone just goes for all they can get their hands on, the fact is that 99% of people lose. 99% of people would get more by having a system of everyone getting paid what they earn, no more or less. And 90% of people would get 10 to a 1000 times more. And 50% of people would get 100 to 1000 times more. So do we really love this game? It is a good game, if we ignore the downside, the underpay for 99% and the super-extreme violence for 100%. The strangulation of the world economy, the waste of 90% of talents, the braking of progress. Now near causing extinction for 100%. But if we face the downside, do we want this game? Would we prefer a modification of this game? A less dangerous form of this game? Fairpay, the challenge of survival in nature, was good enough for millions of years of our ancestors. Our explosion of toolmaking, our technological intelligence, has created plenty for all. And we have played this dangerous game with it. Given ourselves super-hell with it. Are we that reckless, devilmaycare?
Two children with two lunches. They can each eat one lunch, and then play together happily. Or they can engage in a game to try to get two lunches, which will put both in a perpetual struggle to get one lunch and the peace to eat it. If they choose the latter, and then find themselves in an acceleration of violence that is about to kill both of them, will they stop?
100 children, 1000 sweets. They can take 10 sweets each, eat them, and play happily. Or they can engage in a game to get all the sweets, which will put them into constant battle. If they reach a point where this game is causing, not fun, but anger and pain, hunger and cruelty, trouble and excessive labour, will they choose to stop?
Our choice.
The pool of wealth is limited. It is limited to the sum of the products of the work of everyone. it seems to some that it is unlimited, because great gobs of new wealth appear with new technology. But these are piles of wealth raked from the pool of wealth made by products. New technology is just very good at raking wealth. Bill Gates is legally permitted to take US$50 million of products of work from the pool every fortnight he had worked. He has not put in US$50 million worth of goods into the pool with every fortnight's work. He would have to do the work equivalent of building 50 US$1 million houses every fortnight. From scratch, from planting the trees and mining the ore. He takes out far more than he puts in, others have to take out far less than they put in. Do we want to play this game? One in 50 humans are dying each year from this game. 100 million people a year. And 5 times that number are seriously injured in this game. Overpaid and underpaid are dying in this game. If there was a person going around killing 2% of the population every year, we would put a stop to it. We wouldn't be inactive about it. So do we want this game, of all-grab-all?
When we play the game of running a footrace, the losers lose little. Would we play that game if 2% of the losers and winners each year lost life? If 10% were seriously injured each year? If 100% were brought nose-close to extinction? So do we want to play this game?
Two children with two lunches. They can each eat one lunch, and then play together happily. Or they can engage in a game to try to get two lunches, which will put both in a perpetual struggle to get one lunch and the peace to eat it. If they choose the latter, and then find themselves in an acceleration of violence that is about to kill both of them, will they stop?
100 children, 1000 sweets. They can take 10 sweets each, eat them, and play happily. Or they can engage in a game to get all the sweets, which will put them into constant battle. If they reach a point where this game is causing, not fun, but anger and pain, hunger and cruelty, trouble and excessive labour, will they choose to stop?
Our choice.
The pool of wealth is limited. It is limited to the sum of the products of the work of everyone. it seems to some that it is unlimited, because great gobs of new wealth appear with new technology. But these are piles of wealth raked from the pool of wealth made by products. New technology is just very good at raking wealth. Bill Gates is legally permitted to take US$50 million of products of work from the pool every fortnight he had worked. He has not put in US$50 million worth of goods into the pool with every fortnight's work. He would have to do the work equivalent of building 50 US$1 million houses every fortnight. From scratch, from planting the trees and mining the ore. He takes out far more than he puts in, others have to take out far less than they put in. Do we want to play this game? One in 50 humans are dying each year from this game. 100 million people a year. And 5 times that number are seriously injured in this game. Overpaid and underpaid are dying in this game. If there was a person going around killing 2% of the population every year, we would put a stop to it. We wouldn't be inactive about it. So do we want this game, of all-grab-all?
When we play the game of running a footrace, the losers lose little. Would we play that game if 2% of the losers and winners each year lost life? If 10% were seriously injured each year? If 100% were brought nose-close to extinction? So do we want to play this game?
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