Easy, painless strategic plan to make human life better and safer

Easy, painless strategic plan of action to make human life better and safer.

There is an assumption that nothing can be done to put an end to unlimited power and corruption, or, perhaps it is truer to say, there is a lack of considering the possibility. It looks as though people transfer the child-parent relation to the citizen-leader relationship, it seems that people no more ask the question, can overpower be permanently removed from human life, than a little child asks can bad guardians be removed. [Biology tells us that human evolution has involved the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood [neoteny] and perhaps this applies psychologically too, and we are victims of the carrying over of juvenile obedience [an effective survival strategy for young animals] into adulthood. Many people set up as moral police and few ask to see their license. Whereas animals part from their parents quickly, easily and permanently, we do not. This human characteristic has advantages and disadvantages. False ethics is obedience and disobedience. True ethics is independently doing your best, seeking reality and thus happiness. Some cultures have ceremonies to mark the changeover point. The overpowerful promote obedience, inability to respond, and we have people with up to 100,000 times fair share of power.]
But there are factors in favour of the possibility of putting an end to unlimited power and corruption.
1. It can be powerfully argued that we are heading straight and fast for extinction, by nuclear winter or other means, which presumably not even the overpowered want. [Weaponry power at 60 times PDC [planet death capability] and tension, anger, injustice, madness and weaponry power rising.]
2. It can be powerfully argued that the overpowered are not so much active and free in their behaviour, as victims, like people chained to an exercise machine set to steadily accelerate, and, again, it can be argued that this is something that not even the overpowered want. And, whether you believe it or not at this stage, it can be powerfully argued that overpay is necessarily miserable, not happy. Think Shakespeare's Richard III. And miserable in proportion to the size of the overpay.
3. The super-overpaid and super-overpowerful are a very tiny minority. More than 99.99% of people have incomes less than five times the global average. Globally, there are only about 10 million millionaires, 1 in 600+ people, less than 0.2%, and only 100,000 with fortunes over US$20 million, 1 in 60,000+, less than 0.002%.
Can 60,000 people persuade 1 to prefer survival and happiness to misery and extinction? At the moment, the underpaid are unaware of the powerful arguments that overpay is misery, and that extinction is inevitable on the present path. In fact, many of the underpaid, at this stage of 'missed understandings', support and defend overpay, and all the rationalisations for overpay, because they see overpay as a beacon of hope to their underpay and underpower.
4. The 3+ billion adults can be reached, just by word of mouth, in just 31 times the time it takes to reach and inform two people. 4 billion candles can be lit from just one candle in just 31 times the time it takes to light two candles. ['Don't complain about the darkness, light a candle.'] It may take just a month or a year to reach and inform the thinking of two people, just by word of mouth, and therefore just 31 months or years to convince humanity of the benefits of pay justice.
5. History is unanimous on the non-survival of heaps of overwealth, individual, national and imperial, and logic is strong in support of this too. History has fewer examples of equality [pay justice], but history is again unanimous on the strength, sustainability and happiness of equality. [The early period of empires, the Marshall Plan, the high wages philosophy of Henry Ford, MacArthur's land reforms in Japan, etc.] Wisdom and logic are also unanimous on these points. The universal pursuit of unlimited fortune has been by deafness to all voices of wisdom. ['Money like manure is best when spread', Francis Bacon. Spread in proportion to work, which, per-hour, is close to equal.] There is hope in the great length of time we have spent failing to prove that pay injustice causes happiness. Examples abound. The penny may drop. The understanding may break out of the dense thornthicket of human life. Ambition detached from taking out no more than you put in may come to feel self-disrespectful and self-harming.
6. 99% of people are underpaid, and I guess that there are many among the 1% who prefer survival and happiness to overpay and extinction, and that there are some among them who are open or openable to the arguments that these are the options, so the majority is potentially great enough to include many among the 'muscle' of the overpaid, so education can produce a power ratio so extreme that the concrete-mindset overpaid will potentially concede without battle. When opinion is 'in the air', when opinion is 'everywhere', when the leaders know the people are clear and convinced, they have no 'steam'.
7. Word of mouth is hard to police, hard to suppress, so education by word of mouth can spread relatively freely to the point that even the 0.001% concrete-mindset super-overpaid can get a whiff that this might be very, very good 'even' for them. There is no need for an organisation, which the overpaid can burn, bomb, raid, character-assassinate or infiltrate and eviscerate. There is need only for the character to examine with objective self-interest, teach two, and cross the fingers that the average level of character in the human race is at least equal.
8. The herd instinct works for change as more minds are changed, although the herd instinct works against change in the beginning. 10% of people adapted is 100% of people adapted. [Or 99.99% of people adapted. I doubt if the concrete-mindset super-overpaid are susceptible to the herd instinct, but they may be.]
9. People have adapted to startling new ideas many, many times. The idea of handling and using fire must have seemed like purest insanity. ['Money, like fire, is a good slave, a bad master.'] Having a law against murder was a new idea once, which got around, was considered, soaked in, became approved. The idea of being a dashboard away from exploding petrol had its critics. Insurance had to have been learned, considered, weighed and found good. The idea of being on a ball floating in space would have made people queasy. The learning curve is not new to people, and they have conquered it.
10. The possibility of extinction soonish, and the sudden recent acceleration of danger may prick humans awake. We have multiplied our power to kill ourselves by a factor of 60,000 in 50 years, thanks to e=mc2, from power to kill 100,000 in a day to being able to snowball and irradiate the planet. By transport technology we have compressed the violence like a gas by a factor of 250 in the last 200 years, from a day away being 50 miles to being 12,500 miles. An increase of danger factor of 15,000,000. Quite a prick.
11. We can be literally 100 times happier. This 'unbelievable' conclusion follows from very believable premises. Imagine if a government, say, committed the super-extreme injustice of taking 90% of after-tax income permanently off 90% of citizens and giving it all to 1%. There would be 81% loss of happiness just in the financial loss to the 90%. [Money is the joker good, it is good for virtually all good things.] Then there would be the enormous increase in violence [civil war, robbery, murder, mayhem, rape]. Riots have happened in relatively peaceful, egalitarian New Zealand over not getting a 6% payrise. [There have been only two deaths in people-government clashes in NZ.] The 1% would suffer social isolation, endless labour and cost of selfdefense, and losses. [The energy of the underpaid is endless.] The 90% would suffer from their decreased social power, the increased social power of the 1%. All these additional factors could easily raise the loss of happiness from 81% to 99%. Therefore reversing the practice would likely increase happiness by a factor of 100. We have in the real world far greater pay injustice. The 1% get, not 82 times as much, but up to 100,000 times as much. The 9% in the middle get, not fairpay, but between fairpay and 100th of fairpay. The 90% get, not 10th, but between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay. [One billion on less than a dollar a day per family [between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay], three billion on less than $2 a day, below 50th of fairpay.] If equality was a swimming pool one metre deep, our pool is 98% up in a thin, thin needle going up 100 kilometres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 0.1mm deep. [Global means every locality. Global issues are local issues.] Therefore 100 times happier is not excessive, impractical, unrealistic. Decline of happiness has been imperceptibly slow but over a very long time. [Although the unprecedented horrors of WWII might give clues.]
12. Once there is a 99+% will to pay justice, pay justice can be approximated with very little pain or disturbance of social systems. Everyone in the world can be made equal heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to earn that fortune [except, probably, suffer absence of parents]. Everyone has done everything to earn that fortune, to do the work that has made the goods that the money represents and buys. The deceased has not earned by own work more than $10 million of that fortune. [100 hours x 50 weeks x 50 years x US$40. Rather surprisingly, all arguments for higher-than-average pay per hour turn out to be fallacious. Hence also, all arguments for lower-than-average pay per hour.] Governments can be responsible for making sure everyone has access to a bank [mobile where appropriate]. [Governments gain by reduced social costs and labour. The extremely rich-poor Middle East spends around 50% of GNP on defense, mostly internal.] No need for the enormous bureaucratic cost of distinguishing the 1% overpaid and 99% underpaid. The 1% are being trimmed by the law anyway. A small department finalising estates and moving the money directly, electronically to all accounts [one per person of course] with the click of a set-up system. The super-overpay accumulated over 3000+ years will gently rain down over two generations, making the overpaid happier and safer. Warmongering and cannonfoddering will cease. [A person with one billion can now hire a million soldiers for 1000 days at $1 a day. With pay justice, one person will be hardput to hire one soldier.] Or, requiring even less administration and intervention, money supply can be increased 1% per month by adding equal shares of 1% of the money supply to all accounts. The inflation effect reduces overpay more than the extra money raises it, the extra money raises underpay more than the inflation effect lowers it. Inflation is not bad when the underpaid are getting more [mostly much more] in the extra money than losing in the inflation. Once the undue influence of the super-overpaid is gone, and once people see the benefits of pay justice, finer adjustments towards pay justice can be made.
13. This plan is immediately empowering, immediately begins to erode the passivity thrust upon the underpaid. And one can do it until a better plan comes along. Action in a plan in which one has confidence is already a happiness.
14. There is enormous strategic power and efficiency in a plan that strikes at the root. 'There are a 1000 striking at the branches of the tree of problems for every one who is striking at the root', Henry Thoreau. Small things are easier for people. Can't see the forest for the leaves. Only those who see the big picture are awake. Time spent in committee is inversely proportional to the importance of the subject. In other words, we reverse-prioritise. To our enormous cost. If you try to destroy a tree by cutting at branches, the rest of the tree is growing while you labour at one branch. The world tree of problems is growing faster than people are succeeding at cutting branches. If you strike at the root, you are attacking all the branches at once. The tree gathers itself for your convenience into the trunk. Cutting the tree at the trunk removes the tree permanently. But we have limited mental vision of a big, big world, and branches appear in front of our eye. It appears that a branch problem is plenty big enough for the efforts of one person. We think: If a branch problem is very big, how big must the root problem be? And we bite off a problem plenty big enough for our energies. But attacking the tree at trunk or root level is far easier. If we can resist the temptation to attack at branch level, and instead follow the branch back to the trunk, every step we take on that route from branches towards the trunk increases the number of branches our labours attack, increases our power and efficiency, shrinks the problems. We would think someone mad who tried to remove a tree by cutting branches, when the trunk is right there at ground level, offering itself gathered into one. It would be mad to remove just the one leaf of a poisonous tree that poisoned someone. Again and again, the root of problems is pay injustice, whether the problem is warmongering, government failure to respond to the will of the people, saving the whales, the war on marijuana, dangerous cars and pharmaceuticals, suppression of cheaper solutions, environmental pollution, crime, corruption, hidden agendas, strikes, racial 'tensions', religious wars. [Races and religions live in amity where there is no pay injustice, where there is no theft of wealth and power along religious or racial lines.] None enjoy unless all enjoy. Money is a joker good, good for everything, and money is power, so pay injustice is at the root of everything. Wealth [overpay] breeds insolence, said Theognis 2500 years ago. Limited mental vision, falsely distinguishing self-interest from the interest of everyone despite the connectedness of everyone, works against all enjoying, and therefore against any enjoying. What made Hitler think he was strong enough to steal the world was extraordinary failure to grasp the power of others. It is the same failure, different only in degree, that lies behind every arrogant government, corporation and group, and it is the same failure behind striking at branches instead of root. It requires mental discipline to resist striking at branches. Knowledge is power. Truth is perspective. Happiness depends entirely on truth, on perspective, on seeing the whole tree. How much governing is a government unable to do because it is fighting wars [within government and business, the nation and worldwide] to get or keep an unfair share of power? The goods of the world gather themselves in money. The portability and non-perishability of money, increased by electronic money, work against us. How much could a person steal if there were only goods? But this gathering in money can work for us if we focus on pay injustice, if we focus on the ricocheting deathlessness of the greatest injury, overpay and love of overpay. Grabbing from nature is harmless, because nature gives freely. Grabbing from each other is all harm, because others do not give freely. This root distinction is all we need get to remove 99+% of human unhappiness. This plan allows people to strike at the global root at home, just by talking with two friends. What follows, if it is true, that people fight injuries [legal and illegal]? Pay injustice is the huge raging bear in the chinashop of human culture. When it is gone, we can begin to pick up the pieces.

Force has achieved nothing. 3000 years of force have not prevented the steady growth of overpay-underpay and the growth of violence [war, crime and weaponry] that is caused by pay injustice. The underpaid have lost battles, they have never lost a war, all empires have fallen, but the underpaid have never prevented, or even in general tried to prevent, the regrowth of pay injustice after revolutions. There are two American dreams. One is the Jeffersonian dream of permanent prevention of tyranny, the permanent survival of democracy and freedom, liberty and justice for all, by prevention of 'wealth concentration', [overpay-underpay, pay injustice, unlimited fortunes for what is necessarily limited contribution by own work]. The other is freedom to pursue unlimited fortunes. The 'addicted' or just thoughtless gambler is induced to part with his wealth by the dream of wealth. 99.99% of gamblers could produce the same effect in their lives by writing a cheque to the casino and leaving. And post-revolution humanity has been the same. Our ideas are always at the root of our behaviour, and force is but a doomed attempt to graft behaviour on a dominant rootstock.
Therefore, education, quite free from the slightest element of force, including 'moral' pressure, is the only option we have. Education in these points has been nigh zero. The arguments against overpay have never, to my of-course limited knowledge, been formulated before. Few if anyone has suspected, sufficiently strongly to seek them out, that there are powerful arguments in favour of pay justice. Those who have spoken out against 'Mammon' have never given reasons, or the reasons have been suppressed by the overpaid. The very idea of overpay is hardly in the vocabulary of thought. The powerful arguments that it is true that the gambler loses whether s/he wins or loses money should be given so that humanity can have them. At the least, on the Keynesian principle of: Because they cannot hear sense, does that mean I should speak nonsense to them? We cannot assume that the resistance, the 3000-year-old mindset, is unconquerable. As powerful as the arguments are that there are large handicaps to human realism, we cannot assume, we do not have the luxury of assuming, that they are unconquerable. The possibility of extinction by nuclear or other weaponry or technology may be the very thing that will create, that is creating, the opening of minds to new mindsets. So there is hope even in the possibility of extinction soonish.
The disadvantages of underpay are obvious to all. It is the conviction that overpay is good for the overpaid, the conviction that more money is always good, that has driven overpaid and underpaid through the gore of human history for 3000+ years. If this conviction can be overthrown, by study of reality, the way is cleared to the human embracing of pay justice.
One strategy that could be used, perhaps is used, on gamblers is to show them the house and car they would have had if they had not gambled. The world-average family pay is US$200,000, or US$300,000 if there is a student in the house. The world-average worker pay is US$100,000 a year, including housewives and students. World annual income is US$300 trillion, and there are about 3 billion workers, including housewives and students. [World annual income [purchasing power parity figures] is taken from Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1992, pp237-258, compounded with global inflation since 1987.]
People think they are pretty happy, happy enough. You can apparently cook a frog without it noticing if you raise the temperature slow enough. Decline of happiness has been imperceptibly slow, but it has been over 3000+ years. Pay justice is of course equal pay for equal work. We have family pay for a year's work from $30 to $30,000,000,000. That is, from 10,000th to 100,000 times average. A pay injustice factor of one billion. A violence factor of one billion. A brutality factor of one billion. A disinformation factor of one billion. A waste and destruction factor of one billion. For instance, technological progress would have gone ahead, will go ahead something like 100 times faster with pay justice. 90% of tertiary minds we have are tied up in the myriad consequences of pay injustice violence, in the military-industrial complex, in the courts, police, hospitals, universities, government, business. And 90% of the tertiary minds we have are too poor to become scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, etc.
Arguments against the goodness and happiness of overpay.
1. Violence is proportional to pay injustice and inversely proportional to distance between people. Violence gets to everyone. Violence gets everywhere people get. No one is exempt, no one is safe. Although violence is localised and temporary, it is unconfined. And people move about. Honey attracts bears. Bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them. Empires attract vandals. Overpay implies underpay, relative and absolute. Overpay is attacked by greater and equal overpay as well as by underpay. However great the overpay, it is finite, and meanwhile the energy of the underpaid is endless, so every overpay must fall. The underpaid can only throw grains of sand, but they can throw them forever. [Ezra Pound's epithet for the poor, unkillable. And anyway, the rich need the poor to do the work.] And the underpaid are often of mind to throw what they can. Sand erodes rocks. Every underpay is constantly sending the most ambitious, hardest fighters, the next Mafia. And meanwhile the rich get 'soft'. [Conditions for political prisoners under the Russian monarchy were kindly. Rich nations hobble their anti-crime power with decencies.] The overpaid are endlessly in a painful, hopeless bind: they have to make their subordinates as strong as possible to defend them, and as weak as possible not to attack them. Every time the overpaid smack down their subordinates, they increase their own danger. And every time they strengthen their subordinates, they increase their danger. Whenever the overpaid keep the slaves down, they weaken themselves against attack. Eg, the American South. Contrast the Roman Empire, which was 70% slaves at one point, but the slaves were educated, therefore pro-Roman. If soldiers don't get enough loot, they may go over to the other side. Alexander the so-called Great said he could always defeat a town with a golden arrow [bribes to the disaffected]. Both underpay and the golden carrot of overpay are enormous stimuli to war and crime. The super-overpaid have always been falling like drops in a fountain. We underestimate their numbers because people are not interested by the fallen.
2. The overpaid are isolated from the human tribe in freedom and amity. The feeling of belonging to a group is one of the greatest determinants of human happiness. The absolute hermit is rare. The World Happiness Index is constantly finding poor countries happiest. This is not because of their poverty, but because of their high level of belonging, of social trust, of being together with others without fear. Even under attack or oppression, they have company. There are many people of equal wealth among the poor, very few of equal wealth among the rich. 'Beggars fear no thieves.' Among equals, power is equal, so theft has lower chance of success.
3. There is rapidly decreasing marginal utility with overpay, because desires are limited by the body. The super-rich cannot sit in more comfortable chairs, eat more delicious food, occupy more room, wear more clothes and shoes, have more sex, drugs and rock and roll than the fairpaid. They can spend more but they can't consume more. The underpaid glamourise overpay because they have desires unsatisfied, they have no consciousness of satiety. This keeps the stardust bright. The overpaid are not rolling in delights proportional to the size of their overpay. Gluttony is a vice, not because it is distasteful, but because it is a failure. Satisfaction waits on appetite.
'[Wo]mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to [wo]mankind', JFK.