The crucial point - on which hangs whether humans survive and get far greater happiness or don't
Humans are blinded by their sight. They see part, not the big picture. They see a golden tail, and take it home, well pleased, and go to sleep, and wake up and find a tiger in the house. They see benefit, and do not see the downside outside their viewframe. The benefit also makes them not want to see the tiger attached. They see wealth, formed by nature's bounty and human work, and grab some. The more they succeed in grabbing, the more they like it. Yet if anyone grabs more than their equal share of nature's bounty plus that wealth produced by their own work, there is a shortage for others. Which produces violence. Which ever-grows, as both sides try to prevail. And wealth is power, power to grab more, faster, more easily. So inequality, pay injustice, unfair shares, grows, exponentially. Humanity is like a situation where one person takes the goods of 1000, and thus has a. merely 1000 times more than he can use, b. 1000 enemies [detractors, eroders] instead of 1000 friends [supporters, protectors]. Both the one and the 1000 are less happy. And they are set up in a mechanism that grows inequality, violence and unhappiness. So it has been over the last 3000 years or so, since the creation of trade and money. It is hard to save wealth when wealth is perishable. We have gone from equality to an inequality factor of one billion. The ratio of highest to lowest pay per year's work is one billion. The highest yearly increase of fortune is US$30 billion. The lowest is around $30. We have grown war to world wars, cold wars, genocide, death camps, and weaponry to 60 times PDC [planet death capability]. Thanks to technology, we have increased our power to kill 60,000 times in 50 years, from power to kill 100,000 in one day to power to kill everyone. We have concentrated violence by a factor of 250 in the last 200 years, from a day away being 50 miles to being 12,500 miles. Like concentrating a gas, raising the temperature. The tiger has grown enormously. We face a century in which population will go to 100 billion, topsoil will go to zero, oil will go to zero, and third world wealth will go to 90% or so. Third world wealth is 51% now, and is growing 10% every 30 years, probably with acceleration. The tiger is still growing, and at a tremendous rate. The hunting mentality is still strong with us. To catch is good, to catch much is great. There is enough wealth for every worker, including housewives and students, who also work, to be paid US$40 an hour, $100,000 a year. In other words, every worker is producing around US$40 worth of goods and services every workhour. World income is $300 trillion a year, and there are about 3 billion workers, including housewives and students. Plenty, and peace. With progress 100 times faster; because 90% of the scientists we have are tied up in the violence, in the military-industrial complex, universities, business, legal system, hospitals, and 90% of the scientists we could have are too poor to become scientists. Those with the greatest energy and drive to be at the top, those with least sense of enough is a feast, those with the strongest emotional needs to be on top, those with least sense of the downside of having much, govern us. Every empire has plundered and been plundered to death. Every plutocracy has fallen. Money is the second greatest power, the avidity of those who desire to be at the top is greater. Every heap of wealth is under perpetual attack from rivals, and the finity of every heap bows every time to the infinity of attack. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown. Inequality is good for no one. None enjoy unless all enjoy. People are too dangerous to annoy. The belief that people are doormats is incorrect. Overpay cannot add more to satisfaction than fairpay can, because bodily desires are limited. The disadvantages of underpay and underpower are obvious, the disadvantages of overpay are extreme. Obviously, a community in which everyone works, and produces plenty, can be made very unhappy, without destruction of goods, by extreme misdistribution. We are all very unhappy relative to what we could be. Equality can be attained without downside, with enormous upside, in two generations by giving everyone equal shares of a 1% per month increase of money supply. Inflation is not bad when everyone gets a share. Paying everyone, the 1% overpaid and the 99% underpaid, saves the enormous bureaucratic cost in money, time and labour in distinguishing the two. Also, we can make everyone heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to earn that money. Everyone has done everything to make the goods that the money represents and buys. It takes only 60,000 being paid between fairpay and 100,000 times fairpay to take all the earnings of the world, and we are nearly there, with 1% with over 90% of world income, while doing less than 1% of the work. Let all people with wits hasten to promote this greatest of opportunities, with enormous increase of happiness for every person, overpaid and underpaid.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Replies to arguments
Replies to arguments
introductory point: i am talking about something to increase the happiness of everyone, you included - we are all in very deep doodoo - do i need to remind you? - we must be making *some* mistake - so a serious sincere discussion, a willingness to hear opinions of what that mistake is, is appropriate - a lack of confidence, an atom of doubt in our set ways is appropriate, an admission that there may be a flaw in our views - hey, are we perfect in wisdom, do we have perfect sight, can we see all sides, are we small and the world very very big, has no one ever been affected by bias? - none of this is our fault, we didn't make ourselves, but we can accept that pursuit of happiness involves pursuit of reality, because we are all bears of little brain - none of us *knows* in a perfect sense - our knowledge is the same as the knowledge of the people who were sure the sun went round the earth - let us put our heads together to figure this out as best we can, with light not heat - cool heads rescue themselves better
argument to risk: businessmen should be paid for risk - this argument is widespread - businessmen take risks, yes, they risk a sprat to catch a mackerel *for themselves* - workers risk their *lives* - and sometimes pay with their lives, which businessmen rarely do - why is there no thought of paying workers for risk? - businessmen risk money, to make money for themselves - a gambler risks money to make money for himself - but he doesn't complain that he should be paid for risk - it is impossible that there can be payment for risk: risk is risk of losing money - or life - businesspeople risk their money, and if they make money, they justify it with, among other things, the risk they took - they feel the risk they took, the risk takes a psychological toll on them, they wish compensation - but is risk measured? is risk measurable? if risk was measurable, can a dollar value be put on dollar recompense per unit of risk? - and who should pay for this risk? - others are paying for this risk - why? - is there a national acceptance that risk should be paid for? - have people agreed to pay for risk? - no - and it is risk of money to get money for oneself - isn't that the individual's business, the individual's choice? - and if risk is to be paid for, shouldn't risk of everyone be measured, a dollar amount fixed per unit of risk, and everyone be paid for risk in proportion to their risk? - the businessman, or some of them, are pleading their own case, at the expense of others, and not pleading the case of others who are risking more - sometimes risk is low and rewards high, sometimes risk is high and rewards low, this is risk - who can pay for it? - who should pay for it? - life is risky, money can be risked and lost - that's life - crossing the street is risk, living is risk - who can pay for it? - workers are humble, they take on risk, and don't demand payment for it - they absorb the costs of risk themselves without a murmur - without an option - do we pay fishermen for risk? - 'i'm going to try to catch a fish for my dinner - can you pay me now, i might not catch you later' - we defer to the businessman - he has money - he might hire us - he says he deserves payment for his risk - better give it to him - if he makes a lot of money, well, he deserves it, because he is a hero, risking - we aren't risking - we are just workers - the businessman is just over-self-esteeming, the worker is under-self-esteeming
the boss does plain oldfashioned hard work:
work should be paid for - justice in pay is equal pay for equal work - hours of work can be measured - hours of work can be paid for - working 20% harder produces 20% more goods, so taking out 20% more goods, by getting paid 20% more money, is just and good and right - but again, there is special pleading - are people willing to allow equal pay for equal work for everyone? - or is 'hard work' unique to businessmen? - and should 20% harder work be paid 20% more, or is it to be an excuse for limitless overpay? - that is, putting in 20% more and getting out up to 100,000 times more? - every businessperson is supporting the right to unlimited pay for hard work, risk, etc - but the pool of wealth is limited to nature's bounty [which everyone has an equal right to] and to work, and everyone's contribution to the pool by work is limited, not unlimited, so unlimited fortunes for what is necessarly limited work is overpay, which causes underpay, which causes violence, which gets to everyone, rich and poor, and which escalates, and grows weaponry and war and crime, which after 3000 years has reached 60 times PDC [planet death capability] which is not good for anyone - America was founded on the sound principle of democracy and freedom by prevention of unllimited fortunes, which are also unlimited power, which is tyranny and undemocracy, unfreedom, which Americans fought to get free from - so is there not a connection between our attitude that it is good to go for all we can get, and the terrible state we are in? - money is the joker good, good for all things, so underpay is theft of virtually all good things, and therefore causes violence, resentment - is pay justice our friend or our enemy? - can we all dip into the vast but limited, not unlimited pool of wealth, grabbing as much as we can, and not end up fighting everyone all the time? - is justice good because it saves us all from perpetual violence? - isn't it our self-interest to avoid pay injustice, to weed out these excuses for overpay, for pay for no work, like unlimited pay for limited work, like pay for risk? - if we look further down the track of everyone grab all, so we see doom for all? - globally, pay ranges from $30 a year to $30 billion a year - and globally, war has grown for 1000s of years to the present great danger - we were far safer defenseless against the tiger than we are now, defenceless against the bomb - wars have grown to world wars - thanks to e=mc2, we have multiplied our power to kill people by 60,000 in the last 50 years - is there not a connection between pay injustice, the all-grab-all philosophy, the Horatio Alger go out there,boy, and grab!, resulting in super-super-extreme pay injustice, and violence, the growth of weaponry and war? - remembering that money is the joker good, good for all necessities and desires? - the businessman stays later than the workers, perhaps, and says to himself, they don't know what work is - but if the boss does 20% more work, he produces 20% more, and deserves 20% more, not unlimited profits
bosses provide jobs, the worker suckles from the teat feeding him -
it seems that the businessperson provides jobs - he sets up a company, he hires people, and pays them - but this overlooks the fact that the people paid pay for this pay with work - the businessman pays them, he hands over money, but they hand over work, workproducts to the businessman, they pay him, usually more - there is no gifting from the businessman to the workers - there is, if you like, mutual gifting - and sometimes the gifting is greater on one side than the other - what provides the jobs is demand for the products - no demand, no jobs - the businessman is a worker, contributing to the providing of goods - he ought to be paid for his work, like everyone - the demand enables the business to be set up, enables the workers and businessperson to be paid for their work providing goods in demand - it is only the businessperson's self-inflation that makes him think he is doing a kindness to anyone - is a unique sort of person, entitled to privileged treatment - he is working, and being paid - part of his work is hiring and paying people - with money he gets for the goods that the workers have made - the workers, including the businessman, have made the wealth they get - justice is equal pay for equal work - anything else is theft - unequal pay for equal work, which is theft, some getting too much, others getting too little - theft - theft of the joker good - theft of everything, theft of everything money buys - causing resentment, violence, which necessarily escalates, as both sides try to prevail, as both sides ever-seek bigger weaponry to prevail, which necessarily escalates endlessly, or till justice, or extinction of all, which no one wants - and no one wants the war and crime that builds to extinction - you can poohpooh extinction by nuclear winter, but will your poohpooh be heard? - will reality heed? - have we grown inequality, war and weaponry for 3000 years to 60 times PDC or not? - and still growing - ratio of highest to lowest pay per year's work IS one billion - world average pay, if we pay housewives and students too IS US$40 an hour, US$100,000 a year per worker, US$200,000 per family without student - did the first world rob and enslave the third world for 500 years? - did the conquistadors steal and slaughter and plunder? - was the cotton wealth of America made by slaves? - Would you resent being on 100th to 10,000th of world average pay per hour, as 5 billion are? - is the first world sucking $200 billion a year out of the third world, as the Secretary-General of the UN says, although the economy of africa is smaller than italy's? - is everyone in danger? - is there a connection between everyone going for all we can get, and positive all we get is ours, and violence? - does overpay exist? - did Bill Gates earn $500,000 for every hour he worked, or was he paid for scarcity of new technology? - it takes only a profit rate of 40% pa to turn his startup money of $5 million into $50 billion in 30 years
competition:
competition brings prices down *towards* equity - but may take two decades to do so - especially with new technology supported by 70-year patents creating a monopoly, inhibiting competition - Japan has 2-year patents - new technology has built-in scarcity, meaning people pay for the absence of goods, while the industry is gearing up to demand - or they pay for their high demand for the goods, or for the lack of factories - scarcity is not work by anyone - but we pay for it - pay billions, which then suck $100 million a year for every billion at 10% - every year, forever, for no work - suck $100 million of goods others, including businessmen, have created - pay injustice seems good as long as you think only of being on the 'winning' end - but there are no winners - violence gets to everyone - every empire in history has fallen, and has been maintained for a time only with great effort and cost - bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them - and the money in them is not necessarily justly got - the free market has great advantages over central planning, but it is not just, it is not sufficient to preserve us all from universal escalating violence - we need justice for that, we need mechanisms that counter the pays for no work like scarcity.
haven't the guts to be boss:
yes, it takes guts to be boss - but who provides the guts to be boss, the boss or mother nature? - who provides the aptitude, the inclination, the guts, the nature, to be boss? - nature, not the boss - the boss does not *work* to have those guts or that inclination or temperament - there is nothing wrong with choosing to be a worker and not a boss - there is no inferiority in being a worker - the worker creates goods, and is properly paid for them - it is an honourable and noble thing - contempt for the worker and arrogation of superiority is a disease - George Pullman [of Pullman cars fame] said that the worker deserves to suffer first from economic downturn because he contributes nothing to the industry - this is mental disease, megalomania, pride gone made, arrogance enthroned - wealth begets insolence, said the Greeks - with this arrogance, the wealthy rise and fall - Ceausescu, the late Roman emperors, Napoleon, Caesar, Richard III, Hitler - it keeps them from discovering their loneliness and unhappiness - history is loaded with the troubles and falls of the super-overpaid, the pleonectic, the great stealers - pride is the enemy, the deceiver, not anyone's friend.
law of mutually beneficial exchange, exchange wouldn't take place if either party thought that weren't getting any gain -
it is this which has disabled people from seeing the reality, that exchange necessarily involves a little injustice [which then grows with every transaction and causes ever-escalating violence, war, crime and weaponry] - the exchange seems to be voluntary, and how can voluntary be bad? - but is it voluntary? - a person cannot volunteer to do something without knowing what that something is, and no one knows the exact value of both items in the exchange, and, given a choice between paying fairprice [paying for all the work in the item bought] and overprice, everyone will choose the fairprice - but people don't have that choice - there is not always a cheaper competitor right next door - there is usually not a fairprice alternative offered - no one can calculate the fairprice - although the fairprice exists, no one can know it - the theft is often unconscious on both sides - but injustice has occurred - a shift of wealth from one to other has occurred, just from exchange, which should not cause a shift of wealth - and that drop of injustice will, over trillions of transactions create an ocean of injustice, violence and loss of quality of life for everyone - there is a gap between what people might think, and what is real - the person may not care if the other gains a bit for no work, on top of his pay for his work - but the drop of injustice will still cause ever-growing violence when accumulated - both gain from the transaction in that both lose something they can't use and get something they can use - but that is beside the point, which is that drop of injustice - both will feel equally happy with their exchange if the exchange is fair-exchange-no-robbery - the happiness of getting something they both want cannot justify injustice, a transfer of value from one to the other in the difference in value - your argument to competition shows that you support correction of prices towards equality - or permit it - but how efficient is competition? - not perfectly - and there is monopoly, and who can root out all monopoly elements in the economy? - patents are monopolies - the customer is constrained in choice by distance to competitor - cost in time or money or fuel in getting to the competititor - and there is nothing to stop two competitors from both overcharging - and, in our mindset, of get as much as possible, never mind justice, and ignorant of the connection to violence, there is every motive to do so - there are price cartels, and these may be implicit - without actual collusion - just independent decisions by competitors to share the market at the higher price - and then there is the fact that the motive to underprice a competitor decreases as the fairprice is approached - the drive to undercut a competitor is small when the rewards are small - so price fall with competition slows with approach to fairprice - which no one exactly knows - so undercutting may take the competitor unbeknownst into underpricing - a system which allows all the myriad, uncalculable injustices in the economy, but which corrects for their accumulated, endlessly growing injustice and violence effects, by redistributing super-overfortunes to everyone, saves us from violence, and yet leaves us with the great advantages of the so-called free market, which is less than perfectly free and fair - you say there can't be anything wrong with transaction, because it is voluntary - you say both gain - but mere exchange cannot increase value - and the two things cannot be equal - so one must lose and the other gain - a drop of inequality, which with every transaction grows to an ocean - they both gain in the sense that one has money and wants bread, and the other has bread and wants money [to buy lettuce to go with the bread he has made all day] - but not in value - by realising the drop of inequality, we can with sense of justice oppose the ocean it produces - of violence, and inequality of power which is corrupting and tyrannous, and dangerous to overpaid and underpaid - with nuclear weapons, fatal to the whole human race
profit as the difference between costs and perceived value by the customer -
not good enough to prevent injustice and violence - the state built on injustice cannot stand, roman saying - justice is the purpose of government, james madison - because justice is what makes society stand, which everyone wants - the customer has no way of perceiving the exact value of the product - prices in excess of the full costs of the product, including fairpay for owners, *have* to be [unconscious or conscious] theft, have to belong to overcharged customers, underpaid workers or underpriced raw materials [which is ultimately work by people further back in the line of production]. Have to be, by logic - can't belong to owners, who get it - because, by definition, they have been fully paid for their work out of costs - it is obvious that incomes [revenues, prices] can be different from full costs - can be more or less - but the accumulated effect is that 1% are getting 98% of world income, while doing less than 1% of the work - this is a side-effect of trade which can be neutralised by, for example, making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates, or by increasing the money supply 1% per month and giving equal shares to everyone [ inflation is not bad when everyone gets the new money instead of the banks] - the inflation effect reduces ovefortunes and the equalshares lifts the underpay, saving us from ever-growing violence and its huge costs in happiness and fairpay. Justice is the friend of everyone. The overpaid are saved from endless attack, paranoia, nervousness and sure doom, and the overpaid get no reduction in happiness from fairpay, because fairpay, US$100,000 per worker, $200,000 per family, is above the level where money adds to happiness [US$50,000, according to studies]. Desires are limited, and fairpay satisfies all needs and desires. Satisfaction waits on appetite. The overpaid have no more stomachs for food, bodies for clothes, for bed, feet for shoes, etc. The body is limited, its desires are limited. Equality, with its gifts of belonging, social trust, peace, amity, fraternity, social cohesion, safety, friendliness, drastic limitation of war and crime, nuclear winter, removal of overbearing tryannical government by superoverpaid, removal of warmongering and cannonfoddering, etc is far more valuable than money for food with a full stomach, money for more rooms than you can inhabit, etc.
profit is kept by the producer as payment for undertaking the production and for risk -
see above on risk - and whatever the producer does, it ought to be paid for by fairpay, not by unlimited reward - the work of the producer is a certain amount, and the fairpay is a certain amount, not any amount that profits turn up -
do something more cheaply and you get rich -
again, there is the ignoring of the amount of work the person does and the appropriate compensation for the sacrifice of time and energy - there is just: i'm a good fellow, providing a service by lower prices, so my reward should be unconfined - no, it should be equal pay for equal work - you are saving people money, yes - relative to the higher prices - but not necessarily relative to justice - you may be merely less overpaid by your profits than the higher-price person - liberty and justice for all - and the most important justice is pay justice, because money is the joker good, good for all things money can buy, which is just about everything, including necessities and desires - and the most dangerous injustice is pay injustice, because it is injustice in just about everything - the desire to be a good boy or to be a well rewarded boy, or a congratulated boy, and the impossibility of anyone determining the exact workvalue of anything, assist the open grab on the social pool of wealth - but that pool has been formed by work [and nature's bounty, of which everyone has equal share rights] and nothing can entitle taking out except putting in by work.
producer wins a big prize [profits] for his ingenuity -
his sense of right in holding on to overpay is stoked by his love of selfcongratulation - ignoring all the congratulation shares others deserve - his ingenuity is unmeasured, uncertain, and is in any case a gift of nature - or of study, which should be paid for - but not by unlimited reward
the textile manufacturers made money hand over fist as well they should have because they made so many people's lives better -
the appropriation of praise to self again - the manufacturers did no more work than others - they should be paid for their work contribution - and others should too - the manufacturer has contributed to making people's lives better - contributed whatever work they did - the fact that profits end up on a table in front of him, does not mean he did a great deal more work than others - he did not make others' lives better alone - you manage to completely ignore even the makers of the machines! - but the makers of the machines, and the manufacturers, would be helpless without the workers - the amount of work people do and what arrives on their plate because of trade are not the same - if I make a pill that makes everyone 100 times happier, and for which people are willing to pay big bucks, I deserve to be paid for all my work, not for the money that people spill for the pill - because if I get huge amounts, I then buy huge amounts of stuff others have worked to make - I have done X work and I have got 1000X work in the products I can buy - or 1,000,000X work - and that means others get work without pay, slavery, robbed, angry - and righteously angry - I have taken out more than I put in - this system, with millions of people being overpaid for their ideas which have made people happier, has resulted in the draining of the pool of wealth, with 90% getting between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay, and violence proportional - 757s in your skyscraper window - the inventors of the tetrapak are richer than the queen - all this error is why the american middle class are now being sucked, and why america is on the verge of revolution - 50% of people in the first world have less than zero net assets - it seems to people that unlimited fortunes for limited effort is better than limited fortunes for limited effort - forgetting that overfortune cannot happen without underfortune - only 1% make a net benefit from unlimited fortunes - 99% pay for those overfortunes, for taking out more than you put in - the pool of wealth may expand, with machines and computers, but it is always finite - grabbing from nature is fine, because nature doesn't mind, doesn't object - but grabbing from people is cause of violence, which must ever-grow - who contributes when many people benefit from machine textiles, electricity, computers? - mostly nature, in providing materials and putting ideas in people's heads - and also all the people who contribute by their work - the first person learns to handle and use fire - a tremendous benefit - who contributes? - nature and those who use and handle fire - could anyone make the wood or the properties of wood? - the person having the idea and developing it should be paid for every bit of his or her work - sacrifice of time and energy - loss - while he is having the idea and developing it, he cannot hunt, tend fields, gather food.
If Al Gore made billions making cars that get 500 mpg and reduced carbon emissions, who would mind him getting billions - I don't care if each cancer-cure pill costs $1 to make and costs $10,000 to buy, I am happy to pay -
you are happy happy happy!!! - a cancer cure is worth $1,000,000 to you! - $10,000 is a bargain! - but look further down the track, see the big picture - you pay him for his work, say 20 years developing the cure at $40 an hour, 20 yrs x 2500 hrs x $40, $2,000,000, divided by the number of pills, and then what do you pay him for? - if you pay for everything that is worth something to you, you will be out of money - if you had to pay for air - what is air worth to you? - who did the work, to give you something worth $1,000,000 or more to you? - not the developer - you paid him, and every other human involved in the developing marketing packaging transporting advertising accounting patenting out of the $1 - the rest of the value was obviously put in it by mother nature - the chemicals, the intelligence of the developer, the disease, the cure, the esophagus which transports the pill, and all the rest of your body - and this euphoria largesse, this gift for nothing, this $9,999, is power to the developer, and $9,999 less power for you - what if you have 20 diseases, and only $20? -
equal opportunity -
shame on saying this, thinking this - there is only equal opportunity with equal pay for equal work - you say to yourself: it doesn't matter if there is unequal pay for equal work, it doesn't matter if some are taking out 100,000 times the average pay per hour and others 10,000th of average - it doesn't matter if every billion is sucking $100 million a year for no work, meaning others producing $100 million of goods without pay - everyone is equally free to struggle, to climb - what a great system - superfortunes are possible for everyone - but are they equally possible? - no, you overlook that - you were just looking for a way to preserve the system that permits unlimited fortunes for limited contribution - the system that robs from 99% and gives to 1%, and which robs everyone, from top to bottom, of peace, of fraternity, of human fellowship and equality, of decency, of a future. how long do you think you can go on growing violence, when you have 60 times PDC [planet death capability]? - how long do you think you will remain at the level you are now? - everyone is snakes and ladders with this system - Ceausescu, down the snake - the third world is at 51% of world income, and is rising 10% every 30 years - 81% by 2098 - probably more, because they will accelerate as they get stronger - and population 100 billion at 2100 - and world topsoil at zero by 2100 - oil perhaps zero by 2050 - do you think you can weather this huge fruit of all-grab-all, and devil take the hindmost? - do you think that you will not feel the currents of this great situation? - will you feel that equal opportunity exists when you are being paid 10-1c an hour as a billion are now, when all would be paid US$100,000 a year with equality? - wake up and smell the uranium! - you say you will fight, if someone tries to take anything from you - who will pay you for your risk then? - you have such confidence - do you think your economics professors are gods? - do you think they are immune to error, to overlooking things? - people are too dangerous to annoy! - they, like you, will never tolerate slavery - the underpaid have lost many battles, they have never lost the war: every empire, every plutocracy has fallen - the underpaid can only throw grains of sand, but sand erodes rocks - every empire has fallen - and the overpaid can get no more happiness from overpay than from fairpay! - do you think solid gold taps are incredibly pleasant? - how much more pleasant is a $4000 plate of truffles than a $1 meatball? - how many chairs can the overpaid sit in? - how many shoes can they wear, with just two feet? - wake up and smell the folly!
introductory point: i am talking about something to increase the happiness of everyone, you included - we are all in very deep doodoo - do i need to remind you? - we must be making *some* mistake - so a serious sincere discussion, a willingness to hear opinions of what that mistake is, is appropriate - a lack of confidence, an atom of doubt in our set ways is appropriate, an admission that there may be a flaw in our views - hey, are we perfect in wisdom, do we have perfect sight, can we see all sides, are we small and the world very very big, has no one ever been affected by bias? - none of this is our fault, we didn't make ourselves, but we can accept that pursuit of happiness involves pursuit of reality, because we are all bears of little brain - none of us *knows* in a perfect sense - our knowledge is the same as the knowledge of the people who were sure the sun went round the earth - let us put our heads together to figure this out as best we can, with light not heat - cool heads rescue themselves better
argument to risk: businessmen should be paid for risk - this argument is widespread - businessmen take risks, yes, they risk a sprat to catch a mackerel *for themselves* - workers risk their *lives* - and sometimes pay with their lives, which businessmen rarely do - why is there no thought of paying workers for risk? - businessmen risk money, to make money for themselves - a gambler risks money to make money for himself - but he doesn't complain that he should be paid for risk - it is impossible that there can be payment for risk: risk is risk of losing money - or life - businesspeople risk their money, and if they make money, they justify it with, among other things, the risk they took - they feel the risk they took, the risk takes a psychological toll on them, they wish compensation - but is risk measured? is risk measurable? if risk was measurable, can a dollar value be put on dollar recompense per unit of risk? - and who should pay for this risk? - others are paying for this risk - why? - is there a national acceptance that risk should be paid for? - have people agreed to pay for risk? - no - and it is risk of money to get money for oneself - isn't that the individual's business, the individual's choice? - and if risk is to be paid for, shouldn't risk of everyone be measured, a dollar amount fixed per unit of risk, and everyone be paid for risk in proportion to their risk? - the businessman, or some of them, are pleading their own case, at the expense of others, and not pleading the case of others who are risking more - sometimes risk is low and rewards high, sometimes risk is high and rewards low, this is risk - who can pay for it? - who should pay for it? - life is risky, money can be risked and lost - that's life - crossing the street is risk, living is risk - who can pay for it? - workers are humble, they take on risk, and don't demand payment for it - they absorb the costs of risk themselves without a murmur - without an option - do we pay fishermen for risk? - 'i'm going to try to catch a fish for my dinner - can you pay me now, i might not catch you later' - we defer to the businessman - he has money - he might hire us - he says he deserves payment for his risk - better give it to him - if he makes a lot of money, well, he deserves it, because he is a hero, risking - we aren't risking - we are just workers - the businessman is just over-self-esteeming, the worker is under-self-esteeming
the boss does plain oldfashioned hard work:
work should be paid for - justice in pay is equal pay for equal work - hours of work can be measured - hours of work can be paid for - working 20% harder produces 20% more goods, so taking out 20% more goods, by getting paid 20% more money, is just and good and right - but again, there is special pleading - are people willing to allow equal pay for equal work for everyone? - or is 'hard work' unique to businessmen? - and should 20% harder work be paid 20% more, or is it to be an excuse for limitless overpay? - that is, putting in 20% more and getting out up to 100,000 times more? - every businessperson is supporting the right to unlimited pay for hard work, risk, etc - but the pool of wealth is limited to nature's bounty [which everyone has an equal right to] and to work, and everyone's contribution to the pool by work is limited, not unlimited, so unlimited fortunes for what is necessarly limited work is overpay, which causes underpay, which causes violence, which gets to everyone, rich and poor, and which escalates, and grows weaponry and war and crime, which after 3000 years has reached 60 times PDC [planet death capability] which is not good for anyone - America was founded on the sound principle of democracy and freedom by prevention of unllimited fortunes, which are also unlimited power, which is tyranny and undemocracy, unfreedom, which Americans fought to get free from - so is there not a connection between our attitude that it is good to go for all we can get, and the terrible state we are in? - money is the joker good, good for all things, so underpay is theft of virtually all good things, and therefore causes violence, resentment - is pay justice our friend or our enemy? - can we all dip into the vast but limited, not unlimited pool of wealth, grabbing as much as we can, and not end up fighting everyone all the time? - is justice good because it saves us all from perpetual violence? - isn't it our self-interest to avoid pay injustice, to weed out these excuses for overpay, for pay for no work, like unlimited pay for limited work, like pay for risk? - if we look further down the track of everyone grab all, so we see doom for all? - globally, pay ranges from $30 a year to $30 billion a year - and globally, war has grown for 1000s of years to the present great danger - we were far safer defenseless against the tiger than we are now, defenceless against the bomb - wars have grown to world wars - thanks to e=mc2, we have multiplied our power to kill people by 60,000 in the last 50 years - is there not a connection between pay injustice, the all-grab-all philosophy, the Horatio Alger go out there,boy, and grab!, resulting in super-super-extreme pay injustice, and violence, the growth of weaponry and war? - remembering that money is the joker good, good for all necessities and desires? - the businessman stays later than the workers, perhaps, and says to himself, they don't know what work is - but if the boss does 20% more work, he produces 20% more, and deserves 20% more, not unlimited profits
bosses provide jobs, the worker suckles from the teat feeding him -
it seems that the businessperson provides jobs - he sets up a company, he hires people, and pays them - but this overlooks the fact that the people paid pay for this pay with work - the businessman pays them, he hands over money, but they hand over work, workproducts to the businessman, they pay him, usually more - there is no gifting from the businessman to the workers - there is, if you like, mutual gifting - and sometimes the gifting is greater on one side than the other - what provides the jobs is demand for the products - no demand, no jobs - the businessman is a worker, contributing to the providing of goods - he ought to be paid for his work, like everyone - the demand enables the business to be set up, enables the workers and businessperson to be paid for their work providing goods in demand - it is only the businessperson's self-inflation that makes him think he is doing a kindness to anyone - is a unique sort of person, entitled to privileged treatment - he is working, and being paid - part of his work is hiring and paying people - with money he gets for the goods that the workers have made - the workers, including the businessman, have made the wealth they get - justice is equal pay for equal work - anything else is theft - unequal pay for equal work, which is theft, some getting too much, others getting too little - theft - theft of the joker good - theft of everything, theft of everything money buys - causing resentment, violence, which necessarily escalates, as both sides try to prevail, as both sides ever-seek bigger weaponry to prevail, which necessarily escalates endlessly, or till justice, or extinction of all, which no one wants - and no one wants the war and crime that builds to extinction - you can poohpooh extinction by nuclear winter, but will your poohpooh be heard? - will reality heed? - have we grown inequality, war and weaponry for 3000 years to 60 times PDC or not? - and still growing - ratio of highest to lowest pay per year's work IS one billion - world average pay, if we pay housewives and students too IS US$40 an hour, US$100,000 a year per worker, US$200,000 per family without student - did the first world rob and enslave the third world for 500 years? - did the conquistadors steal and slaughter and plunder? - was the cotton wealth of America made by slaves? - Would you resent being on 100th to 10,000th of world average pay per hour, as 5 billion are? - is the first world sucking $200 billion a year out of the third world, as the Secretary-General of the UN says, although the economy of africa is smaller than italy's? - is everyone in danger? - is there a connection between everyone going for all we can get, and positive all we get is ours, and violence? - does overpay exist? - did Bill Gates earn $500,000 for every hour he worked, or was he paid for scarcity of new technology? - it takes only a profit rate of 40% pa to turn his startup money of $5 million into $50 billion in 30 years
competition:
competition brings prices down *towards* equity - but may take two decades to do so - especially with new technology supported by 70-year patents creating a monopoly, inhibiting competition - Japan has 2-year patents - new technology has built-in scarcity, meaning people pay for the absence of goods, while the industry is gearing up to demand - or they pay for their high demand for the goods, or for the lack of factories - scarcity is not work by anyone - but we pay for it - pay billions, which then suck $100 million a year for every billion at 10% - every year, forever, for no work - suck $100 million of goods others, including businessmen, have created - pay injustice seems good as long as you think only of being on the 'winning' end - but there are no winners - violence gets to everyone - every empire in history has fallen, and has been maintained for a time only with great effort and cost - bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them - and the money in them is not necessarily justly got - the free market has great advantages over central planning, but it is not just, it is not sufficient to preserve us all from universal escalating violence - we need justice for that, we need mechanisms that counter the pays for no work like scarcity.
haven't the guts to be boss:
yes, it takes guts to be boss - but who provides the guts to be boss, the boss or mother nature? - who provides the aptitude, the inclination, the guts, the nature, to be boss? - nature, not the boss - the boss does not *work* to have those guts or that inclination or temperament - there is nothing wrong with choosing to be a worker and not a boss - there is no inferiority in being a worker - the worker creates goods, and is properly paid for them - it is an honourable and noble thing - contempt for the worker and arrogation of superiority is a disease - George Pullman [of Pullman cars fame] said that the worker deserves to suffer first from economic downturn because he contributes nothing to the industry - this is mental disease, megalomania, pride gone made, arrogance enthroned - wealth begets insolence, said the Greeks - with this arrogance, the wealthy rise and fall - Ceausescu, the late Roman emperors, Napoleon, Caesar, Richard III, Hitler - it keeps them from discovering their loneliness and unhappiness - history is loaded with the troubles and falls of the super-overpaid, the pleonectic, the great stealers - pride is the enemy, the deceiver, not anyone's friend.
law of mutually beneficial exchange, exchange wouldn't take place if either party thought that weren't getting any gain -
it is this which has disabled people from seeing the reality, that exchange necessarily involves a little injustice [which then grows with every transaction and causes ever-escalating violence, war, crime and weaponry] - the exchange seems to be voluntary, and how can voluntary be bad? - but is it voluntary? - a person cannot volunteer to do something without knowing what that something is, and no one knows the exact value of both items in the exchange, and, given a choice between paying fairprice [paying for all the work in the item bought] and overprice, everyone will choose the fairprice - but people don't have that choice - there is not always a cheaper competitor right next door - there is usually not a fairprice alternative offered - no one can calculate the fairprice - although the fairprice exists, no one can know it - the theft is often unconscious on both sides - but injustice has occurred - a shift of wealth from one to other has occurred, just from exchange, which should not cause a shift of wealth - and that drop of injustice will, over trillions of transactions create an ocean of injustice, violence and loss of quality of life for everyone - there is a gap between what people might think, and what is real - the person may not care if the other gains a bit for no work, on top of his pay for his work - but the drop of injustice will still cause ever-growing violence when accumulated - both gain from the transaction in that both lose something they can't use and get something they can use - but that is beside the point, which is that drop of injustice - both will feel equally happy with their exchange if the exchange is fair-exchange-no-robbery - the happiness of getting something they both want cannot justify injustice, a transfer of value from one to the other in the difference in value - your argument to competition shows that you support correction of prices towards equality - or permit it - but how efficient is competition? - not perfectly - and there is monopoly, and who can root out all monopoly elements in the economy? - patents are monopolies - the customer is constrained in choice by distance to competitor - cost in time or money or fuel in getting to the competititor - and there is nothing to stop two competitors from both overcharging - and, in our mindset, of get as much as possible, never mind justice, and ignorant of the connection to violence, there is every motive to do so - there are price cartels, and these may be implicit - without actual collusion - just independent decisions by competitors to share the market at the higher price - and then there is the fact that the motive to underprice a competitor decreases as the fairprice is approached - the drive to undercut a competitor is small when the rewards are small - so price fall with competition slows with approach to fairprice - which no one exactly knows - so undercutting may take the competitor unbeknownst into underpricing - a system which allows all the myriad, uncalculable injustices in the economy, but which corrects for their accumulated, endlessly growing injustice and violence effects, by redistributing super-overfortunes to everyone, saves us from violence, and yet leaves us with the great advantages of the so-called free market, which is less than perfectly free and fair - you say there can't be anything wrong with transaction, because it is voluntary - you say both gain - but mere exchange cannot increase value - and the two things cannot be equal - so one must lose and the other gain - a drop of inequality, which with every transaction grows to an ocean - they both gain in the sense that one has money and wants bread, and the other has bread and wants money [to buy lettuce to go with the bread he has made all day] - but not in value - by realising the drop of inequality, we can with sense of justice oppose the ocean it produces - of violence, and inequality of power which is corrupting and tyrannous, and dangerous to overpaid and underpaid - with nuclear weapons, fatal to the whole human race
profit as the difference between costs and perceived value by the customer -
not good enough to prevent injustice and violence - the state built on injustice cannot stand, roman saying - justice is the purpose of government, james madison - because justice is what makes society stand, which everyone wants - the customer has no way of perceiving the exact value of the product - prices in excess of the full costs of the product, including fairpay for owners, *have* to be [unconscious or conscious] theft, have to belong to overcharged customers, underpaid workers or underpriced raw materials [which is ultimately work by people further back in the line of production]. Have to be, by logic - can't belong to owners, who get it - because, by definition, they have been fully paid for their work out of costs - it is obvious that incomes [revenues, prices] can be different from full costs - can be more or less - but the accumulated effect is that 1% are getting 98% of world income, while doing less than 1% of the work - this is a side-effect of trade which can be neutralised by, for example, making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates, or by increasing the money supply 1% per month and giving equal shares to everyone [ inflation is not bad when everyone gets the new money instead of the banks] - the inflation effect reduces ovefortunes and the equalshares lifts the underpay, saving us from ever-growing violence and its huge costs in happiness and fairpay. Justice is the friend of everyone. The overpaid are saved from endless attack, paranoia, nervousness and sure doom, and the overpaid get no reduction in happiness from fairpay, because fairpay, US$100,000 per worker, $200,000 per family, is above the level where money adds to happiness [US$50,000, according to studies]. Desires are limited, and fairpay satisfies all needs and desires. Satisfaction waits on appetite. The overpaid have no more stomachs for food, bodies for clothes, for bed, feet for shoes, etc. The body is limited, its desires are limited. Equality, with its gifts of belonging, social trust, peace, amity, fraternity, social cohesion, safety, friendliness, drastic limitation of war and crime, nuclear winter, removal of overbearing tryannical government by superoverpaid, removal of warmongering and cannonfoddering, etc is far more valuable than money for food with a full stomach, money for more rooms than you can inhabit, etc.
profit is kept by the producer as payment for undertaking the production and for risk -
see above on risk - and whatever the producer does, it ought to be paid for by fairpay, not by unlimited reward - the work of the producer is a certain amount, and the fairpay is a certain amount, not any amount that profits turn up -
do something more cheaply and you get rich -
again, there is the ignoring of the amount of work the person does and the appropriate compensation for the sacrifice of time and energy - there is just: i'm a good fellow, providing a service by lower prices, so my reward should be unconfined - no, it should be equal pay for equal work - you are saving people money, yes - relative to the higher prices - but not necessarily relative to justice - you may be merely less overpaid by your profits than the higher-price person - liberty and justice for all - and the most important justice is pay justice, because money is the joker good, good for all things money can buy, which is just about everything, including necessities and desires - and the most dangerous injustice is pay injustice, because it is injustice in just about everything - the desire to be a good boy or to be a well rewarded boy, or a congratulated boy, and the impossibility of anyone determining the exact workvalue of anything, assist the open grab on the social pool of wealth - but that pool has been formed by work [and nature's bounty, of which everyone has equal share rights] and nothing can entitle taking out except putting in by work.
producer wins a big prize [profits] for his ingenuity -
his sense of right in holding on to overpay is stoked by his love of selfcongratulation - ignoring all the congratulation shares others deserve - his ingenuity is unmeasured, uncertain, and is in any case a gift of nature - or of study, which should be paid for - but not by unlimited reward
the textile manufacturers made money hand over fist as well they should have because they made so many people's lives better -
the appropriation of praise to self again - the manufacturers did no more work than others - they should be paid for their work contribution - and others should too - the manufacturer has contributed to making people's lives better - contributed whatever work they did - the fact that profits end up on a table in front of him, does not mean he did a great deal more work than others - he did not make others' lives better alone - you manage to completely ignore even the makers of the machines! - but the makers of the machines, and the manufacturers, would be helpless without the workers - the amount of work people do and what arrives on their plate because of trade are not the same - if I make a pill that makes everyone 100 times happier, and for which people are willing to pay big bucks, I deserve to be paid for all my work, not for the money that people spill for the pill - because if I get huge amounts, I then buy huge amounts of stuff others have worked to make - I have done X work and I have got 1000X work in the products I can buy - or 1,000,000X work - and that means others get work without pay, slavery, robbed, angry - and righteously angry - I have taken out more than I put in - this system, with millions of people being overpaid for their ideas which have made people happier, has resulted in the draining of the pool of wealth, with 90% getting between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay, and violence proportional - 757s in your skyscraper window - the inventors of the tetrapak are richer than the queen - all this error is why the american middle class are now being sucked, and why america is on the verge of revolution - 50% of people in the first world have less than zero net assets - it seems to people that unlimited fortunes for limited effort is better than limited fortunes for limited effort - forgetting that overfortune cannot happen without underfortune - only 1% make a net benefit from unlimited fortunes - 99% pay for those overfortunes, for taking out more than you put in - the pool of wealth may expand, with machines and computers, but it is always finite - grabbing from nature is fine, because nature doesn't mind, doesn't object - but grabbing from people is cause of violence, which must ever-grow - who contributes when many people benefit from machine textiles, electricity, computers? - mostly nature, in providing materials and putting ideas in people's heads - and also all the people who contribute by their work - the first person learns to handle and use fire - a tremendous benefit - who contributes? - nature and those who use and handle fire - could anyone make the wood or the properties of wood? - the person having the idea and developing it should be paid for every bit of his or her work - sacrifice of time and energy - loss - while he is having the idea and developing it, he cannot hunt, tend fields, gather food.
If Al Gore made billions making cars that get 500 mpg and reduced carbon emissions, who would mind him getting billions - I don't care if each cancer-cure pill costs $1 to make and costs $10,000 to buy, I am happy to pay -
you are happy happy happy!!! - a cancer cure is worth $1,000,000 to you! - $10,000 is a bargain! - but look further down the track, see the big picture - you pay him for his work, say 20 years developing the cure at $40 an hour, 20 yrs x 2500 hrs x $40, $2,000,000, divided by the number of pills, and then what do you pay him for? - if you pay for everything that is worth something to you, you will be out of money - if you had to pay for air - what is air worth to you? - who did the work, to give you something worth $1,000,000 or more to you? - not the developer - you paid him, and every other human involved in the developing marketing packaging transporting advertising accounting patenting out of the $1 - the rest of the value was obviously put in it by mother nature - the chemicals, the intelligence of the developer, the disease, the cure, the esophagus which transports the pill, and all the rest of your body - and this euphoria largesse, this gift for nothing, this $9,999, is power to the developer, and $9,999 less power for you - what if you have 20 diseases, and only $20? -
equal opportunity -
shame on saying this, thinking this - there is only equal opportunity with equal pay for equal work - you say to yourself: it doesn't matter if there is unequal pay for equal work, it doesn't matter if some are taking out 100,000 times the average pay per hour and others 10,000th of average - it doesn't matter if every billion is sucking $100 million a year for no work, meaning others producing $100 million of goods without pay - everyone is equally free to struggle, to climb - what a great system - superfortunes are possible for everyone - but are they equally possible? - no, you overlook that - you were just looking for a way to preserve the system that permits unlimited fortunes for limited contribution - the system that robs from 99% and gives to 1%, and which robs everyone, from top to bottom, of peace, of fraternity, of human fellowship and equality, of decency, of a future. how long do you think you can go on growing violence, when you have 60 times PDC [planet death capability]? - how long do you think you will remain at the level you are now? - everyone is snakes and ladders with this system - Ceausescu, down the snake - the third world is at 51% of world income, and is rising 10% every 30 years - 81% by 2098 - probably more, because they will accelerate as they get stronger - and population 100 billion at 2100 - and world topsoil at zero by 2100 - oil perhaps zero by 2050 - do you think you can weather this huge fruit of all-grab-all, and devil take the hindmost? - do you think that you will not feel the currents of this great situation? - will you feel that equal opportunity exists when you are being paid 10-1c an hour as a billion are now, when all would be paid US$100,000 a year with equality? - wake up and smell the uranium! - you say you will fight, if someone tries to take anything from you - who will pay you for your risk then? - you have such confidence - do you think your economics professors are gods? - do you think they are immune to error, to overlooking things? - people are too dangerous to annoy! - they, like you, will never tolerate slavery - the underpaid have lost many battles, they have never lost the war: every empire, every plutocracy has fallen - the underpaid can only throw grains of sand, but sand erodes rocks - every empire has fallen - and the overpaid can get no more happiness from overpay than from fairpay! - do you think solid gold taps are incredibly pleasant? - how much more pleasant is a $4000 plate of truffles than a $1 meatball? - how many chairs can the overpaid sit in? - how many shoes can they wear, with just two feet? - wake up and smell the folly!
You are humanity
You are humanity.
You have erected injustice, and it stalks the earth, devouring who it will, devouring 1 in 50 people every year.
Pay justice: equal pay for equal *work*.
You pay for natural gifts, business risk, landownership, skill, experience, having studied, scarcity, luck, 'responsibility', having money, none of which things is work. [But you don't pay for studying and for housewifery, which are work, which create wealth.] At 10%, a billion pulls $100 million worth of goods a year from the pool of workproducts for no work at all. Legal theft.
Individual contribution to wealth by work is necessarily limited, but you allow unlimited fortunes. You allow overpay, legal theft.
You pay for these things out of your own pockets, out of your work. 50% of people in the first world have negative net assets.
There is enough to pay every worker *in the world*, including housewives and students, US$40 an hour. Plenty, and peace. No starvation, no war, no crime, no corruption, no brutality, no illiteracy, no fanaticism, no anger, no arrogance, no terrorism, no state terrorism, no nuclear winter coming. No inquisitions, no death camps, no people-burning, no torture, no genocide. No warmongering and cannonfoddering. 100 times faster progress, with 90% of the scientists we have not tied up in inequality, in military-industrial complex, business, government, universities, legal system, hospitals, and 90% of the scientists we could have not too poor to become scientists.
Instead, you have pay up to 100,000 times average, and down to 10,000th of average, you have 1% getting 98% of world income, you have 99% underpaid, 90% paid between 100th and 10,000th of average pay per hour. If equality, pay justice, was a swimming pool one metre deep, your pool is 98% up in a thin needle going up 100 kilometres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 0.1mm deep.
Wealth is power, the second greatest power, so you have giants up to 100,000 times more powerful than the average, 1,000,000,000 times more powerful than the weakest. People with a billion can hire a million soldiers for 1000 days at $1 a day, and they are. With equality, one person would be hardput to maintain one soldier. The third world, at 51% of world wealth now, is rising 10% every 30 years.
You grow these giants and then try to lasso them. They murder a million children. You don't run, with police and mayors among you, to drag them from their beds and tear them limb from limb. [You would if the children were children of your own country.] Occasionally, you tear them down in brutefests [revolutions] and let new ones grow. They are now, thanks to chainsaws, tractors and underpaid people, destroying 1% of world topsoil a year, 100% a century.
Fine. Whatever you choose. There's no arguing taste.
You have erected injustice, and it stalks the earth, devouring who it will, devouring 1 in 50 people every year.
Pay justice: equal pay for equal *work*.
You pay for natural gifts, business risk, landownership, skill, experience, having studied, scarcity, luck, 'responsibility', having money, none of which things is work. [But you don't pay for studying and for housewifery, which are work, which create wealth.] At 10%, a billion pulls $100 million worth of goods a year from the pool of workproducts for no work at all. Legal theft.
Individual contribution to wealth by work is necessarily limited, but you allow unlimited fortunes. You allow overpay, legal theft.
You pay for these things out of your own pockets, out of your work. 50% of people in the first world have negative net assets.
There is enough to pay every worker *in the world*, including housewives and students, US$40 an hour. Plenty, and peace. No starvation, no war, no crime, no corruption, no brutality, no illiteracy, no fanaticism, no anger, no arrogance, no terrorism, no state terrorism, no nuclear winter coming. No inquisitions, no death camps, no people-burning, no torture, no genocide. No warmongering and cannonfoddering. 100 times faster progress, with 90% of the scientists we have not tied up in inequality, in military-industrial complex, business, government, universities, legal system, hospitals, and 90% of the scientists we could have not too poor to become scientists.
Instead, you have pay up to 100,000 times average, and down to 10,000th of average, you have 1% getting 98% of world income, you have 99% underpaid, 90% paid between 100th and 10,000th of average pay per hour. If equality, pay justice, was a swimming pool one metre deep, your pool is 98% up in a thin needle going up 100 kilometres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 0.1mm deep.
Wealth is power, the second greatest power, so you have giants up to 100,000 times more powerful than the average, 1,000,000,000 times more powerful than the weakest. People with a billion can hire a million soldiers for 1000 days at $1 a day, and they are. With equality, one person would be hardput to maintain one soldier. The third world, at 51% of world wealth now, is rising 10% every 30 years.
You grow these giants and then try to lasso them. They murder a million children. You don't run, with police and mayors among you, to drag them from their beds and tear them limb from limb. [You would if the children were children of your own country.] Occasionally, you tear them down in brutefests [revolutions] and let new ones grow. They are now, thanks to chainsaws, tractors and underpaid people, destroying 1% of world topsoil a year, 100% a century.
Fine. Whatever you choose. There's no arguing taste.
Mission impossible: rationality
Mission impossible: rationality, if you should decide to accept it
Human care, human industry.
Look at your town. So much is provided, so many needs are addressed and answered. People have food, housing, warmth. Even smaller needs are taken care of. Problems with teeth? Systems for taking care of teeth are set up. And not just pull a troublesome tooth. The most elaborate tools have been designed, built and distributed to answer problems of teeth. The need or desire for stories is answered with libraries, television, etc. Roads and footpaths for greater ease of moving around. For the removal of wastes, there are rubbish collections, and sewage pipes have been laid in every street. If you break a leg, hospitals are set up. If you get lost in the forests, systems are organised and ready to go to find you. Thousands of needs have been addressed and answered with enormous industry. All systems go. Care and tremendous energy has been shown in responding to needs and desires. Food is available, and not just food, but tremendous variety. Everywhere there is organisation, energy, industry, systems to provide and to meet needs and desires, being run every day to satisfy. Right down to places for skateboarding. Are humans lazy, unresponding? Do they just cater for the need for food and then leave everything else? No, no and no. Need to water your garden? Hoses are provided, underground pipes are laid to deliver water to your house. Need an easier way to connect your hose to the tap? Easier couplings are designed, built, distributed. The most incredible industry, responsiveness. Do mothers need support, education? Provided. A list of all the needs and desires responded to would be very, very long, would contain thousands or millions of items.
Strange custom of the Hoo-Min tribe.
Compare the strange customs of the Hoo-Min tribe, recently discovered. They have a culture in which, it is calculated, there is far more than enough for everybody. Everyone works hard. And yet, it is calculated, the person with most gets 100,000 times as much as the average, and the person with least gets 10,000th of average. In other words, the Hoo-Min tribe believes in, or practises, the most extremely uneven distribution. If you ask them why this one person has so much, they say it is because he is doing something very special, he is a very special person, and deserves to have so much. - Why do 90% of the tribe have less than 100th of average? - Because that is all they earn, that is all they are worth. - But everyone is working, more or less equally, you point out. - Oh yes, but the ones with little, they are not working productively. They don't have the marvellous abilities of the ones getting 100,000 times the average. You reply: I have watched the ones being paid 100,000 times average, and I don't see anything remarkable about their work behaviour. They seem to me to be working about the same as everybody. Their reply: Stranger, you are blind, look at how much they have. It is perfectly obvious that they are doing something remarkable, look at how much they have. Could they have so much if they were not remarkable? - I see from your history that these people with so much have often been, well, pushed off their position, by other people with as much, or nearly as much, and sometimes by those with little. - Oh yes, this is true, there are people who are bad and greedy, who want what the remarkable ones have without themselves being remarkable. - I see from your history that there have occasionally been mass uprisings against the ones with most, and those have been put to death. And the mass of people have called for a change in the system, so that there is not this extreme range of pay. - That is true, but such phases are brief, most of the time everybody understands the correctness of our system, and accepts it happily. - It can't be pleasant for the ones with much to be surrounded by so many people who have so little, who are ignorant and diseased. - Well, they put up with it. - So many people unable to be educated, unable to contribute in so many ways because they have so little, is it not a terrible waste of talent? And it seems to me that some having so much is like a golden carrot to everyone to get more, to get as much as they can, and also so many having so little is also a huge stimulus for people to get more in any way they can, and that consequently there is much crime and war, which would not happen if everyone was paid according to how much work they did. - But did I not tell you, stranger, that everyone is being paid according to how much work they do? Whatever people have, it is because of how much work they do. If everyone worked as hard as those who have much, they would have as much. Isn't it obvious? Those with much have so much because of their work. Anyone who does what they did would have as much. - But, friend, is it not possible there are other reasons why those with much have so much? Are you sure it is because of their work?
Equality: synaptic failure.
In a recent article, someone suggests that top executive pay should be no more than 30-40 times as much as the average worker. Is this because the exec works 30-40 times as many hours? Obviously not. The average worker works maybe 50 hours a week, and no one can work more than 100 hours a week, average, longterm. And there is no perception that execs are working such long hours. There is no measurement of working hours, but it is possible that execs are working no longer than average. Perhaps 20% longer hours, perhaps not. Is this because execs are working 30-40 times harder per hour? Are they shuffling paper 30-40 times faster than the average paper shuffler? Are they deciding, talking, reading, discussing, telephoning, 30-40 times faster? No, no one thinks that. Is it that they have rare gifts of management? There is no measurement of giftedness, or of rarity, but perhaps they have rare gifts. Is it sense, or justice, to pay for gifts? Mother nature has done the work, not the person. All the person has done is receive the gift, or, rather, not even that, the gift has been installed by mother nature too. There is not the slightest inclination in society to pay people for receiving birthday gifts or christmas gifts. Even if there was, it is hard to see how a dollar amount could be put on how much should be paid to people for having received gifts. Is it the rarity? Then we are paying the person because mother nature has failed to provide these gifts to many. Paying a person for an absence of gifts. Again, paying for no work by the person. Paying the person for work not done by mother nature. And this pay comes out of pay for people who have done work, because the pay for execs buys goods, which have been made by others' work. The higher pay to execs is a legal license to take from the social pool of goods made by work. A legal license to take out where they did not put in. Leaving less in the pool for those who put in. Is it pay for education? Education is work by the person, and should be paid for. And society should pay for education, not parents or scholarships or students, since it is society that benefits. [Society has the right to decide how much education it wants to buy.] And then no one would in sanity be paid for having been educated, for there is no work, no sacrifice of time or energy, in having studied. And no one would in sanity choose to pay for educatedness, for a person having the knowledge in their head. There is no effort keeping the knowledge in the head, keeping the diploma on the wall. Is it pay for 'responsibility', that is, for heading a large organisation? Is there any belief anywhere that responsibility is a drain on the energies, that responsibility requires extra pay to compensate for greater energy drain with responsibility? Do execs need 30-40 times more food to do their responsible jobs? [Even if they did, food is only a fraction of personal expenses.] It seems that the exec is just working, the same as anyone, but in a 'responsible' job. They are just using what they have, just like everyone. Sacrificing the same time and energies as anyone else. And there is no correlation between 'responsibility' and pay, no direct payment for 'responsibility', no mechanism of measurement of 'responsibility' and corresponding payment for responsibility. People with equal numbers 'under' them are not paid equal fees for 'responsibility'.
We have to look elsewhere for the explanation of this universal devotion to inequality, this avoidance of pay justice. People feel it is natural that people higher in hierarchies be paid more. Even though this extra pay comes out of their own pockets. Although, how much are people aware that overpay, pay for no work by the person paid, means underpay, work for no pay, for others? How much are 'workers' aware that they are paying for this overpay? People are generally aware of a connection between higher pay and lower pay. But they are not so conscious that they see it as taking goods off them and giving them to others. They do not, I think, see it so clearly as plain theft, as removal of things that are theirs by right of having done the work, and giving them to others who have not done the work that made them. In the complicatedness of economic society, the dots are not so well connected. People see others rich, and themselves unrich, and perhaps do not perceive that both are working equally hard, or much more equally hard than the 'rewards'. The sense of justice may stimulate them to get as rich, by hook or by crook, or by the same means, but there is no clear sense of simple plain theft, of pay injustice. Even the mental leap from pay injustice ['wealth disparity', inequality, 'socio-economic strata'] to theft is too great. There are too many imponderables in the way, like 'responsibility', rarity, gifts, 'hard work'. People hear: I made my money by hard work, and, if they don't exactly swallow it, they cannot spit it out. They don't reply: Do you mean that your pay per hour is the same as mine, and the difference in incomes is just that you have worked more hours? They think: Well, it is true I haven't run around, organising warehouses, advertising, office staff, etc. There is a lack of devotion to pay justice, to equal pay for equal work. This devotion is presumably eroded by unclarity, and by feeling that freedom for the other to be overpaid is freedom for self to be overpaid. Without the thought that opening the gates to limitless overpay is opening the gates to limitless underpay. Without the thought that freedom of overpay may mean a little overpay for some and a lot of overpay for others. Without the thought that what you gain by overpay may be more than eroded by others' overpay. Without the thought that opening the gates to overpay means galloping, ever-growing inequality and hence galloping ever-growing violence [war and crime]. For money is the joker good, good for all the millions of things money buys, so that theft of money is theft of just about everything, so theft of money is the greatest injury, stimulating the greatest anger. Underpay does not cause great resentment as long as underpay still meets most needs, but underpay grows with overpay, and it at some point bites more and more deeply into quality of life. Studies have shown that happiness does not increase above about $50,000 per family, so underpay above this is not very stimulating to resentment of the theft. But meanwhile, the overpay is overpower, because money is a power, the second greatest power, and rights, freedoms and pay are ever-increasingly eroded. People underestimate the importance of preventing overpay. They allow overpay as if overpay was innocent, harmless to them, whereas overpay is arrogance and tyranny. And ever-growing. And the less pay, the less power there is to remedy it. And the less safety there is in opposing it. So human society has lumbered on for about 3000 years, with ever-growing inequality, and revolutions, and war and crime. People, so careful about so many things, so industrious in serving their needs and desires, have not learned to be careful about this. What do I care if people are rich, if I am well enough? But money rakes money, and money is power. One billion pulls in $100 million every year at 10%, with no work at all. Great! people think. And they imagine the pleasure of that if it were them. Money for no work is good, they think. And they do not oppose it. They do not think that the money for no work comes from work for no money. They don't see themselves losing by others gaining. They don't remember that if water goes above its level, water has to go below its level, and that as far as water is above and below its level, the rougher it is for everyone. They do not think that a person with a billion can hire a million soldiers for a 1000 days at $1 a day, resulting in warmongering and cannonfoddering. If they are moderately underpaid, they are not worried. And those severely underpaid, and angry, and violent, well, that's life, people fight. You just do your best to protect yourself. Society seems good to them. The ratio of highest to lowest pay per hour is one billion. Annual income ranges from $30 to $30 billion. If equality was a swimming pool one metre deep [$100,000 a year per worker, including housewives and students], our pool is now 98% up in a thin needle going up 100,000 metres, 100 kilometres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 10th of 1mm deep. Overpay and underpay is now $250 trillion a year. An inequality factor of one billion. A violence factor of one billion. A misery factor of one billion. A weaponry factor of one billion. A disinformation factor of one billion. A corruption factor of one billion. A brutality factor of one billion. [A million children killed in Iraq.] An inequality of opportunity factor of one billion. A mental disease factor of one billion. An ungovernance factor of one billion. [World topsoil is being lost at the rate of 1% a year, 100% a century.] A waste and destruction factor of one billion. A horrors and terrors factor of one billion. A potential for increase of happiness factor of one billion. Technological progress would be 100 times faster, for 90% of scientists, etc are tied up in the consequences of the violence, in business, in the legal system, the government, the universities, the military-industrial complex, the hospitals, and 90% of the scientists we could have are too poor to become scientists. Happiness has been eroding imperceptibly slowly for 3000 years, and we have got used to each new level, and have no way of remembering how happy we can be. [Inequality is impossible without trade, and without the imperishability of money. It is hard to accumulate wealth when you have only perishables. Trade grows inequality [endlessly], because the two things in a trade cannot be exactly equal in workvalue.]
Exit.
This super-super-extreme situation can be fixed easily, by making everyone in the world equal heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to earn that money, everyone has done everything to earn that money, to make the goods the money buys. Or [or and] by increasing the money supply 1% a month and giving it equally to everyone. Inflation is not bad if everyone is getting money to compensate. The inflation effect reduces overfortunes and the equal share reduces underpay. [Paying everyone, the 1% overpaid and the 99% underpaid, because it saves the enormous bureaucratic cost and labour of distinguishing the two.] Everyone would begin receiving like gentle rain the 98% of world earnings now up in the needle of overpay, increasing happiness for overpaid and underpaid. But there is no consciousness. If the water supply fails, people act, and act until it is fixed. But with super-super-extreme inequality, with its proportionate super-super-extreme violence, danger and disorder [relative to what we could have], there is no reaction, no will. Not even the appearance of nuclear winter on the horizon makes any motion in humanity. If serious people began talking seriously about it, and pointing the way out, people would begin to move, activity would begin. Who gains from inequality? If one person steals the property of 1000, that person is unhappier, with merely 1000 times more than he can use, and 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends. And the 1000 are unhappier. History is unanimous, equality is strong, inequality is weak, every heap of wealth, individual, national and imperial, has fallen. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown. Money is the second greatest power, the underpaid are the greatest power. Injury energises. Every heap of wealth is finite, and the attacks on them, from underpaid and overpaid, end only with the heap of wealth. The underpaid have lost many battles, they have never lost the war. The third world are gaining in share of world wealth at the rate of 10% every 30 years, from 51% now. We practise every person for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. But the devil takes all. The rough sea is rough for all. Money gives protection, but the attacks are proportional to the size of the heap. Bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them. So who gains from inequality? No one. So who gains from equality? Justice is a hugely undervalued stock, it is standing by to pay the highest dividends to all, waiting for our attention, our waking. We have the greatest opportunity for increase of happiness in the history of the world, because inequality has been growing for about as long as history. This is sacrifice to no one. This is Christmas for everyone. We have been saving happiness for 3000 years, we can begin to spend it. We are standing on the brink of self-annihilation, and of a golden age. Sowing is no fun, but the harvest from thinking on this is supreme. More at happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com, and I will be daily adding my efforts to communicate this. If you can't get enough of this, there is a 500-page book at www.globalhappiness.org [not an org].
Human care, human industry.
Look at your town. So much is provided, so many needs are addressed and answered. People have food, housing, warmth. Even smaller needs are taken care of. Problems with teeth? Systems for taking care of teeth are set up. And not just pull a troublesome tooth. The most elaborate tools have been designed, built and distributed to answer problems of teeth. The need or desire for stories is answered with libraries, television, etc. Roads and footpaths for greater ease of moving around. For the removal of wastes, there are rubbish collections, and sewage pipes have been laid in every street. If you break a leg, hospitals are set up. If you get lost in the forests, systems are organised and ready to go to find you. Thousands of needs have been addressed and answered with enormous industry. All systems go. Care and tremendous energy has been shown in responding to needs and desires. Food is available, and not just food, but tremendous variety. Everywhere there is organisation, energy, industry, systems to provide and to meet needs and desires, being run every day to satisfy. Right down to places for skateboarding. Are humans lazy, unresponding? Do they just cater for the need for food and then leave everything else? No, no and no. Need to water your garden? Hoses are provided, underground pipes are laid to deliver water to your house. Need an easier way to connect your hose to the tap? Easier couplings are designed, built, distributed. The most incredible industry, responsiveness. Do mothers need support, education? Provided. A list of all the needs and desires responded to would be very, very long, would contain thousands or millions of items.
Strange custom of the Hoo-Min tribe.
Compare the strange customs of the Hoo-Min tribe, recently discovered. They have a culture in which, it is calculated, there is far more than enough for everybody. Everyone works hard. And yet, it is calculated, the person with most gets 100,000 times as much as the average, and the person with least gets 10,000th of average. In other words, the Hoo-Min tribe believes in, or practises, the most extremely uneven distribution. If you ask them why this one person has so much, they say it is because he is doing something very special, he is a very special person, and deserves to have so much. - Why do 90% of the tribe have less than 100th of average? - Because that is all they earn, that is all they are worth. - But everyone is working, more or less equally, you point out. - Oh yes, but the ones with little, they are not working productively. They don't have the marvellous abilities of the ones getting 100,000 times the average. You reply: I have watched the ones being paid 100,000 times average, and I don't see anything remarkable about their work behaviour. They seem to me to be working about the same as everybody. Their reply: Stranger, you are blind, look at how much they have. It is perfectly obvious that they are doing something remarkable, look at how much they have. Could they have so much if they were not remarkable? - I see from your history that these people with so much have often been, well, pushed off their position, by other people with as much, or nearly as much, and sometimes by those with little. - Oh yes, this is true, there are people who are bad and greedy, who want what the remarkable ones have without themselves being remarkable. - I see from your history that there have occasionally been mass uprisings against the ones with most, and those have been put to death. And the mass of people have called for a change in the system, so that there is not this extreme range of pay. - That is true, but such phases are brief, most of the time everybody understands the correctness of our system, and accepts it happily. - It can't be pleasant for the ones with much to be surrounded by so many people who have so little, who are ignorant and diseased. - Well, they put up with it. - So many people unable to be educated, unable to contribute in so many ways because they have so little, is it not a terrible waste of talent? And it seems to me that some having so much is like a golden carrot to everyone to get more, to get as much as they can, and also so many having so little is also a huge stimulus for people to get more in any way they can, and that consequently there is much crime and war, which would not happen if everyone was paid according to how much work they did. - But did I not tell you, stranger, that everyone is being paid according to how much work they do? Whatever people have, it is because of how much work they do. If everyone worked as hard as those who have much, they would have as much. Isn't it obvious? Those with much have so much because of their work. Anyone who does what they did would have as much. - But, friend, is it not possible there are other reasons why those with much have so much? Are you sure it is because of their work?
Equality: synaptic failure.
In a recent article, someone suggests that top executive pay should be no more than 30-40 times as much as the average worker. Is this because the exec works 30-40 times as many hours? Obviously not. The average worker works maybe 50 hours a week, and no one can work more than 100 hours a week, average, longterm. And there is no perception that execs are working such long hours. There is no measurement of working hours, but it is possible that execs are working no longer than average. Perhaps 20% longer hours, perhaps not. Is this because execs are working 30-40 times harder per hour? Are they shuffling paper 30-40 times faster than the average paper shuffler? Are they deciding, talking, reading, discussing, telephoning, 30-40 times faster? No, no one thinks that. Is it that they have rare gifts of management? There is no measurement of giftedness, or of rarity, but perhaps they have rare gifts. Is it sense, or justice, to pay for gifts? Mother nature has done the work, not the person. All the person has done is receive the gift, or, rather, not even that, the gift has been installed by mother nature too. There is not the slightest inclination in society to pay people for receiving birthday gifts or christmas gifts. Even if there was, it is hard to see how a dollar amount could be put on how much should be paid to people for having received gifts. Is it the rarity? Then we are paying the person because mother nature has failed to provide these gifts to many. Paying a person for an absence of gifts. Again, paying for no work by the person. Paying the person for work not done by mother nature. And this pay comes out of pay for people who have done work, because the pay for execs buys goods, which have been made by others' work. The higher pay to execs is a legal license to take from the social pool of goods made by work. A legal license to take out where they did not put in. Leaving less in the pool for those who put in. Is it pay for education? Education is work by the person, and should be paid for. And society should pay for education, not parents or scholarships or students, since it is society that benefits. [Society has the right to decide how much education it wants to buy.] And then no one would in sanity be paid for having been educated, for there is no work, no sacrifice of time or energy, in having studied. And no one would in sanity choose to pay for educatedness, for a person having the knowledge in their head. There is no effort keeping the knowledge in the head, keeping the diploma on the wall. Is it pay for 'responsibility', that is, for heading a large organisation? Is there any belief anywhere that responsibility is a drain on the energies, that responsibility requires extra pay to compensate for greater energy drain with responsibility? Do execs need 30-40 times more food to do their responsible jobs? [Even if they did, food is only a fraction of personal expenses.] It seems that the exec is just working, the same as anyone, but in a 'responsible' job. They are just using what they have, just like everyone. Sacrificing the same time and energies as anyone else. And there is no correlation between 'responsibility' and pay, no direct payment for 'responsibility', no mechanism of measurement of 'responsibility' and corresponding payment for responsibility. People with equal numbers 'under' them are not paid equal fees for 'responsibility'.
We have to look elsewhere for the explanation of this universal devotion to inequality, this avoidance of pay justice. People feel it is natural that people higher in hierarchies be paid more. Even though this extra pay comes out of their own pockets. Although, how much are people aware that overpay, pay for no work by the person paid, means underpay, work for no pay, for others? How much are 'workers' aware that they are paying for this overpay? People are generally aware of a connection between higher pay and lower pay. But they are not so conscious that they see it as taking goods off them and giving them to others. They do not, I think, see it so clearly as plain theft, as removal of things that are theirs by right of having done the work, and giving them to others who have not done the work that made them. In the complicatedness of economic society, the dots are not so well connected. People see others rich, and themselves unrich, and perhaps do not perceive that both are working equally hard, or much more equally hard than the 'rewards'. The sense of justice may stimulate them to get as rich, by hook or by crook, or by the same means, but there is no clear sense of simple plain theft, of pay injustice. Even the mental leap from pay injustice ['wealth disparity', inequality, 'socio-economic strata'] to theft is too great. There are too many imponderables in the way, like 'responsibility', rarity, gifts, 'hard work'. People hear: I made my money by hard work, and, if they don't exactly swallow it, they cannot spit it out. They don't reply: Do you mean that your pay per hour is the same as mine, and the difference in incomes is just that you have worked more hours? They think: Well, it is true I haven't run around, organising warehouses, advertising, office staff, etc. There is a lack of devotion to pay justice, to equal pay for equal work. This devotion is presumably eroded by unclarity, and by feeling that freedom for the other to be overpaid is freedom for self to be overpaid. Without the thought that opening the gates to limitless overpay is opening the gates to limitless underpay. Without the thought that freedom of overpay may mean a little overpay for some and a lot of overpay for others. Without the thought that what you gain by overpay may be more than eroded by others' overpay. Without the thought that opening the gates to overpay means galloping, ever-growing inequality and hence galloping ever-growing violence [war and crime]. For money is the joker good, good for all the millions of things money buys, so that theft of money is theft of just about everything, so theft of money is the greatest injury, stimulating the greatest anger. Underpay does not cause great resentment as long as underpay still meets most needs, but underpay grows with overpay, and it at some point bites more and more deeply into quality of life. Studies have shown that happiness does not increase above about $50,000 per family, so underpay above this is not very stimulating to resentment of the theft. But meanwhile, the overpay is overpower, because money is a power, the second greatest power, and rights, freedoms and pay are ever-increasingly eroded. People underestimate the importance of preventing overpay. They allow overpay as if overpay was innocent, harmless to them, whereas overpay is arrogance and tyranny. And ever-growing. And the less pay, the less power there is to remedy it. And the less safety there is in opposing it. So human society has lumbered on for about 3000 years, with ever-growing inequality, and revolutions, and war and crime. People, so careful about so many things, so industrious in serving their needs and desires, have not learned to be careful about this. What do I care if people are rich, if I am well enough? But money rakes money, and money is power. One billion pulls in $100 million every year at 10%, with no work at all. Great! people think. And they imagine the pleasure of that if it were them. Money for no work is good, they think. And they do not oppose it. They do not think that the money for no work comes from work for no money. They don't see themselves losing by others gaining. They don't remember that if water goes above its level, water has to go below its level, and that as far as water is above and below its level, the rougher it is for everyone. They do not think that a person with a billion can hire a million soldiers for a 1000 days at $1 a day, resulting in warmongering and cannonfoddering. If they are moderately underpaid, they are not worried. And those severely underpaid, and angry, and violent, well, that's life, people fight. You just do your best to protect yourself. Society seems good to them. The ratio of highest to lowest pay per hour is one billion. Annual income ranges from $30 to $30 billion. If equality was a swimming pool one metre deep [$100,000 a year per worker, including housewives and students], our pool is now 98% up in a thin needle going up 100,000 metres, 100 kilometres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 10th of 1mm deep. Overpay and underpay is now $250 trillion a year. An inequality factor of one billion. A violence factor of one billion. A misery factor of one billion. A weaponry factor of one billion. A disinformation factor of one billion. A corruption factor of one billion. A brutality factor of one billion. [A million children killed in Iraq.] An inequality of opportunity factor of one billion. A mental disease factor of one billion. An ungovernance factor of one billion. [World topsoil is being lost at the rate of 1% a year, 100% a century.] A waste and destruction factor of one billion. A horrors and terrors factor of one billion. A potential for increase of happiness factor of one billion. Technological progress would be 100 times faster, for 90% of scientists, etc are tied up in the consequences of the violence, in business, in the legal system, the government, the universities, the military-industrial complex, the hospitals, and 90% of the scientists we could have are too poor to become scientists. Happiness has been eroding imperceptibly slowly for 3000 years, and we have got used to each new level, and have no way of remembering how happy we can be. [Inequality is impossible without trade, and without the imperishability of money. It is hard to accumulate wealth when you have only perishables. Trade grows inequality [endlessly], because the two things in a trade cannot be exactly equal in workvalue.]
Exit.
This super-super-extreme situation can be fixed easily, by making everyone in the world equal heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to earn that money, everyone has done everything to earn that money, to make the goods the money buys. Or [or and] by increasing the money supply 1% a month and giving it equally to everyone. Inflation is not bad if everyone is getting money to compensate. The inflation effect reduces overfortunes and the equal share reduces underpay. [Paying everyone, the 1% overpaid and the 99% underpaid, because it saves the enormous bureaucratic cost and labour of distinguishing the two.] Everyone would begin receiving like gentle rain the 98% of world earnings now up in the needle of overpay, increasing happiness for overpaid and underpaid. But there is no consciousness. If the water supply fails, people act, and act until it is fixed. But with super-super-extreme inequality, with its proportionate super-super-extreme violence, danger and disorder [relative to what we could have], there is no reaction, no will. Not even the appearance of nuclear winter on the horizon makes any motion in humanity. If serious people began talking seriously about it, and pointing the way out, people would begin to move, activity would begin. Who gains from inequality? If one person steals the property of 1000, that person is unhappier, with merely 1000 times more than he can use, and 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends. And the 1000 are unhappier. History is unanimous, equality is strong, inequality is weak, every heap of wealth, individual, national and imperial, has fallen. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown. Money is the second greatest power, the underpaid are the greatest power. Injury energises. Every heap of wealth is finite, and the attacks on them, from underpaid and overpaid, end only with the heap of wealth. The underpaid have lost many battles, they have never lost the war. The third world are gaining in share of world wealth at the rate of 10% every 30 years, from 51% now. We practise every person for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. But the devil takes all. The rough sea is rough for all. Money gives protection, but the attacks are proportional to the size of the heap. Bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them. So who gains from inequality? No one. So who gains from equality? Justice is a hugely undervalued stock, it is standing by to pay the highest dividends to all, waiting for our attention, our waking. We have the greatest opportunity for increase of happiness in the history of the world, because inequality has been growing for about as long as history. This is sacrifice to no one. This is Christmas for everyone. We have been saving happiness for 3000 years, we can begin to spend it. We are standing on the brink of self-annihilation, and of a golden age. Sowing is no fun, but the harvest from thinking on this is supreme. More at happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com, and I will be daily adding my efforts to communicate this. If you can't get enough of this, there is a 500-page book at www.globalhappiness.org [not an org].
Are you tough enough for the happiness corps?
Are you tough enough for the happiness corps?
Right, then. What have we got here, then? Squad! Atten-shun! At ease! Are you tough enough for the happiness corps?
Yes sir!
I can't hear you.
Yes sir!
Are you a bunch of snivelly-nosed babies who have to run off to mother every time you hear a fact you didn't know?
No sir!
Do humans have infinite knowledge?
No sir!
Is it your fault if you don't know everything?
No sir!
Do you need to learn, if you are going to be happy?
Yes sir!
Are you going to learn?
Yes sir!
Does the world look like a happy place to you?
No sir!
Could you be happier?
Yes sir!
Have you got all the happiness you could ever want?
No sir!
Are you too afraid to find out how you made this mess?
No sir!
Are you going to get your knickers in a twist if someone suggests how you screwed up?
No sir!
Do you care more about your happiness than appearing to be allwise?
Yes sir!
All happiness is real happiness. There is no happiness in unreality. To be happy, you have to be real. Are you going to be real?
Yes sir!
Why are you going to be real? Corporal Jensen?
To be happy, sir!
Why are you going to be happy? Corporal Stallworthy?
Don't know, sir!
Because it is your duty! What is it?
Our duty, sir!
Why is it your duty? Corporal?
Don't know, sir!
Because you are you! Are you anyone else, Corporal Krishnamurti?
No sir!
Is anyone else you, Corporal Ralston?
No sir!
Is there someone else in charge of your happiness, Corporal Halliday?
No sir!
Who's in charge of your happiness, Corporal Spritsky?
I am, sir!
Are you going to do your duty, Corporal Fujitsu?
Yes sir!
Have you been doing your duty, Corporal Mallard?
Don't know, sir!
Does the world look like anyone has been doing their duty, squad?
No sir!
Right, squad. Into the classroom. At the double.
Right. Up against the wall, standing on your hands! Now, if one person steals the property of 1000, are the 1000 happier?
No sir!
Is the one person happier? Come on, come on, is the one person happier?
Don't know, sir!
Has he got 1000 enemies?
Yes sir!
Has he got 1000 times more than he can use?
Yes sir!
Is he happier?
No sir!
If someone steals from you, are you happier?
No sir!
Is there any reason to believe that there is anyone who is happy to be stolen from?
No sir!
Can you rely on stealing to make you unhappier?
Yes sir!
Can you rely on any form of injuring to make you unhappier?
Yes sir!
Have you been vigilant to see if you are injuring anyone? Been checking lately to see if you have in any way been injuring people?
No sir!
So have you been pursuing your happiness?
No sir!
Does a bird pursue its happiness? Does a worm pursue its happiness? Are you duller than a worm?
No sir!
Yes sir! You haven't been pursuing your happiness, and a worm has. You've been unvigilant about injuring others, who will certainly injure you back. You've been duller, less conscious than a worm, than a hedgehog. Pay justice is equal pay for equal work. Injustice is injury. We have pay for a year's work from $30 to $30 billion. Does that sound like injury to you?
Yes sir!
We have a situation like one person stealing everything off 1000 people. We have enough money to pay every worker in the world including housewives and students $100,000 a year. And we have 90% of workers on between $1000 and $10. Does that sound like theft to you?
Yes sir!
Is theft injury?
Yes sir!
Does injury rebound?
Yes sir!
Are we injuring ourselves about as hard as we can?
Yes sir!
Does that sound like pursuit of happiness to you?
No sir!
Can we do better?
Yes sir!
Do we have an enormous opportunity for increase of happiness?
Yes sir!
Learned anything today, soldiers?
Yes sir!
Are you going to engage in wasteful chitchat this evening, or in eager pursuit of realism and happiness?
Happiness, sir!
Are you going to cry because someone pointed out you are standing in a cesspit, or are you going to haul yourself out of there?
Haul ourselves out of there!
You are going to go out of here, you are not going to say a word, you are going to find a comfortable spot away from others, and you are not going to think one word. If you think, you are going to stop thinking. You are going to make like a block of wood. Class dismissed.
Right, then. What have we got here, then? Squad! Atten-shun! At ease! Are you tough enough for the happiness corps?
Yes sir!
I can't hear you.
Yes sir!
Are you a bunch of snivelly-nosed babies who have to run off to mother every time you hear a fact you didn't know?
No sir!
Do humans have infinite knowledge?
No sir!
Is it your fault if you don't know everything?
No sir!
Do you need to learn, if you are going to be happy?
Yes sir!
Are you going to learn?
Yes sir!
Does the world look like a happy place to you?
No sir!
Could you be happier?
Yes sir!
Have you got all the happiness you could ever want?
No sir!
Are you too afraid to find out how you made this mess?
No sir!
Are you going to get your knickers in a twist if someone suggests how you screwed up?
No sir!
Do you care more about your happiness than appearing to be allwise?
Yes sir!
All happiness is real happiness. There is no happiness in unreality. To be happy, you have to be real. Are you going to be real?
Yes sir!
Why are you going to be real? Corporal Jensen?
To be happy, sir!
Why are you going to be happy? Corporal Stallworthy?
Don't know, sir!
Because it is your duty! What is it?
Our duty, sir!
Why is it your duty? Corporal?
Don't know, sir!
Because you are you! Are you anyone else, Corporal Krishnamurti?
No sir!
Is anyone else you, Corporal Ralston?
No sir!
Is there someone else in charge of your happiness, Corporal Halliday?
No sir!
Who's in charge of your happiness, Corporal Spritsky?
I am, sir!
Are you going to do your duty, Corporal Fujitsu?
Yes sir!
Have you been doing your duty, Corporal Mallard?
Don't know, sir!
Does the world look like anyone has been doing their duty, squad?
No sir!
Right, squad. Into the classroom. At the double.
Right. Up against the wall, standing on your hands! Now, if one person steals the property of 1000, are the 1000 happier?
No sir!
Is the one person happier? Come on, come on, is the one person happier?
Don't know, sir!
Has he got 1000 enemies?
Yes sir!
Has he got 1000 times more than he can use?
Yes sir!
Is he happier?
No sir!
If someone steals from you, are you happier?
No sir!
Is there any reason to believe that there is anyone who is happy to be stolen from?
No sir!
Can you rely on stealing to make you unhappier?
Yes sir!
Can you rely on any form of injuring to make you unhappier?
Yes sir!
Have you been vigilant to see if you are injuring anyone? Been checking lately to see if you have in any way been injuring people?
No sir!
So have you been pursuing your happiness?
No sir!
Does a bird pursue its happiness? Does a worm pursue its happiness? Are you duller than a worm?
No sir!
Yes sir! You haven't been pursuing your happiness, and a worm has. You've been unvigilant about injuring others, who will certainly injure you back. You've been duller, less conscious than a worm, than a hedgehog. Pay justice is equal pay for equal work. Injustice is injury. We have pay for a year's work from $30 to $30 billion. Does that sound like injury to you?
Yes sir!
We have a situation like one person stealing everything off 1000 people. We have enough money to pay every worker in the world including housewives and students $100,000 a year. And we have 90% of workers on between $1000 and $10. Does that sound like theft to you?
Yes sir!
Is theft injury?
Yes sir!
Does injury rebound?
Yes sir!
Are we injuring ourselves about as hard as we can?
Yes sir!
Does that sound like pursuit of happiness to you?
No sir!
Can we do better?
Yes sir!
Do we have an enormous opportunity for increase of happiness?
Yes sir!
Learned anything today, soldiers?
Yes sir!
Are you going to engage in wasteful chitchat this evening, or in eager pursuit of realism and happiness?
Happiness, sir!
Are you going to cry because someone pointed out you are standing in a cesspit, or are you going to haul yourself out of there?
Haul ourselves out of there!
You are going to go out of here, you are not going to say a word, you are going to find a comfortable spot away from others, and you are not going to think one word. If you think, you are going to stop thinking. You are going to make like a block of wood. Class dismissed.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Can we humans be literally 100 times happier, with one new idea, with one law?
Can we humans be literally 100 times happier, with one new idea, one new law?
Consider the following, and decide.
There must have been a time when we got the idea of fire, of using and handling fire. And it made us much happier. So it seems that new ideas can come along, and make us all happier.
Can there be something small and unnoticeable in human culture, in human thought, that has a small effect, but which slowly imperceptibly grows, accumulates, and slowly, imperceptibly makes human life worse, so that after a long time human life is much worse than it need be, but the decline has been so slow that no one is aware of it? If human happiness declined 1% every 30 years, it would be hard to detect it, amidst all the variety of individual happiness levels, and yet after 3000 years, 100% would be gone.
I think that something like this has indeed happened, and that therefore we have the greatest opportunity for increase of happiness in the history of the world, and the cause is small, and easily removed. A bit like a dripping pipe, which floods the house while you are away, and which is quickly fixed when you return. The greatest problems in the world can be solved with the finding of the root cause, which can be as small as a dripping pipe. The greatness of the problems may be only a reflection of the length of time the root cause has gone undetected, and so the greatness of the problems does not mean that they can only be solved with enormous effort. We have been reduced to continually mopping up the house, because we could never find the dripping pipe.
I think I have found the dripping pipe.
At some point, we began to trade, and to specialise in the work we did, because we could trade the products of our work for the variety of things we needed. The two things in every transaction, buy, sell and barter, cannot be equal in the amount of work gone into them. The two things must be worth x and x+y, so that every transaction must be a fair-exchange-no-robbery [the x's] plus a 'robbery', the y. One person has done x amount of work and gets x+y work, and the other does x+y work and gets x work. The difference, the y, is too small to see in one transaction. But the cumulative effect will become obvious in time. Over time, the little gains and losses will not always even out. A few, just by luck, will make far more gains than losses. And a few will, just by luck, make far more losses than gains. And many will make smaller net gains or losses. As long as transaction goes on, the spread of net gains and losses will always grow. It will be impossible to point to a cause, because it is impossible to measure such small amounts in each transaction. But the ever-growing inequality will generate resentment. People will not know how it has happened, but they will know it has happened. And there will be conflict, antagonism between the lucky and the unlucky. And that will cause rows, and the injuries in the rows will be revenged with bigger injuries, and the inequality will go on growing.
We all know the saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And we all know this means that the rich get more and more per unit of work they do, and the poor get less and less per unit of work they do. And the violence is proportional to the inequality. And social unhappiness is proportional to the violence. What started out as trade between equals, with specialisation of work, and exchange of products of work, with perfect amity and trust and friendship, becomes increasingly acrimonious and unfriendly. The beneficiaries of a lot of y's will honestly believe they have not stolen, and it will be true that they have not stolen. Transaction itself has been stealing. Some of the beneficiaries may take pity on the losers, some of the beneficiaries will look for other explanations for the difference in wealth. The government of communities will tend to be with those who are better off, as they will have more leisure and more social esteem. Many will assume that the better-off have somehow got superior qualities, and will promote and support them in governing positions. If work could be measured, it could be decided how much each should have, and perhaps people would have then looked to see what caused the overpay and underpay. But there is no measurement of work. So no one can aim to justice, to equal pay for equal work. Sometimes people will feel that this can't go on, and will redistribute wealth more equally, by legislation or by revolution, sure that extreme inequality cannot be right. But the constant pressure of no one knowing exactly where justice lies, and the constant pressure of the overpaid's will to hold on to what they have got hold of, will continue to support inequality. And the passing of wealth from generation to generation by inheritance will permit inequality to evergrow.
Now we have pay for a year's work ranging from $30 to $30 billion, from 10,000th of average to 1000,000 times average, and still no one is sure this is wrong, and many are confident it is right. And violence is proportional to the injustice. If you set the most overpaid and the most underpaid to create wealth by work, to build a house, say, with equal tools and equal materials, and equal access to information, the range of creation of wealth would not be that different. And yet we allow one person to do a year's work, and then give them a license to take out of the pool of social wealth created by work the work contained in 30,000 $1 million homes, as if he had worked as hard as someone building 30,000 $1 million homes in one year, which is 82 $1 million homes every day.
Violence [war, crime, brutality and weaponry] has grown for 3000 years, and is now at the level of world wars, genocide and 60 times PDC [planet death capability]. All grown from the first amicable transaction with its tiny y, multiplied by trillions of transactions.
We could have decided that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average, and so no one shall have more than twice the average income. But for various reasons, we never did. There is a natural range of belligerence and gentleness, arrogance and modesty, in human nature. And money is a power, the second greatest power in the world. And so, generally, it has been the most belligerent, the most arrogant who have sought and most tightly held on to all the wealth accumulation there was, although it brought them endless trouble in the form of other people wanting, justly and unjustly, a piece of the action. And it has been the more modest, the more instinctively just, the less belligerent who have let them. And the most belligerent have been natural choices as protectors, although the belligerence has not always been directed outwards from the community, and although the belligerent have got the little people into many more battles than they needed to fight. Some people have pointed out that a community is weaker if most of its people are reduced to extreme poverty, but their voices have not moved the belligerent. The more the belligerent have got, the more they have been under attack from within and from without. And so they have been driven by necessity to get more. Which has made them under greater attack, which has demanded more theft at home and abroad. So inequality is its own fertiliser, and equality has rarely made an appearance, and only to be eroded by transaction and greed.
People know that money or wealth is good, is a power. And they have assumed that more money is always better, and more power. The more insecure the ever-rising violence has made them feel, the more people have turned to money to protect them. And this has driven inequality faster. And violence. Actually, money is not always good, there is a point where it stops being good and starts being bad, and gets worse. Money is good when it is self-earned, and bad when it is other-earned. The pool of social wealth, the sum of the products of work, is finite, not infinite. The pool of social wealth is made up of nature's bounty and human work, both finite, not infinite. The pool has grown fast with industry and computers, but it is still always finite. The potential may be infinite, but the actuality is finite. And this means that, if everyone tries to get unllimited fortunes out of it, that there will be overpay and underpay. We all go out into the economic world and try to get as much as we can, and never feel, generally, that we can have too much. We laud the 'success' stories, of those who got a lot out. It tends to convince us that there is hope for us too, although, with a finite pool of wealth, the more overpaid some are, the more underpaid others are. And the violence and unfriendliness is proportional to the overpay and underpay. The greater the overpay and underpay, the more people are motivated to get just more, and the less they are motivated to get out as much as they put in by their work. The more you get for the less work done, the greater the 'success' is felt to be, although this means that others have to get less per unit of work they do, and the more violence there is. Pay for no work means work for no pay, because the pool of social wealth is filled by work and nature's bounty, and no one has natural right to a greater share of nature's bounty than any other. Individual contribution by work to the social pool of wealth is limited, and so unlimited pay is unjust overpay, and thus causes violence. So more money is not always better. There is a point where it gets into overpay, causing underpay, causing violence, which ever-grows, as both sides try to prevail. The attacks on overpay are proportional to the size of the overpay. And the attacks are ceaseless, while the overfortune is finite, so every overfortune must fall in finite time, and must be preserved only with ceaseless labour of defense. The self-protective power of money is proportional to the quantity of money, but the attacks on overpay are proportional to the size of the overpay, and cease only with the existence of the overfortune. Add the fact that satisfaction from money is limited to the desires and appetites of the body, so that overpay cannot add more satisfaction, since fairpay satisfies all bodily desires, and we can see that overpay has no upside and an enormous proportionate downside. The underpaid see overpay satisfying their unsatisfied desires, and so glamourise and love overpay, but fairpay more than satisfies all desires. Overpay only adds troubles, the ceaseless draining tension between overpaid and underpaid. The sense of equality drives the underpaid to aim to have as much overpay as anyone has, and this keeps inequality growing. Studies have shown that the added happiness effect of more money stops at about $50,000 a year per family, whereas fairpay per family is around $200,000. We could all do one quarter the work, and have no less satisfaction.
So equality, pay justice, is the most undervalued stock, able to pay enormous dividends in happiness. Much more satisfaction for the underpaid, no less satisfaction for the overpaid, and the removal of the enormous burden of 3000 years growth of violence and unfriendliness from everyone. If one person steals the good of 1000, that one is unhappier, with merely 1000 times more goods than he can consume, and 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends. And of course the 1000 are unhappier. It is that simple.
How do we get from here to there? Education. 100% of people being convinced of the above simple truth will have an enormous effect on policies. When 100% of people had gone through the learning curve about the use and handling of fire, there was not much more to be done, except gather sticks. At the moment, everyone is more or less convinced that more money is always better, and everyone is sure that it is very difficult to change people's minds. Only changing our own minds will convince us that others' minds can be changed. Know that, if it takes a month to convince yourself, after looking at the facts every which way, and to pass it on to two people for them to check out, it will take only 31 months for every adult in the world to know it, just by word of mouth. There are 3 billion adults to reach, but there are 3 billion adults to reach them, with all their powers.
Can we be literally 100 times happier? Consider that, if a government committed the super-extreme pay injustice of taking 90% of aftertax income off 90% of citizens, and giving it to 1%, there would be the loss of 81% of national happiness just in the loss of the 90% to the 90%, and, on top of that, there would be the enormous and ever-escalating violence, the destruction and waste of property and lives, the waste of productivity and time in the many people tied up in the violence. I think this might well bring the loss of happiness up to 99%. And we have far worse inequality in the real world, with overpay up to 100,000 times average, and underpay down to 10,000th of average. In the above super-extreme example, the 1% overpaid are overpaid only 82 times average, and the underpaid are underpaid only 10th. So I think we can, very conservatively, be literally 100 times happier. It is the slow, imperceptible decline of happiness with the rise of inequality and violence over 3000 years that has given us this greatest opportunity for increase of happiness. We have been saving happiness for that long.
As for the practicalities, it is only necessary to make everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates, and the accumulation of 3000 years of growing overpay will shower down gently on humanity over two generations. Or, even simpler, we can increase the money supply 1% a month and pay it equally into everyone's accounts. The inflation effect will steadily reduce the overpays and the payments will reduce the underpays. Inflation is not bad when the new money is going to everyone.
Are we living on the edge of a precipice and slowly being bulldozed off the edge? It doesn't look like it, if you look around town. But we have 5 billion people on between 100th and 10,000th of average pay per year. How angry would you be to be on 1000th of fairpay? Multiply by 5 billion and that is how much anger that is loose in the world. We have the super-overpaid killing a million children in Iraq. We have population growing to 100 billion in this century. We have topsoil being lost at the rate of 1% a year, which is 100% in this century. This means we will have in this century vast hordes of billions fighting over the shrinking scraps of remaining arable land. We have suicide bombers, people so desperate, so angry at injustice, that they are prepared to do that. We have increased our power to destroy ourselves by a factor of 60,000 in the last 50 years, thanks to e=mc2, from 100,000 in one day to 6,000,000,000, by nuclear winter, an artificial triple ice-age, by blocking out the sun with smoke, and irradiating the planet for a million years. We have, with transport technology, concentrated the violence, like pressurising a gas, by a factor of 250 in the last 200 years, from one day away being 50 miles to being 12,500 miles. Global means every locality.
With equality, progress would be 100 times faster. With the super-extreme inequality we have, 90% of the scientists and thinkers we have are tied up in the consequences of inequality, in business, the military-industrial complex, the legal system, universities and governments, and 90% of the scientists we could have are too poor to become scientists. With 3000 years of equality, we would have been among the stars. History is unanimous: equality is strong, inequality is weak. The world is a ticking bomb. Do we want to live, will we stir ourselves to intelligent action, or are we all suicide bombers?
World annual income is US$300 trillion, and there are 3 billion workers, including housewives and students. US$100,000 per worker, including housewives and students. Family income, US$200,000. World annual income is derived from Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income, 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1992, pp237-258, compounded with global inflation since 1987.
If you approve of this document, or wish to give others the opportunity to consider it while you are considering it, download it from happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com and send it to all government and other social and moral leaders, and to everyone you can. Blitz the world with realism. It can be called democratic capitalism, justice economics or survival.
Consider the following, and decide.
There must have been a time when we got the idea of fire, of using and handling fire. And it made us much happier. So it seems that new ideas can come along, and make us all happier.
Can there be something small and unnoticeable in human culture, in human thought, that has a small effect, but which slowly imperceptibly grows, accumulates, and slowly, imperceptibly makes human life worse, so that after a long time human life is much worse than it need be, but the decline has been so slow that no one is aware of it? If human happiness declined 1% every 30 years, it would be hard to detect it, amidst all the variety of individual happiness levels, and yet after 3000 years, 100% would be gone.
I think that something like this has indeed happened, and that therefore we have the greatest opportunity for increase of happiness in the history of the world, and the cause is small, and easily removed. A bit like a dripping pipe, which floods the house while you are away, and which is quickly fixed when you return. The greatest problems in the world can be solved with the finding of the root cause, which can be as small as a dripping pipe. The greatness of the problems may be only a reflection of the length of time the root cause has gone undetected, and so the greatness of the problems does not mean that they can only be solved with enormous effort. We have been reduced to continually mopping up the house, because we could never find the dripping pipe.
I think I have found the dripping pipe.
At some point, we began to trade, and to specialise in the work we did, because we could trade the products of our work for the variety of things we needed. The two things in every transaction, buy, sell and barter, cannot be equal in the amount of work gone into them. The two things must be worth x and x+y, so that every transaction must be a fair-exchange-no-robbery [the x's] plus a 'robbery', the y. One person has done x amount of work and gets x+y work, and the other does x+y work and gets x work. The difference, the y, is too small to see in one transaction. But the cumulative effect will become obvious in time. Over time, the little gains and losses will not always even out. A few, just by luck, will make far more gains than losses. And a few will, just by luck, make far more losses than gains. And many will make smaller net gains or losses. As long as transaction goes on, the spread of net gains and losses will always grow. It will be impossible to point to a cause, because it is impossible to measure such small amounts in each transaction. But the ever-growing inequality will generate resentment. People will not know how it has happened, but they will know it has happened. And there will be conflict, antagonism between the lucky and the unlucky. And that will cause rows, and the injuries in the rows will be revenged with bigger injuries, and the inequality will go on growing.
We all know the saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And we all know this means that the rich get more and more per unit of work they do, and the poor get less and less per unit of work they do. And the violence is proportional to the inequality. And social unhappiness is proportional to the violence. What started out as trade between equals, with specialisation of work, and exchange of products of work, with perfect amity and trust and friendship, becomes increasingly acrimonious and unfriendly. The beneficiaries of a lot of y's will honestly believe they have not stolen, and it will be true that they have not stolen. Transaction itself has been stealing. Some of the beneficiaries may take pity on the losers, some of the beneficiaries will look for other explanations for the difference in wealth. The government of communities will tend to be with those who are better off, as they will have more leisure and more social esteem. Many will assume that the better-off have somehow got superior qualities, and will promote and support them in governing positions. If work could be measured, it could be decided how much each should have, and perhaps people would have then looked to see what caused the overpay and underpay. But there is no measurement of work. So no one can aim to justice, to equal pay for equal work. Sometimes people will feel that this can't go on, and will redistribute wealth more equally, by legislation or by revolution, sure that extreme inequality cannot be right. But the constant pressure of no one knowing exactly where justice lies, and the constant pressure of the overpaid's will to hold on to what they have got hold of, will continue to support inequality. And the passing of wealth from generation to generation by inheritance will permit inequality to evergrow.
Now we have pay for a year's work ranging from $30 to $30 billion, from 10,000th of average to 1000,000 times average, and still no one is sure this is wrong, and many are confident it is right. And violence is proportional to the injustice. If you set the most overpaid and the most underpaid to create wealth by work, to build a house, say, with equal tools and equal materials, and equal access to information, the range of creation of wealth would not be that different. And yet we allow one person to do a year's work, and then give them a license to take out of the pool of social wealth created by work the work contained in 30,000 $1 million homes, as if he had worked as hard as someone building 30,000 $1 million homes in one year, which is 82 $1 million homes every day.
Violence [war, crime, brutality and weaponry] has grown for 3000 years, and is now at the level of world wars, genocide and 60 times PDC [planet death capability]. All grown from the first amicable transaction with its tiny y, multiplied by trillions of transactions.
We could have decided that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average, and so no one shall have more than twice the average income. But for various reasons, we never did. There is a natural range of belligerence and gentleness, arrogance and modesty, in human nature. And money is a power, the second greatest power in the world. And so, generally, it has been the most belligerent, the most arrogant who have sought and most tightly held on to all the wealth accumulation there was, although it brought them endless trouble in the form of other people wanting, justly and unjustly, a piece of the action. And it has been the more modest, the more instinctively just, the less belligerent who have let them. And the most belligerent have been natural choices as protectors, although the belligerence has not always been directed outwards from the community, and although the belligerent have got the little people into many more battles than they needed to fight. Some people have pointed out that a community is weaker if most of its people are reduced to extreme poverty, but their voices have not moved the belligerent. The more the belligerent have got, the more they have been under attack from within and from without. And so they have been driven by necessity to get more. Which has made them under greater attack, which has demanded more theft at home and abroad. So inequality is its own fertiliser, and equality has rarely made an appearance, and only to be eroded by transaction and greed.
People know that money or wealth is good, is a power. And they have assumed that more money is always better, and more power. The more insecure the ever-rising violence has made them feel, the more people have turned to money to protect them. And this has driven inequality faster. And violence. Actually, money is not always good, there is a point where it stops being good and starts being bad, and gets worse. Money is good when it is self-earned, and bad when it is other-earned. The pool of social wealth, the sum of the products of work, is finite, not infinite. The pool of social wealth is made up of nature's bounty and human work, both finite, not infinite. The pool has grown fast with industry and computers, but it is still always finite. The potential may be infinite, but the actuality is finite. And this means that, if everyone tries to get unllimited fortunes out of it, that there will be overpay and underpay. We all go out into the economic world and try to get as much as we can, and never feel, generally, that we can have too much. We laud the 'success' stories, of those who got a lot out. It tends to convince us that there is hope for us too, although, with a finite pool of wealth, the more overpaid some are, the more underpaid others are. And the violence and unfriendliness is proportional to the overpay and underpay. The greater the overpay and underpay, the more people are motivated to get just more, and the less they are motivated to get out as much as they put in by their work. The more you get for the less work done, the greater the 'success' is felt to be, although this means that others have to get less per unit of work they do, and the more violence there is. Pay for no work means work for no pay, because the pool of social wealth is filled by work and nature's bounty, and no one has natural right to a greater share of nature's bounty than any other. Individual contribution by work to the social pool of wealth is limited, and so unlimited pay is unjust overpay, and thus causes violence. So more money is not always better. There is a point where it gets into overpay, causing underpay, causing violence, which ever-grows, as both sides try to prevail. The attacks on overpay are proportional to the size of the overpay. And the attacks are ceaseless, while the overfortune is finite, so every overfortune must fall in finite time, and must be preserved only with ceaseless labour of defense. The self-protective power of money is proportional to the quantity of money, but the attacks on overpay are proportional to the size of the overpay, and cease only with the existence of the overfortune. Add the fact that satisfaction from money is limited to the desires and appetites of the body, so that overpay cannot add more satisfaction, since fairpay satisfies all bodily desires, and we can see that overpay has no upside and an enormous proportionate downside. The underpaid see overpay satisfying their unsatisfied desires, and so glamourise and love overpay, but fairpay more than satisfies all desires. Overpay only adds troubles, the ceaseless draining tension between overpaid and underpaid. The sense of equality drives the underpaid to aim to have as much overpay as anyone has, and this keeps inequality growing. Studies have shown that the added happiness effect of more money stops at about $50,000 a year per family, whereas fairpay per family is around $200,000. We could all do one quarter the work, and have no less satisfaction.
So equality, pay justice, is the most undervalued stock, able to pay enormous dividends in happiness. Much more satisfaction for the underpaid, no less satisfaction for the overpaid, and the removal of the enormous burden of 3000 years growth of violence and unfriendliness from everyone. If one person steals the good of 1000, that one is unhappier, with merely 1000 times more goods than he can consume, and 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends. And of course the 1000 are unhappier. It is that simple.
How do we get from here to there? Education. 100% of people being convinced of the above simple truth will have an enormous effect on policies. When 100% of people had gone through the learning curve about the use and handling of fire, there was not much more to be done, except gather sticks. At the moment, everyone is more or less convinced that more money is always better, and everyone is sure that it is very difficult to change people's minds. Only changing our own minds will convince us that others' minds can be changed. Know that, if it takes a month to convince yourself, after looking at the facts every which way, and to pass it on to two people for them to check out, it will take only 31 months for every adult in the world to know it, just by word of mouth. There are 3 billion adults to reach, but there are 3 billion adults to reach them, with all their powers.
Can we be literally 100 times happier? Consider that, if a government committed the super-extreme pay injustice of taking 90% of aftertax income off 90% of citizens, and giving it to 1%, there would be the loss of 81% of national happiness just in the loss of the 90% to the 90%, and, on top of that, there would be the enormous and ever-escalating violence, the destruction and waste of property and lives, the waste of productivity and time in the many people tied up in the violence. I think this might well bring the loss of happiness up to 99%. And we have far worse inequality in the real world, with overpay up to 100,000 times average, and underpay down to 10,000th of average. In the above super-extreme example, the 1% overpaid are overpaid only 82 times average, and the underpaid are underpaid only 10th. So I think we can, very conservatively, be literally 100 times happier. It is the slow, imperceptible decline of happiness with the rise of inequality and violence over 3000 years that has given us this greatest opportunity for increase of happiness. We have been saving happiness for that long.
As for the practicalities, it is only necessary to make everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates, and the accumulation of 3000 years of growing overpay will shower down gently on humanity over two generations. Or, even simpler, we can increase the money supply 1% a month and pay it equally into everyone's accounts. The inflation effect will steadily reduce the overpays and the payments will reduce the underpays. Inflation is not bad when the new money is going to everyone.
Are we living on the edge of a precipice and slowly being bulldozed off the edge? It doesn't look like it, if you look around town. But we have 5 billion people on between 100th and 10,000th of average pay per year. How angry would you be to be on 1000th of fairpay? Multiply by 5 billion and that is how much anger that is loose in the world. We have the super-overpaid killing a million children in Iraq. We have population growing to 100 billion in this century. We have topsoil being lost at the rate of 1% a year, which is 100% in this century. This means we will have in this century vast hordes of billions fighting over the shrinking scraps of remaining arable land. We have suicide bombers, people so desperate, so angry at injustice, that they are prepared to do that. We have increased our power to destroy ourselves by a factor of 60,000 in the last 50 years, thanks to e=mc2, from 100,000 in one day to 6,000,000,000, by nuclear winter, an artificial triple ice-age, by blocking out the sun with smoke, and irradiating the planet for a million years. We have, with transport technology, concentrated the violence, like pressurising a gas, by a factor of 250 in the last 200 years, from one day away being 50 miles to being 12,500 miles. Global means every locality.
With equality, progress would be 100 times faster. With the super-extreme inequality we have, 90% of the scientists and thinkers we have are tied up in the consequences of inequality, in business, the military-industrial complex, the legal system, universities and governments, and 90% of the scientists we could have are too poor to become scientists. With 3000 years of equality, we would have been among the stars. History is unanimous: equality is strong, inequality is weak. The world is a ticking bomb. Do we want to live, will we stir ourselves to intelligent action, or are we all suicide bombers?
World annual income is US$300 trillion, and there are 3 billion workers, including housewives and students. US$100,000 per worker, including housewives and students. Family income, US$200,000. World annual income is derived from Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income, 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1992, pp237-258, compounded with global inflation since 1987.
If you approve of this document, or wish to give others the opportunity to consider it while you are considering it, download it from happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com and send it to all government and other social and moral leaders, and to everyone you can. Blitz the world with realism. It can be called democratic capitalism, justice economics or survival.
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