You can easily be much happier, safer, better off

You can easily be much happier, safer, better off.

Why?

Because things have got really bad, relative to what they could be, and because this can all be enormously changed just by learning some things and teaching them to two people, your friends or family.

What things?

Well, for instance, people are creating enough wealth for every working person in the world, including housewives and students, to be paid US$100,000 a year. Instead we have 99% of people being paid less than that, and 1% being paid all the earnings that those 99% are earning and aren't getting. And there is an easy, free, do-in-your-own-home, no-politics, no-religion way to change that.

And the violence in the world is almost all caused by the super-super-extreme overpay and underpay. And that violence is never-ending and is always growing. And that obviously has a huge effect on happiness. For everyone. Violence [war and crime] gets to everyone, rich and poor. Violence is localised and temporary, but it is also unconfined, it can pop up anywhere, on a plane, in the street, in the home. A nation can be peaceful for a long time, and then suddenly it is war. Or some form of crime [which is just a small war]. The golden carrot of super-super-extreme overpay is a constant stimulus to crime and war, and so is underpay. And overpay and underpay are super-super-extreme. Everyone is submerged in an environment of danger instead of an environment of peace. Everyone is engaged in protecting themselves instead of feeling free and safe, in an environment of friends and happy people.

Obviously a community in which everyone works, and produces plenty, can be made very unhappy, without destroying goods, just by extreme overpay and underpay. If an imp takes everyone's property and puts it in someone's house, things have gone a long way downhill as long as those things are not given back. We can learn that there is an imp in human society, and that we are such a community, in which most people have lost the happiness of having all the goods they create by their own work, and everyone is embroiled in the endless violence of what the imp has done.

One only needs to get clear that there is an imp, and he has moved goods to extreme misdistribution, and that has caused a sharp decline in happiness for everyone, and learn how to get it back without struggle or danger, for our happiness, safety and financial situation to improve greatly. If one person has the goods of 1000, he has only got 1000 times more goods than he can use, and has got 1000 enemies and lost 1000 friends. If overpay makes you unhappier, and underpay makes you unhappier, and everyone can get clear about these things [and there are strong proofs that they are true], then everyone can be happier by removing overpay and underpay. Can be super-super-extremely happier, because we have super-super-extreme overpay and underpay.

There are things we have to get unconfused about. There are things that are increasing confusion. But if we can conquer these confusions, by reading and thinking, the way is clear and simple. Like being lost in the bush, if we can just get high enough to see a landmark, we can soon get out.

Part of the problem is that we pack up our troubles in an old kitbag and stick it in a cupboard or attic, and our house looks better. We get used to the level of happiness that is available, and put the bad things out of mind, and don't study them to really get rid of them. We cannot begin to imagine them really being gone. We have marked them insoluble, and forgotten about them, but they are still around. We can't solve problems we have marked insoluble. So it seems that we cannot be much happier than we are. We have to pull out the problems and really get rid of them.

There has been an imp in the system which has quietly, slowly moved earnings from all to few over a very long time. And it has created super-super-extreme overpay and underpay, super-super-extreme violence, millions of problems, and super-super-extreme unhappiness. Just by seeing this, and identifying the imp, and removing it, we can go back to the level of happiness we had before all this started, long, long ago.

If happiness declined 1% every 30 years, the decline would be imperceptible, and everyone would accept the new lower level of happiness as being normal, and yet 100% of happiness would be lost in 3000 years. We are in such a situation. This imp was born about 3000 years ago, and we are in fact in our last 1% of happiness. This is very very good news, in that we can be 100 times happier just by removing the imp, and it is easy to remove the imp, once people see the reality. The imp has been invisible. Once the imp is visible, the problem is nearly solved. His little thefts, over a very long time, have got us into a very bad situation. Which we have come to think of as normal. But spray paint on the imp, and make him visible, and so come to see what he is up to, and the right way is very easy to see and to go.

In the absence of seeing the imp, millions of explanations have sprung up to try to explain the things that have been happening. All these things have to be cleared away in the course of coming to see clearly. Life is so complex, that there are things to support a million different theories. And the theories then blind us to things that contradict the theory.

Let us meet the imp.

For perhaps as much as millions of years, everyone mostly produced and consumed their own goods. Thousands of years ago, job specialisation, division of labour, started to grow. And that necessitated trade, to remix the goods separated by job specialisation. and that is when the imp came in. It is impossible to determine the exact workvalue of a trade item. We have some idea of the workvalue, but not a precise idea. And our valuation is influenced by our desire. The chances of the two things in a trade being of exactly equal value are minute, infinitesimal. The two things are going to be of different value. So one person will end up with a little less, and the other with a little more. They will both be pleased with the trade, losing something they don't want, and getting something they do want, but a little impish theft will have occurred. And this little theft will not even out over many trades. As with tossing a coin a trillion times, there will be many times that there will be strings of two gains in a row, three gains, and, more and more rarely, but still definitely, longer and longer strings of gains or losses. A few people will make large net gain, a few will make large net loss, many will make less extreme net gain or loss. A bell-shaped curve of net gain and loss will grow up, and will everwiden with every transaction. A few making large net gain, a large number making smaller net gain, a large number making smaller net loss, and a few making large net loss. A graph of this, with the quantity of people on the vertical y-axis, and the gain or loss on the horizontal x-axis, will have a bell-shaped curve. Trade causes overpay and underpay, ever-increasing. And this is just by accident, by statistical necessity. Toss a coin a trillion times, and of course you won't get heads tails heads tails all the way. There will be billions of cases of strings of two heads or tails in a row, fewer of three, and so on, till there will be rare but definite cases of strings of hundreds of heads or tails in a row. Every transaction has a drop of pay injustice in it, and this drop will grow an ocean. One of the two traders will go away with a little bit more wealth or workvalue, the other with a little bit less. Or quite a bit more or less. And money is the joker good, it is good for just about everything, so the loss of it is felt keenly, the loss of it is the loss of just about everything. As long as wealth items were perishable, saving was more or less impossible. But slowly nonperishable items of trade, like oil and money, came along, and with it saving. Those who made gains could buy the labour of those who made losses. The two groups could have been working equally hard, and yet one group will have to work some more to get as much wealth in goods as the other group.

And this is all happening without adding in conquest, coercion, bullying, and the natural range of gullibility or 'business acumen' in people. The merchant buys cheap and sells dear. Business is just selling for more than you paid for it. Giving as little, getting as much, as possible. What is undetectable in one transaction is clear in many. The real stories of trading up from a $2 item to a house in 50 trades. And the real stories of a shop in a prisoner-of-war camp for the trading of Red Cross items, and the shopkeeper building up a small fortune in cigarettes. Who can tell how many cigarettes a can of sardines is worth? The shopkeeper can buy at 15 cigarettes and sell at 20 cigarettes. The shopkeeper in justice is paid for his work, but who can tell how much the service of buying and selling a can of sardines is worth?

From such small undetectable beginnings, the monster has grown and grown. And once detectable, it has generated righteous illfeeling.

And money is power, power to rake more money. And so it has gone on, growing pay injustice, power inequality, social status inequality, war, crime, weaponry. So that now we have pay from $30 billion a year to $30 a year, from 100,000 times average pay per hour, to 10,000th of average pay per hour, and weapons capable of blocking out the sun permanently, lowering the temperature 25 degrees, three times colder than an ice-age, and irradiating the planet for a million years. Death camps, torture, state terrorism, fascism, dictatorship, undemocracy, leaders above the law, genocide, murder of millions, starvation of 1% of humanity every year, 2 million going blind each year for lack of just 4c of vitamin A a year, one million girls sold into an incredibly miserable, hard life of sexual slavery every year, billions living in slums, favelas, under brutal police, 99% underpaid, 90% paid between 100th and 10,000th of average, although we have enough wealth to pay every working person, including housewives and students, US$100,000 a year.

Just because of the imp, as little, but as ceaseless, as a drip on a tap.

Even most of the conquest and plunder has been because of the accumulation of power from the accumulation of wealth. The underpaid have been forced to hire themselves out as soldiers to the ones with the money and power to coerce them. And the conquest and plunder have aggravated the pay injustice, aggravating the violence.
The 99% underpaid are obviously worse off with overpay-underpay. Are the overpaid better off? To the underpaid, struggling along with undersatisfaction, overpay seems like oasis and mecca. But satisfaction waits on desire, and desire is limited. Overpay is just 3000 pairs of shoes for two feet, a 1000 rooms for one body. And overpay is the object of attack from both overpaid and underpaid. Overpay can afford more defense, but it has more attackers. And the attack goes on until the overpay is gone. Every empire has fallen, every plutocracy has fallen. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown. Beggars fear no thieves. Honey attracts bears. Bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them. People are too dangerous to annoy. None enjoy unless all enjoy, because everyone feels equal, everyone wants to enjoy. The overpaid are constantly falling all through history. Justice is a virtue, a cause of happiness, because injured, robbed people never stop attacking overpay. Injury energises. Pay injustice, theft of earnings, theft of just about everything, is the biggest injury. Unfortunately there are a few people who have too little imagination to grasp this, and sometimes they get hold of power, and then we all have to be dragged into their hopeless mission to get and hold super-overpay.

The effect of money on happiness falls to zero below $100,000 a year per family, because of the limits of the desires money can satisfy, but we are all producing $200,000 worth of goods per family, because of the overwealthy driving us to produce and consume through underpay, advertising and warmongering, so that they can draw profits from it. We could all now, with all the technology working for us, work half the day, and be no less happy, as far as satisfaction from goods goes. And we could be far more happy, from the equality, safety, and freedom from overpower. Instead of a society in equality, pay justice, enjoying one another, trusting one another, safe with one another, we are all divided along the extreme range from poorest to richest. Instead of being on a plateau together, a happy party, we are apart at different heights up a useless ladder of inequality that tortures both overpaid and underpaid.

Instead of an equality of motivation, equal work for equal pay, we have the super-super-extreme motivation of super-super-extreme underpay and overpay. For 99%, the ladder sinks lower faster than they can climb. And for the 1% overpaid, there is far more trouble, danger and loss of community, and no more satisfaction.
No one is aiming for pay justice. The underpaid are just trying to make more money, by working harder, or stealing, or whatever. The overpaid have been in power, and have made society as they like it, which is a way in which they are freest to rake money. There was a time when interest was looked down on. Now a billion will pull in $100 million, every year, for no work, doubling the billion every 7 years, multiplying it by a 1000 every 70 years. The overpaid have a free, giant rake. And the rake grows with every rake. Inequality grows, violence grows, unhappiness grows, tyranny grows, slavery grows, disorder grows, brutality grows, injury grows, retaliation grows, weaponry grows, illhealth grows, lying grows.

It is possible to look at life and conclude that everything is fairly all right. Most people do. They trust what their eyes tell them, which is so little of the reality. To get to real happiness we have to go from unreal happiness through real unhappiness to real happiness.

Here-now bullets, bombs, battles and burglaries are very rare, we don't have the power to grasp that we have a global bomb, a cut on our finger is of more concern to us than the abject slavery of 90% of humanity. But it is a no-brainer that we would prefer to live in a world where everyone was paid US$40 an hour, US$100,000 per worker, US$200,000 per family, rather than what we have now. Even without realising that we would have 100 times faster progress than now, with 90% of scientists, brains, inventors etc tied up in the consequences of inequality, in the legal system, military-industrial complex, universities, government, business, hospitals etc, and 90% of scientist minds too poor to become scientists. We are using inequality to put off enjoying. None enjoy unless all enjoy.

Assuming we form a will to enjoy, what do we do? We act to bring everyone to the same will. This is easier than it sounds. If each person teaches this will to just two people, so that they also teach it to two, every adult will have that will in just 31 times the time to teach two. Just by word of mouth. The doubling reaches 2000 in ten steps, 2,000,000 in 20 steps, 2,000,000,000 in 30 steps. There are 3 billion adults to reach, but there are 3 billion adults to reach them, with all their resources and energies.

When there is a universal will to enjoy, we only have to pass a law making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates. This will re-spread the wealth back over all the earners of it. The private heir has done nothing to earn that wealth, and everyone has done everything to earn that wealth, by making the goods that the wealth buys and represents, so such a law is just. Which, incidentally, shows that the overwealth is unjust. This is non-bureaucratic, since it only takes the settling of the estate, and the electronic dispersal of the money. Of course, such a 'radical' act is inconceivable in the present state of understanding. Home is very foreign when you've been away a long time. The super-overpay, the 98% of world income the 1% get now, the earnings of 1000s of years, will gently shower down on the earners over two generations, lifting the underpaid from starvation, illhealth, uneducation, slavery and anger, and lowering the overpaid out of overpower, danger and isolation from the human tribe. A person who has the property of 1000 has 1000 times what he can use, 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends, an extremely hunted life. Another even simpler way is to write equal shares of a 1% per month increase in the money supply into every account. This automatically lowers overpay and lifts underpay, without any invasion of individual's affairs. This inflation is not bad, because everyone is getting the money from it. We give equal shares both to 1% overpaid and 99% underpaid only because it saves the enormous cost in bureaucratic labour and money of distinguishing the two.

Is there a will to misery? Everyone works, and we produce plenty. And yet we have aided and abetted the ceaseless growth of pay injustice for 3000 years, with only rare and brief partial corrections towards justice. The inequality has always produced misery for all. Equality has always produced happiness. Nations have been founded on equality, liberty and justice, and we have ignored the foundational principles, and gone hell for leather to try to get unlimited fortunes out of an abundant but limited pool of wealth, provided by nature's bounty and human work. Every heap of overpay has fallen, and has been temporarily maintained only with excruciating labour and danger. We have never attempted to close the many wide-open legal ways by which money moves from earners to non-earners. We let the government rob us by increasing the money supply and lending it back to us to buy back at interest. Women could get equal pay in a week by going on a national women's strike. We let individuals pull millions and billions out of the wealth pool although we know they can't work much harder than us. We have equal share in all of nature's bounty and we give it all away to landowners. We all increase value of land by building cities around it and we give it away to landowners. We give millions to gifted people, although natural gifts are no work of theirs. We don't pay students for studying, although that is work, and all society benefits from it, and we then pay them unlimited amounts for having studied, although that isn't work. And then the people with billions foment wars and we go and fight and die for them. Stop giving tens of thousands from every household every year to the superrich, and thus make them happier, safer, more human.

Equality equals quality. Equality [pay justice, noninjury] is love, and love [noninjury] is the only practical way. Everyone will readily grant that it will utterly catastrophic for one person to have all the wealth in the world, so we ought to understand that what we have now, with 1% having 98% of world income, is almost as catastrophic. If we open our eyes, we can see catastrophe, for both overpaid and underpaid, everywhere. That monster, free to roam, has had till recently only small feet, able to kill only millions a year, but has, thanks to e=mc2, recently acquired the ability to kill us all. And anger and tyranny are super-super-extreme, and rising. We need only educate ourselves in reality, how bad it is, how good it can be, with just tiny effort to educate ourselves and two friends, to create the universal human will to make the change.