Why do you care how much others have? It doesn't matter how much someone else has. All that matters is what you have.
How much each of us gets is related to how much others get. If one takes all, there is nothing left for others. It isn't that we all scrabble at a cornucopia and what each gets depends just on how hard each scrabbles. The cornucopia is each other's work plus nature's bounty. If some get overpay, others have to get underpay. Is there overpay [pay injustice, legal theft] in our system? Is there pay for no work [overpay], meaning work for no pay [underpay] for others? You only have to look at 'money makes money'. You only have to look at pay/year from 100,000 times average to 10,000th of average. You only have to look at 'the rich get richer' etc. You only have to look at a billion at 10%: $100 million a year for no work, doubling every 7 years for no work, times 1000 every 70 years for no work. Pay justice is taking out as much as you put in, creating x wealth and taking out x wealth. You only have to look at paying people for nature's gifts, which is not work. Or at paying unlimited amounts for having studied, although having studied is not work. [Studying is work.] Or paying for owning land which others build around. Or giving all of nature's bounty to landowners instead of recognising birthright to equal shares for everyone. [Of nature's bounty, not of the value added by the work in extracting nature's bounty.] Or private inheritance, when the heir has done nothing: has put nothing in, and yet gets a legal license to take out wealth. Or pay for scarcity, for high demand/supply ratio, which is not work.
What does it matter to me if others get underpaid? It is theft, injury, injustice, the greatest, because money is the joker good, good for everything: the theft of it is theft of almost everything, and injury ricochets untiringly as atoms, in a vendetta back-and-forth, and unlike atoms, accelerates, as both sides use bigger and bigger weapons. Every heap of overpay has been raided to death. Every empire has plundered and then been plundered. Where is Spanish Inca gold now? 100 children trying to get 1000 sweets each from a tub of 1000 sweets, with grabbing sweets from each other too, means endless and accelerating fighting - what we have had for 3000 years. The rich robbing rich and poor, the poor robbing rich and poor. Extreme overpay and underpay are both extreme stimuli to war and crime. The tub of social wealth is filled by nature's bounty and human work. There is no precise way of determining how much each person has contributed, so we have had a lolly scramble: whatever I get is mine, whether I worked proportionately or not. And for those who get more, and, with interest [which comes from profits], money makes money - whoever rakes more out gets a bigger rake, the rake grows with every raking. Some have bought weapons with the money, and gone on to conquest, plunder or illegal crime. Or monopoly. Or coercion of workers. Or slavery. A 10% profit after owners have been fairpaid for their work means the prices, incomes, revenues, were 10% greater than work gone into the product, or workers were underpaid. The merchant buys cheap, sells dear. It is relatively easy to sell something worth $10 for $11 - who is going to notice, to know? Who knows exactly how much workers' work is worth? The profits come from the margins, the inexactitude. In a nonprofit organisation without volunteers, everyone gets fairpay, so what are profits? The CEO may get 400 times as much as the average worker. Obviously that is not because the CEO works 400 times harder, is 400 times as productive. Pay justice is equal pay for equal work, not owners grabbing whatever money is left lying around after paying bills [outgoes, costs]. Our system is: give as little, get as much, as possible, and whatever is left is yours. But this sucks money up from underpaid to overpaid, until the customer base, the buying, from which the profits are skimmed, is exhausted. As happened at the end of the 19th century, leading to Henry Ford's high-wages economics, so his workers could afford to buy 'his' cars, so he could go on skimming. Globally, 90% are getting between 100th and 10,000th of world average pay - the customer base is exhausted, after centuries of military and economic plunder because the first world had better weapons. The money has concentrated in few hands, like the wind blowing sand up against the beachwall, and demand is a tiny fraction of what it would be with fairpay; and productivity, with 90% of people uneducated, in poor health, illiterate, desperate, starving, is a tiny fraction of what it would be - and then there is the enormous drain of the violence, which is proportional to the overpay-underpay, which is at a factor of one billion - ratio of highest to lowest pay/yr one billion - a billion times as much, a billionth as much, for the same amount of work, of sacrifice of time and life in work. The super-overpaid are funding [at public expense] the dictators and leaders of every nation to subdue, fight, torture, terrorise the underpaid of most nations, and sucking at the teat of nations through debt on loans approved by governments without full representation. But one cannot go on making the workers less productive, and making them having less and less to spend, without impairing profits. Profits [overpay] are unsustainable. One can find other markets to some extent, but globally, not. Dickering with interest rates, money supply, etc cannot make a real difference. The wealth, from nature's bounty and work, is finite - maybe growing, maybe growing fast, but always finite. Even the universe may not be infinite. Money has to circulate, pay justice is essential to sustainability. Love, respect, full acknowledgement of the wealth created by workers, nontheft, noninjury, is the only practical, longterm sustainable way. It avoids exhausting the demand base, and it avoids the defense cost waste. Getting profit is fun, but it has to be balanced by restoration of pay justice, by taking the sand piled up against the seawall, and spreading it over the beach again - then we can go on playing profits forever, without the evergrowing violence, and without interrupting the cycle of money by depleting the customer base. Thanks to e=mc2, we can't go on playing the profits, war and slavery game: we have reached the limits of violence, the death of everyone is on the horizon. 60 times PDC [planet death capability] and a violence factor of one billion to press the buttons. We have to find the maturity, the realism, the practicality, the factfacing, soon, or perish. As JFK said: end war or war will end us. And he didn't know about nuclear winter then. I would put the odds of humanity finding the maturity in time at, say, 1000 to one against, but we cannot afford to guess how much maturity is out there, we have to go on working to activate or develop that maturity, as long as life is with us. The wood seems to be green, but we have to keep trying, it may catch any time. It helps our argument that the effect of money on happiness declines to zero below $100,000 per family [while fairpay is $200,000 per two-adult family], with the decreasing marginal utility, since bodily desires are finite - overpay is just 3000 shoes for two feet, 100 rooms for one body. And that defense costs, labour and worry are proportional to the overpay. And that all fortunes are finite, and the attacks on them, with the costs and toil of defense, cease only with the end of the fortune, in finite time, as all history unanimously shows, so all overpay heaps fall. And overpay is loss of fraternity with the human tribe, which is one of the biggest factors in happiness. Since the net benefit of overpay is very negative [no extra pleasure, great extra pain] and since underpay is clearly of negative benefit, and since overpay and underpay can be destroyed by putting one into the other, the way is clear. Ambition can be bound to justice: do more work, create more wealth, and get proportionately more. Put in 20% more, get out 20% more, no theft, no injury, no violence, no shrinking of consumer base. Economics is like a community which comes together for its meals, everyone bringing some food. The unrealistic economics we have had is everyone grabbing as much as they can, treating the feast as free to anyone, whereas it belongs to all in proportion to their labour, and the nature's bounty part of it, in equal shares. Let all the legal thefts be uninterfered with, for it would be impossibly expensive to prevent them effectively, but admit they exist, and counter them with equal distribution to everyone of large deceased estates, spreading the sand back on the beach, limiting overpay-underpay, violence, and the shrinking to nothing of the consumer base. [Clearly the private heir has done nothing to create that wealth, and clearly everyone has done everything to create the goods the money buys and represents, so it is easy to show that such a move is just.] Or [or and] give everyone equal shares of a 1% per month increase in money supply, thus reducing overpay by the inflation effect [paying more for things] and lifting underpay by the equal share. Inflation is not bad when everyone gets the money thus created. By one or both of these simple, nonbureaucratic methods, overpay-underpay is prevented from increasing endlessly to our extreme misery, danger and extinction. Most war and crime is destroyed. [So-called religious and racial wars are overpay-underpay wars along religious or racial lines, as is seen from the absence of violence in all places in the world where there are religious or racial differences without overpay-underpay differences, eg, Canada, Australia, and from the presence of overpay-underpay, overpower-underpower in all places where there are so-called religious or racial wars, eg, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Rwanda, America, Middle East [Sunni/Shiite].]
Proof that we can be literally, conservatively, 100 times happier: If a govt committed the extreme pay injustice of taking 90% of aftertax income off 90% of citizens and giving all that [81% of national wealth] to 1%, there would be, first, the loss of 81% of happiness in the financial loss to the 90% of people, and second, the further unhappiness of the extreme violence [which will get to everyone, from richest to poorest, as in history], and third, the destruction of property, and fourth, the loss of productivity from so many tied up in the violence on both sides and in the repairs and hospitalisations. Which could realistically raise the loss of happiness to 99%. And everyone will readily agree with this. Therefore happiness will, in this example, increase 100 times with the removal of that pay injustice. We have in the world far worse pay injustice than this: in the real world, the 1% get, not 82 times as much, as in the example, but up to 100,000 times as much, the 9% in the middle get, not fairpay, but between fairpay and 100th of fairpay, and the 90% get, not 10th but between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay. Therefore everyone with logic with readily agree we will be literally, conservatively, 100 times happier with the removal of the super-super-extreme pay injustice we have accumulated over 3000 years. The overpaid lose nothing but the danger, violence [ever-escalating] and extreme and doomed labour of selfprotection, and the isolation from the human tribe [belonging, community, being one of the greatest determinants of happiness], the underpaid lose nothing but the underpay [undersatisfaction] and the violence [ever-escalating]. The money going to the bottom constantly rises through the ranks via profit, refreshing all ranks, and is constantly returned to the bottom from the top, thus achieving what the founding fathers aimed at, the prevention of wealthpower concentration. Money, like manure, is best when spread, Francis Bacon, Elizabethan English philosopher. Equality breeds no strife, the Athenians cried.
Since the majority of underpaid is so high, 99%, the majority will include many of the 'muscle' of the super-overpaid, so the super-overpaid who wish madly to keep on getting uselessly richer and more endangered will be robbed of muscle. And some of the 1% overpaid will prefer nonextinction and 100-fold happiness to isolation, danger and extinction. So education can achieve the aim. [Force affects only appearances.] And the 3 billion adults can be reached by word of mouth alone in just 31 times the time to reach two people [by ever-doubling]. There are 3 billion to reach, but there are 3 billion to reach them, with all their energies, talents, media and resources. And, since happiness is everyone's everything, the news [100-fold happiness! nonextinction!], will spread like wildfire, unless the mental wood be too green.
It is our only hope of survival. Whether we become aware of it or not, we stand on the brink of a golden age and of extinction. If we fail, at least all the perps will be punished and all the victims will be freed from their suffering.
Showing posts with label happiness survival justice love economics politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness survival justice love economics politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Travel diary. Day 138 Planet 'Earth'
Travel diary - Planet 'Earth'
Well, diary, this has been the most interesting time of this trip. In fact, of any trip I have made. Maybe it would be the most amazing time of anybody's trips. Just unbelievable. How can I begin to describe it? Where to start? There is just no word for it. The people of this planet have no grip on reality. Can you imagine it? I doubt it. You really have to see it to believe it. No grip on reality! Who would have thought it was possible? I mean, reality is staring you in the face, right? Yet, somehow, these people don't see it. Oh, they see physical reality fine, they can see and hear physical things. But they add it up all wrong. They are making themselves very unhappy and they are unaware of it! Their situation could hardly be worse, and yet they do not see it. They bleep out unpleasant things, so they cannot solve their problems. They can see small problems, but they can't see the biggest problem, and so they can't see the solution. It's the weirdest thing in the universe. It is just so amazing, so inexplicable. Naturally, wealth is limited. The pool of social wealth is limited to nature's bounty and people's work. They have enough for everyone, they have plenty for everyone. It is a prolific planet. It is not like some I have seen, where everyone has to work like blazes just to survive. And they have recently passed into the stage of machines and computers, so their production is terrific. And yet they have totally screwed this up, and made themselves utterly miserable, multiplied natural trouble thousandfold, and they are not even concerned, they are not even aware of the situation. They carry on as if everything was on track and as good as it can be! I don't think I can begin to enable anyone to understand how it is on this planet. It is just so weird, so fantastically odd. I have never seen or heard of anything even slightly like it in all my life. As I was saying, naturally wealth is limited. Everyone knows that. I mean, a planet is limited in size, there are a limited number of people. Not unlimited. But these people allow unlimited fortunes! How can I explain this? They are all trying to get unlimited fortunes out of a limited wealth base! They don't think: Well, naturally my work is limited, so I should have a limited fortune in proper proportion to my limited work. No, they are all just going for unlimited fortunes! They have no idea of working out the fairshare for everyone. It is just everyone grabbing as much as they can. So naturally, some have enormous wealth and some have none! And everyone is fighting everyone all the time to get more. You can't imagine it. You can't imagine how silly it is. They are fighting each other to get more when there is plenty for all. And getting madder and madder at each other because most of them have little. They have been busy inventing bigger and bigger weapons for thousands of years! If they get hold of some wealth, they hold onto it, however much it is! I hesitate to write down how extreme this is. You just won't be able to believe it. You are going to think I have been pulling your leg all along. You are going to think that I was making it up and now I am going to go so ridiculous in my claims to show that I was pulling your leg. But I swear to you this is truth. As weird as it is, it is the truth. I am not pulling your leg. They have pay per unit of work up to ONE MILLION TIMES the planet average. And they look up to the person getting this super-ridiculous amount. I tell the truth, though I can hardly believe it as I write it. It makes my head swirl. You see, they believe absolutely in unlimited fortunes. They totally don't get it that work is limited, that the social pool of wealth is limited, so they totally think that it is okay for someone to have unlimited fortune, for someone to get a million times the planet average pay per hour's work. They think it is good! They think it means that everyone can be that overpaid. They don't call it overpay, they don't know it is overpay, they have no idea of overpay. How can I begin to explain something so strange? They think it is freedom to be free to have unlimited fortunes. They think of it as loss of a freedom if they have to have limited fortunes, although they know that the contribution by any individual is necessarily limited. They surely must know that if anyone takes out more than they put in, everyone else gets to take out less than they put in. But I don't really know what they know and what they don't know. They cannot articulate on this subject. They are intelligent and articulate about many things, but somehow there is a block on their thinking and talking about this one thing, the thing that is at the root of all their problems. There is just this inexplicable giant blindness and dumbness about the biggest thing happening in their world. You ask them about it and you get all sorts of incomprehensible answers. The problems this causes! Naturally, with someone taking out a million times more than they put in, most people here get out very little. 99% of them are getting out less than average. 90% of them are getting out less than a tenth of what they put in. 50% of them are getting out less than 100th of what they put in. Everyone is trying to get more, even the one who is getting out a million times what he has put in. You can't imagine it. Some of the ones who get out a lot give some of it away, but obviously not much of the overpay overall. Naturally, the people getting out less are annoyed, and fighting to get more. Everyone just keeps fighting everyone for more, and the fighting has been getting bigger and bigger for thousands of years. I did a little experiment to try and find out what these people are thinking. I got together 100 people and set them a game of trying to get as many sweets as they could out of a tub of 1000 sweets, and they could grab from each other too. After a few hours of this game, I stopped them and asked them how they liked the game. They liked it fine! They are playing this game on their planet, with every bit of wealth, including their necessities, and apparently they like it fine. Again, I hesitate to tell you because you will think I am going beyond the truth, but this game they are playing, with every bit of wealth, food and all, kills 2% of them every year, from the fighting and the starvation of those with least, to say nothing of the injuries. And they are not stopping the game! There is a little talk about stopping the game, but they are not stopping the game. There is still a great attachment to overfortunes. Even the ones who have the underfortunes are not keen to stop the game, are not keen to have limitation of fortunes for what is necessarily limited contribution. Even the ones with the underfortunes think they will be losers if they limit fortunes to the most a person can earn in a lifetime. I pointed out to them how in the game with the sweets, the people with most sweets got most grabbed from, and soonest lost their sweets. I pointed out how much effort was involved for everyone to be grabbing and trying to hold on to their sweets perpetually, when none of the fighting was necessary, when they could all have ten sweets [plenty for everyone] and save all the fighting, and play instead. This didn't seem to make any impression. Do they like fighting? It is hard to tell. They dance in the streets when one of their wars is over, but they love watching movies of fighting. Maybe they only like to have a break from fighting now and then, but they mostly do like fighting. They don't like losing or being killed, but apparently they like the game more than they dislike the losing and being slaves and being killed. They think that overpay is good, although of course the overpaid are most being grabbed from, and have the busiest time trying to hold on to the overpay, and are in the greatest danger, and soonest get killed. Their weaponry has recently advanced from being able to kill 100,000 in one day to being able to kill them all, 60 times over, 10 different ways, turning the planet into a snowball, and they are STILL unconcerned, they are STILL not thinking the game is going too far. They are acting as though they are immortal, and yet they believe that they are mortal. I truly am not kidding you. It is the weirdest thing in the universe. If they get a sudden big increase in their fortune, they are very happy, and never stop to think whether this is getting out more than they put in, and therefore causing others to be slaves, and therefore angry. It never occurs to them that money is a license to take out of the social pool of wealth and is therefore robbery if it is more than they have put in by their work. In short, they are all thieves, with no regard for justice, and seemingly they never stop and think whether all this unnecessary endless evergrowing fighting is worth it. I am not sure they have made the connection between the unlimited fortunes, necessarily unlimited theft, and the violence! Although they all get angry if someone steals from them! I can't figure it out. These people don't make any sense. Occasionally they call for liberty, equality and fraternity [friendliness], a few grumble about the super-extreme inequality and the tremendous human cost of it, but mostly they play the suicidal game. Some thefts they have made illegal, but many thefts are legal! For instance, a person with a billion has a legal right to take out 50 million or more every year for no work at all! When a person dies, someone has a legal right to take over ownership of their fortune for no work at all! When someone invents something new, they have a legal right to charge any price they can get, regardless of how much work has gone into the invention! The price might be $140 although the cost of making the thing might be only $100! In other words, the customer does $140 worth of work and gets only $100 worth of work. The customer earns $40 and hands it over in return for nothing! No one is checking how much work went into the thing sold. No one is making sure there is no overpricing! Everyone living has of course a birthright equal share in the free goods of nature, the land and the valuable things of nature. But they don't get the equal share! And no one notices this theft! Everyone's work produces the infrastructure gains, and yet only the landowners and stockholders get the wealth of this work! A person can buy a bit of land, do nothing while others build a city around it, making the land valuable, and the landowner gets the wealth of it! And no one is interested in countering this theft! There were a few people who were interested in countering this theft for a while, but nothing was done, interest in the idea faded away! I tell you you would die laughing. People will read this letter out at parties to have a good laugh. How can people be so uninterested in having their fairshare of wealth? How can people be so uninterested in having all the wealth they create? Legal thefts! It is like a bear catches a fish, another bear grabs it, and the first bear isn't bothered! These people have an enormous tolerance for theft. Occasionally they get so poor that they object, and get mad, but for long periods they just get robbed and robbed and just keep on working! They pay people for having natural gifts! Mother nature gives them a gift and they pay the person for having that gift! It doesn't bother them that the person has done nothing to have that gift. It doesn't bother them that 99% of people have to fund this mad payment to the gifted. Imagine paying people for having received a birthday present! They seem to like the idea of paying people for gifts because they imagine themselves being paid for having gifts, and they don't see who pays for this paying for gifts - themselves! And so it is with all the other legal thefts, they seem to be so simpleminded that they imagine themselves benefitting from the payment, and don't imagine who has to pay for this paying for gifts, which is 99% of them. You can explain it to them, but it makes no impression, it doesn't sink in, they just can't get it. Instead of working out how many tertiary-educated people they need and want, and paying them for studying, they have the parents or the students themselves pay for the study and then pay them a market-variable premium ever after for having studied. Everyone paying for this premium of course. Of course, the extreme misdistribution means that only about 10% of the bright people can go to university, so they are holding back their technological progress to a tenth of what it could be. This doesn't bother them, I don't think they have even noticed, although they love technological advance! Most of their technology money and talent goes on the wars the pay injustice produces! If they didn't have the pay injustice, I suppose technology would go ahead 100 times faster. They would also save all the money they spend rebuilding after wars, to say nothing of the extra labour rebuilding. I don't need to go into the sickening brutality that such a super-extreme range of power causes. Let's just say that there is nothing imaginable or unimaginable that they haven't done to one another. And done it plenty. On a planet so plentiful that a family working average hard produces US$275,000 worth of goods each year. Of a beautiful sunshine life they have made a starless endless night. Self-extinction may be only 30 years away. Turning the planet into a forever-silent snowball will punish all the perpetrators and release all the victims. Alas, or good, I'm not sure which. They have technological smarts but when it comes to pursuit of happiness, they have no brains at all. Perhaps a plug in their brains fell out. All the other creatures on this planet have ethical, pursuit-of-happiness smarts and no technology. Weird. I pointed out to them that all this super-overpay would shower down on them over fifty years and put an end to poverty and war if they just made everyone the heirs of large deceased estates. But NO ONE WAS INTERESTED. I truly am not pulling your leg. Go see for yourself. Weirdest thing in the universe.
Well, diary, this has been the most interesting time of this trip. In fact, of any trip I have made. Maybe it would be the most amazing time of anybody's trips. Just unbelievable. How can I begin to describe it? Where to start? There is just no word for it. The people of this planet have no grip on reality. Can you imagine it? I doubt it. You really have to see it to believe it. No grip on reality! Who would have thought it was possible? I mean, reality is staring you in the face, right? Yet, somehow, these people don't see it. Oh, they see physical reality fine, they can see and hear physical things. But they add it up all wrong. They are making themselves very unhappy and they are unaware of it! Their situation could hardly be worse, and yet they do not see it. They bleep out unpleasant things, so they cannot solve their problems. They can see small problems, but they can't see the biggest problem, and so they can't see the solution. It's the weirdest thing in the universe. It is just so amazing, so inexplicable. Naturally, wealth is limited. The pool of social wealth is limited to nature's bounty and people's work. They have enough for everyone, they have plenty for everyone. It is a prolific planet. It is not like some I have seen, where everyone has to work like blazes just to survive. And they have recently passed into the stage of machines and computers, so their production is terrific. And yet they have totally screwed this up, and made themselves utterly miserable, multiplied natural trouble thousandfold, and they are not even concerned, they are not even aware of the situation. They carry on as if everything was on track and as good as it can be! I don't think I can begin to enable anyone to understand how it is on this planet. It is just so weird, so fantastically odd. I have never seen or heard of anything even slightly like it in all my life. As I was saying, naturally wealth is limited. Everyone knows that. I mean, a planet is limited in size, there are a limited number of people. Not unlimited. But these people allow unlimited fortunes! How can I explain this? They are all trying to get unlimited fortunes out of a limited wealth base! They don't think: Well, naturally my work is limited, so I should have a limited fortune in proper proportion to my limited work. No, they are all just going for unlimited fortunes! They have no idea of working out the fairshare for everyone. It is just everyone grabbing as much as they can. So naturally, some have enormous wealth and some have none! And everyone is fighting everyone all the time to get more. You can't imagine it. You can't imagine how silly it is. They are fighting each other to get more when there is plenty for all. And getting madder and madder at each other because most of them have little. They have been busy inventing bigger and bigger weapons for thousands of years! If they get hold of some wealth, they hold onto it, however much it is! I hesitate to write down how extreme this is. You just won't be able to believe it. You are going to think I have been pulling your leg all along. You are going to think that I was making it up and now I am going to go so ridiculous in my claims to show that I was pulling your leg. But I swear to you this is truth. As weird as it is, it is the truth. I am not pulling your leg. They have pay per unit of work up to ONE MILLION TIMES the planet average. And they look up to the person getting this super-ridiculous amount. I tell the truth, though I can hardly believe it as I write it. It makes my head swirl. You see, they believe absolutely in unlimited fortunes. They totally don't get it that work is limited, that the social pool of wealth is limited, so they totally think that it is okay for someone to have unlimited fortune, for someone to get a million times the planet average pay per hour's work. They think it is good! They think it means that everyone can be that overpaid. They don't call it overpay, they don't know it is overpay, they have no idea of overpay. How can I begin to explain something so strange? They think it is freedom to be free to have unlimited fortunes. They think of it as loss of a freedom if they have to have limited fortunes, although they know that the contribution by any individual is necessarily limited. They surely must know that if anyone takes out more than they put in, everyone else gets to take out less than they put in. But I don't really know what they know and what they don't know. They cannot articulate on this subject. They are intelligent and articulate about many things, but somehow there is a block on their thinking and talking about this one thing, the thing that is at the root of all their problems. There is just this inexplicable giant blindness and dumbness about the biggest thing happening in their world. You ask them about it and you get all sorts of incomprehensible answers. The problems this causes! Naturally, with someone taking out a million times more than they put in, most people here get out very little. 99% of them are getting out less than average. 90% of them are getting out less than a tenth of what they put in. 50% of them are getting out less than 100th of what they put in. Everyone is trying to get more, even the one who is getting out a million times what he has put in. You can't imagine it. Some of the ones who get out a lot give some of it away, but obviously not much of the overpay overall. Naturally, the people getting out less are annoyed, and fighting to get more. Everyone just keeps fighting everyone for more, and the fighting has been getting bigger and bigger for thousands of years. I did a little experiment to try and find out what these people are thinking. I got together 100 people and set them a game of trying to get as many sweets as they could out of a tub of 1000 sweets, and they could grab from each other too. After a few hours of this game, I stopped them and asked them how they liked the game. They liked it fine! They are playing this game on their planet, with every bit of wealth, including their necessities, and apparently they like it fine. Again, I hesitate to tell you because you will think I am going beyond the truth, but this game they are playing, with every bit of wealth, food and all, kills 2% of them every year, from the fighting and the starvation of those with least, to say nothing of the injuries. And they are not stopping the game! There is a little talk about stopping the game, but they are not stopping the game. There is still a great attachment to overfortunes. Even the ones who have the underfortunes are not keen to stop the game, are not keen to have limitation of fortunes for what is necessarily limited contribution. Even the ones with the underfortunes think they will be losers if they limit fortunes to the most a person can earn in a lifetime. I pointed out to them how in the game with the sweets, the people with most sweets got most grabbed from, and soonest lost their sweets. I pointed out how much effort was involved for everyone to be grabbing and trying to hold on to their sweets perpetually, when none of the fighting was necessary, when they could all have ten sweets [plenty for everyone] and save all the fighting, and play instead. This didn't seem to make any impression. Do they like fighting? It is hard to tell. They dance in the streets when one of their wars is over, but they love watching movies of fighting. Maybe they only like to have a break from fighting now and then, but they mostly do like fighting. They don't like losing or being killed, but apparently they like the game more than they dislike the losing and being slaves and being killed. They think that overpay is good, although of course the overpaid are most being grabbed from, and have the busiest time trying to hold on to the overpay, and are in the greatest danger, and soonest get killed. Their weaponry has recently advanced from being able to kill 100,000 in one day to being able to kill them all, 60 times over, 10 different ways, turning the planet into a snowball, and they are STILL unconcerned, they are STILL not thinking the game is going too far. They are acting as though they are immortal, and yet they believe that they are mortal. I truly am not kidding you. It is the weirdest thing in the universe. If they get a sudden big increase in their fortune, they are very happy, and never stop to think whether this is getting out more than they put in, and therefore causing others to be slaves, and therefore angry. It never occurs to them that money is a license to take out of the social pool of wealth and is therefore robbery if it is more than they have put in by their work. In short, they are all thieves, with no regard for justice, and seemingly they never stop and think whether all this unnecessary endless evergrowing fighting is worth it. I am not sure they have made the connection between the unlimited fortunes, necessarily unlimited theft, and the violence! Although they all get angry if someone steals from them! I can't figure it out. These people don't make any sense. Occasionally they call for liberty, equality and fraternity [friendliness], a few grumble about the super-extreme inequality and the tremendous human cost of it, but mostly they play the suicidal game. Some thefts they have made illegal, but many thefts are legal! For instance, a person with a billion has a legal right to take out 50 million or more every year for no work at all! When a person dies, someone has a legal right to take over ownership of their fortune for no work at all! When someone invents something new, they have a legal right to charge any price they can get, regardless of how much work has gone into the invention! The price might be $140 although the cost of making the thing might be only $100! In other words, the customer does $140 worth of work and gets only $100 worth of work. The customer earns $40 and hands it over in return for nothing! No one is checking how much work went into the thing sold. No one is making sure there is no overpricing! Everyone living has of course a birthright equal share in the free goods of nature, the land and the valuable things of nature. But they don't get the equal share! And no one notices this theft! Everyone's work produces the infrastructure gains, and yet only the landowners and stockholders get the wealth of this work! A person can buy a bit of land, do nothing while others build a city around it, making the land valuable, and the landowner gets the wealth of it! And no one is interested in countering this theft! There were a few people who were interested in countering this theft for a while, but nothing was done, interest in the idea faded away! I tell you you would die laughing. People will read this letter out at parties to have a good laugh. How can people be so uninterested in having their fairshare of wealth? How can people be so uninterested in having all the wealth they create? Legal thefts! It is like a bear catches a fish, another bear grabs it, and the first bear isn't bothered! These people have an enormous tolerance for theft. Occasionally they get so poor that they object, and get mad, but for long periods they just get robbed and robbed and just keep on working! They pay people for having natural gifts! Mother nature gives them a gift and they pay the person for having that gift! It doesn't bother them that the person has done nothing to have that gift. It doesn't bother them that 99% of people have to fund this mad payment to the gifted. Imagine paying people for having received a birthday present! They seem to like the idea of paying people for gifts because they imagine themselves being paid for having gifts, and they don't see who pays for this paying for gifts - themselves! And so it is with all the other legal thefts, they seem to be so simpleminded that they imagine themselves benefitting from the payment, and don't imagine who has to pay for this paying for gifts, which is 99% of them. You can explain it to them, but it makes no impression, it doesn't sink in, they just can't get it. Instead of working out how many tertiary-educated people they need and want, and paying them for studying, they have the parents or the students themselves pay for the study and then pay them a market-variable premium ever after for having studied. Everyone paying for this premium of course. Of course, the extreme misdistribution means that only about 10% of the bright people can go to university, so they are holding back their technological progress to a tenth of what it could be. This doesn't bother them, I don't think they have even noticed, although they love technological advance! Most of their technology money and talent goes on the wars the pay injustice produces! If they didn't have the pay injustice, I suppose technology would go ahead 100 times faster. They would also save all the money they spend rebuilding after wars, to say nothing of the extra labour rebuilding. I don't need to go into the sickening brutality that such a super-extreme range of power causes. Let's just say that there is nothing imaginable or unimaginable that they haven't done to one another. And done it plenty. On a planet so plentiful that a family working average hard produces US$275,000 worth of goods each year. Of a beautiful sunshine life they have made a starless endless night. Self-extinction may be only 30 years away. Turning the planet into a forever-silent snowball will punish all the perpetrators and release all the victims. Alas, or good, I'm not sure which. They have technological smarts but when it comes to pursuit of happiness, they have no brains at all. Perhaps a plug in their brains fell out. All the other creatures on this planet have ethical, pursuit-of-happiness smarts and no technology. Weird. I pointed out to them that all this super-overpay would shower down on them over fifty years and put an end to poverty and war if they just made everyone the heirs of large deceased estates. But NO ONE WAS INTERESTED. I truly am not pulling your leg. Go see for yourself. Weirdest thing in the universe.
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