Why

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.

Confused ideas, confused society

'An economy in which everyone shares the good times'. 'Liberty and justice for all'. D H Lawrence calls the people 'the eternal dupe'. Try this on for size: you don't have a right to be underpaid, you have a duty, to yourself, your family, children, parents, friends, community, state, nation and planet to not be underpaid. If a group of people give up some of their earnings, the people they give it to: use it to buy whips and chains and ropes of laws for you, and if you complain, use it to buy policemen to keep you down, and if you won't stay down, use your money to legalise torture. Allowing yourself to be underpaid is the source of all evils in states. The state built on injustice cannot stand: hence permitting yourself to be underpaid is unpatriotic, is traitorous, is acting as an enemy of the state. The purpose of government is justice, James Madison. Hence permitting yourself to be underpaid is failing in your duty as a citizen, your duty to yourself, your family, friends, children, community, nation, planet. The most important justice is pay justice, because money buys just about everything, and money is also power. Nowhere is there a specification of where exactly pay justice lies, in money terms. There is no thought of where overpay-underpay starts. The overpaid have been feeding lies to you forever. So that many lies have become custom, have become accepted ideas. The pile of lies is so deep, and your ability to detect them is so weak, that you maybe remove one or two layers, and never get down to the bedrock of justice, of survival of the state, of liberty and justice for all. 'In which everyone shares the good times': that is, in which the handouts are a little more 'generous', in which the 'generous' handouts are still far from justice. Without a specific, detailed, close determination of actual pay justice, you have no idea where justice lies, and you are unable to prevent underpay, which allows overpay, which is overpower, which is tyranny, which is full of evils, and which goes on growing in the production of evils, which has grown to present 60 times PDC [planet death capability], the extermination of everyone, underpaid and overpaid. You have a most urgent, vital, fundamental duty to dig through the lies to bedrock, pay justice, the root of all good. The overpaid, often without effort, constantly pour forth false arguments in support of their super-overpay. They have done so for centuries, and so successfully, that the lies have become the custom, the never-questioned 'certainties' of societies, though their illogic is simple. Little work has been done to clear the track of these nonsenses, and 'the eternal dupe' has done less work to mentally absorb these exposures of the nonsenses. I have collected and discovered I think all the untruths that buttress overpay, at happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com. I give them to you, for my sake, your sake, everyone's sake. If you are to survive, to have any society, to have the best society, you must work very hard to judge these untruths by standards of good sense alone, not by custom. Pay justice is, according to my calculations, US$40 an hour for every working person *in the world*, **including housewives and students**. That is what every working person actually earns. That is how much wealth every working person creates. Judge my reasoning. Examine closely. No justice equals no nation, globe, happiness, peace, family, anything. We have to walk a way many times to make a [new] [mental] path, Thoreau. Don't distract yourself with whether I am a boaster. Examine, test, prove for your life. Be slow to indulge your modern attention span, to scoff, dismiss, brush off. You need truth. There may be some here. Happiness lives on Reality Street.

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.

My Nailed-to-the-Nuremburg-church-door piece

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.

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!

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.

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].