by sceneshifter » Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:32 am
<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:maroon;font-size:small;">Once upon a time, long long ago, everyone did their own work, and there was little exchange. Slowly specialisation in jobs grew and exchange became more and more a necessity. Which led to the invention or development of money, a convenient artificial exchange item: divisible, so that if you raised goats and wanted a pot, you could sell a goat, buy a pot, keep the difference in money till you wanted something else; portable, and nonperishable. But money brought with it a nasty side-effect that we have not yet mastered, a side-effect that has doomed us to 1000s of years of war and weaponry, causing untold unnecessary suffering and trouble, which is escalative, and has thus brought us to the eve of extinction.<br><br>In any transaction, the two items exchanged are not equal in value. We try to make them as equal as possible, but there is always a difference in value. In every transaction there is gain and loss, equal to the difference in value of the things exchanged. Overall, this inequality, this passing of value from one person to another, equalises. Over many transactions, people lose and gain. But there is a range of gain and loss. Many will lose a little more overall than they gain. Many will gain a little more than they lose, overall. A few will gain greatly, just by statistical spread. A few will lose greatly overall. In fact, there will be a bell-shaped curve of gain and loss. Money is power. So the gainers will also gain a leverage to gain more. The buyer is always trying to get value for money, to get as much as he gives, or more. The seller is also trying to give as little and gain as much as possible. This tends to increase the difference between cost [in work] and price. A merchant is one who buys cheap and sells dear, as much as he can. This is theft, injustice. One gains, one loses. The sellers make the product look as good as it can look, and look better than it is, to raise the gettable price. And money makes money. <br><br>All this causes the wellknown phenomenon of fewer and fewer getting richer and richer and working less and less, and the rest getting manier and manier and poorer and poorer and having to work harder and harder. A creeping theft is at the bottom of society. The poorer people find themselves, the more they just want to be richer, and the less they want just a fairpay, the less they want justice and nontheft. They want revenge, the justice of being rich as others have been. The overpaid want more and more. This is partly because their defense and security costs are higher, the richer they are. And the defense and security costs are unending. The attacks from underpay are unending, and sooner or later exhaust the overpay of the overpaid. Every empire so far has fallen. Every plunderer gets plundered. The inequality, the injustice, the theft, generates war of everyone agaisnt everyone. The robbed attack the robbed because the robbed are weaker and easier to steal from. The underpaid rob the overpaid [countries and individuals] when they can, because the overpaid are more attractive to thieves. [The Siclilian Mafia robbing America.] The overpaid rob the underpaid because money is power, and so they can, and because they want to, to protect themselves against everybody. The overpaid attack the overpaid when they can: the richer, the more attractive to thieves, to both rich and poor thieves. So history has been a perpetual and ever-escalating robbery of all against all [apart from the honesty of some]. <br><br>Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we have started something we dont know how to stop.<br><br>The total costs of a product are whatever they are. There is nothing in our system to make price equal to total costs. That is, there is nothing in our system to make incomes of companies and individuals equal outgoes in wages and salaries and other costs; which are ultimately labour costs, costs for people's contributions to the existence, quality and presentation of products sold. In a nonprofit organisation with no volunteer workers, everyone gets paid for their work. So what are profits? They are theft, they are gain in one place and loss in another. The customer comes out better off, if the prices are set below the full costs. The company comes out better off if the prices are overall above the total costs. There is gain and loss in transaction. Because of transaction, which we introduced to deal with necessity of exchange that arose from taking advantage of the efficiency of specialisation in jobs, we have subjected ourselves to a creeping theft and the anger and violence and ever escalating vendetta-type to and fro of stealing back and stealing again. Kings steal in taxes from the people to fight the wars generated by the king's love of plunder or another king's love of expansion and plunder. Everyone stealing from everyone. Like children grabbing sweets from each other, getting madder and madder and madder at each other, more and more desperate and violent and dangerous, because we cannot see the cause of inequity, of theft and countertheft. <br><br>Even if inequity levelled off at, say, the most overpaid being paid 10 times as much as the most underpaid per unit of work, the vendetta would escalate endlessly, as both sides tried to prevail, and sought beter an better weapons to prevail. But the evil side-effect of transaction goes on in every transaction every day. A drop of inequity is born in every transaction, and now it is a mighty ocean, tossing and toiling and giving birth to more and more powerful weapons. If all the nuclear weapons disappeared tomorrow, war and weaponry would continue to grow endlessly, as the inequity grows. Without ever so far seeing the real cause, and fixing the problem, we have come to weapons capable of throwing 60 planet earths into three times colder than an iceage. The sword of extinction hangs over us, and we are accelerating towards it, unaware of the cause of all our problems, blaming each other, blaming others. <br><br>The hydra-headed problems born of this fundamental problem are so many and so great, that all people are fighting their whole lives without success against only one of millions of problems born of this fundamental problem. Most people are spending all the energy they have on keeping their heads above water, trying to avoid drowning in the sea of bills born from the underpay of the many. 99% are underpaid now, the 1% overpaid are now paid up to a million times the average pay for a unit of work. Over 90% of world income goes in overpay. That is, is paid to people not for their work but for others' work. That is, is stolen. The range of power is equal to the range of inequity. Money is power. Power to plunder, power to conquer, power to dominate, power to command obedience, power to terrorise, to enslave. Power to become overpaid, so that the overpaid can become the object of attacks of millions of sorts of attack from all the rest, overpaid and underpaid. From hostile takeovers to robbing banks, from revolutions to stealing from employers.<br><br>The strength and persistence and intensity and focus of attacks is proportional not just to the overpay [of individuals and nations], but to the underpay that the overpay causes. Where an overpaid person would not be attacked if all others were fairpaid, they are attacked because of the depth and desperation of underpay.<br><br>This is not human nature, because it didn't exist when there was human nature but no vicious side-effect of exchange. There was violence, but at the level of animals, the level of fists and stones. It was not driven by people being paid a 1000th of what their work would generate in comforts in a state of pre-exchange. It was not being driven by people with a million times as much power as the average power. Money is a joker good, good for millions of things, including all necessities and millions of pleasures. So money is necessity and pleasures. So people are going to care about it very very much. In fact, money is so loved that it causes people to conclude from the fact that self-earned money is good, the false conclusion that other-earned money is also good. The true understanding that money is a joker good, good for millions of things, has led people to be blind for 1000s of years to the fact that overpay, theft, injustice in money, comes with an angry person attached. 90% of world earnings are stolen, and 99% of people are underpaid, that is, robbed. Robbed of not just food and clothing and health and education and medicine, but freedom and dignity and equality and fraternity. They have not power to stop the usurer charging 60%, and they have not power to stop the stronger [richer] from stealing from them at will. In Bangladesh, landlessness has gone from 15% to 75% since 1948.<br><br>We can no longer afford the luxury of so much anger and desperation, of so much inequity. We have said in our hearts: all's fair in trade, and it has cost us all peace and happiness, and soon it will take all our lives, unless we get smart in short time. Unless we face the facts we have been fudging for millenia. The labour of one person is limited. The maximum possible contribution of one person is limited to the maximum number of hours a person can work in a lifetime multiplied by the world average pay per hour. Working 100 hours a week for 50 years is 250,000 hours. The person working 100 hours a week for 50 years is not working harder than the average hardness of working per unit of time. It is unlikely that anyone can work or has worked so hard. Therefore the maximum earnings is certainly below 250,000 hours times the world average hourly pay. The world average hourly pay is US$15 in 2006 [doubling every 12 years at 6% global inflation - paying housewivesand students too]. Making a maximum selfearned fortune of US$3.75 million, or let's say US$4 million or US$5 million. And we subtract a minimum lifetime spending, say, US$1 million, which is only US$20,000 a year. I dont suppose anyone with money has earned so much and spent so little. So the absolute maximum possible earned fortune is VERY CERTAINLY less than US$5 million. Therefore only an increase in justice can be caused by limiting fortunes to US$5 million. And increase of justice can only cause a decrease of violence, disturbance, and the costs in lives, money, taxes, property damage, and time and energy. Not just the lives lost in war and crime, but the millions of lives that have to be spent in the military and police because of the extreme violence generated by the extreme inequity. To say nothing of court costs, lawyer-training costs, corruption costs, lives spent trying to trace the nefarities of the nefarious.<br><br>What is all the suffering and underpay of the 99% in aid of? What is the benefit we reap from the 90% who are paid between a 10th and a 1000th of what they produce in wealth by their work? The benefit is that 1% are overpaid, up to a million times what they earn. What do the overpaid get for their overpay? All necessities and millions of desires, from tapwashers to airfreshener to tennis racquets to cars to education to medicine to holidays, are provided by fairpay, which is US$15 an hour, US$75,000 per family in the world. In return for world average hours and hardness of work. The poor rich! There is not much that overpay can add to their pleasures. A law of rapidly diminishing returns applies. A Ferrari is 10 times the cost and 1/10th more pleasure. And what do the overpaid lose? Security, safety, community with the human tribe without fear and distrust, many hours lost in security costs and worries, and in time the complete erosion of the overpay by the costs of the ceaseless attacks from every other person, overpaid and underpaid. Every empire has lost all its plunder, has fallen to its enemies within and without. Where is the Roman empire, the Spanish empire, the British empire? As these are, so will the American empire be, and so will the Japanese or Chinese empire be that will replace the American empire. Overpay of a million times means that there are millions of people who have been robbed and thus enraged, energised to rob back. A million working lives have to fund the million times overpay. A million people's worth of theft, a million person's worth of attack. These empires have to be 'won' and lost at enormous expense of lives. A billion rapes. A billion fatal swordthrusts, and bombs. We teach children to share fairly. And we are all thieves. And our thieving is killing us. Has reduced our birthright happiness to a 100th or a 1000th of what it could be. We accept all money that comes to us, whether earned by us or by others. We are not aimed at getting out of the social pool of wealth as much as we put in, but at getting as much as we are 'lucky' enough to get, even if it be a million times what we deserve. And we reap the whirlwind of trouble suffering and horrors and brutality it brings. Money is very very good, and that is why we should be more careful not to steal it. Because if you have others' money, legally or illegally, by plunder of the sword and bomb, or by the plunder of profit and loss, you make those others' lives as bad as money is good, and the anger is potent, is explosives, and historically has been always in the end successful.<br><br>If we define profits as the difference between all costs, including fairpay for principals of the company, and prices, as the difference between outgoes and incomes, then BY DEFINITION AND THEREFORE INCONTROVERTIBLY profits belong to overcharged customers and underpaid workers. The customers and the workers have given more than they have received. And that is theft. And theft gives rise to anger, anger to war, war to weapons, and weapons to extinction. Overpay looks good to us generally and it is in fact very very bad for us. Fatal to us. And fatal to happiness. Scarcity and oversupply are manipulated to make cost and price further apart, theft and violence greater. preventing grain from being imported in time of famine, enclosing, stealing the country to force labour into towns and into oversupply, etc. <br><br>Therefore the net benefit of overpay/underpay, of pay injustice, of theft, is VERY NEGATIVE for both overpaid and underpaid. Especially now that we are nuclear winter capable, extinction capable. What is more negative than all earth life turned into a perpetual severe snowstorm in the dark? Therefore the net benefits of limitation of fortunes is VERY POSITIVE FOR ALL. That is, we can all be much happier. We can be 100 children with a 1000 sweets, all eating sweets, all chatting and happy and friends, instead of 100 children, 1000 sweets and everyone against everyone every second till everyone is hamburger meat - frozen.<br><br>And this explanation above is not hard to understand. It is easy to see it is true. Therefore everyone can get to understand that everyone will benefit. Therefore it can be taught to everyone. Therefore it can be achieved, without fight. The limitation of fortunes, the avoidance of tyranny, the stable founding of democracy and capitalism and freedom and equality and fraternity, can be easily achieved. And millions of offshoot problems will just fade away. <br><br>We have done it before. There must have been a time before there was a law against murder. [There must have been an earlier time before there was even a concept of murder.] And we decided that it was beneficial and we spread the teaching and got that law and we have been happy with it ever since. There never has been, in any country, as far as I know, a campaign in favour of repealing the law against murder. <br><br>We can do it again. If everyone teaches it, passes it on clearly to one person in x time, all humans will know it in just 33x time. If it takes one day to pass it on to one person, it takes 33 days to pass it on to 10 billion. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. In round numbers, from 1 to a 1000 in 10 steps. Each one of those 1000 will grow to a 1000 in another 10 steps. That is, a million in 20 steps, a billion in 30 steps, and 8 billion in 33 steps.<br><br>Put the brake instead of the accelerator on extinction, solve millions of offshoot problems, [including most or all of the problems discussed on ri], by cutting the root, end most war and violence permanently by finding and treating the root cause, which is the lack of limitation of fortunes for limited contribution to social wealth. The total cost: learning the above and teaching it to 33 people each. The super-bargain of all time. Learn the lesson of history at last: that if you dont limit fortunes, you will wallow and suffer in horrors and dangers and be drowned in them at the last. Most shit doesnt happen if you limit fortunes to the maximum earnable. The above gives you a ballpark figure for maximum earned fortunes. It is a weapon at last in the hands of the 99% decent people to prohibit the robbery of our birthright happiness, which is about 100 times more peace and relaxation than we enjoy now. <br><br>This idea is utopian only in the sense that we haven't done it yet. It is as doable as the law against murder. [And the un-limitation of fortunes is a far greater sin against human happiness than murder. Unlimitation of fortunes has put a weapon into the hands of tyrants to kill millions each tyrant, billions in the history of humanity. And millions have died in robberies.] <br><br>Do it for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of the much suffering overpaid, and the much suffering underpaid, and the much suffering few fairpaid in the middle of the whirlwind of the extreme level of war and crime generated by pay per unit of work ranging from one unit of money to a billion units of money when the average is 1000 units of money. <br><br>DOES ANYONE HAVE ONE REASON FOR UNLIMITATION OF FORTUNES? IF ANYONE THINKS THEY DO, PLEASE DISCUSS IT, PLEASE TRY TO THINK IT THROUGH: IS THERE IN FACT, IN TRUTH, IN REALITY AND SANITY, ONE REASON FOR UNLIMITATION OF FORTUNES?<br><br>Savings [investment, formation of capital] is highest with highest equity. Extreme overpay REDUCES capital, reduces capitalism. Social violence costs are lowest with highest equity. [Compare Middle East and Sweden.] Real income growth is highest with highest equity.<br><br>BE ON THIS SUBJECT SOBER SERIOUS SINCERE - PLEASE LET'S HAVE A ****REAL**** DISCUSSION - BEING WRONG PRODUCES ALL EVILS - THEREFORE FIGHT AGAINST BEING WRONG - SEEK THE TRUTH WITH COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE OF MIND - <br><br>Let's put aside ego, and closemindedness, and attachment to our pet ideas, and attachment to customary thinking, and pride and frivolity and cheap shots. We probably have less than 50 years to stop being wrong, to find the brake and press it.<br><br>Underpower has bred under-responsibility, immaturity, undiscipline. Pull maturity and sobriety of mind and awakeness and awareness out of yourself, though it cost the greatest effort. Let your pride be hurt. Don't defend your pride. Defend your life. And find your birthright happiness, the leisure of lions.<br><br>You see I am not mincing words. This is because there is no time for mucking around. The person who warns you is your truest friend, but you may fail to recognise him. You have persecuted truthtellers. The truth wounds the pride. But it is the only way to happiness, the only way away from unnecessary suffering. Where your pride is wounded, there is probably truth. And you are totally dependent on truth for happiness. And you only have your limited brainpower to get the truth. And you-destructive pride is trying to keep you in misery. Be as proud and as arrogant and as scoffing and as idleheaded as you like. But get the facts, get the truth, get all the happiness that you can get. <br><br>Since humanity has not got this idea in 1000s of years, since Einstein didn't get this idea, let me put it one more way:<br><br>If the 1% overpaid got together tomorrow and decided to limit themselves to US$15 an hour, to limit themselves to a fair and equal share for equal work, to stop allowing themselves to be overpaid, to stop giving themselves the liberty of thinking they deserved more per unit of work than others, to stop stealing and to shift that overpay back to its earners, then 99% of violence and war and danger and suffering and crime would stop. Remove the cause, remove the effect. It's that simple. And it is that hard. And we have to educate ourselves into knowing it, or continue with our vast unnecessary accelerating suffering and become extinct. Can the 99% become focussed and intent and determined and dedicated enough to lever the 1% out of theft, danger and unhappiness, to lever humanity out of extinction? <br><br>Do you want the universe to carry on shining without us?<br><br>Arouse yourselves to full consciousness, to full life-livingness! </span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <p></p><i></i>
