Day 217: Who's Free Riding Who?

In economics you have the 'free-rider' phenomenon, a concept which if often brought forward in favour of capitalism.

The free rider concept refers to instances where someone enjoys the benefits of a product or service, without having paid for that particular good or service.

A classic example that is used in text books is where someone uses a form of public transportation such as a train, without having paid for a ticket, and is thus 'free riding'. The same goes when there is for example a project where there is collective action to reduce emissions as to increase air quality. Some may not want to participate/contribute and keep their emission levels the same while everyone else is lowering theirs, still resulting in better air quality for them, even though they did not contribute.

Now, within the context of economics, capitalism thinks to have the solution for the free rider problem, by trying to capitalize on as much as possible. If everything has a price, then everyone who uses whatever good or service, will pay.

Linked to this is also the whole 'but I worked so hard for this' and 'it's not fair that I have worked for this and that others besides me are benefiting from it, if they want it they should just work for it' mentality. This is the result from believing that our current society and economic system truly provide everyone with 'equal opportunity' -- while this is not the case.

When the Equal Money System is put forward, the 'free rider problem' gets hauled in to show how 'unfair' the system is, because everyone is provided for even though not everyone may be contributing (because they are unable to).

The problem with the free rider concept is that it is only ever brought up in the interest of holding on to one's money where "it's mine! And I worked for it!". Other forms of free riding are never brought up.

If everyone consumed as much as an average American, we would need 5 planet Earths. Put otherwise, it's a situation where 5% of the population consumes 20% of the Earth's resources. Isn't that free riding as well? You are then free riding because other people both now and in the future will bare the consequences of the unsustainable lifestyle someone else enjoys. Free riding doesn't only occur when someone is enjoying the benefits, but when someone is not taking part in resolving the consequences of the actions you are involved in.
People are being deprived of resources which are being directed towards unsustainable lifestyles – and so people are free riding on the lives of others and free riding on borrowed time from generations to come. Dumping waste into the ocean or poor countries with weak environmental regulations is free riding the Earth. The continuous postponement of coming to an actual agreement that is binding for everyone to reduce emissions and use of fossil fuels is free riding. Each time we wait with making crucial decisions which we KNOW will affect future generations is free riding. Just because ‘we won’t be here to face the music’, we don’t care = free riding.

We live in a polarized world of massive inequality – where some have more than they’ll ever need and other barely, and even don’t, get by on a day to day basis. Rich countries positions today are the result of free riding other countries in the past under forms such as colonisation and slavery. Without free riding, capitalism as it exists today would not have been possible.

Instead of moaning about people benefiting from your efforts, it would be better to spend one’s energy towards ensuring that we have a world that is Best for All to make sure that we can all live and live sustainably while ensuring the safety of life for future generations. This is the only form of free riding that is really a problem – as it has actual physical consequences on the life of others, while the free riding problems most people currently care about only hurts one’s self-interest and ego and does not really pose any real problems.

In an Equal Money System, we care about real free riding problems and will act according to the principle of Prevention is the Best Cure to minimize consequence as much as we are able to

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Day 18: Who's Got the Most to Lose - The Rich or The Poor?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is righteous that the owner of a company gets to make profit from running a business because he deserves it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that the owner of a company deserves to make profit from this business because in starting this company, he invested his money and herein took an apparently very courageous risk and should therefore be rewarded with profits.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realise that the person investing to start a mining company, though he bets with a lot or all of his money, still has less to lose than the miner who might lose his life working in the mine - and therefore, that there is no rationale that justifies profit.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to actually believe that the person who puts all his money on the line possibly loses more than a person putting his life on the line - and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to herein justify a company making their employees work in crappy conditions in order to lower costs and increase profits, while the employees' lives are increasingly at stake.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to actually believe that the boss sitting at his desk making phonecalls deserves to get a higher income than the workers at the lowest level who do the actual hard, physical labour.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that if I want to pursue the line of thought as justification of 'those who earn more money do so because they deserve it', then all the workers doing the actual hard physical labour should be the ones who get the highest incomes, because they do the jobs those with higher incomes don't want to do - indicating that they are giving more of themselves in their job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept that so many laws and regulations exist to protect the rich and their wealth from the poor, while mostly the rich are born rich and have therefore barely deserved any of their wealth.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to deliberately exclude the poor from becoming wealthier by making capital a prerequisite for making money and accumulating wealth - and on top of that making sure that poor people can't get loans to get capital with to be able to participate and become wealthier in the economy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to claim that the poor are in their position because of laziness, while actually deliberately creating the barriers that keeps them from any significant participation in the economy as a strategy to rule out competition.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that as long as we as humans compete with each other in any aspect of our lives and as long as we are afraid of coming out the short end in losing everything we have, we will never live in a world where poverty is eradicated, because poverty is merely a consequential outflow of the designs of competition and fear of loss.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that each one requires to investigate their life and see where it is that they are participating in competition and fear of loss, and where they try to take out competition and remain 'on top of them' in the nastiest of ways, if we ever want to see a change in this world.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that competition and fear of loss are part of 'what makes us human' and that we cannot live without such experiences, or that we would no longer be ourselves.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that competition and fear of loss cause consequences in our and others' lives of suffering, pain and misery.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that I can never lose myself and therefore, it is absolutely possible to stop the habit, need and desire to compete with others and to give up fear of loss and still be here.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that self-improvement should be about self, for self and not about trying to be better than and outshine others - self-improvement is about correcting the relationship one has with oneself in a way that there is no conflict with self, in self, towards self and self can live fully in every moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define self-improvement in relation to how well I perform in comparison to others and use others and what others think of me as a benchmark for where I need to go or what I need to change, instead of realising and understanding that self-improvement is about looking at where I am not satisified with me, equal and one with me and to correct those points accordingly and where then, others who have already walked the particular point I'm busy correcting can assist and support in being an example where I then equalises myself to others, but not from the starting point of trying to outrace them or trying to outshine them.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that we cannot walk this process of change on our own and need to be able to stand as a group of equals, as one, to see the change we need in the world - and herein competition is unacceptable.

I commit myself to stop all desires, needs, wants, tendencies to compete with others in and as myself.

I commit myself to stop all forms of fear of loss within and as myself.

I commit myself to learn to work together as a group of equals as one, instead of against each other.

I commit myself to show how the current economic system works like a casino where each one places their bets, in terms of their capital, their life, their time, their efforts, their health - and where some can continue playing and others just lose it all.

I commit myself to the implementation of an Equal Money System where each everyone is always a winner and no-one loses out.

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