Day 19 - Starvation is Murder - Part 2: Feedback

This blog is a response to a comment made on "Day 17: Starvation is Murder".

Thanks for a really interesting article and really highlights how possible it could be to eradicate poverty and the suffering that comes with it. I wonder if it would be useful to highlight which are public and private expenditures as public expenditure can be directed from one thing to another with policy and the amount stays the same as it come from a fixed source eg. tax. Whereas private expenditure is often individual and variable, for example if everyone stopped buying cosmetics everyone in the cosmetics and attached industries would lose there jobs, stop paying tax, take up welfare/services and so there would not necessarily be the same amount of money left to transfer to other more important things. Anyway I would be really interested to hear your thought on this

It would make a difference in terms of where the money comes from -- public or private expenditure -- as you pointed out. Though, within this blog I merely touched upon one of the many aspects within our current economic system which reveals the values we as a society place upon certain outcomes or goods -- which when reflecting upon it, are quite irrational from a broader perspective when looking at the current state of the world, and the abhorrent conditions many find themselves within.

When looking at the issue from a different angle, it does not really matter where the money comes from (public or private), as the essential point is that we are living in an economic system with distorted values. The expenditures listed, reflect the dynamics between supply and demand which is one of the base fundamental systems in our economy. The problem already starts right there, where a person's demand is necessarily linked with their ability to pay for the goods/services wanted or needed (and the fact that there's no differentiating between a 'want' or a 'need' in itself is also problematic). This results in skewed supply and demand curves which determine how much and at what price particular goods and services should be provided -- as they only answer to the demand/wants/needs of those who have money and does not reflect the needs/wants from the whole population in question. This would then (partially) explain the expenditure figures. If everyone's wants and needs were taken as a valid demand, no matter what the state is of a person's income -- these figures would be quite different and the various industries, sectors and markets involved would then restructure themselves according to these new sets of values.   

This in itself is however not a complete solution, as now obviously those with low income / no income still dont have the means of accessing the goods and services they need/want. For this a system ought to be in place, where the Basic Income Grant is a cool first point of implementation, to provide those people with a disposable income. Such a system would however still not be a permanent solution, as there are still so many other points in place in our current economic system which would ultimately render this change ineffective -- yet it's a good start to begin with.

The solution that I propose is that of the Equal Money System, which is a more broader encompassing perspective/solution to our current economic system (than for instance the BIG porposal). You can read up about it here: www.equalmoney.org and feel free to join the forum @ www.equalmoney.org/forum for discussion.

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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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