Day 247: Only in a Broken System does Misery equal Profit

Growing up and living in a First World Country where your Basic Human Rights are actually ‘met’ (albeit through considerable compromises) – you are made sure to be reminded of the many places and many people who are not in the same fortunate position as you’re in. “Empty your plate, don’t you know there’s starving children in Africa who don’t have anything to eat?”, “You should be happy going to school, in country XYZ they don’t get even get to go to school because there aren’t any”, “Stop whining, in country SomethingSomething you’d be living on the street by now”.

The message that gets ingrained is “Don’t complain, you should be happy – out there it is HELL”. So not only is one molded into an obedient citizen, made sure to ‘not bite the hand that feeds it’, we also get imprinted with immense guilt for having the niceties we have – knowing fully that if we had been born somewhere else, things would look a whole lot different.

So, what do we law-abiding-guilt-bearing-citizens do? Once in a while, as we get some ‘time-off’ from being a wage-slave – we want to go and do some ‘good’ in the world. We sign up to take care of the poor people, the less fortunate, the parentless, the hopeless, the marginalized and abused ones ‘out there’. We grab together our hard-worked savings and pay some travelling company to go work somewhere for free.

We are getting our holiday, we’re helping those poor people – it’s a Win-Win situation, right?
Is this ‘voluntourism’ phenomenon an expression of our altruism and good hearts? Or is it just another way devised by a crooked system to make money out of whatever will tickle our fancy?

In fact, 'voluntourism', as it's been dubbed, is the fastest growing travel sector, worth an estimated £1.3 billion globally.

Let us have a look at how the market responds to our demand for Guilt-Relief and Exotic Holidays:

'I thought, even if I can make a jot of difference, it's got to be worth it. So I started looking on the internet. Eventually, I came across an orphanage called the Dream House on the borders of Thailand and Burma, which rescued children at risk of being trafficked. There were videos on the website and it all looked amazing.'

A Thai charity, Starfish, was offering two-week voluntary placements at the orphanage for £400, with basic accommodation included.
Caroline paid in advance, and in January this year she travelled to Thailand. On arrival, she met other volunteers, many of them teenagers on their gap years, all signed up to help at the orphanage.
But within days of starting the placement, Caroline sensed that something was seriously wrong. 'I was pretty shocked at the conditions,' she says. 'The children slept on the floor - although there wasn't even a floor, just carpet underlay - with no beds or blankets. The youngest was only two years old.
'At dinner, they had one chicken between 29 children and a few vegetables. All the volunteers were coming in and giving £200 a week. So where was all the money going?'

Ah… the ways of Supply and Demand: you wish to relieve your guilt – and so we shall provide you with the opportunity to do so. The ways of the free market are cold; the market does not look at your intentions, the market does not care about the repercussions of serving demands – all it does is reek money and provide the quickest and best way to cash it in.

We end up with fake orphanage centers with children trained to act according to our idea of what ‘poor orphans on the other side of the world’ act like – because that is the experience we desire, and our money bring to life such an attraction.

The shocking revelation has been that volunteers, who have intentions to give some love back to children in real need, are tragically and inadvertently having the opposite effect.'

Not only are we maintaining the atrocities we would like to see eradicated within the world, we are in effect enhancing them and not in any way whatsoever addressing the very system, the very design which is responsible for them in the first place. After all, what this ‘voluntourism’ point illustrates, is that we cannot address the symptoms of a broken system through utilizing the same broken system as medium towards a solution.

'One volunteer I heard of turned up to teach at a school, and wondered why he didn't get a very warm reaction. Towards the end of his time there he discovered the local teacher had been fired because a Westerner was coming in to teach for free.'

In a world driven and moved by profit only, we cannot expect to alleviate poverty or alleviate the hardship of people through a profit-driven medium, as it is the very profit starting point, the worshipping of profit/money over Life/People – that lies at the heart of the problem, that pumps and thrusts its poison all throughout the body, leaving no area untouched.

While we see the hardship of remote places on our television screen, we want to travel to those distant places in the belief that the problem and solution lie in the same place. There is actually little that can be done by travelling to the other side of the world for a few weeks / a year and trying to alleviate the symptoms of a much darker dis-ease. It’s not by coincidence or genuine will to ‘work hard’ that we’ve created a Safe First World Bubble for ourselves. We need only to flip through history to see that we’ve acquired our wealth and security through the exploitation of others. In the past in direct forms, through conquest, through colonization – and today indirectly through economic ties whose nature and flow had already been determined, shaped and solidified within the previous Era of exploitation, now merely extending the same relationship in a different form – but really, nothing has changed.

Unless we change the values and principles of the system at home that we live by, we are not going to be able to bring about change ‘out there’. We are the power-center that maintains the problem, if we want to bring about change – we are right where we need to be.

The first step towards a global effect is to put into place the values and principles we want to live by and that we want to see others live by. A good place to start, would be the enforcement and safeguarding of Human Rights which can practically be employed through the implementation of a Living Income Guaranteed. Since the Right to Life has been historically linked to the ownership of money, making sure that everyone has enough money/funds available to live a dignified life is an absolute must.

To find out more about the Living Income Guaranteed, please visit:
http://livingincome.me and http://livingincomguaranteed.wordpress.com

All quotes from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2418074/Fake-orphanages-Bogus-animal-sanctuaries-And-crooks-growing-rich-Western-gullibility--gooding-gap-year-holidays-horrifyingly-callous-con.html

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Day 237: Planned Obsolescence becomes Obsolete with Living Income Guaranteed

During the war as countries no longer had access to their usual trading routes through obstruction like blockades and disrupted commercial agreements, industries had to start making the same things with inferior materials, simply because the usual materials which would ensure quality and durability were out of reach.

As time progressed, an interesting thing was noted. People who bought the products for which inferior materials were used, ended up having to buy the product again after a shorter period of time than what they were previously used to. While the use of inferior materials and the shorter life-span of goods was supposed to be a ‘negative side-effect’ of the war, it turned out to boost the economy as more people were forced to buy more goods to sustain their lifestyle.  After the connection was made between the inferior materials and diminished durability of goods leading to increased economic activity, it was made to be ‘a thing’.

People now started playing around and testing various materials and inputs and their durability within products to design and engineer goods with calculated life-spans. The use of inferior materials and diminished durability was no longer seen to be ‘unfavorable’, but necessary evils which our business men must employ to ensure the vitality and longevity of the economy. Planned obsolescence, had become an ethical thing to do.

Along with it, came also a culture of disposability. You could now use plastic cups, and plastic bags which you use once and then throw away. So that you can just keep on buying and disposing = it’s great for the economy!

While these manifestations may be ‘good for the economy’ in terms of manipulating consumers into extensive buying behavior, these manifestations by themselves obviously also bear great negative side-effects to the world outside of the economy. Re-producing the same products over and over simply to keep the buying going results in massive amounts of waste. Not only are we wasting tons of energy which we could have used more productively, we also end up with huge amounts of waste which accumulate in landfills and oceans. So while the economy may ‘thrive’, we are slowly but surely putting pressure on all other parts and areas of our society.

People are being put pressure on as they have to budget more carefully as goods who used to be once durable are getting a shorter and shorter life-span. What used to be a onetime big investment for which one had to go into debt, is now becoming a pattern where more people are living in debt and what they are receiving in return is of lesser and lesser quality.

Nature and the animal kingdom are being put pressure on as we pollute the environment and seize their habits for expanded production.

Our resources are being put pressure on as we exploit them at an unsustainable rate where they will soon be exhausted before we have put into place alternatives.

So all in all, the price we pay for our economy to thrive through planned obsolescence, is just not worth.

With the implementation of a Living Income Guaranteed as presented by the Equal Life Foundation, planned obsolescence itself will become obsolete within the economy.

Currently, we are placing our focus on ‘things’ to guarantee our spending, and thus to guarantee the spinning of the economic wheel. This, as we have seen, is simply ineffective and wasteful. Instead, it would make more sense to ensure spending by firstly ensuring that everyone has some level of purchasing power through having a Living Income Guaranteed in place, and secondly through placing our focus on human capital rather than repetitive buying patterns.

This practically implies that instead of depending on things to break for consumers to spend money in the economy, we move our focus to appreciating and rewarding human labour adequately and properly. This means that we can revert back a high standard of quality and durability, with prices that accurately reflect the amount of human labour that went into the product, so that we can establish wages from which people can live a dignified life.

At the moment, we are counting on low quality level goods and low quality standards of living through low wages for the economy to keep going. It does not have to be this way. If we re-arrange our values and priorities, we can still keep our economy going, but we can do it by directing our attention (and money) to quality, durability and human dignity.

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Day 235: Living Income and Effective Markets

"... and it leads to mediocrity by furthering the emergence of a “mass culture” where the lowest tastes are catered for. Furthermore, it is contrary to human nature with its rich diversity. Why make equal that what was not equal in the first place?"

The above quote was made in relation to the promotion of Equality within society. Within the implementation of a Living Income Guaranteed, we are promoting Equality within placing everyone in a position where one can participate in Life, economically, politically, socially and culturally.

By giving those who are unable or have yet to establish a stable income stream for themselves, a living income – we ensure that everyone is equipped to participate in society. This places everyone on a more ‘equal footing’, as everyone is able to take care of one’s basic needs and contribute to society.

By implementing a living income guaranteed, we will have a more accurate market system. As more demands are being validated through a living income providing everyone with money to ‘back up’ their demands – our demand curves will more accurately show and reflect the populations demand, consequently allowing supply to adjust to the actual demand levels of the consumers (as everyone is now being recognized as a consumer) and catering for that which is actually wanted by society. Previously (or currently), only those demands were recognized which were backed up by one’s purchasing power. This means that there’s an exclusive catering mechanism taking place for those who have money, by those who want even more money. From this, a mass culture emerged in terms of the arts like in the Music Industry, where mainstream music is all about what ‘most of the people who have money’ want to hear – where only the taste of money is being catered for as that which will be ‘most profitable’ – leading to Music Industry ignoring lots of areas of Music to explore as there is ‘no money in it’, which leaves us with a bland, monotonous, mediocre mainstream music industry. By extending economic participation to everyone, more people are able to ‘place their votes’ as their demands of what it is they want / would like to receive – and thus the music industry will receive a larger variety of signals of types of music to be explored and developed.

For more on the Music Industry and Living Income, read the following blog:Living Income and the Music Industry

Promoting equality such as equality in economic participation, does not lead to mediocrity and ‘mass culture’ – that, we already have and is the result of a profit based system, a system of discrimination. By implementing a Living Income Guaranteed, everyone is able to signal their demands to the market effectively. Only when we have a Living Income can our “human nature with its rich diversity” be captured and reflected in our society and economy and can we truly enjoy the variety and creativity that the Human has to offer.

Stand for a Living Income Guaranteed, Stand for a Better and more Effective Market System!

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Day 233: Can LIG provide us the punch to beat the recession?

Whenever the point of policies in relation recessions opens up in economy textbooks, we look at expansionary and monetary policies to help stimulate the economy. Within this government spending, taxation and interest rates play a major role. Here, we are pulling strings from a giant tapestry, hoping that a pull here and there will have an effect way down, on the other side of the tapestry, somewhere down the line… (if we allow enough time to pass by of course).

Yet, we can stimulate the economy a lot more effectively by boosting the aggregate demand in the economy, through the implementation of a Living Income Guaranteed
.
By granting everyone who does not have access to a stable income with a grant that allows them to live a decent life, we generate a greater level of disposable income. Those who were previously surviving and saving – now transfer more money towards spending and consumption.

As disposable income goes up, demand goes up, spending goes up and the wheels of the economy are greased up: economic activity goes up and economic growth is being promoted! As people want more things, more people need to be employed and the unemployment rate goes down. People get their needs taken care of, suppliers and producers are able to sell their things and jobs are being created.
As the economic capital grows, the social capital improves as well. As people’s living standards rise, people become more effective and efficient in their activities.

Implementing a Basic Income Grant System, is a win-win situation.

Check out the following blogs for more information:

Living Income and Nationalized Resources

Living Income Can Save Capitalism

Living Income and Minimum Wage

Living Income Guaranteed and the Nationalization of Banks

Living Income Guaranteed and Pensions

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Day 232: Putting Economic Theory into Practice with Living Income Guaranteed

Living Income Guaranteed as the Capitalist’s Answer to a Healthy and Wealthy Economy

Any economist is familiar with Keynes and the Keynesian economic model of a demand-driven economy. Keynes understood that money requires to move for an economy to thrive, in the same way that blood must flow for a body to be healthy.

An economy can be broken down into three basic flows: Spending, production and income – spending requires to happen for companies to be able to produce goods – the production of these goods then provides income to the employees of the companies that produced them. There is thus an undeniable link between spending and income. When too few people have adequate income, or when income is too low – too little is spent, too little is produced – and income reduces even more.

The ideal way to ensure spending is therefore to secure everyone with an Income.

Furthermore – capitalism can only work if Equal Opportunity of Participation exists. Unless Equal Opportunity exists, capitalism becomes a system of exclusion and deprivation – because Capitalism only ensures efficient production and distribution of resources for those with an income. Therefore – to prevent Capitalism from becoming a weapon, but instead, an actual management system as how it was intended to be – each individual should have a guaranteed income.

Furthermore – an economy will not only thrive through money movement, BIG pilot projects have shown that more children attend school, and thus, one will have a more qualified labor force in the future – increasing the intellectual capital in an economy.

A Guaranteed Living Income is a Human Right

Regardless of the economic arguments, guaranteed income is a basic human right. To speak of Basic Human Rights without securing the means through which to benefit from these rights, is useless.

The Equal Life Foundation therefore suggest that the Living Income one receives should be sufficient to be able to enjoy one’s Basic Human Rights, and thus, large enough for individuals and families to live a decent human life – meaning: one can live off a Living Income Guaranteed with dignity. This implies the ability to pay for one’s basic needs such as electricity, water, food and clothing – but also extends to the means to participate in our current society and thus includes things such as a car, a phone/cell phone and internet access.

Social Dividends

To fund a Living Income Guaranteed – a system of social dividends is ideal. In every country there are those goods and services that are vital for the basic well-being of the citizens of that country. Examples are basic resources such as water, electricity, raw materials, transportation and media. Such goods and services do not belong in private hands – but belong to each individual of the nation. Therefore – every citizen should be a shareholder of every company involved in the production of such goods and services.

This is not a new idea – as early as 1935, G.D.H. Cole, wrote the following:

“How will ... incomes be distributed? There are two possible ways - payments for work done, and 'doles', or, to give them a less coloured name, 'social dividends'. I believe the system of distribution will be a combination of these two, but a very different combination from that which now exists. ... There will remain, broadly, two sources of income - work and citizenship. Incomes will be distributed partly as rewards for work, and partly as direct payments from the State to every citizen as 'social dividends' - a recognition of each citizen's claim as a consumer to share in the common heritage of productive power.” (Cole 1935, pp. 234-235)

The dividends one receives from the profits of these nationally owned companies then form the Living Income Guaranteed. With each one being a shareholder, each one immediately also has an equal say in the activities of such companies – which is an application of direct democracy in the areas of life that are most important, which again solidifies and protects each one’s Basic Human Rights.

Incentive to Work

The inevitable question then comes up: If everyone receives an income that covers one’s needs – who will be willing to work?

This is where the Equal Life Foundation suggests an interesting solution. To provide incentive – the minimum wage should be double the Living Income. This means that anyone who has a job can not only fulfill one’s needs, but can enhance one’s quality of life through acquiring luxury items that would not be available on a Living Income budget. One can then afford a bigger house, a larger family, a second car, a bigger garden, more exotic and fulfilling holiday destinations, subscriptions to sports clubs and other leisure organizations, and so on and so forth.

Consequentially - as soon as one has a job – and thus, receives a wage that is at least double the income one would have earned from social dividends – one’s right to the Living Income Guaranteed falls away – simply because one doesn’t require it anymore. The social dividends system then functions as a National Insurance system – combining unemployment fund, life insurance and retirement funds all in one – where, one receives a pay-out based on the applicability to one’ situation.

Also read:

Living Income and Nationalized Resources
Living Income Can Save Capitalism
Living Income and Minimum Wage

Day 415: Bailouts Are No Solution

Sources:

COLE, G.D.H. 1935. Principles of Economic Planning. London: Macmillan & Co., 1935.

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Day 231: Will Equality Destroy Society? |Equality and Human Rights – Part 8

Also in this Series:
Day 219: Equality and Human Rights
Day 221: Are Humans Equal? – Equality and Human Rights – Part 2
Day 223: Equality of Opportunity: Introduction – Equality and Human Rights – Part 3
Day 225: Equality and Disinformation – Equality and Human Rights – Part 5
Day 227: When is something Equal and Unequal? – Equality and Human Rights – Part 6
Day 229: Can Equality only be Achieved through Inequality? | Equality and Human Rights – Part 7




Within this blog and the next one we will be looking at two statements with regards to the perception of the necessity of inequality within society and the world:

Statement 01:

Some inequalities are surely also necessary for the maintenance and functioning of a social order. For example, complex, modern, industrialised societies are characterized by a division of labour, many different functions and roles and a range of differing skills, which are necessary for the existence of such societies.

Statement 02:

Equality would have to be imposed again by government by redistributing income from the productive to the less productive. If this strategy continued, the productive would eventually lose the incentive to produce more than they required for their immediate needs, and ultimately there would be nothing to redistribute. All would eventually be equal in poverty.

Here we are looking at economic justifications for the existence of inequality, where it is no longer a matter of whether we should promote equality or not – but where inequality requires to be protected as an important drive force in society which ‘holds everything together’. Equality is no more a moral ideal, but a threat which requires to be fended off at all cost.

Within this blog, we will work with Statement 01.

Here the author expresses the belief that inequality is necessary for the functioning of a social order, especially in the case of modern, industrialized societies which are characterized by features such as the division of labour, distinction in functions and roles, etc. Most, if not all societies are now marked by these type of ‘order’, even a global level where some countries are subordinate/superior to others in their position due to the nature of their relationships among one another.

Obviously, when you have a society which in its very essence and fabric is based on the notion of inequality – which permeates every element within the structure of society as the ruling principle by which society lives – then OBVIOUSLY the elimination of Inequality and pursuit of Equality will demolish the order and functioning of the day, when that very order is the representation of Inequality. All that means, is that we have to come up with a new order, a new structure – and this time base it on the principle of Equality, where the principle of Equality determines the structure of society and permeates every element in every possible way. Society will still exist, people will still exist – all we are changing and re-defining are the Relationships within Society to take on a New Form. Thus, the destruction of that particular order is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’ which we should all fear. It is simply a matter of breaking down a dysfunctional system and rebuilding a system based on Equality as the Respect for all Life.

This also doesn’t mean that we have to go through/walk through an Apocalyptic / End of Days type of scenario where everything is literally being destroyed to ground zero as the infrastructures that are already here before we can ‘rebuild’ society. That would just be a waste of energy, time and resources. When we speak of the destruction and resurrection of society, we are not talking about tearing down buildings and looting towns and whatever other images may come to mind when ‘the destruction of society’ is mentioned. The actual physical structures are not the problems and are in fact very useful for future usage and their physical destruction would only be to everyone’s detriment. 

The point which requires to be addressed is the order and the relationships we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to live. This will not happen overnight and will have to be a gradual implementation/transformation we all have to walk and adjust to. We thus do not promote any kind of Revolution or other means if implementing change which is physically destructive and violent. The Equal Money System / Equal Money Capitalism will follow the Political Route to be voted into power as a collective decision and agreement.

For more on this subject, please consult the following material:

343. How are We Going to Change the System to Equal Money? 
 How on Earth will an Equal Money System be Implemented?  
How can we practically go about implementing an Equal Money System?
  How do we Transition to an Equal Money System? 
 Day 351: Desteni, Equal Money, Zeitgeist and Occupy Wall Street  
How to implement Equal Money? The starting point of community.

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