<!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:helvetica;font-size:small;"><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br>Oooh, yippee, some replies. Okay, professorpan, floyd, ivanbo, i hear you. Whoops, gotta go back and add caps. No one said before that the punctuation was hard to read. And I find the blue colour easier than the black - I thought others would too. <br><br>Nomo: you make some points. They are all dealt with in my free articles and book at
www.globalhappiness.org [not an org, a plan].<br><br>1. 'What do you propose to do about it?' Show people that they already agree that this plan will solve most problems. Explain all the points. Discuss until people are clear, and certain they agree. Then get them to pass the word on to friends and loved ones. Thus get a great majority really seeing - knowing - that limitation of fortunes will bring - literally - 100-fold happiness. [99% of people will profit financially, 100% of people will profit 100-fold in happiness.] If each person who gets clear and certain-sure about this plan passes it on to just one person a month, everyone in the world will hear it in just 33 months. Once there is a great majority [99+%] knowing that this is very very very good - for everyone - it will be easy to get the simple laws to make it happen. The laws will disadvantage financially less than 0.01%, and even that 0.01% will get 100-fold increase of happiness. I can prove that everyone in the world already agrees it will produce 100-fold happiness. The proof takes a minute, the chewing over the proof till it is grasped may take longer. The points, such as the ones you raise, need to be gone through and the answers thoroughly grasped - it is all in the book and the articles. Obviously, the more people ask questions, the faster improved FAQs can be assembled. People already agree, but not all parts of people - people are very complex and have ideas that contradict their own ideas. Some ideas we absorb from the culture without really thinking about them. This idea/plan is simple but it has to flood all chambers of the mind. Ideas that we have thoughtlessly from the culture - that we ourselves disagree with - have to be thrown out. Explanations have to be improved until everyone gets them easily. I have to get people who 'get' the idea/plan enough to take an interest in it. The more people in on it, the more brains to write different ways of getting it through. Some minds will relate better to different ways of expressing it. <br><br>2. A higher hourly payrate for intangibles like responsibility, merit, brains, business risk, etc. None of the arguments for these things are good arguments. The arguments are probably invented by people to justify themselves getting more per hour. I shoot the arguments full of holes. People can see they are full of holes. And I produce arguments for not having higher and lower hourly payrates even if they were just. And finally, even if we keep higher and lower hourly payrates, we can have limitation of fortunes and solve most problems by that. The plan limits fortunes at a level of the maximum a person can put in to the social pool of wealth by their work in their lifetimes - about US$4 million - so the plan only takes money that must have NOT been earned by the person owning the money - that is, overpay - legal [or illegal] theft - which means someone else earned it. The money is given back to the people who earned it. These are new ideas, and it takes time to get used to them. They have to be tumbled in the mind a while.<br><br>3. 'People allow discrepancies because they figure they might one day be on the wealthy side.' I agree with you. And this is perhaps the heart of the error in people's thinking. It is perhaps the heart of why we have had escalating wars for 1000s of years, and why we are facing extinction by atomic mega-ice-age. [The bombs are built and primed and aimed and ready to go at the touch of a key.] I show that, if people think about it - carefully, thoughtfully, thoroughly - it is a very very very very bad bargain. That thought, that idea is responsible for having destroyed 99% of our possible happiness. That is why we can be 100 times happier. We just have to think it through, and we can get free from that error, and then we can float without difficulty back to normal amounts of happiness, which is about 100 times what we have now. Ideas are the seeds of everything in our culture. Wrong ideas and right ideas. The modern car contains 1000s of ideas. With those ideas, you have the modern car. Without those ideas, you dont have the modern car. With the idea you brought up - which we ALL have, to some extent - we have war, escalating to extinction by atomic mega-ice-age in a few years. With the removal of that idea, we go back to normal happiness, normal human behaviour. I guess that, although this plan is essentially very simple, we have to cut through a lot of crap in our heads to get to it - we have to cut through a lot of ideas we have that we wouldnt agree with if we think about it. <br><br>Point 1: When you allow 'discrepancies' - inequalities, injustice in pay, overpay and underpay, theft - those discrepancies grow and grow and grow. They dont grow and then stop. They can only get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Without end. If you put no limit on them, they grow and grow without limit. We now have pay from a million times the average, to 1000th of the average. From US$10 million an hour [!!!!] to 1c an hour [!!!!]. The overpaid [the thieves] get richer and richer, more and more arrogant, more and more powerful, more and more tyrannical, more and more above the law. The underpaid [the robbed] get more and more annoyed, more and more violent, more and more angry, more and more enslaved, beaten, powerless, desperate. The overpaid, overpowerful, inflict more and more damage, steal more and more, send more and more to early graves, force more and more into greater and greater misery, send more and more off to fight in their wars to get them more money and more power. Then the tension and struggle and conflict between the overpaid and underpaid gets worse and worse, behaviour degenerates more and more. Our behaviour has been degenerating for 1000s of years, under pressure of greater and greater injustice [theft]. Now, this is not good for ANYONE. It is a general whirlwind. No one escapes. The more money/power people have, the more they attract hatred. The less money people have, the more they are certain they have been ripped off, and the more determined they are to get rich by hook or by crook, or have their revenge on the overpaid, the thieves, by assassination, revolution, chopping aristocratic heads off, etc. The injustice doesnt just sit, it grows - and the violence grows with it, which embraces everyone. Degrades everyone's happiness. Involves everyone in the universal destruction. <br><br>The more unlimited fortunes can be, the more people are stimulated and incited to get money/power by hook or by crook. You hold out a giant carrot, the rabbits jump a long way. Limit fortunes to what a person can earn in a lifetime, and fortunes and power and underpay and slavery are limited too. And the violence between the two is limited too. <br><br>Overpay is a stimulus to people to attack the overpaid. And overpay means underpay. And underpay is a stimulus to attack the overpaid. So the overpaid are unsafe. This is a damage to their happiness. It is also costly. And the costs of defense go on and on and on, till the money and power is exhausted. And they have to spend time thinking about their safety. You may say: Rockefeller no doubt thinks that the electric fences, the guard dogs, the bullet and bombproof cars, the helicopters and the security staff are a small price to pay for billions of bucks. But what about the overpaid who dont make it? A crack in the armour, the crack of a rifle. Look at the long long list of the overpaid who fell. All the emperors, kings, presidents, tyrants, aristocracies, empires that fell. <br><br>And another point: most needs and desires are satisfied by fairpay, which is US$75,000 a year per family. There is not much that more money can do to increase happiness. And there is a lot that more money does to reduce happiness. So the upside of wealth is in fact very limited. And the downside is very large. <br><br>Put it this way: Fairpay means every family in the world gets US$75,000, and there is no violence generated by overpay/underpay. Defense costs way down. [Eg: the Middle East, with extreme wealth and poverty, spends up to 50% of its income on defense, most of it internal defense. And they have very low capital formation [savings]. And low income growth. Egalitarian countries, like the Scandinavian countries, have very low defense costs [like 2%]. And very high capital formation. And high income growth.] Everyone has money to spend, so the economy is vigorous and healthy, and business confidence and safety is high. Everyone can afford an education, holidays, medicine, etc etc. No one is robbed of anything that they have earned by their work. No one is violent from being robbed.<br><br>With the present situation, with extreme inequality, there is universal violence, which affects everyone and is speeding towards extinction. 99% are worse paid than under fairpay. Of the 1% overpaid, the more overpaid they are, the more isolated and unsafe they are, the more under attack they are, the more reason they have to be frightened, and the sooner they fall. Which is better? It is a no-brainer. <br><br>Even if the overpaid were happy exactly in proportion to the money they have, and not under attack at all, the 99% would be mad - are mad - to allow the overpaid to have wealth at the expense of the 99% - to allow the overpaid to have the money the 99% have earned - 90% of people are robbed of from 9/10ths to 999/1000ths [!!!!] of the money they earn by their work. The 99% have the power to have their money back. Can one person steal most of the money of 99 people and hold on to it? It is just that the 99% have been hoodwinked into thinking the overpaid have earned the money they have. It is only in the last 100 years or so that the 99% have been allowed to be literate. And it is only now that people can become economically literate. It is only now the 99% can learn what money is theirs. <br><br>Even if the money the overpaid have was justly theirs, the 99% would be mad to allow anyone so much money, which means so much power relative to others, ie, tyranny, unfreedom, undemocracy. Giving power to another is taking power from yourself. Power corrupts. Giving power to another is giving suffering from corruption to yourself. Allowing huge money/power is growing a giant, and buying him a club to beat your brains out with. Eg, communism, which took everything off everyone and gave it to the leaders. Result: People so mad, and leader so powerful, he killed 60 million of them. Plus the leader paranoid, having to kill off potential rivals regularly. Plus huge secret police, state terrorism, siberian prisons, gulags, etc. [Like America tomorrow.] <br><br>The overpaid cannot have earned the money they have. Can anyone earn $10 million an hour? That is, can anyone do in one hour enough work to create $10 million of goods and services? Bill Gates can work one hour and buy a $10 million house, cash. That house has something like a million hours work in it. Can one man build a $10 million house in one hour? He can't design the doorhandles in one hour. We just need to think about it. We are under a spell, a madness. People are slaving 16 hours a day and getting paid 16c for it. They are creating $160 worth of goods or services in that 16 hours and getting robbed of all but 16c. <br><br>It is really AMAZING that people dont see the madness. It is the most amazing thing. It has never occurred to anyone, seemingly, that Bill Gates may not have earned all the $50 billion, that other people may have earned most of the $50 billion and been robbed of it somehow. People dont know that there are wide-open, legal ways in the economic system by which money transfers from earners to non-earners. In fact, $70 trillion a year [over 90% of world annual income] transfers from earners to non-earners. It is amazing that it has never occurred to anyone to think: hang on, I work about the same hours as Bill Gates and Rockefeller, and I have nothing like the money: something is very wrong. But we have been hoodwinked into thinking that there are reasons for different hourly payrates. But there can be no reason for payrates from $10 million to 1c. [A bit more - a way way lot more - than 'rather obscene', nomo, isnt it.] Maybe the range is so great, we cannot, really, even begin to conceive it. <br><br>Well, I wont, now, deal with the incentives argument, which I can rubbish. If there is in this stuff I've written things that have had an impact on you, that make you think I may know something very very useful to you and all, we'll talk more.<br><br>Just a quickie with the incentives: If money is an incentive, then the incentives argument is on my side, not on the side of those who argue for the super-hyper-extreme payrange we have. Simply, because 99% are better paid under fairpay. 90% are 10 to a 1000 times better paid!!!! That is a huge incentive to go with fairpay, or equal hourly payrates. It is just for the 99% who will be better paid to wake up to it. It is very very strange they havent woken up to it before this. But I seem to be the first to have worked out the world average pay, which is what everyone will get with equal hourly payrate. And I seem to be the first to work out what percentage are underpaid. And work out how much is stolen. And work out the maximum one person can earn in a lifetime.<br><br>I think people just have to sit down and work out: is it in our interests to share, to pay equal hourly payrates - US$15 an hour, for every worker, including housewives and tertiary students. It certainly, very certainly is. Extremely so. <br><br>People think that wars are caused by all sorts of things. But remove the economic motivation to war [overpay and underpay], and you dont get religious or race wars. Wherever there is no economic injustice along racial or religious lines, eg, in Canada and Australia, there is no war or violence. Wherever there is war or violence along religious or race lines, the war or violence is proportional to the economic theft, not to the religious or race difference. Eg, in South Africa under apartheid.<br><br>It is as simple as this. What is everyone doing? Going for all they can get. Whatever I get is mine. Which is like saying to 100 kids with 10 sweets each: Okay, everyone, grab as many sweets as you can, and whatever you grab is yours. What are you going to have? Endless grabbing, no peace, no safety, no time to sit and eat sweets, no friends to play with, no time to play, fear of being grabbed from, constant, endless and draining, scratched faces, tears, fights, kids getting madder and madder and madder, no friendship, no trust, no smiles. Say: okay, kids, sit and enjoy your sweets. No fighting, no uproar, no anger, no stress. Whoever works an hour gives an hour of their lives. People can't slack very much, because it gets noticed and you get warned or fired. And people can't work much harder in an hour than the average, and anyway, why would they try? - especially if they are getting overpaid. So the sacrifice is very nearly equal. The equality of humans means that the sacrifice of one person's hour is the same as the sacrifice of another's hour. Life is precious to all humans. Having brains or not having brains is no fault or merit of anyone. Paying people for brains and other gifts of nature is taxing, fining, punishing, robbing the others for having fewer brains. Pay Madonna for every hour she works, pay a pianist for every hour he practises, but not for the gift of nature. There is a vicious backlash. [Eg. the cultural revolution in China, the anti-intellectualism of Nazism, the Bush supporters. Europe robbed their poor, then the poor tried to rob something back, so they got sent to America, and then America robbed the world, and got rich, and then the world started robbing America, so America got poor defending itself.] Stealing is infectious. The more theft there is, the more theft is generated. Theft travels the world, over and over. Limit theft to US$4 million [or, even better, $2 million]. [You can earn $4 million only if you work 100 hours a week for 50 years - discourage workaholics - they have a disease - they are stealing leisuretime from themselves, their families and their communities.] Which is like limiting the kids to 15 or 12 sweets - much less fighting.<br><br>Is anyone beginning to get the picture? Is anyone getting excited? If so, let me know, because I feel like I'm talking Swahili into a black hole.<br><br>[Mother: It is not me who says we are like apes, science says we are 98.4% identical to chimps. My point is that, if someone is inclined to think that we couldn't have overlooked such a mammoth source of happiness and peace, well, maybe we could have. It is only a few years that we stopped running from fire. And I bet the first person to have the idea of cooking had trouble getting through. ['What? You trying to say I should burn my food?'] It is only 100 years or so since we found out the world is millions of years old. It is only 500 years since we found out the earth goes round the sun. And most of us are taking others' word for it - we couldn't discover the earth goes round the sun to save our children's lives. And there is a saying that it is the obvious which is hardest to see. I mean, evolution is obvious NOW, isnt it. And it is the large patterns that are hard for us to see. And I dont see that chimps are so unsharing as one chimp to have a billion times as much as another. And thank you for detecting love in me. I would love to be able to make people laugh all the time. Laughter is unfascist. 'My friends sent me a postcard with a picture of planet earth on it. They wrote: Wish you were here.' 'I talk to myself a lot. Which bothers some people, because I use a megaphone.' 'I'll consider taking up jogging when i see a jogger smiling']<br><br>[Example of people having contradictory ideas: Everyone know a weight will not budge until the upward force is greater than the weight. Everyone knows the earth's gravity pull is much greater than the moon's gravity pull. But everyone thinks that the moon pulls up the water directly below it.] </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <p></p><i></i>
by sceneshifter » Sun Jan 29, 2006 11:50 pm 
