Wolf Wilbert replies to my comment (by email):

I can see your point Sepp.
Just imagine if this would be a solution for the whole planet:

1) Basics are provided for everybody
2) More effort if one wants more
3) Not enough to do for everybody anyway (robots and intelligent machines do the work)
4) Fooling around, is for killing time (western world will increase birth rates again)
5) China, India, Africa, South America will double their birth rates ..... woowee!
6) World population is already 6.5 Billion
7) Where is the brake?
8) Ahhhhhhhh! Control by the World Government, right? One more needle will not make a difference.

Sorry for being sarcastic .............
Wolf

To which I reply:

Hi Wolf,

I see your preoccupation, but don't share it.

you say

4) Fooling around, is for killing time (western world will increase birth rates again)
5) China, India, Africa, South America will double their birth rates ..... woowee!
6) World population is already 6.5 Billion
7) Where is the brake?

I think we have a different view of what makes birth rates go up or down.

For one, I don't believe that obbligation to work has anything to do with how high or low is your birth rate. Economic well being does - in the sense that when a family has its survival assured (as in the developed countried) then they do not make lots of children. That is what lowers our birth rate, and perhaps TV (distraction) has something to do with that as well. So the less preoccupation with the future (survival assured) and the more distraction, the lower is the birth rate. In that sense, the availability of a universal income guarantee would have exactly the opposite effect from what you envision.

The brake is right in the general improvement of the economic condition of everyone.

Control by world government? No, I don't think we need that, and I am not advocating it.

I do not understand Dugan King’s position.

The system overpays and underpays partly because of banks, as Dugan says, but also because of myriad other legal thefts in the system. Like the capital gains legal theft that Henry George points out (buy land, value of land increases due to infrastructure increase (everybody builds city around land), landowner scores millions or billions for others' contributions). And like payment for scarcity, which is not payment for work, which is payment for no work. And like the monopoly of land which Tawney and other economists point out, which strips off everyone’s birthright to a place to put their feet. These, and all the other legal thefts, are payments for no work, ie overpay, ie injustice.

Dugan is saying that if you don’t overpay the overpaid, the overpaid will stop working, and if you don’t underpay the underpaid, the underpaid will stop working. Which is clearly self-contradictory.

The present system believes in getting 99% to work by underpay and 1% to work by overpay. The absurd logical conclusion of this view is that the most work will be done by paying one person everything.

I guess Dugan just can’t get his head quite free from thinking the status quo is right. He is not alone. Humans cannot seem to get their heads to think their way back to justice.

What’s in people’s heads is what’s driving everything that is going on. The rich are not the enemy or the problem. The enemy and the problem is an idea: the bad idea to allow unlimited personal fortunes. It’s a bad idea because it’s inherently unjust, while justice is a virtue essential to happiness. Equal justice for all is the whole POINT of the Golden Rule. The maximum sacrifice of personal time and energy that can be made in order to contribute to the pool of wealth is FINITE. Yet, we allow infinite withdrawal, thereby getting farther and further from reality and justice. And safety and happiness. And survival.

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” means the 1% get paid more and more per unit of work while the 99% get paid less and less per unit of work. The legal thefts are constantly shifting money from earners to nonearners. Transaction itself contains the primary legal theft, since the two things in each and every exchange cannot be of equal value, ie cannot represent equal amounts of contribution to society through work. Over trillions of transactions that fact on its own must lead to an ever-stretching bell curve of overpay and underpay.

To which we add the coercive power of money to make money, plus the greed tendency to maximize the inequality of value of the two things exchanged. In most transactions people are trying to pull outlays and returns as far apart as possible: the merchant buys cheap and sells dear. The customer has no way of knowing the exact value of the item, ie no way of knowing the actual workcost of making and offering the item for sale, ie no way of knowing how much he is overpaying. Therefore every transaction contains a unilateral transfer of value in return for nothing - on top of a fair exchange. It’s hard to beg a dollar, but easy to get $11 for something for which the *total* costs (including fairpay for the merchants) are only $10. Not that I’m going to argue for dropping the profit system – that is not necessary or desirable.

The currently overpaid will continue to work with fairpay because if they don’t work they won’t get fairpay. The currently underpaid will continue to work with fairpay because if they don’t work they won’t get fairpay. The correct motivation for work is fairpay. Neither underpay nor overpay is necessary to get people to work - just as in nature: bear no fishee bear no eatee; and bird no catchee worm bird no eatee worm. The insertion of money in between work and eat doesn’t change the fundamental situation.

Note that the few people who are currently fairpaid continue to work. Therefore fairpay does not cause unworkingness.

F Scott Fitzgerald - We have used gold for motivation for so long we have forgotten there is any other way. Our society is so far from nature we have forgotten the underpinning natural sense in the system.

Broadly speaking, everyone is working, more or less equally, or in other words, working unequally within a small range. No one can work more than twice as hard as the average person who works more than 50 hours a week. Half the world's workers, housewives, work 70-90+ hours a week. No one can work more than about 100 hours a week long-term. Meanwhile, pay ranges extremely widely: from a million times to 1000th of world average hourly pay, from US$1billion a fortnight to $1 a fortnight around the world average of US$1000.

Another argument of the subrational majority of people is that work is unequal, therefore unequal pay is just. The error here is that this justifies only one out of an infinite number of possible inequalities of pay. If one works twice as hard, justice pays him twice as much - not any unequal amount from 1000th as much as average to a million times as much as average.

Most people will get hot under the collar if you suggest equality, because they think equality is unfair and/or would take away motivation to work. Some people take pride in working hard and they reasonably want to be paid more. They suspect or presume others are working less, and they don’t want those others paid the same as themselves. Fair enough, reasonable enough, although one could still argue against it further. But the inequality of work does not prove that inequality of pay should be uncontrolled; it argues only that inequality of pay should be proportional to work, which is very different from what we have.

I don’t think anyone will argue that the most overpaid is working a billions times harder than the most underpaid, who is presumably working his/her ass off to stay alive and save his/her family. And yet, many are the voices more indignant if some slacker’s child gets a free sandwich, than they are over billions of doles to the richest sandwich eaters, the Welfare Kings.

One ought to be able to say just the one fact that pay per fortnight ranges from $1 to $1,000,000,000 and immediately everyone understands that that is extremely dangerous destructive wasteful miserymaking violencemaking chaosmaking warmaking slaverymaking ignorancemaking. That that is putting a brake hard on human progress. And that that is destroying 99+% of human birthright natural happiness. And that it is in everyone's interests to have some mechanism for preventing or countering the ever-escalation of overpay and underpay, of violence, crime and war, of slavery and tyranny, of genocide nazis fascists hiroshimas dresdens stalins ceausescus idi amins pol pots alexanders napoleans biafras beiruts and nuclear winter.

But, no. The power of custom and convention, the faith in the herdthink, the power of denial, of head in the sand, of immaturity, of pleasure-principle over reality-principle, the enormous energy relative to average human mental energy needed to put the brain into gear and think realistically, means no-think.

Not even the fact that we have gone in 50 years from being able only to firestorm Dresden and 87 Japanese cities, which are just flyspots on the globe, to being able to globally block out sunlight forever and kill everything with a 60th of the bombs we have, not even this fact stirs even 1% of human minds to consciousness, alarm, correct prioritization and practicality.

The steady escalation of injustice and war and weaponry for thousands of years has not alarmed most people. Most people are not thinking about these things. Most people are quite confident that nothing is wrong, that the only purpose of life right now is steady as she goes working, watching tv, playing sports, amusing ourselves however we can, catching laughs. Moreover, they will quickly turn vicious if you made a concerted attempt to make them face reality. Like trying to tear a lion away from its food.

In the human race, there just isn’t 100th of the intelligence needed to pursue happiness successfully. Justice is happiness. We have extreme extreme injustice. Therefore we can be extremely extremely happier. Investment in justice pays the greatest dividend. But you cannot get this into people's heads. At all. Not a tiny bit. Not a tiny teeny itsy bit.

The human cortex has made us technological and nuclear giants, and ethical cretins. You just have to look at the facts that we have pay from a billion to $1for a fortnight's work and that virtually no one is worried about this and that indeed many are vigorously defending this, to see that there just is not 100th of the intelligence needed to attain natural ordinary birthright happiness such as the noncortical animals have the sense to attain.

We were infinitely safer when defenseless against the tiger than we are now, defenseless against the atom bomb. We had more ideas to defend ourselves against the tiger than we are having ideas to defend ourselves against the bomb. The human being is apparently in a state of deep numbness in the face of the pickle we are in.

The solution is so easy: counter the ceaseless automatic drift of money from earners to nonearners by shoveling money from the 1% overpaid back to the 99% underpaid who did 99% of the work that produced the goods that the money is token of.

But people see economic justice as injustice, even though 99% of people would be better paid with justice, ie, pay proportional to work.

Even though it is obvious that the defense costs for the higher paid per hour are proportional to the ratio between the higher paid and lower paid. The greater the overpay, the more people are more underpaid. And thus, the more that the overpaid are under attack.

Even though it is simple enough that fairpay, which is US$75,000 per anum per family, paying housewives and tertiary students, too, satisfies all major, and 99+% of minor, desires and that therefore overpay must experience rapidly diminishing returns in pleasure per dollar added. Twice as much as fairpay will add less than 10% extra pleasure and double the danger. Four times as much as fairpay will add another 1% to pleasure and quadruple the danger, and so on.

So the proportionally growing downside of overpay will very quickly greatly exceed the rapidly diminishing upside of overpay.

Thousands of years of history demonstrating this commonsense law has not impressed itself on human intelligence. Thousands of years of people falling from the heights of overpay has made no impression on the human mind.

What we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history. We have already a 90+% concentration of wealthpower that is auto-increasing at an ever-escalating pace, ie, we already have wealthpower tyranny, yet we speak of Democracy as if it exists. Tyranny is Anarchy. We have Tyranny Anarchy and we are congratulating ourselves on our Democracy. But Democracy stopped when vigilance stopped. Which was about when Jefferson died.

It would be impressive to see a list of all the overpaid who have fallen by assassination, by defeat in battle with other kings, by betrayal, even by family. The list of overpaid fallen even for just one year would be very long indeed. The number of 1930s Chicago gang members who bathed the dust with buckets of their own blood. The bigger the treasure, the bigger the fighting over it. Danger is proportional to overpay. People should teach this in schools.

The American dream of freedom from tyranny was founded on prevention of concentration of fortunes, and what did people do? People who had just escaped from the extreme pains of tyranny did nothing to prevent limitless concentration of money power in their new land.

You can’t even investigate human thinking on limitless overpay as good, because people will not talk about their thinking on it. In fact it is probably not thinking, it is purely atavistic, therefore not verbalisable.

The lion’s inarticulate but very powerful attachment to its food has been transferred from lion’s kill to unlimited overpay. And even the underpaid support overpay.

No one will say that a person who receives a birthday gift deserves to get gifts for having received the birthday gift. Everyone will call that idea absurd. Get gifts because you got a gift?

But defend overpay with that exact same absurdity, and people will class it as some kind of wisdom for the lesser-gifted to be overpaying those who won greater gifts of intellect or talent, etc, in the birth lottery. People argue emotively for overpays on a truly obnoxious number of faulty, illogical premises.

The American pride in their land was based on its freedom from tyranny, and yet they erected that tyranny with all speed, ignored the advice of their founders, and don’t even know they ignore the good advice of their founders.

People love money because it is power, and yet they can’t see that extreme inequality of money is tyranny and slavery.

Who can see the vice that everyone has? A vice is an unhappiness maker. Everyone believes in unlimited wealth. Money is good. Money is as good as the goods it buys. But people can’t see that more money overpay can be bad, can be cause of 99+% of our troubles. Self-earned money is as good as other-earned money (overpay, theft) is bad.

All the money equals all the products of work. No work means no products, which means the money is worthless. Half the work means half the products, which means all the money is worth half as much as it would be worth; the unit of money buys half the amount of goods, of work products. Twice as much work means the unit of money buys twice the amount of goods.

People have lost sight of the basics. The money system is too complex and confusing for people to see it whole, to see it simply. People can’t see the economic forest for the economic trees. Economists try to change things by fiddling with the money factors, interest rates, etc, but this cannot make a difference. The only thing that makes a real overall difference is the amount of work.

The overpaid takes out more than he puts in, and the underpaid gets out less that he puts in; equals theft = anger = violence = unhappiness.

And the violence is escalative even when the injustice is not growing, because both sides will escalate the violence to try to win. And the injustice is always growing, is automatically escalative: money makes money. Which means the person didn’t make the money. Which means money steals money.

But you won’t be able to get people to admit this until they are free from thinking that greed is good, that unlimited fortune is good. Selfearned money is always good because it is making more goods and getting more goods. Otherearned money is always bad because it is getting more goods without self making more goods, therefore it is theft.

The highest real actual present pay, ie, increase of fortune, is US$1,000,000,000 for a fortnight's work, ie, someone puts a fortnight's work into the social pool of products of work, and takes out from the social pool of products of work one thousand US$1 million houses for a fortnight's work. And every economist is blind to this reality and every human is blind to this reality and there is no power on earth that can wake people up that much to see that insane reality.

For one thing, people will not attack their vanity. They will not defend their happiness against their vanity - they will always protect their vanity and sacrifice their happiness.

They will not say to their vanity, “Vanity, you and I must here part company. To be happy I must be real, and if being real means admitting that despite my supreme intelligence among the animals I have been cretinous on this particular matter of money, then I will pay the small price of admitting this particular cretinousness for so great a benefit as my happiness is.”

The source of greed is very deep. It goes deeper than just “I want more, I want everything.” It is sourced in the desire to *see* wealth. People equate seeing wealth with having wealth. They crave an image of wealth, failing to see that by putting wealth outside themselves in order to see it, they are removing it from themselves.

This is the deep, deep meaning of the golden idol story. The people gave up their jewelry in order to see an image of wealth. Real poverty and imaginary wealth was infinitely better to them than real wealth and imaginary poverty. The cortex has given the human animal the fatal, intense lust to see good, and thus they ceaselessly separate themselves from the good.

In the world today everywhere you see people idolizing wealth and feeling they are wealthy if they can see wealth, feeling that they would be poor if they could not see wealth, would be poor if people were prohibited from being limitlessly wealthy. People like learning about the rich. Magazines are glossy because of this rapacity to see glittering wealth. Indeed, the poorer people are in reality, the more they want to see wealth, although this happiness of seeing wealth is being poor in reality. People want to see shiny valuable things like flash cars or skyscrapers or temples. 1% get to keep 90% of world wealth. Every year humanity gives 1% of people US$70,000,000,000,000 - $70 trillion – ie, every family gives US$70,000 every year to others so that they can see wealth in heaps. People take pride in the building in Dubai and in that pride forget they own nothing of it, are crushed under the weight of it. Wealth is finite, so the greater the concentration of wealth to attain height and dazzling vision of wealth, the deeper the slums must sink and the wider underpay must spread. The energy to take back their earnings is considerably smaller than people’s urge to give their earnings to idolize, adore, and see wealth; to touch the stars by making stars out of other people.

They support the super overpaid, they love the super overpaid, hence their enormous enthusiasm for seeing the Queen in her glittering golden carriage or Diana on her wedding day or Donald Trump in his tower or Hearst on his yacht. The source of greed is not so much in the taking by greedy people as in the giving of wealth by the many idolaters. The superoverpaid are truly servants of the people's will: the will to see wealth. The little man's ego swells to what Donald Trump looks like, or what Versailles looks like, or what the Louvre looks like, or the Sydney opera house.

This atavistic feeling is also attached to ‘us against them’. My king is better than your king. Our rich people are considerably richer than your pathetically inferior rich people. My emperor is more splendid than your stupid secondrate emperor. Our golden idol is bigger than your golden idol. And likewise anxiety and inferiority and powerful resentment is felt when someone else’s superoverpaid is more glorious than theirs.

The source of greed is addiction to sensation, to the sensational; a bigger pyramid, a brighter Las Vegas, a more splendidly glittering court, a greater god, a bigger golden Buddha, more cars in the driveway. The invisible heart that knows peace and happiness and contentment is overlooked. The source of greed is the invisibility of the real.

The source of greed is people's inability to see, feel, experience the invisible. Those who still remember how to experience the real, the inner, the invisible, are detached from seeking idols/ images of wealth. They are content with the reality. They have the knack of connecting with the Real. They know the value of sunshine of children of laughter of ease of friends of food of family of rain of grass of water of soil of sufficiency of peace. They are the world's moderates, people of the middle way, the Tao.

50% of people live from incomes made from being paid less than a 100th of the world average pay per hour, ie, 3 billion people get less than $2 a day, US$750 a year. 90% get less than a 10th of the world average hourly pay of US$10 an hour, ie they get less than $1 an hour, less than US$7500 a year. 99% get less than the world average pay per hour, of US$75,000 a year. People who work at world average hardness should be getting world average income, namely US$75,000.

1% get up to a million times the average, ie up to US$10,000,000 an hour. Humans reward one person with peak pay of the equivalent value of 10 US$1million dollar houses for an hour's work - and some even passionately and heatedly defend this anarchy.

100 hours a week for 50 years is just 250,000 hours. This is the utter maximum, or more than the utter maximum, anyone can work in a lifetime. Divide 250,000 hours into a fortune and thus find the average hourly pay for that fortune, eg, a fortune of 50 billion averages US$200,000 an hour every working hour of a life. There is more than one hour's work in a US$200,000 house.

How crazy is this? Nearly infinitely nuts.

Out of 4 billion workers, there must be 1000 who work very close to equally hard with equal maturity, work ethic, energy, intelligence, etc, and yet these are paid all over the world range of pay.

People have the strongest unthinking aversion to justice. And therefore have failure in happiness.

An injustice factor of one billion means a violence factor of one billion, an escalation-of-violence factor of one billion, a misery factor of one billion, a madness factor of one billion, a disease, waste, destruction, torture and ignorance factor of one billion. People are very glad when a war ends, but they routinely don’t determine the cause of war. Although they all know that violence would multiply by a factor of at least 10 if a government took say 50% of aftertax income off 50% of workers and gave it to 1%, ie they know by simple commonsense the causal connection between pay-injustice and violence.

They know the unhappiness of underpay, and they can easily know the unhappiness of overpay with a minute's thought, yet they can’t find their way to pay justice and thus to happiness by throwing overpay into underpay and seeing every family working average hard having US$75,000 a year, thus making 10 times as many brainy people available to further knowledge. And if 90% of scientists are at present tied up in defense industries then it would mean 100 times as many scientists, knowledge going ahead at 100 times the pace!

But, no. People would rather see moneypower piled high in phallic towers, though they know that, like manure, in heaps it stinks.

Manure, power, and money: all three must be spread to do any good.

Human acquiescence to inequity is responsible for the deaths of 100 million per year; starvation and war take 1 in 50 humans every year. Inequity is extremely wicked. It causes misery, and misery is not isolatable, is infinitely contagious and mobile. No one with pretensions to goodness can take refuge in doing lesser good(s) than abolishing inequity. Saving the whales or being good at branch level equates to destroying the planet by default, by failing to strike at the root.

Dugan King seems to imply that Rob George has founded his vision on compassion, but that’s not the case. I have no doubt Rob George’s proposed SocioeconomicDemocracy would foster more compassion for others, but compassion for oneself is all the compassion it requires. Plans that rely on altruism or compassion for others in order to succeed are doomed to failure, for two reasons: because every human being contains both the noble and the base and even the best humans will experience failures of judgment and character sometimes, and because when dire straits become widespread enough, you can safely conclude that people will look out for number one first, as seen when people are made desperate in a food shortage.

That people will preserve themselves and their families first means all people will readily unite behind what best preserves their own happiness and safety, once they learn what that thing is.

It is outlawing overpay/underpay, and there are no second-best solutions.

Compassion for others is fine and dandy, but it cannot substitute for adhering to principles of justice. Woe to the society that relies on charity to do the work of social justice. Altruism is not necessary, not reliable, and therefore not recommended as a rational motivation for establishing/creating economic justice for all. In truth the most self-interested person in the world has every reason to align with and prioritize economic justice, and zero reasons not to. (If you don’t love life, this message is not for you.)

Being sanely self-interested, I care about having a happy planet for myself – and I recognize that the only way to get a happy planet for myself is by global sanity.

Those who agree, each one tell two. Do it to save your own bacon.

Now, where do I vote for those minimum recompenses and maximum limits on personal fortunes, Rob? LET ME AT THAT BALLOT!

Sepp’s generous reproduction of this writer’s somewhat lengthy original material is hereby acknowledged and much appreciated. Likewise, Dugan King’s attempt to gather together a coherent response thereto is also acknowledged.

Finally, it is perhaps unnecessary to more than mention that the description of our book and the relatively short article, slanted, as it was, for its original intended audience, namely, the USBIG Congress, where all participants are well aware of the many desirable aspects and advantages of the various forms of universal guaranteed personal income (but are currently struggling with questions such as how to finance a basic income and how much should it be and who should say how much it should be) couldn’t possibly fully explain the many virtues and desirable ramifications of Socioeconomic Democracy, forms of which will, it is respectfully submitted, eventually prove to be the politicosocioeconomic system of the 21st century.

In an attempt to utilize King’s rather tangled thicket of assumptions, misinterpretations, misrepresentations and occasional inconsistencies regarding his misunderstanding of both Socioeconomic Democracy and the seriousness of the many very real individual, societal and global problems it addresses and can completely eliminate or significantly reduce, this writer will respond at some length. This writer has also already acknowledged the powerful response to Mr. King’s comments by Dr. Xavier Onassis, who can evidently pen strings-of-words this writer can only fantasize about writing.

Of course, the thoughtful and critical reader will understand that, considering the above claim, a careful study of the totality of the book Socioeconomic Democracy: An Advanced Socioeconomic System is required and perhaps even desirable. Nevertheless, an honest reading of the material presented on the website of the Center for the Study of Democratic Societies (www.CenterSDS.com) should dispel much of the misunderstanding and provide an adequate springboard for further necessary research and productive thought on the subject and its promising potential.

First, a few general remarks. Needless to say, any serious discussion of any new theory designed to even partially explain observable phenomena, especially if that new theory is designed to replace older, inadequate and obvious dysfunctional theories (though SeD does indeed have an impressive genealogy of ancestral ideas dating back at least 2500 years), must pay careful attention to definition. Any graffiti-like attempt to discredit such a theory, paying little attention to, or defacing, the original words, meanings and structures, merits merely being lamented and painted over.

The definition of Socioeconomic Democracy perhaps needs to be repeated. With an apology to all those who “got it the first time:”

Socioeconomic Democracy is a theoretical model socioeconomic system wherein there exist both some form of Universally Guaranteed Personal Income and some form of Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth limit, with both the lower bound on personal material poverty and the upper bound on personal material wealth set and adjusted democratically by all participants of society.

King’s misinterpretations and/or misrepresentations include his correct observation that “money is not [necessarily] wealth” and his incorrect assertion that this writer (me!) identifies and interchangeably employs the two very different words with very different meanings. Again with apologies to those who read and understood it, the definition of SeD does not include the word “money” -- even once! Nor did the article’s discussion of SeD use the word -- even once, as I recall.

Now certainly, the easiest and most direct way to facilitate the ideal theoretical Universally Guaranteed Personal Income (UGI) is to have the democratic government provide the democratically determined amount of UGI to all in a money (cash, check, deposit, bla, bla, bla) form.

This assumes first that the democratic society has voted to establish a nonzero UGI, though that democratic society could just as well democratically vote to set the UGI at zero. All this is discussed even in the short article, and some (including Mr. King, no doubt Rush Limbaugh and a few others who perhaps oppose it) could/should vote to place UGI at zero when the issue comes up at election time. There are, in fact, a few legitimate reasons to set UGI at zero, for some societies, at some times, under some conditions, and with some perspectives and philosophies.

Further, and as also discussed in the article, various practical political approximations to the ideal theoretical UGI include (and in fact are already realized) guaranteed education, of varying quality and for varying age ranges. This, of course, is a two-dimensional approximation to the ideal theoretical UGI. Similarly, in almost all self-proclaimed civilized, developed societies, some form of universally guaranteed medical care, again of varying quality, is already available. These and many other possibilities exist as legitimate (and some even argue, highly desirable) approximations to the ideal, theoretical democratically set UGI.

Of course, some folks object to the use of democracy to help resolve serious societal problems, and for a variety of (mostly curious and inconsistent) reasons prefer instead to employ the process strictly in order to, say, determine which particular political politicians are to be elected to which particular political offices, legally or with questionable voting machines. Thence, the world, as we presently see and suffer it. The book lists, discusses and dispenses with many of these amusing objections to democracy.

But since those who, for any reason(s), object to the use of democracy, and more specifically, majority rule, to peacefully resolve societal questions, are frequently vociferous, if vacuous, about the matter, they must logically allow all others to express their opinions also, just as the undemocrats do. It’s either that (which implies acceptance of democracy), or the nondemocrats are advocating minority rule, which, it is reported, also has its shortcomings. Didn’t Sir Churchill say something about that? Suffice to say that Socioeconomic Democracy is a study of what can be accomplished in a democratic society, which, it is observed, is/was attempting to be exported by, among others, notables such as both George Bushes (H. W. and W.). It’s really fun to play around with these ideas; but we must proceed.

While he doesn’t use the particular term, King’s tangled thicket of desperate opposition to some form of UGI is enveloped by that foggy rhetoric of “free-ridership.” Of course, it all depends upon who is getting that free ride and for how long and in which comfortable or uncomfortable conveyance it is provided. Counterbalancing the “free-rider” concern is the concern of and for all those who now volunteer to do all the now necessary but totally unpaid tasks required for a viable humanity and a sustainable environment. Whole PhD theses await being written on just such miniscule matters.

Another, actually far more serious misstatement by Dugan King is his apparent identification of “wealth” with “income.” As he collects and scrambles in one of his confused and curious sentences, “If you limit the income of the visionary leaders, the entrepreneurs, they too will quit working and close down their shops once they have reached the legal limit of their income.”

Where to start?! Guess the best and quickest way is to suggest reading the book, or at least the article to which Mr. King was ostensibly responding, and in particular the subsection on Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth (MAW), democratically set.

Now this particular confusion is, admittedly and unfortunately, not infrequently encountered. Believing that words have meanings, this writer has long grappled with trying to understand why there is so much confusion about such a seemingly simple, short string of words as the defining meaning of the acronym MAW. Evidently, most folks just do not have any conception or comprehension of what real, mega-enormous giga-wealth is all about and blithely assume that a “high income” and large amounts of “wealth” are synonymous.

To be sure, some few folks (luckily or unfortunately) “earn” (and we’ll let that term go relatively unexamined, for the moment) an “income” amounting to what many and now even a majority consider utterly impossible, even in their wildest dreams, even after winning the jackpot, to ever personally “earn,” no matter how long and hard they work.

While certainly not everyone, some other folks talk about obscene salaries and scurrilous stock options and utterly unjustified golden parachutes and dozens of other intricate high-finance, tax-law cons, while such “wealthy” people’s extremely entrepreneurial companies lose money, their stockholders being screwed, their “workers” (there’s that word!) are left with nothing after years or a lifetime of faithful, if naive, hard, dangerous, unfulfilling, body-crushing and/or deadly employment, and all the other innocent stakeholders of the planet are polluted, poisoned and robbed by the predictable, if unrecognized or unacknowledged, externalities of the profitable process. This, regardless of whether the particular company obeys the laws it paid the lobbyists to pay the politicians to enact, or circumvents the legally established minimum laws of the land, with legal experts.

During all these hyperventilating happenings, it is often said that such a person is “wealthy,” as opposed to more accurately saying he “earned” a large “income,” thus utterly confounding the legitimate difference between “income” and “wealth.”

But “wealth” ain’t “income,” and vice versa. With many acknowledged, but here-unmentioned, modifying aspects and definitely impacting circumstances, to be sure, “wealth” is the time-integral of “income.” Put another way, “income” is the time-derivative of “wealth.” Repeating, “wealth” ain’t “income,” and MAW says nothing about “income” but is the acronym for the proposed limit on personal “wealth,” with that limit on personal wealth set democratically in a democratic society.

Further, and most importantly, if one simply assumes the (to-be-sure, frequently violated) assumptions of classical neoliberalism (that’s economic theory, to those of you in Rio Linda), which, nevertheless, axiomatically and theoretically justify the monstrosity frequently referred to as contemporary entrepreneurial capitalism, it can be easily seen that the economic incentive created by Socioeconomic Democracy (and in particular, MAW, democratically set) does not cause the still-richest folks of the society to stop “working” but rather will cause a goodly and the good portion of them to set about seriously working to improve the “general welfare,” one of the six stated reasons for the writing of the US Constitution and the purpose of establishing the new country and the new experiment, according to those rabble-rousing, admirable, loveable and certainly imperfect revolutionaries such as Paine, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, among others.

Presumably, by now, the terrifying horror conjured up by the term “hyperinflation” can evaporate, and its possibility can be seen to be completely dependent upon how the UGI (in whatever form and amount it takes) is “paid for.” If the “excess wealth,” trimmed off the unprecedented peaks of some folks’ personal un”earned” mountains of wealth, is diligently and perspicaciously employed to finance the UGI, inflation won’t budge a micron. Other ramifications are again eagerly awaiting analysis and PhD thesis philosophizing.

There are (at least) two basic, profoundly fundamental shortcomings of contemporary “economic theory.” One is the mode, means, whatever, of creating “money.” Mr. King correctly alludes to this problem, and further sensibly acknowledges the desirability of a “peaceful revolution,” though he also seemingly abandons the thirst for rationality by referring to “Satan.”

The other fundamental shortcoming of contemporary economic theory is it’s utter lack of a competent (not to mention, optimal) consideration of a wealth and inclusive-human-productivity-distribution process. Socioeconomic Democracy offers a democratic solution to this second problem, and, in the process, provides considerable effective economic incentive to satisfactorily resolve the first problem -- rationally.

Resolutely, if reluctantly, determined to end this delightful opportunity to discuss Socioeconomic Democracy, it must suffice to merely mention a few other topics begging to be examined, such as advertising, “analytical vision,” technology already developed sufficiently to supply all necessary human needs, leisure, arrogance, the confusion between “leaders” and ”followers,” inaccuracy, universal individual development, fair share, a satisfying life, a sustainable humanity, the harmful and ultimately unviable, though seemingly insatiable, consumer society, and the dozens of other very real and very serious societal problems SeD reduces or eliminates -- simultaneously.

And, oh yes; please don’t call me an economist. Them’s fightin’ words.

Now I know what it is my intuited utopia is called. Socioeconomic Democracy. The concept is magnificent and quite practical. Also given the current human condition and the certain overwhelming resistance by the elite and their many mindless minions, even the chance of the idea being able to be passed on widely and accurately is non existent.

Dugan King is simplifying the whole thing too much and not really answering the idea at all. Nobody is saying remove the extra incentive of greater profit for greater input, only limiting the top end, so that disparities are not so high as millions or billions of times more reward for one over others.

Xavier Onassis, who is a friend of mine I am proud to say and who is a woman of wit and intelligence as you can see; presents an articulate and profoundly elegant summation of the holistic relationship between the massive economic inequities and the problems which have accumalated to plague the human race to this day.

I have no doubt that the best, maybe only chance to achieve this Utopian system, but then it would seem to be very doable indeed, would be on the corpse of the old. . AFTER a possible cataclysmic change, say war or natural disaster which hypothetically leaves the world population and society in ruins. A period of Anarchy which saw the power of the old elite lost or so diminished as to be ineffectual, would then give the only opportunity I can realistically imagine of ever implementing it.

John Merryman sent along an essay on economics that is published on this site.

Humanity is rapidly approaching a crossroads, where we will begin cooperating on a scale that we never have before, or we will descend into a state of warring tribes like we have never seen before. Appeals to the conscience only work on those willing to listen, while it is the less altruistic who need to pay the most attention. If there is one thing that does get people's attention, it's the money.

. . .

Growth is bottom up, not top down, so capitalism is at its most vibrant when wealth is most evenly distributed. The problem with treating the economy like a game of Monopoly is that when one person controls everything, the game is over and you start again. In real life this stage is called revolution.

Read the whole thing here: Revolution Happens

- - -

p.s. In a subsequent email, John adds:

I would like to explain that the purpose of my observation about the nature of money isn't to provide an economic framework, but to inject the seed of an idea into the larger economic debate. It isn't about redistribution of wealth, but framing the debate so that some degree of economic equilibrium seems natural and not forced. Money as private property is about rights. Money as public utility is about rights and responsibilities in equal measure.

It's also the kind of idea that is basic and explainable enough that it might be able to penetrate the general consciousness.

Hello again Xavier (I really like the user-name by the way - a good amount of thought must have gone into it!) I have been working through your latest post this evening.

I confess that I am somewhat sceptical at this stage. I certainly agree with you about the problems with the way the world economy currently 'works', many of which you have explored here and in your first post. When it comes to how to change it, you may be a little more optimistic than I am prepared to entertain being.

The following are my foremost thoughts on what I have read this evening. I hope that you will be up for addressing these concerns and not write me off as "one of them" or similar like some of the socialists I have debated/argued with did!

1. The most important of the concerns I have with these proposals is to do with the way you wish to implement the universal personal income.
Basically, I don't understand what you are proposing here. I could interpret your post as indicating that you wish every family across the world to be paid $75,000 per annum, regardless of how much or what type of work is performed. Your first 'proposal for change' in the latest post increases my confusion by referring to "[increasing] the global money supply".
I don't think I have to be an economist to state fairly confidently that this would be disastrous due to resultant severe imbalance between supply and demand. Is this what you meant?
I could also interpret the aside "...not nature's work giving people gifts and talents" as meaning that you believe that all types of work should earn equal pay. Is this what you meant?

2. You say a few times using different wordings that people are "committed to pay injustice". I dispute this.
I think there are at least three factors you have failed to take into account (or at the very least you have neglected to indicate that you have done). The first of these is love of freedom (factor A), the second of these is fear of turmoil/upheaval (factor B) and the third of these is the feeling of powerlessness (factor C).
These are not discrete, of course. A & B occur to me when you talk about all of the "legal thefts" in the paragraph that begins "On your first point...". Are you suggesting that all of the things you list should be prohibited?
In general, when I hear of a new political initiative, I think to myself: "Who is going to gain from this?", "Who is going to have the power?", "What opportunities for corruption will this present?" etc. I am not saying that Socioeconomic Democracy would be worse than the system we have now (I very much doubt it!) or alternative proposals such as Marxism, just that people might reasonably have these concerns. B also because people are aware of the political oppression that has followed revolutions elsewhere, C because most people are conditioned to accept as normal and legitimate the party political system in their respective countries, are not aware of the oligarchic aspects of their 'democracy' (the mainstream media plays a huge part in this) and fringe movements, at least in Western countries, tend to stay just that.

3. Some of what you say suggests that for your proposals to succeed, they would have to be adopted across the world. In particular, your averaging of $75 trillion across one billion families to come up with your $75,000 per year figure. Also, I am inclined to believe that the introduction of (effectively) 100% inheritance tax (is this what you mean when you say "mak[e] inheritance public instead of private" in your second proposal?) would have to be worldwide to succeed, otherwise the very rich would exploit the opportunities provided by those states in which it was not implemented to pass wealth on to their descendants.

4. A question rather than a comment (I think the commentary on what you have posted is implied): How do you think entrepreneurship would differ between present-day Western society, and a society governed as you propose?

Finally, could you give me some more information about the sociology/psychology aspects of your first post that I attempted to summarise in 5a, b and c. I thought this was particularly interesting (and might in addition to my suggestions in 2., above, go some way to explaining why people are refractory to the social change you advocate)?

I hope you don't feel that this post has been singularly critical of your work! What I have picked out are the aspects of it that most trouble me. You can consider that those parts of the post I haven't mentioned it are things that I at least broadly agree with.

QuestionThat

P.S If this post contains mis-sense it's because I wrote it in my local with beer.

QT, you have my very sincere apologies. I keep running into unavoidable damn delays and I'm growing evermore concerned that I'm inconveniencing you if you're checking back in here, waiting for clarification/answers to your questions. To avoid this truly unintentional rudeness (and since there appear to be no other parties reading), would you be interested in conducting the rest of this present conversation through email (or Skype, if you have it?)?

If that possible alternative would be helpful to you, I will gladly post my email addy and/or Skype name here, and you can then contact me directly. That way, you would be saved any annoyance having to keep checking for communications that aren't up yet...and I could stop fretting over how I may be wasting even small parts of your valuable time.

Let me know what works best for you, please?

Don't worry, you're not inconveniencing me at all - I spend plenty of time pottering around on the net reading 'blogs and sociopolitical discussions, and this is a particularly interesting one (and a welcome break from Gordon Brown vs David Cameron talk).

I would prefer to keep the discussion here rather than move to email or Skype, so that it may be possible for others to join the conversation and so that people can view its proceedings in the future.

I have had a good read through your above post, and look forward to the followup.

QuestionThat

Wow! The power of the pen! I typed my name into google today to see what would come up. I see where the post I wrote back in April caused a bit of a stir. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Didn't intend to. I am neither a democrat/communist or a republican/fascist,but I do like the idea of Social/Economic Justice. I was apparently misconstrued. I was proposing that we level the economic playing field and bring social justice to the world by eliminating the private banker. I still don't agree with giving credit to people who don't work to earn it. If you give credits away without redemption through labor, you are diluting the value of those credits. The more you give away, the more you dilute the value. It's simple arithmetic. It doesn't take a lot of words to explain it. Xavier Onassis or whoever could have saved some of that energy. Their very first sentence would have sufficed for me to understand that my proposal went beyond their comprehension. And I apologize for that. I apparently did not make myself perfectly clear. If you eliminate the private banker and return that power to some form of Public Credit Bureau, you will be eliminating all of the wealthy elite who earn billions of dollars without putting in a legitimate effort to justify their earnings. Take them out of the picture for good. Private Bankers are creating public credits simply by making notations in their ledgers. That is the entire effort on their part. They receive the benefit of principal and interest on that credit when they are paid back through the blood, sweat and tears of the borrower, who has to labor for decades to satisfy that mortgage or other indebtedness. By the time the banker is paid back the principal and interest with money redeemed in labor at lets say 10% interest over 30 years, the poor borrower has paid for 3 houses. He gets to keep one, the banker gets the other 2. This is the root of the injustice. Taxation, usury, inflation, recession are unnecessary evils which can be simply eliminated by eliminating the privelege of the private banker as the originating source of credit. If the credits were issued instead by a non-profit, public agency, like a state,county or city credit bureau, as it was done in Benjamin Franklin's time, we could eliminate the bugs in our system. Imagine a world without taxes, usury, inflation or recession. If the county needs to build a bridge, they put a workforce together and pay them with credits as the work is done. If a private person needs a loan for a business, home, car or tuition, he borrows credits from the Public Agency and pays back only the principal, no interest. The worker gets the full fruit of his labor with no taxes to pay whatsoever. There is a lot more to this honest monetary system, but I don't have time to explain it all. I will have to write back. And I will put it down in as few words as possible. Dugan King