They say that we accept the system because the system has come about
naturally, automatically, not artificially. They say it is an unfortunate side-effect of money.
That we as a race have mistaken precision of money for accuracy of money.
Money is precise: $11.43c,
not: somewhere between 8 and 13 dollars. But
not accurate. Price does not equal
costs, even if we wanted it to. You
aim at the bullseye and hit it rarely (though, interestingly enough, your
intention is indicated by the centre of the area of your hits). And everyone is trying to separate price and costs, because
the gap is profits. (Profits
understood as money left over after paying all labour costs, including fair
labour costs of company owners.) In
this sense, profits are theft, beggary, and inequity, and are always accompanied
by equal and opposite loss. I am
perhaps not making myself clear. The
point has been better expressed by others.
I quote. “In a non profit
company, everyone gets paid, so what are profits?”
Again: “it is hard for a
beggar to get $1 for nothing, but easy for a company to get $11 for $10 worth of
goods”. Or this: “Business is
just selling things for more than you paid for them, plus a million details.”
(To be precise, the labour of taking care of the million details is part
of the costs.) And let us add this
one: “Why shouldn’t I give half
my money to the people? They gave
it all to me.” Profits, in this
sense of that left after all labour costs, including directors’ and owners’
labour costs, is by definition unearned. Profits
are unearned, and inequitous. Each
transaction involves unavoidably a passing of something for nothing.
A little drop of inequity, our little side-effect, which with trillions
of transactions over 1000’s of years, carried from generation to generation by
inheritance, leads us to the present inequity factor of 100 million and to war
and crime, endless disturbance: crisis,
insecurity, danger, terror, violence, shame, oppression, slavery for 80%,
underpay for 99% and the pinnacle of paranoia for the extremely overpaid.
Which would explain why we are miles under Everest here today.
I always feel stifled when I am here.
I notice with surprise and curiosity that none of you lords (and
baroness) seem to suffer from this place of hiding and security.
I apologise. My lords
(baroness), excuse my nervous humour. Where
was I?
A relevant clarification. The
accepted idea is that justice is good and injustice is bad.
But one writer points out that this is ideal, not real.
Humanity is not at that stage. People
love injustice when it favours them. Examples,
inheritance, lotteries, gambling and profits.
Economics is a science in which everyone has an interest - a vested
interest. Money is good and should
be loved. (So they write.)
It is as good and as properly loveable as the things it buys.
Overpay (unearned money, extreme money) is the root of all evil.
The first thought (humanity to date, with all the trouble they have been
in, the nightmare of history, all evil) is:
grab as much money as you can. The
second thought (humanity tomorrow, the sweet dream of life no worse than the
other animals enjoy) is that money is good but wealth is killing us:
if I have more than others, my quality of life is decimated by the
tension, stress, resentment, suspicion, distance, fear, anger, retaliation
generated. (The tension between
hard workers and easy workers both fairly paid is insignificant.)
Everyone feels a little bit guilty about being better paid than
others, even if they are underpaid themselves.
(No one knows the world average is US$10 an hour.) But
they are not going to give away any of what they have.
Not generally. Because
everyone feels poor because poorer than some.
If there were a level of pay, people could relax when they reached it,
and begin to be generous. But
everyone - especially the rich in a sense - feels poor and in danger.
The rich are higher up on a building in an earthquake.
In fact, the poor experience a poor kind of equality:
the people around them are equally poor;
and a kind of security: they
cannot fall. Kings topple, not
beggars.
But enough of this. The
point is that transactions have a droplet of inequity and this inequity grows
and grows with time, and is the grey unseen mouse that transforms into the
golden ravening lion of wealth and war. So
we are victims all, of a small cause which grows over us all, which is hidden
from us by our misguided fear of losing money.
In fact, our fear of losing money makes us not look at a situation
through which we (99%) lose money, 80% of us lose 90% of our money, and we (100%
of humanity) lose 99% of our happiness.
One group tells us it as a story of circus workers making a human
pyramid: for the pointless purpose
of touching the tightrope, people on the bottom get crushed, people on the top
topple off, people on the bottom and in the middle struggle to get higher where
there is less weight on their shoulders, people higher up are forced to try to
prevent people lower getting higher, to save themselves, etc.
And they can all stand on the ground and have none of these hassles!
Another group has - independently I believe - thought the same
thought and come up with a simple version of the human pyramid:
a person carried on another’s shoulders.
The moral: insecure for the
person on top, burdensome for the person below, and unnecessary!
The sensible purpose of money was to exchange people’s products
and services neatly and easily in a complex society where people specialised
(butcher, baker, etc) instead of every individual being self sufficient, being
all things to himself alone. I sell
a goat and buy a saucepan and keep the difference as money till I want to buy
something else. But the naughty
difference, which often enough will cancel from transaction to transaction, will
in a small percentage of individuals involve profit every time, or loss every
time, or profit or loss more than 50% of the time.
So wealth and poverty will emerge even just with pure luck, even without
skill (skill in buying cheap, selling dear, that is, skill in lying).
And once a money-heap has emerged, it becomes a money-magnet. Money is power and becomes a lever.
Out of eagerness and fear to be on the winning side of profit, 99%
of us end on the losing side of profit, and 100% of us lose 99% of our
happiness, peace, relaxation, leisure, ease, etc. We let injustice free in the world in the hope it will favour
us, and it steals the money of most and the happiness of all.
One writer compares money and fire. “Money does not trickle down like healing water, it leaps
up like consuming fire.” He says
that Prometheus personifies that stage in human development when we became
cool-headed, unpanicked and scientific about fire. (1000 thunderbolts strike the earth every second, starting
enough forest fires.) We are just
on the point of becoming Promethean about
money, of looking at it without panic about poverty and observing its properties
and mastering it. Fire is a good
servant, bad master.
Writes one author: “We
lose all our money, and when someone comes who says he can get your money back
for you, we run away, fearing he will steal from us. What will he steal? Your
poverty, your insecurity, your misery, your danger, your wars, your slavery?”
Some writers have focused on the extremeness of the inequity.
One writer: if the Pacific
Ocean were as rough as the human sea of money, it would wet the moon.
(Average depth of the Pacific 2 kilometres:
highest pay rate a million times the average:
distance to moon, 400,000 kilometres.)
Another writer: if one
graphs the world average pay rate at one centimetre, one has to go up 10
kilometres to graph the highest pay rate. (And
down to less than one millimetre for the pay rate of 80% of workers.)
This graph, starting so high, coming down so steeply (few
super-rich), turning at the corner of the graph, skimming along well under the
average for most (the 99% underpaid) looks like a tack, which one writer
pictures through the foot of humanity, another through the heart.
One writer entitles her piece: humanity’s
self-crucifixion through overpay.
Some writers focus on making the point of the connection between the
inequity and the violence. “Imagine
if you had a company where everyone did the same work, say, sewing up jeans or
typing. And all got paid the same
for the same work. And then you
were to say: okay, from now on, 80% of you will be paid 10% and the 90% we
don’t pay to the 80% of you, will go to just one person.
Can you imagine the trouble that will cause? Can you imagine what it will cost to enforce that?
(The world’s military budget.)”
“Imagine if one were to take a suburb, surround it with fences,
take out everything of value, and leave the people to get on with it:
can you imagine anyone, short of a madman, accusing the victims of
laziness, violence, disease? And yet so it is with the third world, plundered for
centuries, blocked from escape, squeezed for US$50 billion a year, and history
does not even frankly admit the evil deed.
They hate the first world, but we don’t know why.”
One writer makes a strong point.
That every poverty breeds a mafia, every mafia is harder and tougher than
every richer country, every mafia is strongly attracted to the richest country,
and inevitably conquers it. Forced
to fight among themselves for survival, they become the world’s best
survivors. The poorest become the
hardest, they conquer the softest and richest.
Every mafia becomes rich, and conversely, every rich family is a mafia
(or it would not survive at the top). This
is the fiscal ocean, where troughs leap into crests, crests tumble into troughs.
A sick ride for everyone. Wealth
causes poverty, causes all the explosions.
Poverty is too expensive. These
are the lessons one might learn from history and does not.
From fear of loss of money, we become poor indeed.
Afraid of looking fire in the face, we are burned alive.
All of us, rich and poor, all to be pitied.
Putting nails through our feet and unable to determine the cause of our
pain. The Japanese have a proverb:
where this is profit, loss is nearby.
Loss is a list to port, profit is a list to starboard.
Full satisfaction of desires comes from moderation.
The opposite of wealth is moderation.
Read: wealth, understand:
wealth-poverty-conflict. Read:
profit, understand: profit-loss-violence.
One writer says: I am
not trying to talk you out of money. I
am trying to talk you into taking money, and happiness and peace.
Not taking by force, but taking by understanding, by seeing.
If it is true, it can be seen. If
it is false, it cannot be forced.
“If I can get two people to see in my lifetime, and they get two
people each to see in their lifetimes, it will take just 33 lifetimes - just
1000 years - to teach 10 billion. If
it is true, it is good to teach it. How
long it might take is not a reason not to teach it. And it might take much less time. Perhaps when 100 people see it, suddenly everyone will see
it. If 100 per year can learn to
see it, it will take just 5 years for 10 billion to see it.
“Every misery and nastiness that has ever occurred will continue
to pop up at random in human life forever till we see. Hiroshima, genocide, holocaust, conscription, fear, pain,
suffering. Until we step from
wealth-good to wealth-poverty-war-evil. In
our heads.”
If we saw, what would we do? We
would keep the capitalist structure of profit-making and competition, we would
defuse the extreme wealth-poverty machine most painlessly by simply limiting
inheritance to, say US$100,000, and new fortunes to US$1,000,000.
Old fortunes would die out. And
by limiting yearly incomes to US$100,000. Cullings
from the excesses would go to the most underpaid of the world, destroying every
mafia - every conqueror, every destroyer - by destroying every poverty.
Destroying misery like destroying malaria by spraying mosquito ponds.
Refreshing every company by enriching customers.
Like spraying liquid fertiliser around lettuces.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Markets fail for lack of customers.
Violence breaks out and there is great destruction and pain.
“The Roman Empire, in the beginning, was strong and grew, though
small, because there was equal pay for equal work. In the end, the Roman Empire was weak, and collapsed, though
huge, because there was great inequity of pay.
So for every empire.”
“See its importance. Teach
it to children. Fill a playpen with
balls or whatever. Tell the
children to grab as much as they can. Video
the activity. Tell the children
there are so many balls each. Tell
them to take their share. Video
that. Show them the videos.
Plant a seed in their heads when they are two and three.”
“Take these words to people.
See what they say, how they react. Study
their psychology. Find what
imprisons them in wealth-love. The
psychology of wealth-love will save the world.”
“People say: communism
hasn’t worked; we have to accept
capitalism. Reply:
communism took everything off everybody and gave it, effectively, to one
man. This proposal is the reverse.
Taking everything off the few and giving it to everyone. Power corrupts, and we cannot have no power, and inequality
of power grows and grows, so we will have power spread as evenly as work.”
“People say: equality
is unfair, because some people work harder.
They should not be penalised. So
inequality is correct. Reply:
there is one equality, but many inequalities.
This proposal suggests changing from an extremely unfair one to a much
fairer one, a practical approximation to perfect fairness which will reduce
righteous resentment and world-disturbance dramatically.
No news.”
“People say: ah, this
is all very well, but you can’t change human nature. Reply: it
isn’t human nature, it is money-nature. Extreme
money leads to extreme deeds and we create priesthoods to dissolve our shame and
guilt. But human nature is not
weak, just not super-strong, to resist extreme money. And money really is good, and to be loved as much as houses,
food, medicine, and everything else it buys.”
“People say: a rich
person, a capitalist, an entrepreneur, a business person makes money.
They do not take it off the poor. Reply:
every dollar they end up with came over a counter out of someone’s
pocket. No-one can work more than
twice as hard as the world average. Probably
no-one works or can work more than 25% harder than the average.
Can a person talk on the phone harder?
Chair a meeting harder? Dictate
a letter harder? There is no reason
to assume rich people work harder. They
may work longer hours. If profits
are high, it is because of large illusion of value.
($10 worth of goods looking worth $11 and getting that price.
Or $12. Or $20.)
Example: in new technology
industries, people value according to the new-toy value, and to how much money
it saves them, say, in typists or files and file offices and file clerks, not
according to the cost of making the item. Whatever
the technology development costs, the costs are divided by the number of units
(millions). Competition may force
prices down towards costs, they will not reach costs. (If the profit percentage gets too small, capital will move
out, so high-profit industries sabotage smaller-profit industries.
Small-profit products (which may include necessities) will shrink,
producing shortages and higher prices. So
high-profit industries are inflationary, increasing profits (and losses) and
reducing output. And there may be subtle shades of price-fixing and monopoly.)
“People say: I have
brains and talent. I have studied
for years. I deserve to be paid for
that. Reply: students should be paid, because that is work.
To prevent people becoming perpetual students, they will have to pass
exams or stop. As for brains and talent:
if I receive a guitar for Christmas,
I don’t get or expect a reward for it.
Surely the guitar and the brains or talent is the reward?
A person who asks to be paid more for a unit of work than others cuts
himself off from society, from friendship, fellowship.
It is an aggressive, hostile, insulting act.
The main purpose of money is to compensate a specialist in one area for
the loss of time he could spend in another.
He can’t grow vegetables because he is baking bread, so he is paid so
he can buy vegetables. Instead of
spending one hour baking bread, one hour growing vegetables, he bakes bread for
two hours and buys vegetables. For
his hour’s work, he needs only to be paid enough to buy an hour’s worth of
vegetable-producing labour. Somehow
brains get paid in present society (because brains rule society);
compassion (nursing) and brawn don’t always get paid so well.
So present society does not always pay for talents.
And society overpays for first-rate talents, and consequently must
underpay for second-rank talents. The
difference between first and second may be 1% and reward difference 100%.
Lecturers cannot quite look workmen in the eye:
that is poverty too. People
steal privilege, power, position, prestige from the community and then wonder
why the world is a hostile place. No-one
points out our mistake. If a person
receiving an average or ordinary wage were to offer someone money for nothing,
people would hesitate, ask why it was being offered, refuse; even feel insulted. If
a rich man did that, people would take it.
Think about it.
“If you were in a community, and suddenly a section of people, for
no good reason, were to be given more (say, people with names beginning with M,
or the left-handed ones) would that not decimate community unity, trust,
closeness, friendship, warmth? If
we call ourselves someone’s friend, and when offered cake, we share none, or
unequally, does not that assassinate friendship? Our society rewards unfriendliness. Our so-called society rewards anti-social attitudes.
Our leaders, our owners, are unfriendly, anti-social, lone wolves.
We buy hatred, coldness, heartlessness.
We offer big money for it, and get lots of it.
Feel it when you visit a medical specialist. (Governments should increase supply of overpaid professionals
till they are paid average, reduce supply of underpaid jobs till they are paid
average. There are many things a
government would do if they were working for us.)
“All overpaid jobs are filled with mercenaries, jockeying for
higher positions, with less love. So
we live in a world, of our own making, where doctors are not healers,
politicians are not governors, administrators are not administrators, business
people are not business people.