The Optimal Western Model (OWM) System
Reportedly, to save all animals, Noah built an optimal ark;
to save ourselves, we need to build an Optimal Western Model (OWM) system,
which begs the question, what is the OWM?
Hypothesis: Coopetism.
Are there any other systemic – i.e. non-Band-Aid – candidates?
The Apex-Systems: Natural & Artificial
It’s said, “politics is downstream from culture,” which is often true; however, culture is downstream of systems.
Our apex-natural-system is the human-mind – i.e. human-nature.
Our apex-artificial-system is government.
While human-nature can’t be altered, government can.
Regarding government, ideally, infrastructure should maximally harness citizens’ human-nature for the national-benefit – i.e. optimal government maximally catalyses citizens’ ‘nation-contributive self-actualisation.’
This occurs via Coopetism – i.e. government infrastructure that maximally catalyses Coopetition (‘Cooperation first & foremost and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second’).
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August 31, 2024
Hello
Systems, systems, systems – we’re a result of our systems – it’s self-evident, isn’t it?
That is, we’re a result of our genetics & environment and our environment is heavily influenced by systems.
For instance, an individual born 50 (let alone 300 or 100,000) years prior will be different to one born today. Also, even contemporarily, one will be different depending on whether one is brought-up under the system of Saudi Arabia or Nepal or Chile or ….
And, our Big Picture systems are mostly government social-infrastructures.
Accordingly, given our Big Picture problems are increasing, it must be because our social-infrastructures aren’t optimally correlated with nature’s requirements for a society, which is Coopetition.
This is tremendous news because it means we only need to implement optimally Coopetive social-infrastructure and our Big Picture problems will begin automatically self-correcting.
However, those with a platform often make non-systemic suggestions such as: “We need to respect others more,” “We need to lower the temperature,” “We need to listen more,” “We’ve got to embrace diversity more,” “We need to stop racism,” “Men must stop being violent towards women,” “People need to take more responsibility” etc.
While these ‘personal decision’ suggestions are understandable, hearing it over and over is itself depressing, which probably also means it’s counterproductive (as Lenore Taylor, Guardian Australia Editor said, “We need joy, more than ever”) plus the impetus for them indicates the social-infrastructure is suboptimal – i.e. the suboptimal social-infrastructure forms a vacuum that begs for such beseeching. Thus, these suggestions are no substitute for optimally Coopetive social-infrastructure.
Worse still, because of all the imploring, the spaces in the media, politics, academia, social-services, bureaucracies, business-peak-bodies and, in general, minds are already so full that no systemic suggestion can be heard.
Thus, we may first need a system for improving the expertise of those with a platform.
The CDO’s History
What would it be like to be Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest – i.e. sane but trapped in a mental asylum?
Originally (in 2018), with humanity facing a culminating perfect storm of exponentiating catastrophes, the CDO assumed our best, brightest and most-platformed were scouring for the solution.
Thus, the CDO believed the source-problem only needed to be defined, the solution detailed and that information sufficiently distributed then someone with a platform would pick it up, there would be a ‘battle of ideas’ and, within say 6 years, it would be implemented. [at which time the CDO would return to anonymity rather than, perhaps, becoming the world’s most famous unfamous].
Since then, the CDO has identified the source-problem as anti-Coopetivity, specifically, Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) and the solution as the self-capitalising SIS-&-unemployment-eradicating ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’ where:
- The USI is The Universal Subsistence Income
- UMHoW is Universal Minimum Hourly Wages.
Regarding the CDO’s distribution goal, its database is well into 6-figures and reaches into most of the non-Authoritarian world’s significant realms of influence – for example, it includes every living Nobel Prize in economic sciences laureate (44). [Perhaps a media outlet can investigate their thoughts on Coopetism – i.e. for humanity’s sake, our disparate extreme expertise must be brought together.]
Yet so far, catalysing even a single public utterance re Coopetism or ‘The USI-4-UMHoW Reform’ has proven a bridge too far as the chorus of ‘There are no easy answers’ continues playing. [In our experience, people are predisposed to think any Big Picture solution must be convoluted and difficult (‘no pain no gain’ and ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’), which means the simpler and more pleasant a policy candidate, the more difficult it is for them to accept.]
It feels surreal – i.e. we have massive growing problems (in the last 6 years, the 4 SEE-in (Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] components have each doubly worsened) including the Left & Right increasingly at each other (and, like the ’90’s Liberian Civil War, fragmenting) yet we have a simple pleasurable solution, which gives all sides most of what they want (and more than what they’ve got) and from which all sides benefit, yet every platformed person in the world either ignores it or, publicly, has kept it at arm’s length.
Nevertheless, with humanity’s unnecessary suffering stakes so high, we decided to, within Coopetive bounds, ‘do whatever it takes’ – for a lot less, many sacrifice a lot more – in the minimalist hope of initiating, at least, a public conversation.
Of course, when one prosecutes via ‘doing whatever it takes’, people think that’s extreme and, therefore, you’re crazy and, if people think you’re crazy, they’ll laugh rather than listen but, then again, out of the hundreds of thousands of those globally with a platform, the world only needs one serious one to decide to start chatting about it publicly.
Regarding the CDO’s failure, the reasons are potentially:
- We’re wrong about having the solution
- We’re wrong about people searching for the solution
- We’re crazy (or, alien)
- There’s something else going on – for instance, perhaps many platformed-minds are subconsciously trapped by a starting point of bias.
Regarding the first, if our hypothesised solution is mistaken, it should be easy to point out; however, no one has done that.
Regarding the CDO’s original assumption of people, in good faith, searching high-and-low for the solution, on the contrary, such motivations must be miniscule (and, too often, disingenuous).
Regarding being bananas, if we weren’t before, like Jack, at times, we’ve been heading that way – for instance, disgust at us as a species has probed the outskirts, though, in Homo sapiens’ defence, it’s the same anti-Coopetive system we’re attempting to overcome that’s making us selfish such that we care more about our level of retirement Superannuation than we do about the inordinate numbers of our Disempowered fellow citizens who are unnecessarily significantly suffering. Also, like Jack, to cut-through, we do attempt approaches from different angles using unconventional methods.
In terms of alien-thinking, there does seem to be a difference – i.e. whereas the CDO consciously attempts to corral its analysis such that it obeys nature’s systems, many of our platformed seem oblivious to that idea let alone have it as a priority, which often leads them to misuse the overarching SCOT tools of:
- Science
- Citizen-Organisation
- Technology.
Regarding Science, which is defined as the ‘understanding of nature’s systems,’ it should be the source for analysing both Citizen-Organisation-systems & Technology systems.
However, while in the case of Technology, Science is necessarily adhered to by all successful technologists – i.e. if they don’t obey nature, their innovations (plane) won’t physically work (get off the ground) – in the case of Citizen-Organisation, this is the realm of the human-social-sciences.
The social-sciences, which relate to human-nature, include:
- Anthropology
- Sociology
- Law
- Political science
- Media
- International-relations
- Psychology
- Economics.
Unfortunately, in contrast to technology experts, the social-sciences-platformed are often less intellectually-disciplined; hence our SEE-in problems where SEE-in is ‘Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural].’
For instance, rather than critiquing policies via considering their indirect consequences on all SEE-in components, the CDO is yet to see an exception to the tendency of implicitly treating the effects as siloed as per the following examples:
- A social-services executive who wants all help for the Disempowered means-tested when what matters is not that those ‘undeserving’ receive the benefit but that none of those ‘deserving’ miss out (and they’re not harassed) plus the system is economically-efficient because, not only is it better for society, it also enables the economy (i.e. business) to finance that benefit and other benefits
- An economist who, head in the sand, is fixated on balancing unemployment and inflation ‘at a low-level’ when, if not for Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW), unemployment wouldn’t even be a concept
- A military commentator whose solution to the rise of Authoritarianism is limited to marginally increasing the government budget allocation for more soldiers and more and better weapons when if, via increased efficiency, the economy is, for instance, doubled, the military budget can, if desired, be increased 10-fold with everyone still better-off [Also, domestic manufacturing (including of weapons) will, as a matter of course, increase]
- An environmentalist who advocates renewables yet ignores the potential sustainability benefits of an efficient economy when, currently, our economies are, at least (as per Coopetism 5.2 & 5.5), 90% waste (no exaggeration).
[Note: in these 4 examples, the common thread is economics, which is the key social-science discipline influencing all 4 SEE-in components; yet, diabolically, economics’ teaching is:
- Incomplete – i.e. typically, it doesn’t consider The Universal Subsistence Income (USI) nor mention Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) let alone designate it as our defining social-problem
- Contradictory – for example, on the one hand, it points out UMHoW as the source of unemployment yet, on the other, states ‘frictional unemployment’ always exists (in reality, without UMHoW, frictional unemployment doesn’t exist and is just a confusion of ‘non-participation’).
Nevertheless, those advocating social-policy need to be mindful of economic-efficiency.]
Regarding bias, all of us are biased because our experience is biased.
Thus, perhaps the CDO is wrong about the source-problem being Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) – i.e. perhaps, the source-problem is our platformed frequently possess an intrinsic Big Picture bias.
This is reflected in the existence of the Left, the Right and their fragmentations – i.e. each has Coopetive attributes yet none are the full Coopetive package. That is, at their purest, the Left are champions of Cooperation & the Right are champions of Competition; however, their respective bias leads each to demean the other when both are needed as per the Coopetive configuration.
So, given asking our platformed to conceptualise Coopetition hasn’t worked, how can this bias be overcome or, at least, minimised?
Perhaps the solution is a bias-overcoming system, which, training would-be experts to think in terms of overarching systems, expands knowledge, contextualises those knowledge ‘strings’ and leads them to creating nature-consistent systems.
Such a proposed bias-eradicating training system consists of 3 elements:
- ‘A Life Apprenticeship’
- ‘An All-Encompassing Sketch’
- ‘A Holistic System Narrative.’
Life Apprenticeship (LA)
Most of our ‘experts’ have pigeonholed experience,
which limits their capacity to zoom out far enough to see the Biggest Picture.
At 17, the future CDO-founder, in his loungeroom with a few mates having just finished final school exams was asked, “What are you going to do with your life?”
Desiring to be helpful but reasoning being a stereotypical naïve do-gooder should be avoided, an idea struck, “I’m going to do a ‘Life Apprenticeship’”.
The Life Apprenticeship consists of, within reason and bearing in mind not to hurt others (which now is defined as ‘within Coopetive bounds’), doing what one:
- Fears most
- Dislikes most
- Knows/understands least about
- Is worst at.
That thought was like jumping in a Formula 1 vehicle and slamming the accelerator – i.e. it was exhilaration.
Not just a license but an imperative to be adventurous, it promised to rocket the participant multi-dimensionally way beyond their imagination – a boredom vanquisher, which, defying nature’s boredom-lobotomiser of mind-atrophy, means there’s always something next and, almost, the only limit is one’s imagination.
Moreover, not a cheap ‘bungy jump’ thrill – it gave a core justification – to just ‘go for it’.
It was freedom, excitement and purpose tied in a bow as though it were Santa’s greatest ever elf-created gift.
However, it also marked a clear differentiation – i.e. whereas most are attempting to set themselves up and get comfortable, within the LA, comfort is a signal to move on.
Thus, it also cuts in reverse – i.e. constantly starting at the bottom is challenging and, because it’s not easily understood, the ‘crazy’ tag gets bandied. Also, to an extent, it breeds kindred-spirit loneliness plus one’s thinking may diverge from most people’s beyond what one realises – for instance, the CDO’s 2018 misjudgement.
Still, overall, it can be recommended as leading to the richest of lives.
Regarding an LA, obviously, it methodically multi-dimensionally expands one’s ‘strings’ of knowledge.
Regarding the sources of knowledge, experience should be gained via both firsthand and second-hand learning (i.e. study/reading) because, while the latter can deliver a lot of information quickly, the former is more contextualised as feeling rather than just knowing – for example, feeling war is different to only seeing it.
While mistakes aren’t treasured, a preparedness for them is embraced and, when they occur, the realisation of them is treasured because that signals an opportunity to grow, which is the point of the LA.
Part of the process is inviting advice and suggestions but, as per the LA goals, keeping your own counsel.
The LA also acts against snobbery – i.e. continually starting at the bottom is humbling. Also, if one’s knowledge doesn’t much change (or isn’t challenged) then one gets used to what one knows such that, paradoxically, the mind may think it knows more than it does. [The CDO may not seem humble but, for the sake of ameliorating human unnecessary suffering, it’s our duty to not waste time and, therefore, to be direct.]
This is especially important in the case of our platformed who, to this point, are presiding over disaster and so need to be able to accept (if not hunt) new ideas.
Despite cultivating humility, the LA also cures shyness.
In addition, the LA broadens and deepens the Self including empathetically, which, given our experts are often privileged such that they don’t bear the brunt of anti-Coopetive unnecessary suffering, has extra benefit.
Moreover, the LA is particularly good for politicians because, of all professions, ideally, they need to be the Jack/Jill of the ‘Jack/Jill of all trades.’
In the CDO’s case, early on, the importance of economics was realised and quasi-prioritised – for a would-be social-sciences expert, economics is non-negotiable yet amongst social-services (including trade-union) executives understanding of it is usually low. For politicians, without an economics background, a condensed education program must be made available.
However, knowledge is one thing, understanding or contextualisation is another.
All-Encompassing Sketch (AES)
An ‘expert’ whose expertise is contradicted by another field such as economics or science isn’t an expert, which means a social-sciences-expert must have Big Picture expertise.
While it’s not possible to have a Perfect All-Encompassing High-Definition Picture, one can aim for an All-Encompassing Outline or Sketch.
An ‘All-Encompassing Sketch’ (AES) is a single contextualisation of, ideally, all one’s knowledge ‘strings’ (especially from one’s Life Apprenticeship).
In turn, understanding results from contextualisation – i.e. via knowledge strings being contextualised, each string adds understanding to every other element.
In this way, the total (i.e. the understanding) is greater than the sum of its parts (i.e. the knowledge strings).
Regarding the AES, while people are singularly aware, often their understanding isn’t singularised – i.e. their thinking may occur in terms of relatively uncontextualized stand-alone strings, which, not only means there are gaps and they’re not taking advantage of the ‘sum of all parts’, but also usually means there’s contradictions.
Contradictions means one’s perception of truth doesn’t match actual-truth, which, therefore, requires reconciling.
Consistent with this, contradictions are indicators of bias.
The contextualisation process (including of the LA information) teases contradictions out, which, challenging one’s biases, leads to reconciling the contradictions such that the bias is eradicated. [In terms of the Big Picture, if both the Left & Right’s bias can be eradicated then that may lead each to Coopetism.]
Usually, reconciling contradictions only requires tweaking the AES; however, sometimes it can lead to Revolutionary change – i.e. a life-view change, which, turning one’s previous understanding on its head, requires rebuilding one’s ‘All-Encompassing Sketch’.
Ideally, the attitude should be, ‘the bigger the change the better’ because that should mean a bigger jump toward accurately perceiving truth – i.e. the path to truth is via hunting and reconciling contradictions.
Regarding reconciling contradictions, often this will require more information via LA investigation.
Regarding would-be experts, they should keep adding and reconciling LA experiences until their AES can, without contradiction, explain the field they wish to be an expert in.
As an example of all this, the author’s single most defining LA experience was joining the Army Reserve.
At 19, he was thinking (and announcing) that, “All military personnel are trained murderers.”
However, as per the LA, the question-to-self became, ‘What do you know about the military?’
Answer: Nothing.
Thus, he joined the Reserve, which covered a full set of LA criteria – i.e. he expected to hate it, was fearful of it and thought he would be poor at it.
As it turned out he did alright, learnt a lot about himself (as well as the military) and, in retrospect, met the best bunch of people (dependable, with character and integrity) I’ve ever met.
Regarding being a ‘trained murderer’, we spent about 1% of the time firing a rifle and throwing grenades (i.e. practicing killing) and the rest on discipline, physical fitness, bushcraft, theory, tactics, history, mateship, leadership, esprit de corps, pit-digging, rifle-cleaning, shoe-shining, bed-making, uniform-starching, button-sewing, cyclone-training (i.e. resting lying down) etc.
It also led into many other avenues – for example, it was enough military to get Humanitarian Aid contract work with one organisation who valued it and then, with that warzone experience, not enough to be discounted by another who eschewed it.
With that next warzone being a Liberian frontline, my AES was challenged with regards to Capital Punishment – i.e. I’ve always been against Capital Punishment on the basis, not just that society should take the higher civilised ground, but also it should take responsibility for what it plays a part in producing and to assume it has nothing to do with creating the conditions for horrific crime is a dangerous cop-out, which detracts from preventative learning.
However, an incident occurred that led to my AES of being against Capital Punishment becoming qualified such that I became only against it provided a society’s institutions can adequately handle such perpetrators.
Anyway, in sum, if not for the LA/AES, the CDO and the Coopetism theory wouldn’t exist.
Regarding politicians whose remit encompasses humanities’ totality, while no one’s AES can have all the detailed answers for their job’s demands, it can be comprehensive enough to allow reasonable questions to be formulated whose answers can then progressively be incorporated as extra detail in their Sketch.
Holistic Systemic Narrative
For a would-be expert, the goal of all this is, avoiding the naivety trap, to create and advocate for a useful system, which gets to the source of the issues.
First, it’s always the Big Picture that counts most – i.e. avoid being distracted by the ones you see (for example, the photo of a particular child your heart tells you to save) and advocate for the system that saves the thousands or millions who can’t all be photographed.
Regarding our Big Picture problems, a partial solution is no solution – i.e. the solution must solve all the relevant streams of the Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) problems.
And, the indispensable social-science is economics – i.e. if ideas aren’t economically-efficient then they will add to the problem.
Yet economists, who are the guardians of an entire SEE-in sub-category – the only profession who can boast that – are the greatest of sinners because, typically, they predominantly accept our current Squandonomy’s inefficiencies. [Perhaps, upon graduation, all economists should be fitted with ankle-bracelets.]
Regarding the platformed who ‘have a list of 10’, it’s probably more a Band-Aid scattergun than it is a system.
Lastly, guard against the horse called “Self-Interest.”
In the CDO’s case, its attempt at a ‘holistic system narrative’ is, ‘The National Cycle’ …
Coopetism 5.5 Executive Summary
Coopetition: nature’s morality of ‘Cooperation first & foremost and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second.’
Coopetism: government consisting of the 5 optimal Coopetition-catalysing infrastructures (‘Coopestructures’) of:
- Universal Rule of Coopetive Law
- Universal Subsistence Income (USI)
- Universal Liberal Democracy
- Universal Liberal Education (including the Coopetition & Coopetism narratives)
- Universal Healthcare.
The 4 Big Picture Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) national-outcomes are:
- Socio- Optimally-Interactive
- Econo- Maximally-Efficient
- International-Enviro- Fully-Sovereign
- Natural-Enviro- Perpetually-Sustainable.
Of these, the Socio- is most important because it directly relates to citizens and ‘nations are, predominantly, for citizens by citizens.’ Also, the Econo- is a subset of the Socio- because, predominantly, it’s also ‘for citizens by citizens.’
However, currently, we don’t have The USI and, in its absence, instead, there’s the tri-USI-proxy of:
- Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW), which is unemployment’s source
- Labour-market-anti-Coopetive Hire-&-Fire Laws
- Income-Welfare.
Accordingly, rather than just one simple infrastructure, we’ve got 3 complex policy groups.
Not only is this inefficient, which saps national-prosperity, but it also leads to Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS).
Diabolically, SIS hits both the Socio- (including driving extremism) & the Econo- thereby undermining all SEE-in outcomes – i.e. it’s catalysing:
- Poverty
- Employee-exploitation
- Self-actualisation-denying-mental-illness
- Poverty-&-escapism-driven-crime.
The solution is the self-capitalising SIS-&-unemployment-eradicating ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’.
However, the tri-USI-proxy acts as a bottleneck to The USI because many platformed are ‘devil you know’ content to continue arguing either “we need more” or “we need less” irrespective of both scenarios leaving SIS intact, punitive taxes high and creating the unemployment.
[Also, as per Coopetism 5.5, the amount taxpayers pay above receiving The USI (i.e. the net-taxpayer-USI) will likely be less than current income-Welfare and, in any case, the GDP-to-USI ratio will increase from its current figure of, in Australia, just 5 to up to 50.]
Regarding Science, Human-Organisation & Technology (SHOT), while, in S&T, humans tend to welcome transformative change (i.e. revolution), which is called ‘innovation’, they’re more fearful of Human-Organisation innovation where they prefer ‘devil you know’ incrementalism such as, in this case: variations to the annual UMHoW, paid-workplace laws and social-housing & childcare-subsidisation.
Thus, while ‘The USI-4-UMHoW Reform’ is a pleasant revolution, jumping the fearfulness-threshold requires debate, which, prior to a ‘battle of ideas’, requires a ‘mentioning of ideas’, which is challenging because people avoid ‘putting their name’ to a new idea lest they be ridiculed.
The CDO’s had all sorts of people (including some household-names) worry aloud at the prospects for their name – i.e. it eclipses those who are worried about an aspect of the policy.
Hence, this fear of ‘mentioning the idea’ is preventing people publicly asking questions such as, “What about ditching SIS?” or “What about implementing the USI-4-UMHoW Reform?” or “What do you reckon about Coopetism?” etc.
Accordingly, it’s not that the ideas are too big but, as per Coopetism 5.5, while citizens care about their nation (and the world) and social-divisiveness and the Disempowered and economic-inefficiency and the Authoritarian threat and nature’s sustainability and their descendants’ future, our Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) system drives them to prioritise themselves in the short-term even above all that put together.
This isn’t a criticism of citizens but another criticism of our SIS-dominated system’s failure to optimally catalyse ‘nationally-contributive self-actualisation.’
Conclusion
Preferably, our platformed (including experts) should consciously seek to expand their understanding, eradicate their biases and use their portion of public space to advocate for relevant systems rather than non-systemic distractions.
Regarding relevant systems, the solution to our SEE-in catastrophes is Coopetising our infrastructure especially the self-capitalising SIS-&-unemployment-eradicating ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform.’
The logic is there, it’s only our imaginative limits and fear of ridicule stopping a public conversation.
…
Given, currently, apparently, it’s still difficult for politicians and political-parties to adopt the Coopetism or ‘USI-4-UMHoW’ innovations, what about creating:
The Coopetism Party
A technocratic political party whose goal is Coopetism (not electoral nor personal advantage), which, via advocating Coopetive policies, will assist the electorate become comfortable with them such that other parties may more easily adopt them.
Question: while, currently, no voter on Earth has the option of choosing ‘The USI-4-UMHoW Reform’, if you could, would you? [Please reply.]
To politicians and political parties, would you welcome swapping preferences with a minor party who will work Coopetively with you?
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
The Citizens’ Dividend Organisation (CDO)