The Civilisationist 4.2 – CDO Launches System-Optimising Consultancy

The CDO – All-or-something?

Call for RBA Governor to Explain

“We want to get the unemployment rate down, for the first time in 50 years, to below 4%”

Philip Lowe [Reported by Matthew Elmas (February 2, 2022), The New Daily]

On November 11, 2021, in the article ‘The Univisionist 2.14 – Newsflash: There’s Good Reason to be Up-Beat’, the CDO called-out 8 ‘super-empowered’ Australians.

On the champions-of-Cooperation Left are:

  1. The Prime Minister
  2. The ACTU Secretary
  3. The GetUp! Chair
  4. The ACOSS President.

On the champions-of-Competition Right are:

  1. The Opposition Leader
  2. The Business Council of Australia CEO
  3. The Ai Group CEO  
  4. The RBA Governor.

[Note: Paul Ross wishes to apologize to them (and others) – I thought the CDO’s ideas were self-evident; however, even assuming they’re correct, I now realise this was unreasonable.  I particularly apologise to ACOSS President Peter McNamara for implying his main aim is to follow the ACTU.]

The CDO called them out because we believe each has power enough to kickstart solving our culminating perfect storm of exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) catastrophes.

The implicit SEE-in catastrophe solution relates to the Left/Right divide.

[Note: Coopetition – i.e. ‘Cooperation first & foremost and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second’ – solves the Left/Right divide via transcending the Left-Right paradigm.]

The Left/Right divide is a post-Industrial phenomenon, which arose when ‘everyone-knows-everyone’ communities merged to become ‘societies-of-strangers’.  This was catalysed via the Econo- transformation in which subsistence-farmers who had direct control over their survival needs – i.e. they produced (and bartered for) what they consumed – became factory-machinists who earnt money-incomes, which they then used to obtain their needs/desires.

Optimally, such a national ‘society of strangers’ requires 5 government-administered ‘universal, guaranteed and unconditional’ Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure (CEI) cornerstones – i.e.:

  1. Universal Rule of Coopetition-maximising Law
  2. Universal Liberal Democracy
  3. Universal Education
  4. Universal Healthcare
  5. The Universal Survival Income (USI), which is Survival-Income-Servitude (SIS) abolitionist and, arguably, the most important.

However, with humanity possessing no such conscious narrative, the Left arose as an agitator against the status-quo thereby creating 5 battle-zones – i.e. one for each cornerstone. 

In turn, the Right – as conservatives – arose as resistance to the Left; however, gradually, particularly in the West, the first 4 cornerstones were mostly adopted.  [Note: an exception is the U.S.A., which doesn’t have Universal Healthcare.]

Once adopted, these cornerstones typically became bipartisan, which meant, within that cornerstone’s realm, notwithstanding one cornerstone’s absence destabilises the others – for instance, Poverty detracts from a child’s education – the Left/Right divide dissolved.

Thus, in 2022, most Western countries (including Australia) possess robust versions of the first 4 cornerstones with only The USI unimplemented.

Unfortunately, as a Left/Right battle-zone, The USI cornerstone is unique because, the Left, rather than advocating for the ‘universal, guaranteed and unconditional’ solution, as they did with the other 4, agitated for the proxies of either:

  1. Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW); or,
  2. Communism (the eradication of Competition in the Econo-).

Accordingly, in Australia, we have the ‘perpetual struggle’ between employers seeking to maximise their profit (as they should) but employees, especially those most precarious, because they are Survival-Income-Servitude (SIS) beholden, seeking not to be Exploited.  Subsequently, this has devolved into battles over the UMHoW rate, conditions and other workplace legislation (including discrimination).

The resultant inefficiencies on government, business, employees and society per se means our Econo-, which should be for ‘exclusively efficiently producing and distributing the goods & services we need/desire’ is wasting more than half (and perhaps more than, a staggering, 90%) of our potential Human-Organisation, Science & Technology (HOST) productivity, which, among other things, is disproportionately destroying nature for no goods & services net benefit.

The solution is ‘The USI-Reform’ of trading-in the Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) system for The Universal Survival Income (USI), which means:

  1. No Poverty
  2. No Unemployment (because there’s no UMHoW)
  3. No paid-worker-Exploitation (because with no Poverty and no Unemployment, a paid-worker who feels Exploited can quit their job and choose either to get another or survive while taking a break from paid-work).

Thus, The USI-Reform also extinguishes the Left/Right divide both:

  1. Directly regarding The USI cornerstone
  2. Via overflow into the other 4 cornerstones.

So, regarding the super-empowered 8, given they are most responsible for their organisations’ strategy and, by extension, Australia’s strategy, with just a few words, they could kickstart The USI-Reform’s implementation.

Therefore, in ‘The Univisionist 2.14’ article, we particularly highlighted the RBA Governor because, as our ‘Econo- High Priest’, ‘it’s unthinkable he cannot swiftly grasp it’, which, in retrospect and in-line with my above mea culpa, may be going too far.

What is certain is, since November 2021, the RBA has used monetary policy to drive down Unemployment; however, unsurprisingly, this has led to (Demand-pull) Inflation because, in our current ‘USI-Reform’-absent system, there is something called ‘the NAIRU’ – i.e. ‘the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment’.

[Note: As mentioned, ‘The USI-Reform’, in addition to eradicating Poverty, permanently eradicates Unemployment (also, ‘The USI-Reform’ is benign to Inflation).  That is, Unemployment, which is defined as ‘those who want paid-work at the going rate but can’t get paid-work’, solely exists due to UMHoW, which means monetary policy can never eradicate it.  Also, given UMHoW causes Unemployment, without an UMHoW, there would be no NAIRU.  Moreover, with UMHoW causing the existence of a NAIRU, all other things equal, the greater the UMHoW, the greater the NAIRU.  (Reference: ‘The Coopetitionist 3.5 – Schizonomists’)]

Notwithstanding the NAIRU is a function of the UMHoW rate, given the NAIRU is estimated by Treasury to be between 4.5 and 5% and our Unemployment rate is 3.9%, this means, irrespective of other (external-Cost-push) causes such as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Inflation would be expected to increase.  [Reference: ‘The RBA should have realised the party was over’ (June 15, 2022), Dimitri Burshtein, The Australian.]

Meanwhile, the more Inflation, the more the UMHoW rate is devalued – i.e. with Inflation at 5.1%, the UMHoW rate ($20.33 per hour) has been devalued 5.1%, which translates into an Unemployment decrease; however, the Fair Work Commission will then do what it has just done – i.e. create an internal-Cost-push via raising UMHoW (to $21.38 per hour), which both puts upward pressure on Unemployment and contributes to the likelihood of a wage-price Inflation spiral.

Thus, given the RBA’s core goal is to keep Inflation between 2 and 3%, why did it use monetary policy in a stated effort to drive down Unemployment (to a level below the NAIRU)?  Or, did it think the NAIRU (for our current UMHoW) is below Treasury’s estimate?  (And, if so, why?)  Or, was it testing so as to detect where the NAIRU is located?  Or, …

Objectively, the RBA Governor should explain this.

June 19, 2022

Hi

On August 1, 2019, the CDO crystalised the following goal:

  1. Interim – At the 2022 Australian Federal Election (unlike in 2019), at least one registered political party will have The USI as its signature policy such that The USI is an election issue
  2. End – At the 2025 Australian Federal Election, the winner has a mandate for the implementation of The USI, which it then prosecutes.

Thus, with the 2022 election over – keeping you informed – it’s time to take stock.

The CDO Self-Appraisal

Coopetitionism: government-systems that maximise citizen Coopetition

– i.e. Cooperation first & foremost (often via agreed formalised rules) and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second.

In order to achieve its interim (2022) and end (2025) goals, the CDO intended to:

  1. Develop a Big Picture nature-consistent governance narrative
  2. Advocate the narrative so as to ‘nourish the intellectually aspirational’ and, particularly, ‘influence the influencers’
  3. Shake matters up because many with power seem too comfortable with the status quo.

Regarding ‘influencing the influencers’, the CDO reasoned, if successful, the influencers will reinterpret the ideas, make them their own and, independently of the CDO, prosecute their implementation.  In this way, rather than entering politics ourselves, we wish only to support such leaders.

Regarding the positives …

The ‘Coopetitionism’ theory has been developed such that:

  1. Our source problem has been identified as the prioritisation of the Econo- above the Socio- via the presence of Survival-Income-Servitude (SIS)
  2. The solution is ‘The USI-Reform’ consisting of trading-in the Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) system for The Universal Survival Income (USI).

This theory appears integrated such that it achieves the national vision of ‘sustainable stability-prosperity optimisation’ via a national mission of ‘Citizen Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation maximisation’, which infrastructurally all-but-solves all our Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) issues.

Regarding the CDO’s resources, we have developed:

  1. A significant database of Australia’s most talented and influential (also, includes some international influencers)
  2. A (simple) website to which our articles are posted.

Regarding our emails, opens are healthy, unsubscribes low and, these days, spams all but non-existent, which suggests our readers, while still very wary, are decreasingly outright dismissive.

In addition, over the past 4 years, we have succeeded in regularly making the case via:

  1. Our public newsletters/postings
  2. Newspaper comments
  3. Privately.

Regarding the ‘shake-up’, while our ideas are yet to bubble into mainstream media or politics, we believe enough minds have been sufficiently exposed to Coopetitionism and The USI-Reform that ‘a single seed’ could rapidly initiate ‘an orchard’.

Regarding the negatives …

First, it took far too long (i.e. until the recent election campaign) for us to realise that, what seemed obvious to us, wasn’t obvious to others; however, at least, we understand this now.

Second, regarding ‘influencing the influencers’, while we’ve made inroads, we have hitherto failed to wholesale convince and certainly failed to stimulate action.

This could be because the theory is wrong yet none have made a fist of pointing-out any mistakes.  And, given the theory isn’t fuzzy – for example, it’s not a pro-this-or-that such as ‘pro-environment’ or pro-integrity’ or ‘pro-compassion’ or ‘pro-business’ etc. – and, on the contrary, is definitive, if it’s wrong, there should be numerous substantive anomalies.

Alternatively, perhaps the failure to convince is due to the theory being too unifying.

Seriously – don’t some from the Left & Right, like pairs of undomesticated canines, seem to blood-lust-enjoy barking, biting & burrowing at each other?

Other possibilities include the writing is too long and too rambling and/or the theory is too difficult.

[Note: Sometimes, we receive emails from people who worry they lack intelligence because they’re finding it difficult to grasp; however, on the contrary, to our knowledge, no judge, economist, futurist, journalist, politician, bureaucrat, social-servant, business-leader, think-tankist etc. has yet fully understood it and, even for us who are devoting our lives to it, our understanding continues to evolve.]

However, regarding The USI’s synonym of Universal Basic Income (UBI), there’s plenty of shorter, easier, sharper and cuter stuff out there; however, that’s also yet to cut through.

Moreover, while the theory is challenging, this is mostly due to its newness.  That is, no single component is that difficult; it’s just there are a number of new components and the tying together of the components is also new.  We note, the human-mind can only compute 1 or 2 new things at a time, which is one reason we use repetition and attempt to say the same thing in slightly different ways. 

[Note: We are convinced people are (and need to be) smarter than the foolishness they are often being immersed in (particularly via the media); accordingly, we’re attempting to educate and raise the level of discussion.]

Nevertheless, given all humanity’s other attempts are crashing and no other Big Picture alternative is being offered, we are astonished The USI-Reform is still not part of mainstream conjecture.  It’s as though there is an ‘unconscious conspiracy’ of:

“Let’s try everything else before even discussing the one simple reform that may be able to solve it all.”

So, perhaps, convincing others is outside our control – for example, some of our influencers may be:

  1. Squeamish – i.e. can’t bear to risk their position and social-status
  2. Scheming – i.e. self-interested
  3. Smug – i.e. unrufflable composures prone to peering-down their noses
  4. Unintellectual – i.e. with an impetus on ‘sound-bites’ and the principles of KISS (‘Keep It Simple Stupid’), our social-engineers may have, like dictators who only ever hear “Yes”, stupefied themselves
  5. Unaffected – i.e. most influencers’ lives are still as they want them such that they still have good jobs, good incomes, good lifestyles and high social-status and issues like Climate Change and Put/Xi are still at arms’ length.

2022 Victorian Senate Election

Regarding the CDO’s interim goal of: ‘At the 2022 Australian Federal Election (unlike in 2019), at least one registered political party will have The USI as its signature policy such that The USI is an election issue’, as the theory evolved, the aimed at signature policy became not The USI but ‘The USI-Reform’.

In any case, we failed, which left Paul Ross to run as an independent.

Still, this is the first time in global history that The USI-Reform has been represented.

The campaign highlight was The Geelong Advertiser (as per ‘The Coopetitionist 3.16 – Geelong Addy Becomes a Survival-Income-Slavery Abolitionist Global-Leader’) referencing us on its front-page and giving us top billing (including photo) amongst the candidates.

Most importantly, learning our ideas aren’t easily digested, we now know we must be more patient.

Regarding the result, while publicly aiming for 10,000 primary votes (and privately happy with 2,000), to this point (counting may have finished), we have received 328 primary votes.

So, we’ve made a start but there’s plenty more to do.

Prediction (2022 to 2025): ‘The Breaking’

‘Reality can surprise the mind because a mind’s imagination is limited by its experience.’

Over the next 3 years, in terms of our 4 Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) components, what ‘could’ happen is, in terms of:

  1. The Socio-, due to the increases in the UMHoW rate, social-housing, mental-health professionals etc., these problems are solved
  2. The Econo-, inflation stabilises, growth rises, unemployment drops, the budget moves into surplus and our national debt drops
  3. The international-Enviro-, Putin & Xi die naturally or are otherwise replaced, the next leaders move their countries towards democracy, Russia withdraws from Ukraine, which leads to restabilised international commodity prices and food-provision, and China stops harassing north Asia (and beyond)
  4. The natural-Enviro-, COP 27 solves our climate change problems and our other environmental problems are solved in other ways.

Does this seem likely to anyone?  Perhaps its unlikeliness is something we can all agree on?

So, with our SEE-in components already at catastrophic levels (and exponentiating), the rapid deterioration will swiftly, in principle, open minds to possibilities previously automatically dismissed.

Certainly, regarding our readers becoming less dismissive of our ideas, while we think this is partly due to our arguments’ strength, it’s probably mostly because of the unfolding-reality.

Hence, though currently, to most, The USI-Reform’s implementation is all-but-unimaginable, if the CDO is correct regarding it being the unique SEE-in catastrophe solution then we may be on the precipice of an avalanche of debate, in which case, its power will fast become mass-cognizant such that it could be implemented as early as 2023.

If this occurred then it would be the mother of all resets as some of its positive effects will be near-instantaneous – for example, within a month, no Poverty, and, within 2 months, no Unemployment.  In turn, citizens: from remote community dwellers to city business leaders; from minorities to women; from indigenous to non-indigenous; from youth to aged; from able-bodied to disabled; from domestic violence victims to, and this may sound strange, domestic violence perpetrators will be good-faith empowered and inspired. 

Also, akin to Universal Education, ‘The USI-Reform’ makes us more prosperous, which means the question, “Can we afford it?” doesn’t belong in this paradigm.

Currently, all that’s missing is debate because debate will deliver the willpower.

The third possibility is we continue as we’ve been going (including trying ever more Band-Aiding), which will rapidly result in oblivion.

That is, if matters keep deteriorating, by 2025, at least one SEE-in component will break.  Perhaps, multiple SEE-in components will simultaneously break or the breaking of one will precipitate breaks in others.  If a natural or international-Enviro- breaks such as via war with China then (depending) our society may continue to function for a time; however, if a Socio- (including Econo-) component breaks then this could mean our society ceases (to function).

Of these alternatives, the CDO has faith ‘The USI-Reform’ will be implemented by 2025.

Ongoing CDO Advocacy

For the last 4 years, Paul Ross has been working at the CDO full-time+ yet, until now, the CDO has been run as a zero-revenue Not-For-Profit.

Moving forward, this is unsustainable.

The alternatives are:

  1. Philanthropy – this project only requires $30,000 to $40,000 per 12 months – yes, for just 30 grand, arguably, the world’s best chance of kickstarting the minimisation of global unnecessary suffering can be sustained
  2. Full-time paid-work – this means putting the CDO on ice, which could be justifiable if one believes, akin to an alcoholic who needs to hit rock-bottom, maybe Australia needs a break from the Coopetitionism etc. lectures
  3. Part-time paid-work (say 20 hours per week) – the efficiency of the CDO would probably drop to around 10 to 20% of what it has been because it would suck-out the whatever-it-takes commitment, the prime-time creativeness, database-management would become a much greater fraction etc.
  4. Wait it out a little longer – i.e. with a SEE-in break possibly imminent and the other Paul-specific barriers to obtaining paid-work such as his mad-gination and age (57), there may not be much point.

[Aside: Age-discrimination laws, which are a USI-absence Band-Aid, waste time (and other resources) because employers must feign interest.]

Or, potentially, there is a compromise – i.e. consultancy.

The CDO’s System-Optimisation Consultancy Launch

Given Coopetitionism will at least double Australia’s prosperity – i.e. add $2 trillion per year to income – if your business (or other-organisation) is something smaller than the Aussie economy, perhaps Paul Ross can assist optimise its systems.

As a system-oriented person, he has improved procedures in a broad range of settings including while working:

  • As a business banker for one of the top 4, making around 100 formal written improvement suggestions.
  • As manager of an overseas Chamber of Commerce, increasing membership by 50% in 6 months.
  • As a TAFE administrator, simultaneously performing his job, his boss’ job (long-term ill-health) and, for some months, his boss’ boss’ job.
  • On the production-line at Ford – in one job, increasing productivity 6-fold.

One proposal is for Paul to work in your business (perhaps for 2 to 4 weeks) and, via doing, observing and questioning, detect potential organising efficiencies and/or other opportunities. 

Paul is adaptable, mobile (Australia-wide or international) and can start immediately.

Yes, he is open to other paid-work.

As always, ideas and suggestions welcome.

Thank you.

Best regards

Paul Ross

Founder, Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO)

Principal, System-Optimising Consultancy