The Coopetitionist 3.10 – Amazing Grace: Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) Reharmonisation

If our society’s current Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) configuration were 3-stave organ music (right-hand, left-hand and pedals), it would be cacophonous.

‘The End’

[2023 Academy Award ‘Best Picture’ Movie Plot]

Usually, when the world is about to end – i.e. be hit by the asteroid or invaded by aliens or blown-up – no one believes the messenger’s story of the terrible thing about to happen; so, what about a movie in which everyone knows the world is racing to catastrophe (on multiple fronts) and all know they don’t have the solution but then some nerd sticks-up their hand and waves it around yelling, “There’s a single definitive all-encompassing solution, which is also simple, pleasant and elegant” to which all ‘understandably’ protest, “Are you crazy?  Don’t you know the world’s about to blow-up and the whole of humanity including my kids and their kids are going to be incinerated and we need to start by spending trillions of dollars to slow down the accelerating damage to the environment – besides, I need more luxury-income to keep up with the Joneses and those damn dole-bludgers, homeless and other income-Welfarists keep siphoning my gross-income – so we don’t have time for distractions” and then, as everyone perceptively predicted, the world blows-up. 

‘The End’.

[While, currently, the looming Australian Election gives zero indication it could be the watershed that begins the process of saving humanity,

if you decide it will be

then

it still can be.

And, if you’re thinking, ‘Well, what the Bl__dy Hell can I do?’

Specifically, you can contact the ‘neither Left nor Right’ Democratic Labour Party (DLP) [https://dlp.org.au/contact/] and inform them, if they adopt ‘The USI-Reform’ then you will join their party and vote for them.

Are we supporting the DLP?  No – we will support any party or candidate that adopts ‘The USI-Reform’ and they haven’t done that; however, as far as we can discern, currently, they are the most receptive.]

2022 ‘Amazing Grace’ Budget Analysis

Josh:    It’s all about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) and Unemployment having a 3 in front of it.

Jim:     Triple-J forever plus got-to-lift-wages, got-to-lift-wages, got-to-lift-wages.

Michele: Yes, got-to-lift-wages so raise UMHoW – i.e. raise Universal Minimum Hourly Wages.

CDO: All Unemployment is due to UMHoW and, all other things equal, the higher the UMHoW, the greater the Unemployment, which means following the election (whatever the result), when UMHoW rises, Unemployment will re-rise.

Besides, for the Disempowered (including low-wage paid-workers), it’s not wages that matter but income.  And, adding The Universal Survival Income (USI) means:

Income = The USI + wages.

Solution: ‘The USI-Reform’ – i.e.:

  1. Increase GST to 20% full-breadth
  2. Pay everyone The Universal Survival Income (USI) of $20,000 per year (irrespective of whether or not they are in paid-work), which means someone currently earning $40,000 gross will get around $60,000 gross
  3. Eradicate UMHoW, which eradicates Unemployment/Underemployment.

This means Survival Income Slavery (SIS) is abolished and Triple-J politics eradicated, which means we can prioritise the natural and international environments.

Moreover, Poverty, Unemployment, Stigma (the ‘dole-bludger’ narrative), Harassment (‘mutual obligations’) & paid-work-Exploitation (PUSHE) are all eradicated. 

Yet business enjoys both increased demand (because people have more to spend) and lower costs – i.e. business isn’t directly paying The USI plus there’s less regulation (including no UMHoW), which, in particular, increases their international competitiveness.

Imagine Michele, no worker-Exploitation and low-paid workers with significantly increased incomes.  Imagine Josh, labour market deregulation and unemployment permanently with a 0 both in front and behind it.  Imagine Jim, zero Poverty and the eradication of institutionalised Disempowerment including the abolishment of Survival Income Slavery (SIS).

Thus, via the Amazing Grace of ‘The USI-Reform’, our society’s Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) components are reharmonised.

And, wouldn’t The USI be a lifesaver against life’s batterings whether from floods, bush-fires, spouses, trauma, mental-illness or physical injury/illness?  After all, The USI is an immediate, non-bureaucratic, mobile, non-stigmatic and non-harassing poverty-eradicator.  Also, because it’s only for those citizens who are in-country and not in jail, it helps the tourism industry (and business generally) and discourages crime.

Josh, Jim & Michele:  CDO, you’re a Utopianist – long live Triple-J.

March 30, 2022

Hi

I’m constantly being told such as, ‘your articles are too long’, ‘too complex’, ‘too much change’; meanwhile, I constantly wish someone else would come along and explain it in a way, which I don’t seem to be able to; then, we can just support them.

[Definition of insanity:  Wanting to be a politician.  (No wonder the pollies are policy-useless.)]

Hence, from the start, our strategy has been to ‘influence the influencers’ …

The ‘Influence the Influencer’ Strategy

After 4 years of this ‘influ-the-influ’ plan – i.e. of sending material to Australia’s most gifted, educated, privileged, ‘professionalist’ and influential – we have learnt our influencers frequently:

  1. Irrespective of the truth, don’t wish to be influenced
  2. As Socrates discovered, don’t have their logic ducks in a row, are annoyed by the truth and are only influential because they focus on and are good at politics
  3. Lack imagination, which is further pruned by self-interest, misunderstanding and spinelessness
  4. Protect their place in ‘their’ territory by absenting, distorting and even perverting the facts
  5. Care far more about their relationships – i.e. what others think of them, which massages their income, career and social-status – than about reality or assisting society
  6. Choose not to engage – i.e. their tactic of choice is avoid, ignore, obfuscate, hide and veto so veracity suffocates.  [Which is why we also send our thoughts to those of good faith like you.]
  7. Are more likely to be sociopathic (Cooperate only to Compete) – i.e. if, in the general public, sociopaths are 1 or 2%, amongst influencers, it’s more likely 5 to 10%, including in the social-services where, of course, they’re supposed to be representing the Disempowered.  [Curse: to have seen them ‘playing’ in warzones is to be able to almost smell them in civil society.]

Furthermore, not one influencer – no politician, no community leader, no journalist, no public servant, no ‘think-tanker’ – comments on policy using the prism of, simultaneously, all 4 Big Picture societal objectives, namely:

  1. The Socio-
  2. The Econo-
  3. The natural-Enviro-
  4. The international-Enviro-.

[All policy-analysers (starting with journalists) should be considering all 4 objectives all the time.  It should be a mantra.  How else can unintended consequences be captured and Band-Aiding circumvented?  Unfortunately, currently, the main prism used is that of ‘political’-consequences including an obsession with personalities at the expense of what’s best for our society.]

So, will our listed observations affect the influencers – perhaps, shame them into change?

Without any attempt at reverse-psychology, we know our comments will have zero direct effect on them because they follow the money, the career-path and the social-status.

However, you can change. 

And, if you change, the flow of income, the corporate-ladder and the virtue-signalling will begin changing, which means they will start to change.

Are we being too harsh?

It’s one thing for leaders to be too busy (with the day-to-day stuff) to reflect – this we accept – however, when the ‘Big Picture’ solution to virtually everything worth fighting for (i.e. Disempowerment eradication, societal-optimisation and humanity’s existence) is gifted on a platter, continuously, over a period of years (during which our Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) situation has continued plummeting), to hundreds, thousands and, even, tens-of-thousands of our leaders (who all intuitively know our society is structurally flawed) yet not a single one has mentioned, let alone advocated for, the solution, which is ‘The USI-Reform’, we believe that’s intolerable.

Put another way, not a single influencer has mentioned the one reform that, via abolishing Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) and eradicating Poverty, Unemployment, Stigma, Harassment & paid-worker-Exploitation (PUSHE) is:

  1. Mental-health-delivering – Socio-
  2. Business-unleashing – Econo-
  3. Waste-eradicating – natural-Enviro-
  4. Sovereignty-maximising – international-Enviro-.

And so, facing a culminating perfect storm of interwoven exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes, we have an election in which not a single candidate let-alone party is advocating what Australia and the world needs.

Accordingly, here’s another attempt at the ‘Coopetitionism Mission Statement’ …

The Coopetitionism Mission Statement

Vision: ‘Societal Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) sustainable stability-prosperity optimisation’.

Note: The Socio- is supreme because society (and, therefore, each of the SEE components) exists for and revolves around its citizens (whose core interests are, in turn, represented by the Socio-) – that is:

  1. The Econo- is created for and by citizens, which means the Econo- is a subset of the Socio-
  2. The Enviro- concerns the interaction:
    1. In the case of the natural, between citizens and nature
    1. In the case of the international, between citizens and foreigners.

Thus, in order to optimise the Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE), we must prioritise the Socio-.

[So, are we prioritising the Socio-? 

No – Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) politics isn’t a prioritisation of the Socio-; on the contrary, Triple-J reflects a failure to prioritise the Socio- because Poverty & Unemployment shouldn’t even exist.]

Mission: Coopetitionism – i.e. “minimal government systems that maximise citizens’ Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation”.  

That is, government systems are designed to empower and inspire citizens to, in their way, contribute to society.

Definitions:

  1. Coopetition is ‘Cooperation first and foremost and Competition the treasured second’. 

[In modern human societies, Coopetition exists as rules-based sport, civil-debate & democracy and also may be imagined as an efficient non-exploitative (i.e. Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) Abolitionist) free-market economy.]

  • Coopetition is nature’s morality – i.e. it’s ‘natural morality’.
  • In nature – from bacteria to traditional human-societies – society is the supreme manifestation of Coopetition.
  • Evolving out of ‘society of strangers’, Government is a top-down monopolist, which transcends the requirement for respect of particular people by replacing it with respect of institutions and their accompaniments such as uniforms. 
  • Government optimisation is achieved with Coopetitionism – i.e. “minimal government systems that maximise citizens’ Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation” – which maximises the catalysation of Coopetition between society’s bottom-up entities – i.e. its individuals, families, businesses, trade-unions and other non-government organisations.

Note: Currently, the national mission is, effectively, ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’ (or, ‘Triple-J’).

Core Values: Infrastructurally encompassing the full-spectrum of human-rights, Coopetitionism inspires and empowers citizens (and foreigners) to both:

  1. Find and pursue their own Coopetitively-contributive self-actualising path
  2. Inspire and empower other citizens (and foreigners) to find and pursue their Coopetitively-contributive self-actualising path.

Note: If one is behaving Coopetitionally then one is not acting as a racist, a sexist or, in any other way, pejoratively.

Strategy: With the government’s tool for impacting society being legislation (and its enforcement) – i.e. the Law – Coopetitionism requires the implementation of ‘Rule of Coopetition-maximising Law’ because it maximises citizens’ desire and capacity to Coopetitively-contributively (or, societally-contributively) self-actualise.

Note 1: It is often said, “There must be ‘The Rule of Law’”, which is true – the Law must apply universally – however, the Taliban have law, apartheid was law and there’s Putin (& Xi) law so ‘The Rule of Law’ is, self-evidently, by itself, deficient.  That is, the Law should maximise the benefit to citizens, which includes encompassing their empathy toward both foreigners and non-human animals.

Note 2: While the government has the choice of Band-Aids or (societal-wide) Infrastructure, in order to adhere to Coopetitionism’s minimalism requirement, the Law should be exclusively Infrastructure.  That is, Band-Aids represent either a failure of Infrastructure or profligacy, which means, currently, there is overwhelming inefficiency – for example, our income-Welfare Band-Aid (mentioned below).

Action Plans & Policies:

Given the Socio- (including the Econo-) must be prioritised via Coopetition Infrastructure, the question becomes how to infrastructuralise:

  1. Citizen Cooperation (first and foremost)
  2. Citizen Competition (as the treasured second).

Regarding the latter, laws (particularly those concerning the Econo-) should be structured such that, Competition-reward is merit-based.

Regarding the former, there must be a Citizen Empowerment minimum, which is non-Competitive and purely-Cooperative, consisting of:

  1. Universal Education
  2. Universal Healthcare
  3. The Universal Survival Income (USI), which is, of course, the glaring omission.

[Note: The USI abolishes Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS), which arose out of the Industrial Revolution when subsistence-farmers transitioned away from self-sufficiency to become income-earning factory-machinists, which, in turn, meant they lost direct control over their survival needs.  Hence, The Universal Survival Income (USI), which differentiates Survival-Income from Luxury-Income, should have been an Industrial Revolution inheritance.]

This allows all citizens to Cooperatively-Compete – after all, one can’t Compete very well when one doesn’t know much, is sick and/or has an empty-stomach.

[Note: Regarding social-housing, while for some disabled, housing related expenditures will be part of their Healthcare, for the able, with The USI, it is not needed.  Moreover, social-housing for the able, though increasingly fashionable, is yet another Band-Aid, which has targeting inefficiencies, is inevitably disproportionately expensive and restricts mobility, which reduces agility in accepting opportunity – i.e. the aim is to Empower; not to find yet another way to bog citizens down in Disempowerment.]

Thus, collectively, Coopetitionism requires Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure’s (CEI) 5 ‘guaranteed and unconditional’ cornerstones:

  1. Universal Rule of Coopetition-maximising Law
  2. Universal Liberal Democracy
  3. Universal Education
  4. Universal Healthcare
  5. The Universal Survival Income (USI), which abolishes Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS).

Currently, due to The USI-absence, we have:

  1. Citizens forced to prioritise obtaining their and their family’s Survival-Income rather than prioritising contributing to society
  2. We have a perverted Econo-.

Of our SEE components, the Econo- is supposed to be the one bright-spot – i.e. while Socio- measures such as mental-health are nosediving and our Enviro- both natural and international are rapidly, perhaps irredeemably, deteriorating, at least GDP and the sharemarket are rising, right?

Yet, the Econo’s- apparent improvement doesn’t take into account Science & Technology innovations, which are delivering exponential potential productivity improvements.

That is, our potential productivity is doubling every 7-10 years, which means, since the Industrial Revolution, while per person potential-productivity has improved perhaps 10,000-fold (including, since 2012, more than doubling), Australia’s per capita income is just 216 times that of Burundians, who, as the poorest in the world, are poorer than the 1760-era British.

Thus, our exponential S&T potential productivity improvements are camouflaging exponentiating Econo- inefficiency, which, among other things, means exponentiating natural-Enviro- damage for absolutely no increased human-benefit.

The Australia-Burundi figures speak for themselves – i.e. given the Burundian tragedy, our per capita income should be around 10,000 times Burundi’s yet is only 216 times.

Even if it is somehow only 1/10th true, it means Australia can be 5 times as prosperous without any increased use of resources.  Among other things, this means instead of being 10% the size of China’s economy, we should be, effectively, 50% of it.  

[Without blinking, we could stop all Iron Ore shipments to China – apologies to Gina and Andy – thereby crippling Xi’s ability to do anything more than tie his shoelaces then, amongst other things, dictate he get his blood-soaked hands off the Antarctic and the South Pacific.]

So, why is the Econo- outrageously inefficient and how can we fix it?

The answer is Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) and The USI-Reform, respectively.

That is, the Econo’s evolved natural purpose is, rather than to provide Jobs, to ‘exclusively provide the goods & services we need/desire’; however, due to the Universal Survival Income’s (USI) absence, there is Poverty, which manifests as Survival Income Slavery (SIS), which has led to paid-worker-Exploitation, which led to the Left/Right divide, which led to the evolution of the Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) Band-Aid (currently $20.33 per hour – is there anything in nature that looks like an UMHoW?), which manufactures Unemployment/Underemployment, which, conflating with Poverty, has led to the evolution of the income-Welfare Band-Aid, which, in turn, has led to:

  1. Excessive Band-Aid regulation on business
  2. One-bad-apple-spoils-the-barrel office-politics
  3. The ‘dole-bludger’ narrative including its racist and disablist variants
  4. ‘Mutual obligations’ harassment
  5. Fall-through-the-gap mistakes, delays and expensive bureaucracy
  6. The fracturing of the Left/Right divide into Identity-warfare
  7. Massive mental-illness
  8. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) politics, which, elevated to our national mission, displaces our other Socio- and Enviro- priorities.

Thus, in order to recalibrate the Econo-, the solution is to implement ‘The USI-Reform’, which pleasantly consists of substituting The Universal Survival Income (USI) infrastructure for the 2 Band-Aids of:

  1. Our current income-Welfare system (inc-Wel) – including abolishing Centrelink, Job Service Provider (JSP) contracts and Jobseeker payments
  2. The Universal Minimum Hourly Wage (UMHoW), which ‘invented’ Unemployment/Underemployment and restricts business.

Then, in this way, with the Socio- automatically infrastructurally optimised, the government can put its full manual focus on optimising the balance between:

  1. Luxury-income
  2. The natural-Enviro-
  3. The international-Enviro-.

That is, with the Socio- optimised (including no institutional Poverty or Unemployment/Underemployment), the current national mission of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) is vanquished, which means via ‘The USI-Reform’s’ Amazing Grace, the Econo’s status as a subset of the Socio- is rightfully recalibrated, which, in turn, also reharmonises the Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE).

Thus, the current prioritisation of the Econo- above the Socio- – i.e. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) politics – indicates an extraordinary societal-wide failure.  However, because it’s all we’ve ever known and we’ve never been provided with an alternative, we believe the Triple-J obsession to be necessary – i.e. on this issue, akin to the North Koreans in their love for Kim Jong-un, we are mind-washed.

Conclusion

While Slavery is clearly incompatible with Coopetition, because Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) is all we’ve ever known and, until now, has never been contested, there is a mass mind-washing into thinking it’s the way it should be or, even, must be. 

However, ‘The USI Reform’ is the simple, pleasant and elegant SIS-abolishing solution, which will, in turn, reharmonise our Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) components such that we achieve sustainable stability-prosperity.

And, while many remain to be convinced, historically, a majority of citizens were against Universal Liberal Democracy, Universal Education and Universal Healthcare yet, now, we not only have them but they also have bipartisan support.

So, if you wish to ‘make a difference’, please contact the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) (https://dlp.org.au/contact/) and ask them to adopt The USI-Reform.

Thank you.

Best regards

Paul Ross

Founder, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO)

Prospective 2022 Independent Senate Candidate (Victoria)