The Univis 2.4 – For the Sake of Thwarting Homo Sapiens’ Ongoing Suicidal-Genocide, Which of a Nation’s Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) Partitions is Supreme?

The Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) – which is most important? – which should be prioritised?

‘By the Way’ Noticeboard

1st: This Wednesday, March 10 Event

Australian Taxation and Welfare:

Unfinished Business and New Directions

John Quiggin

“The Case for a Guaranteed Livable Income”

Colin Hargreaves

“An Environmental UBI”

Wednesday, 10th March, 4pm, Free Open Seminar

2nd: Article – Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off by Annie Lowrey, March 4, 2021, The Atlantic.

3rd: The United States of America is a Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) underperformer such that of the 5 UEI cornerstones:

  1. Universal Legal Equality – heterogenous
  2. Universal Liberal Democracy – second-rate
  3. Universal Education – highly heterogenous
  4. Universal Healthcare – no
  5. Universal Survival Income (USI) – very poor substitute with a relatively low Universal Minimum-Wage (UMW) and insufficient Unemployment benefit.

[Note: while welfare is 1-way; infrastructure is 2-way – i.e. the UEI, as well as assisting individual citizens, also improves human capital and societal efficiency including unity – which means The USI, distinct from JobSeeker, is infrastructure not ad hoc add-on Band-Aid welfare.]

This explains why, despite its wealth, The U.S.A. has inordinate social-problems.

Regarding The USI, matters could have been very different as Republican President Nixon championed its equivalent as “the most significant piece of social legislation in our nation’s history” and, on April 16, 1970, the House of Representatives voted for it 243 for and 155 against.

‘… Plan Passes House … a Battle Won in Crusade for Reform,’ headlined the New York Times; however, the Democrats decided it didn’t go far enough and eventually passion turned to confusion and obfuscation such that it never passed the Senate.

Nevertheless, with the Biden Covid relief bill including $1,400 cash payments – the third such recent cash payment – passing the Senate on March 6, though yet to be reported as such in the Australian media, the U.S.A. is now in the vanguard, if not charging ahead, toward The USI.

And, the organisation most driving this charge whose motto is ‘Bridging partisan divides to bring families direct relief’ is ‘Humanity Forward’, which, having just celebrated its first birthday, is the brainchild of former Democratic Presidential nominee candidate – whose signature policy was The USI-synonymous ‘freedom dividend’ – and present New York mayoral candidate, Andrew Yang.

For further information, please see https://movehumanityforward.com/.

March 8, 2021

Hi

Given we’re facing a perfect storm of culminating exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes, which are entirely our own-goals, in order to thwart our species’ suicidal-genocide, isn’t it imperative we understand these SEE-3 compartmentalisations including their interrelationship?

And, given our current national vision can be summed-up as ‘Triple-J’ – i.e. ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ – of the SEE-3, obviously, we regard the Econo- as the most important??

The Nation as an Equilibrium

Can’t a society of people – for example, a nation – be thought of as an equilibrium?

That is, isn’t a nation akin to a large and complex yet singular molecule?

And, regarding the equilibrium’s Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) compartmentalisation, isn’t:

  1. The Socio- synonymous with the internal
  2. The Enviro- synonymous with the external?

[Regarding a nation’s Enviro-, it consists of both:

  1. Nature – for example, our air, water and general habitat
  2. International machinations – for example, ‘of the people for the people’ democracy versus illegitimate authoritarianism friction.]

Regarding the Socio- internal and Enviro- external, isn’t the Socio- most important?

After all, with everything from rainforest-clearing by poor subsistence-farmers to concern over plastics in the ocean to riots and Civil War, if the Socio- is inadequate, won’t the Enviro- be sacrificed?

Next, if the Socio- refers to the internal and the Enviro- to the external:

  1. What is the Econo-?
  2. How is it the Econo- is commonly perceived as eclipsing both the Socio- and the Enviro-?

The Econo-: The Socio- Subset

Notwithstanding international trade, the Econo- is predominantly a subset of the Socio-.

[Thus, the phrase ‘Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE)’ could be written as ‘Socio-econo-Enviro- (SeE) with the ‘Socio’ in bold and ‘econo-’ possessing a small ‘e’; however, reading this tends to confuse and tire the mind.]

That is, we rely on the Econo- to produce the positive Socio- outcomes of supplying:

  1. The goods & services we desire
  2. Income
  3. Life-purpose as a contributor in the production machine.

[‘Trickle-down’ is a justification for the Econo- based on its perceived Socio- beneficial trickle-down effects; however, there is an inordinate difference between trickle-down with a full 5 cornerstone set of Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) and trickle-down without.]

The economy’s major benefit is the capacity – particularly since the Industrial Revolution – for its citizens to leverage production of the goods and services we desire through:

  1. Specialisation such as operating a particular machine
  2. Comparative advantage – i.e. concentrating on what one is best at.

And, because, with Science & Technology, these 2 effects are exponentiating – i.e. it’s not like we are each going to build our own television, computer or internet infrastructure system – this is why we prioritise the Econo-.

Also, while the likes of clothes washing machines have improved our productivity around the home and for ourselves, this has been eclipsed by the potential productivity improvements in the Econo-.

Thus, the reason we prioritise the Econo- is due to its spectacular leveraging of our individual production capacity and, therefore, our cumulative production capacity.

However, in essence, the Econo- is just an exchange system.

The Econo-: A Formalised Trading System

The Econo- is a formalised 2-way exchange or trading system.

That is, while ‘trade’ is most usually referred to in 2-way goods & services exchange between countries, more generally, it encompasses any 2-way trading of goods & services between individuals and/or other entities such as business.

This means trade doesn’t include:

  1. 1-way charity
  2. Labours of love – both with respect to people (i.e. caring for a loved-one) and activities (i.e. hobbies – unless one also makes money out of it)
  3. Production that is consumed by those producing it such as if one grows one’s own vegetables, cooks for oneself or cleans one’s own house.

Hence, given charitability, love and self-sufficiency are tremendous virtues within a society, prioritising the Econo- above the Socio- and the Enviro- is societally counterproductive.

The Econo- Prioritisation Perversion

No matter the Econo-’s production prowess, the supreme prioritisation of the Econo- ignores if not trashes such Socio- manifestations as:

  1. A household is society’s most important ‘small business’
  2. The unpaid-carer is society’s most important ‘job’
  3. Companionship is becoming relatively more important as machines increasingly can do our other ‘work’
  4. Children are, literally, society’s future
  5. Citizens’ need for Self-Actualisation and a society’s need for that Self-Actualisation to be Societally-Contributive (whether or not it is an Econo- contribution)
  6. Society should lead by example and the example should be love – which, in case we’ve all forgotten, is unconditional – and, from a societal ‘love thy neighbour’ point of view, the practical manifestation of love is Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI).

Somehow, these truisms are being overlooked such that we are behaving as if the manufacture of such things as ice-cream is more important.

Nor does the supreme prioritisation of the Econo- take into account its damage to the Enviro-:

  1. Regarding the natural environment, the Econo- disproportionately damages it – i.e. performing paid-work, pre- and post- paid-work activities such as transport, unpaid-work substitution such as buying Econo- manufactured food and drink and excess, ‘keeping up with the Jones’’, demand  
  2. Regarding the international environment, the prioritisation of the Econo-, rather than making us less vulnerable to Authoritarian Illegitimates, makes us more vulnerable as it both demonstrates an imperfect model to the Illegitimates’ citizens and, despite our apparent obliviousness, it produces an increasingly non-optimised economy.

Regarding the latter, the supreme prioritisation of the Econo- over, particularly, the Socio- but also the Enviro-, produces a parallel anti-economy.

The Anti-Economy

The economy is optimised by ‘exclusively efficiently producing those goods & services we desire, which we can’t more efficiently produce individually for ourselves.’

[Though part of prioritising the Econo- seems to be to encourage everyone to spend more, while the author can’t speak for others, he has discovered, he can make a black coffee cheaper, quicker and more efficiently (plus without the need for Styrofoam) than Starbucks.]

In this way, it is consistent with Optimisationism – i.e. the vision of ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity maximisation’.

In contrast, however, the anti-economy is a corruption of Optimisationism, which has, at least, 4 types of costs:

  1. The Optimisationism vision cost – i.e. it detracts from ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity maximisation’
  2. The Optimisationism mission cost – i.e. it detracts from ‘Societal-Contribution-harnessed Self-Actualisation maximisation’
  3. The Optimisationism goal cost – i.e. it detracts from prioritising the Socio-
  4. The Optimisationism objective cost – i.e. it detracts from the Econo- goal of ‘exclusively efficiently producing those goods & services we desire, which we can’t more efficiently produce individually for ourselves’.

Regarding purely the latter Econo- objective cost, this manifests as:

  1. Jobs-for-jobs-sake B.S. paid-work – such as excess public service jobs and subsidised/protected private enterprise jobs
  2. Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (‘Triple-M’) paid-work – such as Centrelink, excess legal system jobs and excess mental-health jobs etc.

These B.S. and Triple-M jobs, which don’t add to what we desire, on their own, pervert our economy such that 6 to 7 million jobs (out of the 12.5 million total) exist on a dystopian spectrum spanning from: sub-optimal to completely wasted (akin to digging a hole and filling it back in again) to detrimental.

Nevertheless, apparently oblivious to this, as though the anti-economy is a positive, we include all of it in the measure of our economy – i.e. we include it in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Thus, we have, at least, a dual error:

  1. Prioritising the Econo- over the Socio- and the Enviro-
  2. Including the anti-economy as part of the Econo-

And, while the waste shows in Australia’s lack of manufacturing, in a wealth sense, we can carry these jobs because of our abundance of resources and the extraordinary post- Industrial Revolution Science & Technology productivity improvements.

[Imagine, how wealthy we would be if we just implemented The USI – at least twice as wealthy.]

For example, the productivity improvement from an 18th century cotton-spinning-wheel to a modern clothes-making-machine may, per worker, be 10,000-fold and such productivity improvement is still doubling every 7 to 10 years, which, by the way, is why we have asset inflation.

However, while this productivity success is masking our increasingly inefficient Econo-, nonetheless, it is the source of much of our perfect storm of culminating exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes.

So:

  1. If the Econo- is a subset of the Socio- (and, to a point, the Enviro-), what is driving us to erroneously prioritise the Econo-?  
  2. What is driving us to create such an increasingly mammoth anti-economy? 
  3. What is driving us to ignore Optimisationism’s vision of ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity maximisation’ for our ridiculous ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ national vision especially when unemployment shouldn’t even be a concept? 
  4. What is driving us to eschew Universal Empowerment, Self-Actualisation and Societal-Contribution?

Answer:  All these own-goals derive from our love-affair with the Universal Minimum Wage (UMW).

The Universal Minimum Wage (UMW) Original Error Bad Love

Historically, rather than achieving Universal Empowerment via implementing The Universal Survival Income (USI), we substituted the Universal Minimum Wage (UMW).

However, the UMW doesn’t promote Universal Empowerment:

  1. It fails to guarantee all citizens their Survival Income, which allows poverty
  2. It creates its own Self-Actualisation detraction problems including creating unemployment.

Thus, the UMW doesn’t only fail to eradicate exploitation, it manufactures it in the form of Poverty, Unemployment & Stigma (PUS).

In contrast, The USI is the PUS-Eradicator, which compensates unpaid-work and, in being the ultimate Exploitation-Eradicator, is the most important of the 5 Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (USI) cornerstones.

[Serious about minimising Mental Illness, Domestic Violence and, in general, anti-social behaviour?  Then, put all your spare energy into advocating swapping The USI for the UMW.]

Hence, this one mistake of the UMW instead of The USI distorts and, frequently, prevents Self-Actualisation and Societal-Contribution.

This has created the parallel anti-economy and led to flow-on electoral pressures that have culminated in our ‘Triple-J’ ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ national vision.

Hence, as though chasing the end of the rainbow for the pot of gold, we prioritise the Econo- so as to perpetually pursue full-employment (along with equally ridiculous pseudo-arguments over whether that really means 2% or 4% unemployment).   Although we never quite get there, we don’t think this is because we have the wrong system, we just think we need to do what we were doing a little bit better.

Conclusion

Of the Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE), the Socio- is supreme then the Enviro- and the Econo- is predominantly a subset of the Socio-.

Error begets error, which is why we can’t solve our problems via more-and-more ad hoc add-on Band-Aids but, instead, must retrace our steps and rebuild our societal infrastructure via inputting The USI.

This input of The USI will automatically correct the imbalance such that we prioritise the Socio-.

And, regarding The USI, which has more features than a Swiss Army knife, it benefits our:

  1. Socio-: it is a PUS-Eradicator – i.e. it eradicates Poverty, Unemployment & Stigma
  2. Econo-: it streamlines it to exclusively producing the goods & services we desire, which we can’t more efficiently produce individually for ourselves, while eradicating both jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work and Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (Triple-M) paid-work
  3. Enviro-: regarding the natural, it eliminates irrelevant environment destroying paid-work and provides Universal Empowerment in considering how best to Societally-Contribute and, regarding the international, it demonstrates a strong efficient model, which will undermine authoritarian models.

Most profoundly, The USI promotes Societal-Contribution-harnessing Self-Actualisation, which maximises Optimisationism – i.e. the societal vision of ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity maximisation’.

Thank you.

Best Regards

Paul Ross

Founder

The Universal Empowerment Organisation (UEO) Australia

The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) Australia

https://citizens-dividend.org/
https://www.facebook.com/paul.ross.798
https://twitter.com/paulross2

Humanity is being confronted by a perfect storm of Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) Catastrophes including:

1. Social:

a. Internal: mental illness, domestic violence, drug & alcohol abuse etc.

b. External: our weaknesses boost Democracy’s enemies, which is currently enhancing international rivalry such as with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran;

2. Economic: absolute poverty, relative income inequality, unemployment, homelessness etc.; and,

3. Environmental: ecosystem destruction, species extinction, human population explosion, plastic islands, climate change etc.

Hypothesis: This is due to a single foundational ‘Society-Individual Interface’ contradiction whose deleterious effects are cascading through every facet of society.

The relevant contradiction is the partial absence of the natural-morality-derived ‘Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’ (UEI), which consists of the 5 cornerstones:  

  1. Universal Legal Equality – [In Australia] Yes;
  2. Universal Liberal Democracy – Yes;
  3. Universal Healthcare – Yes;
  4. Universal Education – Yes;
  5. Universal Basic/Survival Income (UBI/USI) – No, not yet.

The Socio-Econo-Environment-Harmonising Universal Survival Income (USI):

It’s not that it is the solution; 
It’s that its absence is the problem.

The Taxpayer-to-Citizen-Transfer [Note: Unlike the Current System, this is not a ‘cost’ but a ‘transfer’.]Around $20,000 per year x 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) + $5,000 x 4.5 million (children) = $386 billion (2018 figures).

This may be achieved by:

1. Reallocating $150 billion of the $175 billion Social Services budget (yes, we are already spending half of what we need), which still leaves $25 billion to top up pensions and disability payments;

2. Abolishment of the Tax-Free Threshold ($35 billion); and,

3. Insertion of a 20% full-breadth GST (no – it’s not regressive if the disempowered are net beneficiaries; also, the wealthy and multinationals’ capacity to avoid a GST is particularly limited), which results in $200 billion minus $60 billion (from the current 10% gap-ridden GST) equaling an additional $140 billion.

In addition to this $325 billion total, there will be massive human-capital, efficiency, societal-involvement and trust gains, which means, not only is the USI easily afforded, we will be, at least, twice as prosperous such that it will amount to a win-win-win in which all community segments – the wealthy; the middle-class; and, the currently disempowered – all win.

In the process, the economy will also be transformed from an ‘environment-destroying jobs-for-jobs’-sake’ ‘own-goal’ one to ‘an efficient production of goods and services we desire’ one.

Then, there is the massive permeating benefit of achieving full-employment.

That is, with everyone both taken care of and invested with the freedom to say ‘no’ to an employer plus the rectification of the present social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work, which will dissipate the stigma of not having paid-work, this means there will be a massive flow of power to the disempowered and working classes, which will result in a workers’ paradise.

Yet, this workers’ paradise will enable significant labour-market deregulation (i.e. everyone is already being looked after so, while we may continue to feel an emotional attachment to, for instance, economy-wide minimum-wages, in practice, there will no longer be a need for them).

And, this means our (pre-Covid-19) 5.7 million volunteers can get paid something and our young, elderly, relatively unskilled, disabled, unpaid-carers, 600,000+ unemployed and 1.1 million+ underemployed can, if they desire, get paid-work (or, more work) and, generally, there is full-employment such that ‘anyone who, at the going rate, wants a job, can get one’.  

In addition, the USI will eradicate the current welfare-to-paid-work distortion where there is a disincentive to acquire paid-work because, in doing so, one loses one’s welfare.

Furthermore, full-employment will result in wages and conditions being bid-up.

And yet, business, as well as benefiting from deregulation, rather than having to tolerate the current crop of unhappy conscripts, will benefit from an army of volunteer workers, which given, with regard to morale and productivity, ‘one bad apple spoils the barrel’, will deliver massive productivity efficiencies.

This means our tradables’ sector – especially manufacturing – will roar back to life. 

The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation’s Commitment (August 1, 2019):

1. Short-term (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; and,
2. Medium-term (end) – At the 2025 Australian Federal Election, the winner has a mandate for the implementation of a USI, which it then prosecutes.

Without The Universal Survival Income (USI),

It’s Impossible to Save the Environment.