Univ 12 – Universal [Open] Submission to the Disability, Aged, Covid-19 Taskforce & NCCC Inquiries: The Universal Empowerment (Disempowerment Eradication) Solution

This is a Joint Submission to:

  1. The Disability Royal Commission;
  2. The Aged Care Royal Commission;
  3. The Covid-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce; and,
  4. The National Covid-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC).
Big Picture Blue Sky: The Universal Empowerment Goal

Coincidence?

Can it be a coincidence we simultaneously require 4 such inquiries (and others including recently into banking, natural disaster arrangements, child-abuse, child detention, mental-health etc.)?

In addition, can it be a coincidence Class- & Identity-warfare (CAIW) polarization – for example, the Black Lives Matter protests – is increasingly pervasive?

Moreover, can it be a coincidence our across-the-board Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes – from homelessness to increasingly skewed economic power to plastic clogging the oceans – are culminating exponentially?

In sum, can this culmination of 3 broad cross-confirming sets of calamities be a coincidence?

The Causality

It was once said, ‘All roads lead to Rome’; however, in order to reflect Rome as the causality, this can be rephrased as ‘All roads lead from Rome’.

Analogously, it is posited here, our current adversities are symptoms stemming from a common source, which, immune to our current ‘treating of symptoms’ approach, constitutes the reason this is a joint submission.

The Common Causality

Imagine not only systemically solving the issues you’re individually tasked to solve but also both:

  1. Solving the issues of your compatriot inquiries; and,
  2. Pre-empting future inquiries such as to make them obsolete.

Similarly, imagine the focus and power of the 4 (diverse) inquiries producing reports to government with a reinforcing focus on a common once-and-for-all integrated across-the-board solution – wouldn’t it make the commonality un-ignorable?

Moreover, imagine this policy is not-at-all painful but, on the contrary, is liberating and prosperity creating.

Gain without pain because it’s smarter not harder.

Furthermore, imagine, via that same single policy, achieving a salvatory ‘society before self’ Australia.

Societalism:

Nature’s Universal Societal Goal: In nature, from bacteria to sentient-animals, society’s individuals are unified in the purpose of ‘society before self’.

Modern Humanity’s Goal: ‘A society united in maximising sustainable stability-prosperity’.

Means: Implement societal-systems that maximise citizens’ earnestness and capacity to, natural-morality, put ‘Society Before Self’.

That is, finish implementing The Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’s (UEI) 4 Cornerstones:

  1. Universal Liberal Democracy;
  2. Universal Healthcare (Medicare & The NDIS);
  3. Universal Education; and,
  4. Universal Survival Income (USI).

[∴ ‘Close the Disempowerment Gap’]

Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) will fully convert the current empowered/disempowered paradigm into an exclusively empowered one.

‘Society before self’ is natural because it’s a morality that is self-perpetuating – i.e. it makes society stronger, which strengthens its citizens, which, in turn, makes society stronger and so on.

The Supreme Societal System:

Adoption of the ‘society before self’ concept as the sole criteria for all formalised societal-systems.

‘Society before self’ is also the ultimate solution to mental health issues because when one is focused on helping others, one can’t be focused on oneself.

The ‘Society Before Self’ Prerequisite:

Under normal ongoing circumstances, in order for a person to be able to put ‘society before self’, that person must be confident their survival consumption is guaranteed.

That is, one way or another, having enough shelter, food and water is inviolable, which is why even prisoners are in-kind guaranteed it.

[How can we have manufactured a situation in which some are better off in prison than outside it?]

If people don’t have enough basics, they will put ‘self before society’, which, natural-morality-violating, will ultimately, if evident amongst a critical-mass of society’s citizens, lead to the anarchical manifestation of societal-collapse.

[Is this, in the West, what we are beginning to witness?]

The Source of the Issue Questions:

1. What non-optimal societal-system is preventing the maximising of citizens’ earnestness and capacity

to, natural-morality, put ‘Society Before Self’?

2. What structure of societal-systems will maximise ‘society before self’?

Unnecessary Suffering

When a society’s systems aren’t optimal, the comparatively vulnerable and disempowered disproportionately Unnecessarily Suffer.

The Means- (i.e. Income & Wealth) Testing Catastrophe

‘Means-testing is glorified because it is targeted so as to avoid the undeserving – either rich or ‘lazy’ – receiving the allowance yet, counterproductively, it manufactures the insidiousness of societal-division and, rather than vanquishing disempowerment, structurally promotes it.

Hence, it is not a way to empower the disempowered; on the contrary, it serves to entrench disempowerment.’

July 12, 2020

To the Commissioners/Committee-Members:

Given the immense ‘Unnecessary Suffering’ associated with the issues you are each addressing, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) and, the new, Universal Empowerment Organisation (UEO) thank you for this opportunity to contribute.

Submission’s Scope

First, in general, we believe there are two types of non-optimal systems:

  1. Generic non-optimal societal-wide systems (societal-systems); and,
  2. Specific non-optimal localised-systems.

This submission confines itself to the former for three reasons:

  1. We don’t have the requisite expertise for the latter;
  2. The nature of localised’-systems’ means they will be specific to each of the 4 inquiries; and,
  3. We suspect the former is the far greater problem, which, given it is not being addressed, explains why the problems are exponentiating rather than dissipating.

We trust this generic systemic approach won’t be considered outside your respective inquiry’s scope.

Introduction

As stated, ideally, societal-systems should:

‘Maximise the earnestness and capacity of individuals to

put their ‘society before themselves’,

which, amongst sentient-animals, may be termed ‘natural-morality’.’

Societal-systems (both formal and informal) are, by definition, foundational – i.e. they affect all citizens’ psychology and, therefore, behaviour – which is why the various nations/communities of the world are so diverse.

Consider, for instance, the distinctions between The UK, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Brazil and China.

Hence, should a formalised societal-system be natural-morality contradicting then it’s to be expected we would witness the adverse consequences bubbling through precisely as the kind of across-the-board phenomena that’s, indeed, occurring.

‘But, regarding the abuse of the disabled and the aged, how can such citizen-inflicted horror be a symptom of a so-called non-optimal societal-system?

As humans, don’t we each have a decision-making mind and the ability of free-choice? 

Thus, these perpetrators are not like the rest of us – they should be ashamed. 

We need to prevent these sub-human predators getting anywhere near our most vulnerable and, should they bypass our screening, be able to catch them (perhaps, more cameras) before they can cause too much harm then throw the book at them.

Lock them up and throw-away the key or better still (in the obscenest cases), bring back capital punishment, and quick-march them to their just deserves.

I mean how can we unemotionally imply the abhorrent abuse is just a canary in the coalmine for a non-optimal societal-system?

Similarly, regarding Covid-19, how can the ‘self before society’ decision to go out in public when one is sick, to not wear PPE when one should, to meet with more people than is allowed or to flout social-distancing be a symptom? 

And, regarding the current catastrophic job and business losses, they’re just a symptom of Covid-19, right?’

Notwithstanding such arguments, we believe:

  1. As stated, all the issues covered by the 4 inquiries are predominantly symptomatic of a common societal-system causality; and,
  2. Pre-emption is preferable to treatment.

Societal-Systems

Societal-systems impact our collective mentality and our behaviour to the point of ‘mind-washing’ – it’s inescapable – we are all a function of our experience including our culture and, consequently, this necessarily mind-washing presence cannot be considered ‘bad’; only the various effects should be critiqued.

So, the question is: are our societal-systems maximising the earnestness and capacity of individuals to put their ‘society before themselves’ or, in some respects, are they producing perverse outcomes?

That is, do they promote ‘society before self’ contribution or ‘self before society’ ‘feather one’s own nest’ and ‘look after number 1’ selfishness?

In order to identify any such deleterious societal-system in Australia, we believe, notwithstanding the enormity of the challenge, it is necessary to contextualise it within the entire scope of human societal development…

Human Societal-System History [Summarized]

Hunter-gatherers

‘A society’s sustainable stability-prosperity is optimised

when its societal-systems

maximise the earnestness and capacity

of individuals to put their society before themselves’.

With respect to hunter-gatherer societies, Post-Industrial Revolution societies are characterised by two major differences:

  1. They are ‘societies of strangers’; and,
  2. Members, rather than directly obtaining their survival needs – i.e. shelter, clothing and food – typically receive them indirectly via money income and ‘the market’.

…

Originally (i.e. pre-history), human societies had two main characteristics:

  1. They were hunter-gatherers, which is the most direct means of obtaining one’s survival needs; and,
  2. Everyone knew one another such that trust, which is necessary for society’s definitional prerequisite of cooperation, was based on interpersonal familiarity.

As hunter-gatherers, humans, like all other sentient-animals, didn’t have an ‘economy’ or a ‘market’ (whether for ‘goods & services’ or ‘labour’), which definitively indicates both:

  1. Despite the common modern misconception, one’s contribution to society is definitely not confined to the market – examples, society’s most important job is the unpaid-carer and, to some minor extent, hopefully, this document; and,
  2. In principle, the natural way of gaining one’s personal sustenance is in a non-market fashion.

[Whether there is a market or not; whether it is working or not; whether everyone can participate in it or not; whether some are locked away from it or not – one way or another, each person must have their Personal Survival Needs (PSN) met or they will (and are, in any natural sense, entitled to) put ‘self before society’.  Thus, since our society’s foundational role is to ensure all its citizens receive their Personal Survival Needs, currently, our societal-systems are failing as evidenced by people living on the streets, starving, being forced to beg for charity and, generally, being disempowered such as to be exiled from the mainstream.]

Then, there arose the innovation of farming.

Farming

In comparison to hunter-gathering, which is a direct mechanism of obtaining one’s survival needs, subsistence-farming is a one-step indirect means.

That is, while subsistence farmers are still the supplier of what they most demand, unlike hunter-gatherers, it takes an extended period of time, which means, for example, it can be destroyed by inclement weather.

In addition, farming, rather than being a substitute for hunting & gathering, was far more a compliment, which meant, with their hunter-gatherer skills largely unlost, they could, as required, toggle between farming and hunter-gathering.

Also, with farming, they always had some control over their sustenance both via labour and thought.

That is, if one crop failed, they could try another; if one type of animal didn’t survive, they could likewise try another; and, if need be, they could invest more hours or try irrigation or different types of shelter etc.

In addition, with farming, in comparison to scavenging, they could specialise thereby, potentially, producing much more.

And, among other things, this promoted barter.

Barter

Bartering, as well as operating as a ‘same-time’ exchange, can also operate intertemporally – i.e. across time.

Intertemporal exchange – in which there is a promise, in the future (such as at the time of harvesting), for a product – is what we know as, ‘credit’.

And, with the increasing complexity and agreements between people who, in some cases, also lived increasingly further apart and were increasingly tenuously related, there arose the use of items representing stored value – i.e. money – of which there were two types:

  1. Directly stored value – such as shells, seeds, gems and metals;
  2. Indirectly stored value – i.e. a person’s promise, which, when formalised in writing, is termed an IOU, which, in turn, is the forerunner of paper money.

With money, there evolved a goods & services market in which a seller’s goal was to, rather than barter for other products, earn money, which could then, indirectly, be used to buy products.

[At this point, psychologically beginning to yearn for money as opposed to the specific items they wished to consume, these days, people say things such as ‘I wish I had more money’.  Thus, rather than money being correctly perceived as a means to an end, it has become perceived as the end.  Among other things, this ‘cart before the horse’ phenomenon, has led to such theoretical perversions as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).]

Also, from this point on, people may have evolved the capacity to be consciously cruel – i.e. with people the only animal that uses other animals indirectly as tools, there arose an evolutional advantage in using (over a period of time) sentient-animals (including other people and including the abomination of slavery), which often required a capacity to be ruthless and cruel.

[Regarding the scope of your respective inquiries, assuming the capacity to be cruel is now inherent within humans, since cruelty can only occur where the victim is disempowered, this reinforces the case for focusing on optimal disempowerment-eradication societal-systems.]

Regarding the economy, at this point, it was a natural exclusively demand-driven economy devoted to efficiently producing the goods-and-services we desire without any 20th/21st century jobs-for-jobs’-sake secondary component.

Meanwhile, due to economies of scale, which included a society’s self-defence, in the most substantial farming-conducive locations, these societies grew to become ‘societies of strangers’.

Societies of Strangers

Societies of strangers have a massive problem – i.e. if one doesn’t know a person, is unconnected with them in any familial way and hasn’t had ongoing dealings with them, how can one trust them?

The solution to this ‘society of strangers’ problem is, buttress one-to-one trust with trust-enhancing societal-systems.

Thus, still in prehistoric times, there evolved the top-down entity of government, which, in addition to battling other societies for territorial control, implemented internal security and efficiency system infrastructure especially regarding law-enforcement, transport, information-flow and government-issued money.

And, within this increasingly complex framework, there arose the paradigm of society-internal ‘identity-groups’.

Identity-Groups

First, within a ‘society of strangers’, identity-groups are unavoidable.

Second, the types of groups extend to:

  1. Interest;
  2. Belief;
  3. Skills;
  4. Stage of life;
  5. Genetics such as race and gender; and,
  6. Social-status or class.

Third, identity-groups are defined by:

  1. What they are and what they are not; and,
  2. What they do and what they don’t do.

For example, an art group may be of people who enjoy drawing rather than painting.

In this way, there is an ‘us and them’ element of differentiation, which may or may not be provocative.

Fourth, with respect to the greater society’s ‘sustainable stability-prosperity’ goal, groups can either assist or be deleterious.

Identity-Group Facilitation of ‘Nature’s Universal Societal Goal’

There are two types of societies:

  1. Those with relatively healthy societal-systems – i.e. those approaching full implementation of Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’s (UEI) 4 cornerstones – in which, from within, there may occur incremental management and improvement; and,
  2. Those requiring revolution.

In the case of the former, identity-group members should see themselves and their group as subordinate to the society.

Ideally, even one’s self and family should be seen as less important than one’s society – which is why, when necessary, its sons and daughters go to war.

In general terms, groups represent competition and there is massive benefit in competition, provided it is Cooperative-Competition – such as organised and regulated sport (or, perhaps, a competition of ideas concerning optimal societal-systems) – as opposed to Uncooperative-Competition – such as street-brawling.

[Specific examples of good groups are your respective inquiries, which each employ Cooperative-Competition principles.]

Nevertheless, in some cases, the distortion can be such that it becomes ‘group before society’, which, rephrased as ‘my group before society’, constitutes a version of ‘self before society’, which, of course, directly violates ‘society before self’.

And, the most prone, insidious and potentially festering forms of ‘group before society’, derive from the empowered/disempowered paradigm because, in this, they can grasp maximum traction.

The Empowered/Disempowered Paradigm

The disempowerment component of the empowerment/disempowerment paradigm strikes directly and structurally at natural-morality – i.e. it is impossible for the disempowered to earnestly, let alone with all their potential, put ‘society before self’.

And, while, within hunter-gatherer ‘society of familiarity’ tribes, there is a hierarchy, it typically exists within the ‘society before self’ framework in which, with everyone important, it is grounded in merit.

However, in ‘society of strangers’, there arose an empowered/disempowered structural paradigm manifesting as ‘class’.

Class: ‘The Empowered Before Society’

With the empowered-class consisting of leaders in governance, business, security, religion, health and education, the disempowered existed within different grades of disempowerment.

There are two types of class structures:

  1. Entrenched – such as the racially-based cast system; and,
  2. Flexible – for example, where movement can occur via skill-development or marriage.

However, regarding the latter, since all are resistant to falling in class, this leads many to use their power to keep those below them comparatively disempowered, which, among other things, gives rise to frictional non-merit entitlement.

[Please note: This is partially (and only partially) rebuffed by Universal Liberal Democracy, which, diluting the power of the comparatively empowered, drags power toward and into the sphere of the majority; however, while, traditionally, the majority necessarily included at least some of the disempowered, in modern first-world countries (such as Australia) with a large middle-class and a disempowered proportion of perhaps 20%, the disempowered may still miss out.  In Australia, prior to Covid-19, this has been the situation – i.e. many of the relatively small and divided disempowered minority were condemned to live on a Newstart allowance, which was too low given the other societal structures, however, post Covid-19, many more have been added to the unemployed such that the minority has suddenly become far more electorally powerful, which is one reason its replacement Jobseeker is, so far, twice that of Newstart.]

The most pertinent determinant of class was based on one’s ‘income-receiving-mechanism’.

And, the prejudice pertaining to this income-receiving-mechanism is here termed – akin to racism, sexism etc. – ‘Incomism’.

Income-receiving-mechanism prejudice (Incomism) was characterised by:

  1. On the part of the relatively disempowered, deference; and,
  2. On the part of the relatively empowered, an ‘I’m better than you’ snobbish superciliousness.

[Despite Australia’s claim to egalitarianism, as is detailed below, this is still very much in evidence today and has even become increasingly virulent.]

While the disempowered’s lack of power was correlated with:

  1. A lack of education;
  2. Low resources;
  3. Lack of security; and,
  4. Being dispersed;

the major cumulative reason was a lack of organisation.

This lack of organisation, not only prevented them colluding out of their disempowerment, it also led to fighting amongst themselves.

Hence, with the empowered-disempowered paradigm incorporating the highest of stakes, it typically manifested as a societal-wide ‘my group/class before society’, at least, partial violation of natural-morality.

Meanwhile, the empowerees executed their power in terms of a duality.

The Empoweree’s Dispensing of Power

The empowered dispense their power via two main avenues:

  1. The market – i.e. directly via the goods & services they could buy and also in the labour market;
  2. Non-market – i.e. directly via persuasion and force, which may indirectly involve the market such as employing thugs.

First, regarding the market, with class partly a matter of perception, it was reflected through the power of wealth, income and career.

Hence, while, originally, the market was a means to an end – i.e. to get the item one wants – it increasingly became the end, which began distorting lives away from seeking to ‘society before self’-contribute and toward personal market prowess.

[These days, in the West, the market is regarded akin to a monotheistic God; however, as can be seen by looking at the 80% of the world that isn’t developed, a strong base (including security, which is most securely achieved via Universal Empowerment rather than Authoritarian majority-disempowerment) is the most important factor and the market is the very delicious very important ‘cherry on top’.]

In addition, the worth of an activity to the market is not necessarily correlated with the worth to society – i.e. paid-work may interfere in appropriately raising one’s children, which may have vast, even intergenerational, deleterious effects.

Hence, there is often a market ‘conscience-compensating’ salary premium.

An extreme example is enormous tobacco executive remuneration.]

That is, in terms of the empowered/disempowered paradigm, how one receives income and how much income one receives manifests as the supreme determinant of both social-status and perceived self-worth.

Thus, there arose ‘self before society’ Materialism – i.e. a glorification of getting rather than contributing.

[Currently, after the population explosion, Materialism is the second greatest causer of environmental destruction.  Of course, environmental destruction has indirect yet massive relevance to all 4 inquiries and it will not be solved by solar panels (or, even, nuclear energy) – on the contrary, it can only be solved via, once again, optimal societal-systems.]

Second, regarding non-market power, this included using war.

Regarding war, the empowered used the disempowered to wage war on other societies – also the disempowered sometimes rebelled against the empowered – which has led to colossal continual upheaval and conflagration – both external and civil – and mass migrations.

[Some tend to think of wars as a natural inescapable human condition yet whether or not they occur predominantly depends on our societal-systems – for example, no two liberal democracies have hitherto waged war upon one another.  Hence, with the empowerment/disempowerment paradigm still ubiquitous, we should be confident, if we optimise our societal-systems, we can solve problems extending from Disability/Aged Care/wider-health problems to pandemic pre-emption/management to an optimal all-empowered economy to a sustainable environment.  Similarly, if we don’t optimise our societal-systems, we can expect continuing exponentiating disaster.  Lastly, optimising our societal-systems is the one and only way to defeat tyrants such as Xi because:

  1. It will optimise our economy, which is necessary in order to optimise our defence; and,
  2. It will maximally demonstrate to mainland Chinese citizens the benefits they are missing – i.e. currently, Chinese citizens look at the U.S. (and even Australia) and correctly see a lot of problems; however, what if our societal-systems were such that there was zero structural disempowerment?]

Within this context, there was also the complicated role of religion, which, while usually advocating equality and morality, in practice, sometimes violated natural-morality.

In addition, the empowered/disempowered paradigm’s injustice served to nurture all manner of other ‘identity before society’ manifestations such as racism and culturism (including religionism).

Yet, ‘self before society’ produces dissatisfaction and even mental-illness, which, reflected in the super-rich being no happier than those modestly well-off, is another own goal.

Meanwhile, as societies territorially expanded, their governments only loosely administered over increasing numbers of predominantly localised communities, which meant, from the typical disempowered subsistence farmers’ point of view, unless sent to war, their society was their immediate community.

However, that was until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution (circa 1760) was, firstly, a supply-side economic revolution.

That is, with the economy still a natural exclusively demand-driven one, nonetheless, the Industrial Revolution led to the production of goods & services that were increasingly various, cheap, specialised, sophisticated and scalable.

Hence, the economy’s supply-side rapidly morphed from being dominated by communal collections of, often bartering, subsistence-farmers into a national (even international) focused socio-economy of machinists earning money-income.

Thus, it was also a social revolution in which there existed two main types of disempowered:

  1. Country-dwelling subsistence farmers; and,
  2. City-dwelling machinists and unemployed.

And, whereas subsistence living is, due to their direct control over the supply of that which they most demanded, of itself, a ‘Safety Net’ – i.e. if something went wrong such as a bad crop, individuals still had a home to live in, land to invest effort (and thought) in and a community to elicit favours from in order to eat – in becoming a machinist, while initially they still had family in the village and could therefore return, over time that Safety Net was gradually degraded and, ultimately, lost.

[This gives context to why, even in 2020, Covid-19-afflicted transmigrant Indians, having lost their jobs in the city, have had to get home even if it requires walking a thousand kilometres – the driving force is not their desperation to see their families – far less romanticised, it’s because, if they don’t, they will die for lack of sustenance.]

That is, many of the disempowered, via entering into the new economy and its money-income jobs, traded their subsistence self-reliance for the trust/hope of a much better life yet, becoming divorced from nature, became trapped within the new economy.

Hence, in the cities, the most vulnerable were now entirely convolutedly reliant on entering the labour market in order to get money to, in turn, buy what they needed, which meant they were no longer self-reliant.

And, with each person, one-way or another, needing their Personal Survival Income (PSI), this is a type of slavery because, with the market independent of them, they now had no choice but to participate in the labour market, which meant the market was their overseer.

[Too many conflate survival-income with non-survival income – i.e. rather than relating to whether or not to buy a new car, survival-income is the non-negotiable no choice stave-off-death default – i.e. one way or another, one must have it or get it or, at least, endeavour to get it, even if that involves crime.  Economically, there is a massive Dead Weight Loss (DWL) to people not getting their survival-income or having to use excessive focus on getting it.]

And, given the imperative for the city-disempowered to be in the labour market, this leveraged the empowered business owners’ relative power such that they often exploited their workers.

In addition, with the disempowered divided – city from rural and city-employed from city-unemployed – they continued to be easily ruled.

Meanwhile, the disempowered either participated in the labour market, became criminals and/or became charity recipients.

Hence, the Industrial Revolution didn’t just allow people to natural-morality-violate by putting ‘self before society’ but, in the case of the city-disempowered, forced them to do this.

[This distortion is our inheritance – i.e. the general attitude that one is only contributing to society if one has paid-work and is a taxpayer, never mind if one’s job is only marginally contributing or is not contributing or, even, is detrimental to society (at least half of our jobs are either jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work or designed to fix and/or manage other own goal disempowered-related inefficiencies) and never mind if that non-contributing job happens to be government provided, which means, of course, the government salary payment well-and-truly exceeds the tax paid back.]

Regarding disempowerment eradication solutions, universal empowerment requires Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI).

The Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) Solution

In order for society to maximise the earnestness and capacity of citizens to, natural-morality, ‘society before self’ contribute, it must, via its societal-systems, maximise merit-based empowerment.

And, in a Post-Industrial Revolution national society, the solution is top-down government-administered Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) in the form of 4 cornerstones, which, in order of importance, are:

  1. Universal Survival Income (USI);
  2. Universal Healthcare;
  3. Universal Education; and,
  4. Universal Liberal Democracy.

Regarding The USI, for many, it’s counterintuitive – i.e. ‘no one should get something for nothing’ – actually, we all get almost everything for ‘nothing’ – i.e. our environment, all our scientific and technological understanding, all our culture, all our physical infrastructure and all our societal-systems.

We each inherit all of this and, representative of the supreme ‘sustainable stability-prosperity goal’, that’s perfectly wonderful and natural.

In the case of Universal Liberal Democracy, it is a Cooperative-Competition microcosm, which may be perceived as consisting of:

  1. The Field:
    1. Rule of law;
    1. Freedom of information and articulation (including a free media);
    1. Freedom of action (including freedom of association, freedom to enter the market and freedom of labour market participation – which should, via The USI, include the freedom to say ‘no’);
  2. Players:
    1. Universal suffrage (everyone can play);
    1. Compulsory-voting (everyone must play);
    1. One person one vote (everyone counts as one player).

Those most disempowered benefit most from The UEI, which, since this minimises disempowerment, means society benefits most by The UEI.

[Regarding Universal Liberal Democracy’s freedom of labour market participation (particularly the freedom to say ‘no’), this is the requirement that has been hitherto overlooked.]

However, keeping in mind, in 2020, the empowered/disempowered paradigm still exists, given humanity didn’t possess this Universal Empowerment Infrastructure narrative (let alone start implementing it), nature began acting through us– i.e. it began acting evolutionarily.

Post-Industrial Revolution Evolutional Hell

For sentient-creatures, evolution is a hellish route of massive Unnecessary Suffering, which, amongst other things, is why your respective inquiries exist.

Post-industrially, there evolved three main (yet unsuccessful) Universal Empowerment Infrastructure achievement routes:

  1. Authoritarian Capitalism;
  2. Communism; and,
  3. What may be termed, ‘pseudo- Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’ (‘pseudo-UEI’).

[The World Wars, The Cold War, Authoritarian-induced suffering, The Great Depression, billions in poverty and environmental disaster are just some of the deleterious legacies of this convoluted evolutional path.]

Regarding Authoritarian Capitalism, it is an Uncooperative-Competition continuation of Industrial Revolution conditions – to this day, many developing countries still suffer this, which we all share some responsibility for, yet this responsibility can be assuaged by showing the way via adopting The USI.

Regarding Communism, while originally perceived by Marx as an inevitable conclusion to, as he saw it, Capitalism’s ‘perpetual worker-capitalist struggle’, which, he advanced, would inevitably end in Capitalism’s collapse and the rise of Communism, it became a rallying cry to precipitously overthrow Capitalist societies – after all, why wait?

In practise, Communism is characterised by:

However, until now, due to its unnatural attempt to extinguish Cooperative-Competition, in order to implement it, it has always also required Authoritarianism.

In short, Communism is predominantly regarded as creating more problems than it solved – certainly, it increased disempowerment by slashing Cooperative-Competition in the goods & services and labour markets and via implementing Authoritarianism.

Regarding pseudo-Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (pseudo-UEI), this is what has evolved in the West and it is the model for virtually all modern so-called, ‘First World’ nations.

Western Evolution: The Pseudo-UEI

Within pseudo-UEI evolution, which was assisted by the Christian-based theoretical importance of ‘freedom of choice’, there were two main driver-streams:

Regarding the former, in the late 18th century, this particularly manifested in the U.S. and France with their respective revolutions.

Regarding The USI driver, particularly in Britain, this began with the collusion and collectivisation of city-disempowered-workers into a modern pugnacious form of Trade Union.

Hence, whereas Communism sought both a regulated goods & services market and a regulated labour market, the pseudo-UEI was driven by an unregulated goods & services market and, via Trade Unions, a partially regulated labour market.

Regarding the pseudo-UEI form of regulated labour market, in the absence of The USI, Trade Unions, unconsciously, constructed a labour-market-conditional Survival Income Safety Net.

‘The Trade-Union Survival Income Safety Net’

In the absence of The USI, in the city-dweller labour market, post-Industrial Revolution Trade Unions fought for conditional Survival Income Safety Nets that commonly consisted of:

Enterprise- and then industry-wide (and, later, societal-wide) minimum-wage workplaces,

which were subject to minimum health and safety conditions.

These Trade Union Survival Income Safety Nets were characterised by being heterogenous across industries, occupations and locations.

Given The USI wasn’t, at the time, on offer and the two alternatives of Authoritarian Capitalism and Communism were even more extreme injustice alternatives, thank goodness the Trade Unions achieved this non-universal labour-market-conditional Survival Income Safety Net; nevertheless, vis-à-vis The USI, the costs have still been massive.

Unlike The USI, receiving minimum-wages was conditional on:

  1. Being fit enough, healthy enough and otherwise being able to work;
  2. Being able to find work in what was a maturing labour market with excess labour supply; and,
  3. Risking the deleterious health and safety conditions that still existed despite the Trade Union achieved agreements.

[Regarding finding work, as it is today, there were two requirements:

  1. One’s individual productivity must be of more value to the employer than the minimum-wage; and,
  2. One’s relative suitability (productivity) to work must be higher than those one is competing against.]

Hence, unlike the unconditional USI, employers were the guardians of:

  1. How many received the minimum-wage (i.e. how many worked); and,
  2. Who received and who didn’t receive the minimum-wage.

That is, while the setting of minimum-wages and conditions involved both Trade Unions and employers – the involvement of employers is often overlooked – once set, it was the employers who predominantly decided the rest.

And, due to minimum-wages’ conditionality of only applying to those city-disempowered who performed paid-work, they did nothing for those without paid-work including, for whatever reason, if one stopped.

That is, the conditionality left many disempowered out.

This also meant, even while working, a worker remained under threat of not working and, therefore, remained comparatively disempowered.

Thus, unlike The USI, there remained, as there does to this day, a slavery component – pseudo-slavery – in which, whereas a wealthy person (including ‘something for nothing’ inheritors) can say ‘no’ to paid-work, a poor person, can’t.

Regarding those who couldn’t or shouldn’t work because of age (both the elderly and children), sickness, disability (including those injured at work), the previously imprisoned or because they had responsibilities such as being an unpaid-carer – they either didn’t get paid or, if ‘lucky’ enough to have a choice, had a ‘Sophie’s Choice’-type dilemma.

Thus, a city-disempowered worker, often had to suffer workplace-exploitation – whether mental, emotional and/or physical (including sexual), which still occurs – for example, it was exceedingly difficult to refuse excessive working hours or excessively dangerous work.

And, while Trade Unions tried to compensate with minimum health and safety conditions, this was (and still is) no substitute for the individual worker having The USI given power to permanently say ‘no’ to an employer.

[Despite The Fair Work Commission and all the legislation, legal regulations, lawyers, unionists, HR specialists, lobbyists and the vast business resources perpetually expended, it is all still absolutely no substitute for The USI and being able to say, ‘no’, which also means it is a monumental waste of resources (including of some of our brightest talent).]

Thus, with the main currency of survival being labour-market-employment, Trade Union Survival Income Safety Nets not only reinforced the societal division between the empowered and disempowered along class-lines, it also reinforced the divide between city-disempowered workers and non-workers.

Lastly (and, more technically), while enterprise minimum-wages are a USI-consistent microeconomic phenomenon, industry-wide and society-wide minimum-wages are macroeconomically distortionary, which has massive deleterious effects on productivity and therefore net societal prosperity – i.e. it drastically decreases the total ‘cake’ we have to share – including in terms of increasing environmental degradation.

[For example, as a former Ford-machinist, the author believes industry-wide minimum-wages are the major reason we ‘lost’ the car industry.  Also, the associated ‘us and them’ adversarial attitude wasn’t helpful – for instance, some employees occasionally purposely crashed their very expensive machines because then, with a shortage of parts, there would be overtime.  Australian workers may have 5-times the potential of their Authoritarian counterparts, however, those smarts are only useful if appropriately focused.]

Nevertheless, with the post-Industrial Revolution economy still maturing, which meant the amount of paid-work was still rapidly increasing, analogous with modern fast-growing developing economies such as recent China, hope was a spur to societal unity.

Regarding Australia’s historical industrialisation, beginning far more recently – i.e. only since the British arrival in 1788 – it’s pseudo-Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (pseudo-UEI) evolution was supercharged.

The Australian Pseudo-UEI Evolution

In Australia, regarding Universal Liberal Democracy, it gradually evolved from the 2nd half of the 19th century to 1984 when Aboriginal voting became compulsory.

Regarding Universal Education, in the early 20th century, this gained strong traction.

Regarding Universal Healthcare, this has recently achieved massive milestones:

  1. 1984 with Medicare; and,
  2. 2020 with the full-rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

[Regarding, The NDIS – given it’s not the resources the disabled want but the empowerment, its need is already implied within The Universal Empowerment Infrastructure philosophy.]

Regarding the economy, with the British arrival, in order to facilitate industrialisation and then the supporting services sector, there was urbanisation, which meant, in general, the newcomers were never self-reliant subsistence-farmers.

Then, during the 2nd half of the 19th century (pre-Federation), in the states, with people continuing to live below the poverty-line, increasing numbers subject to the market for their basic needs and democracy beginning to blossom, pressure for minimum-wages, on the one hand, and aged & disability pensions, on the other, concurrently (yet somewhat independently) became increasingly irresistible.

And, this would lead to Australia’s modern full-fledged version of The USI-substitute, which may be termed, The Survival Income Safety Net system (SISN).

The Australian-Version Survival Income Safety Net (SISN) System

In 1901, the Australian states were federated into today’s national governance structure.

Then, in 1907, there was the pivotal Harvester decision in which minimum-wages were set for that company’s workers.

While this was a microeconomic – i.e. enterprise-specific – decision, because it had been made by external arbitration, this set the scene for macroeconomic industry-wide and even societal-wide minimum-wages.

That is, it led to the Australian version of ‘The Trade Union Conditional Survival Income Safety Net’.

And, with minimum-wages so hard fought and such a comparative victory for justice, we are emotionally attached such that, even though The USI is clearly better, we have great difficulty bringing ourselves to swap the two yet whereas the other UEI cornerstones can evolve, technically, minimum-wages took us off course such that it is now impossible to evolve it, which means, if we are to get it, it must be consciously deliberately manually implemented.

And, because of The Trade Union Survival Income Safety Net’s conditionality, which left out some disempowered, it led to ‘Close the Gap’ pressures.

[The current indigenous-related ‘Close the Gap’ pressures are a rerun of previous ones (i.e. ‘Close the Disempowerment Gap’), which is crucial because it indicates, rather than being racially-based as is the presumption (yet there is no such racism against, for instance, Australians of East Asian descent), it is Income-receipt-mechanism based – i.e. Incomism – which means The USI will also systemically solve this issue.]

Then, in 1909, there were added Aged pensions and, in 1910, Disability pensions.

In 1929, The Great Depression began, which, in very simple terms, is characterised by a dislocation of resources – i.e. there are factories, there are people who want employment, there are people who want to buy the goods and services that the factories can produce and yet factories were left idle, people suffered unemployment and people could not buy what they needed.

Out of this era, came Keynesian stimulus expenditure policy, which advocated government demand-side intervention, which is, currently, also being advocated.

First, The USI is, in comparison to its absence, a massive demand-side stimulus so, in that sense, it is the ultimate Keynesian policy.

Second, with The USI (and labour market deregulation), as we shall see, there is no unemployment.

Third, unlike ad-hoc Keynesian expenditure, if The USI is already implemented, it is already budgeted for (and funded), which means it doesn’t need to be paid back.

Fourth, The USI is also a natural ‘automatic-stabiliser’.

That is, whether the problem is personal (such as becoming sick, elderly or injured (including permanently disabled)), communal (such as a bushfire, drought or flood) or societal (such as Covid-19), The USI is:

  1. Comprehensive such that everyone can automatically subsist including if isolated such as in Covid-19 lockdown; and,
  2. In place – i.e. it requires no extra mechanism such as Jobseeker and Jobkeeper, which means no delay, no casuals’ anomaly, no welfare to work anomaly, no risk of a, for example, $60 billion miscalculation and no new rules, means-testing apparatus, fraud, corruption, mistakes, friction, disaffection or other management inefficiencies.

Regarding the catastrophe of job and business losses being a symptom of Covid-19, far less jobs and businesses would have been lost (and, it would matter far less), if we had possessed The USI system.

Also, the decision to lockdown would have been much easier and therefore could have come much quicker (this is not a criticism because the Federal Government acted very quickly) and been much more definitive (i.e. eradication rather than playing with it like a cat does string, which is a criticism) because the harm would have been less. 

Fifth, if extra stimulus is desired, the ‘tap’ can be immediately opened precisely to the extent desired with everyone receiving an increase on The USI.

Sixth, given the purpose of an economy is to efficiently produce the goods & services we desire, The USI is the superior method because, consistent with the demand-focus, it lets people allocate demand to their priorities rather than, for instance, indulging in such unnatural supply-side schemes as social-housing.

Thus, the exclusive stimulus needed is The USI and if there had been The USI in the 1930’s, there would have been no Great Depression and, even if there had been, there would have been no need for Keynesian stimulus, which, in any case, due to leakage (i.e. expenditure on imports), hasn’t, at least since the 1970’s, worked very well.

From the 1940’s, there gradually followed child endowments (1941), widow’s pension (1942), unemployment benefits (1945), student allowances and a plethora of ever-changing child, family and other grants/subsidies.

Hence, in sum, we had a conditional system of:

  1. Minimum-wages, whose recipients were decided upon by employers; and,
  2. Benefits, whose recipients were decided upon by governments.

Thus, in place of The USI, we have the modern-day Survival Income Safety Net system (SISN).

The SISN System Means-Testing

Unlike The USI, yet akin to minimum-wages, the Survival Income Safety Net (SISN) system is conditional – that is:

  1. Employment is decided upon by employers; and,
  2. Benefits are decided upon by the government.

And, whereas employers differentiate by seeking those employees with the maximum productivity, governments differentiate via means-testing.

Means-testing, which is a monument to distrust, refers to tests on income and/or wealth.

‘Government benefit means-testing is glorified as being targeted

so as to avoid the undeserving – either rich or lazy – receiving ‘something for nothing’.

This is supposed to be cheaper but is, actually, many times more expensive.

That is, counterproductively, it creates inordinate Dead Weight Loss (DWL) costs,

including insidiously manufacturing societal-division, which manifests as stigma

and, rather than vanquishing disempowerment, structurally ingraining it.

Hence, it is not a means to empowering the disempowered;

on the contrary, it serves to entrench disempowerment.’

The inordinate waste and inefficiency begins with the monstrous means-testing and administering bureaucracy of Centrelink plus the contracted national employment services providers.

With The USI, neither would exist.

These bureaucracies produce nothing that any person wishes to consume – i.e. no houses, no health, no education, no mobile phones, no cars, no food etc.

Yet, the staff are often incredibly talented with both tremendous people skills (caring and patient) and analytical skills.

Hence, they would be a wonderful addition to any industry including in Disability, Aged Care and other Health services?

Thus, it is an unimaginable waste.

However, not only do they produce nothing of value and are a wasted talent, they actually produce ‘bads’ – i.e. means-testing leads to gaps (the SISN’s different elements are only loosely interlocking), friction, stigma, stress, mental-illness and reinforces the ‘self before society’ paradigm, which, in turn, reinforces itself through Materialism, the undervaluing of unpaid-carers, Incomism and, with money the social status currency, resentment at being taxed into funding these ‘others’.

The system (especially the ‘employment-service providers’) entails one set of citizens harassing another set of citizens – aren’t we all supposed to be equal? – in a ‘you do this or I will cut-off your survival-income’ manner.

This persecution toward those most disempowered is an example of Unnecessary Suffering, which, since it is no accident but intentional (and ultimately conducted by society’s most powerful institution – government), is cruel.

While there are those who, becoming used to this power, habitually wield it, it is the system that is at fault – it’s like blaming hotel quarantine security contractors for falling asleep, the bigger problem is the flawed system.

That is, due to governmental design, the job-service-provider staff are forced to do it because it is their job and the victims are forced to endure it because they need their Personal Survival Income (PSI).

Imagine, one citizen being salaried (ultimately, by the government) to threaten and harass another citizen – it is a despicable dehumanising disgrace.

Even over this period, where there are great concerns over mental health and the economy has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, the harassment is still ongoing. 

[Is this Coalition policy?  If not, they should be clear and stop it occurring.]

And, like all ‘self before society’ behaviour, the effects don’t stay there but percolate around the entire society fermenting division.

This is a massive problem, perhaps Kumanjayi Walker – purportedly a thief yet also a very nice young man – was frustrated into death. 

Certainly, there are plenty affected who in their darkest moments would like nothing more than to rip the head off the employment-service-provider individuals they are combatively facing.

For this reason alone, we need The USI.

[For some reason, virtually every Australian charity – and it is an indictment upon them – has jumped on ‘The Raise the Rate’ bandwagon yet, to our knowledge, not a single one is overtly advocating for The USI.]

Meanwhile, by the 1970’s, with Trade Unions winning above productivity and inflation minimum-wage rises, this began producing unemployment.

Unemployment

With The USI (and an unregulated labour market), there is no such entity as unemployment.

The definition for full-employment is:

‘Everyone willing to engage in paid-work, at the going wage-rate, is able to get paid-work.’

Effective minimum-wages – i.e. minimum-wages above the equilibrium – produce unemployment.

While many refute this – including some economists – this is predominantly because they see the value in minimum-wages for preventing exploitation; however, that impacting minimum-wages cause unemployment is an unassailable law of supply and demand.

Thus, the solution is finding a system without industry-wide and societal-wide minimum-wages that doesn’t exploit, which is achieved via The USI in conjunction with a deregulated labour market – this is a superior abolisher of exploitation than our current system.

With unemployment (and underemployment) constituting a massive loss of productivity, pre-Covid-19, we had a workforce of around 12.3 million employed and 600,000 unemployed yet, for example, 5.7 million volunteers many of whom would like paid-work (say, $10 per hour or even $5) but are legally prohibited from receiving it.

Unemployment also reduces the power even of those with paid-work because it reduces their ability to find other paid-work, which further reduces their ability to say ‘no’ to an employer, which, in turn, reinforces the pseudo-slavery component.

This also, of itself, fundamentally distorts the labour market such that resources are non-optimally allocated.

That is, some are working when they should be unpaid-caring; some are working in an industry they are unsuited for because unemployment means people have to jump into whatever they can and then some become stuck there or, at least, not develop the skills for which they are optimally suited.

This is one reason the disability, aged care and other areas of the health profession may be attracting non-optimal personnel.

These sectors particularly need people who self-select because, rather than just wanting a wage in order to survive, they want to work in this field, which means they are more likely to be the right type of person with the right motivation, skills and temperament.

This all creates stress and, therefore, further inefficiency.

[Inefficiencies means less for other projects such as Aged Care, NDIS, health and the economy (in terms of reduced taxes).]

Meanwhile, with effective minimum-wages, it’s a case of musical chairs, someone will get a job and someone won’t, which means the oft used phrase ‘I can get a job if I want’ may be true, however, it misses the Big Picture point that someone else will miss out, which means there’s no net societal benefit.

[And, is it even moral for a person who, for example, is nearing retirement and who doesn’t have a family to try to get a job (especially relatively unskilled paid-work) when it’s very likely that will result in a young person with a family missing out?  Yet, that ‘society before self’-motivated person, will still be harassed.]

Nevertheless, out of this sort of mindset, there arose ‘the dole-bludger legend’.

‘The Dole-Bludger’ Legend

While there’s no ‘inheritance-bludger’ or ‘paid-work bludger’ legends, there’s certainly a ‘dole-bludger’ one, right?

This is because, with ‘the doling out’ of benefits funded by tax, taxpayers resent having to pay ‘something for nothing’ – actually, if it is to be so-phrased, it’s pay ‘survival-income for nothing’.

Fair enough – no one enjoys feeling as if they are being ripped-off – however, instead of blaming individuals, we should blame the system then change it to The USI such that we all get not only our ‘survival-income for nothing’ but, along with it, a whole lot more benefit for ‘nothing’.

In any case, via ‘the dole bludger’ legend, The USI’s absence has also created a new (Type II) far more virulent form of Incomism.

That is, as well as the ‘I’m better than you’ Incomism, there is also the much more virulently-divisive ‘dole-bludger’-hostility Incomism.

And, as both unemployment has become intergenerational and Materialism has increased, employed taxpayers have become increasingly infuriated.

This has led to the dole’s means-testing hoops becoming increasingly draconian, distrusting and divisive.

Meanwhile, the vitriol has grown including spilling over into racism against indigenous Australians.

With human nature such that people yearn to be socially accepted and, therefore, to be known as contributors rather than leaners, which, under our current non-USI societal-systems, predominantly relates to one’s income-receiving mechanism, the most disempowered are being locked-out.

As stated, this drives crime, escapism (including alcohol and other drug abuse), domestic violence, suicide etc.

[Also, The USI not only assists people to stay out of jail, it’s also an incentive to stay out because, while in jail, it is lost.]

With The USI, the common question, “What do you do?”, which currently implicitly asks ‘What is your paid-work?’ will become a non-judgemental question about how you spend most of your time whether it be paid-work, unpaid-work and/or a hobby.

With The USI, the importance of paid-employment dissipates as:

  1. Everyone is taken care of whether or not they have paid-work;
  2. There is no stigma or inefficiency with not having it; and,
  3. People are not artificially corralled against contributing in other ways.

Of course, some ‘dole bludgers’ pretend, as a defensive mechanism, to be happy being a ‘dole-bludger’ and, in any case, even with the lower quality of life (‘Close the Gap’), they learn to accept it and survive.

[All this is the progeny of understandable, even admirable, but certainly not optimal minimum-wages as a USI-substitute; yet, there’s far more deleterious consequences.]

Meanwhile, with all segments of society despising unemployment – i.e. the unemployed, the employed and the non-labour market participants – such that it is electoral death, governments (both federal and state) were forced to act.

Government Reactions to Unemployment

In addition to those unemployed who want paid-work, with those in paid-work normally the electoral-majority, they don’t like unemployment because:

  1. They are afraid of becoming unemployed themselves;
  2. They don’t want others (especially family and friends) suffering unemployment;
  3. They recognise it constitutes a misallocation of human resources, which decreases our collective prosperity; and,
  4. They don’t like paying (via their taxes) for people to do ‘nothing’.

Hence, governments have instituted two main solutions:

  1. Jobs-for-jobs’-sake policies; and,
  2. Job seeking assistance (and harassment) for the unemployed.

Regarding the former, Federal and State governments instituted an undeclared covert policy of ‘jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work’.

This has trans-morphed the economy from being a natural exclusively demand-driven economy, which efficiently produces the goods & services we desire, into a ‘Frankenstein’ partially ‘cart before the horse’ own-goal supply-driven one.

[By the way, jobs-for-jobs’-sake is all that’s been holding back the AI and robot onslaught on paid-work, which would mean, if it was fully allowed to take its course, we would be enjoying about twice the prosperity.]

With the government effectively becoming a partial employer of last resort, our bureaucracies are inefficiently filled with too many people, which is, in and of itself, inefficient.  In addition, all of these ‘extras’ have to do something and what many of them are forced to do is create inefficiencies for others both inside bureaucracies and in the form of red-tape for businesses and citizens, which constitutes a double-whammy of inefficiency.

This type of work – of creating unnecessary problems for others and/or dealing with unnecessary problems – is soul-destroying, which creates mental-illness and other social issues including escapism all of which creates jobs to directly address them and/or manage their consequences (i.e. more police/prison-guards/lawyers/health-staff etc).

We also have a massive charity sector (non-taxpaying by the way), which is predominantly producing band-aids for what shouldn’t even exist.

This system has also helped create a divide between paid-work – i.e. the ‘real’-job phenomenon, which is particularly pejorative to sections of the Public Service.

Meanwhile, the system continues to entrench a ‘self before society’ paradigm.

For example, even amongst the wealthiest, there is plenty of evidence of rampant tax avoidance.

Even charities are corrupted such that many (most?) are vested-interest self-perpetuating funding-attracting lobbyists, which may be reflected in some of your respective submissions.

‘Self before society’ has become so ingrained and twisted, it even masquerades as ‘society before self’.

For example, it is widely believed, if you are not a supply-side (i.e. a labour market employee or employer) contributor then you are not a societal-contributor; never mind, for instance, that a household is society’s most important ‘small business’, the unpaid carer is society’s most important job and children are literally society’s future.

Also, our thinking has been fundamentally confused such that, as if on a ‘Quest for Complexity’, we wander further and further away from The USI solution’s elegant simplicity.

That is, there has been a conflation between class, unemployment and the disempowered such that, instead of seeking to directly solve disempowerment via implementing the labour market deregulation-enabling USI, which indirectly and naturally also solves unemployment, we try to directly and artificially solve unemployment, which makes matters so much worse.

Thus, rather than worrying about the economy and employment, we need to focus on implementing The Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI).

So, regarding our SISN system, it detracts from what society (particularly the most disempowered such as the disabled and aged) most need – i.e. it detracts from trust and base-level individual empowerment.

And, in comparison to the SISN, the USI delivers across the board empowerment.

Here ends the according-to-the-CDO history lesson.

[Those responsible for school curriculums may wish to consider including such a contextualised historical societal development narrative.]

The USI’s Potential Societal Socio-Econo-Enviro- Benefits

Regarding the Socio- empowerment, The USI encapsulates the responsibilities of:

  1. The duty of care;
  2. The duty to assist; and,
  3. The dignity of choice including risk.

In addition, regarding, for instance, the disabled, The USI also delivers:

  1. The dignity of a disabled person’s demand over the duty of supply – this is a massive issue, which the NDIS has been especially designed to address yet, without the USI, it can only ever be partially effective; The USI perfectly complements the NDIS such as to, once and for all, finish this task;
  2. The duty of a disabled person’s dignity, which means no means-testing, no need for begging, no friction, no lack of basic needs, no gaps, no stigma and no survival income source inequality – i.e. everyone gets it;
  3. Not only will the disabled receive The USI, equally as importantly, their unpaid-carers will also automatically receive it – a total situation-improver without any special means-testing treatment; and,
  4. The dignity of a disabled person’s empowerment – this is their money not because they are disabled but because they are human – even in the case of severe intellectual disability, The USI still empowers these citizens because they receive it as a citizen right, which, in this case, can be managed with the assistance of others.

More generally, The USI achieves:

  1. Poverty eradication – the disempowered have money to buy what they need rather than needing charity and also to live in households free of survival financial pressures;
  2. Abolish means-testing;
  3. Homelessness – they have money to choose their own shelter (or not) and make use of the existing residences rather than the easily corrupted social-housing ‘solution’ of being on a means-tested stigmatised waiting list (perhaps for years) to go and, for example, live in a particular house, with particular neighbours in a particular area all of which involves a very limited choice;
  4. Eliminate welfare-receiving stigma;
  5. Mental health liberation as all know their survival needs and those of their family and friends are perpetually taken care of;
  6. Create full-employment – i.e. via labour market deregulation, everyone (keeping in mind there are 5.7 million volunteers who currently earn $0.00 per hour) who wants a job at the going rate can get one;
  7. Encourage urban decentralization as people whose major portion of income is The USI naturally move to where rents are cheaper;
  8. Liberate individuals from a survival mentality;
  9. Unleash creativity including in ways as diverse as entrepreneurialism, scientific research (i.e. scientists have their survival-income taken care of so don’t need to worry at all or as much about funding) and artistic endeavours – in general, it promotes a caring, cooperative, thinking and smart society; and,
  10. Maximise utility/happiness, which will radically temper escapism and its associated problems.

The indirect benefits of all this to the disabled is astronomical.

Regarding the Econo- empowerment, The USI will:

  1. Return the economy to being an exclusively demand-driven efficient production of goods-and-services we desire one, without the need for any jobs-for-jobs’-sake secondary focus of ‘creating/protecting jobs’, which is an own goal that already represents half the economy;
  2. With full-employment already achieved, end the political use of the public sector to soak up the unemployed in unrequired soul-destroying problem-creating (for example, Centrelink) environment-degrading jobs;
  3. Radically increase our national prosperity, which among other things, will allow far more resources to flow through to the disempowered particularly the aged, disabled and ill;
  4. Decrease tax-avoidance as taxpayers observe their taxes no longer being wasted, which allows lower marginal rates and decreases the black-market;
  5. Inside a decade, double national effective-income, which means vastly more resources to invest assisting the disabled including in scientific research and technology; and,
  6. With a deregulated labour market both the disabled and aged and their carers will be infinitely more able to find, should they wish, suitable paid-work, which means, as well as the additional income, they will also each get much greater quality of life including respite from their home environment.

The USI will ensure we are only producing – laser focused on producing – that which we desire, which, among other things, will at least double our prosperity.

Regarding the Enviro-, there are two components:

  1. The natural environment; and,
  2. The international environment.

Regarding our natural environment’s destruction, the catastrophes include:

  1. Climate Change;
  2. Habitat obliteration;
  3. Biodiversity extinction;
  4. Food source degradation (such as collapsing fish stocks);
  5. Plastic in our waterways and food chains; and,
  6. Human-over-population.

And, the common source of almost all this destruction devolves to the goods & services market.

Hence, the goods & services market is a blessing, which can, nevertheless, in the case of Uncooperative-Competition become cancerous.

The USI is Enviro- empowering because it moderates the G&S market by:

  1. Dispensing with the pressure for a jobs-for-jobs’-sake component, which, currently, directly and indirectly accounts for about half our economy – thus our economy can produce the same amount of goods & services we desire with a workforce and production cost half its current size;
  2. Decreasing population growth as the poor – particularly in the developing world – no longer need large families to take care of them;
  3. Decrease Materialism, Consumerism and Wealthism by tempering the social-status attachment to income;
  4. Appropriately value society’s most important job – unpaid-caring;
  5. Decreasing paid-work, which decreases Consumption since people need to spend money in order to get to and from work, invest in time-saving assists such as cars and bought coffees and make themselves appropriately presentable; and,
  6. By vanquishing the ‘income before society’ natural-morality violation, encourages people to put their society first including with respect to the environment.

Regarding the international environment, with our sovereignty an indispensable prerequisite to all else we desire, as stated, The USI is indispensable to maximising our sovereignty in terms of societal unity, economic strength and projecting an optimal societal structure to the Authoritarian world.

Regarding projecting The USI to the world, if the poor in developing countries had it then there would be vastly less environmental interference, which means, among other things, the chance of diseases such as Covid-19 spreading would be vastly reduced.

In sum, The USI will help maximise intra-societal trust, respect, good faith, love and unity, which will, in turn:

Assist in maximising

the earnestness and capacity of individuals to

put their society before themselves.

Thus, The USI assists in vanquishing all our Socio-Econo-Enviro- problems to the extent that what remains is manageable.

Financing The USI Transfer

Regarding affordability, in principle, given our 1000+ fold productivity improvement since the Industrial Revolution, survival-income for all Australians is easily afforded.

In addition, as with each of the other UEI cornerstones, rather than being a cost, on the contrary, it will make us at least twice as prosperous – imagine, the equivalent of a $4 trillion economy – which means, especially with our sovereignty coming under increasing threat, we cannot afford not to do it.

Among other things, this will immunize us against Chinese trade provocations – with such prosperity who of us would care if Xi picked up his soccer ball and went home?

And, while it won’t immunize us against non-market provocations including invasion, via maximizing our strength, it will maximise the deterrent.

Moreover, rather than The USI being a cost – i.e. a Dead Weight Loss (DWL) – which is the case of our current Survival Income Safety Net (SISN) system, it is a transfer between members of society, which can actually make our tax system more efficient.

Specifically, $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) can be financed 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) equalling an additional $140 billion.
  4. The massive efficiency flows from Universal Empowerment including labour market deregulation.

Conclusion

260 years following the Industrial Revolution, while in Australia, we have comparatively robust versions of 3 of The Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) cornerstones, it is well-and-truly time Australia fully implemented the still absent Universal Survival Income (USI).

The Universal Survival Income (USI) must first and foremost be implemented because it is integral to achieving universal empowerment.

Second, it must be implemented because our sovereignty depends on it.

Without sovereignty we can only guess at the effects on each of us including our currently disempowered.

In any case, like a sturdy chair, completion of the UEI’s fourth leg, which should have been first, will make it so steady that, just by looking at it, Authoritarianism will, inside a decade, lose all credibility to its own citizens.

Third, rather than ad hoc ‘solutions’, we need to adopt a single disciplined integrated narrative, which is The Universal Empowerment narrative, so that we’re not continually making it up as we go along.

Fourth, since The USI’s absence is the source of our current culminating exponentiating across-the-board Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes including our increasingly pervasive Class- & Identity-warfare (CAIW) polarization and your respective inquiries’ structural problems, without it, our society will continue to decay.

Fifth, regarding your respective inquiries, implementation of The Universal Survival Income (USI) is the only way to:

  • Minimise the Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Disability Royal Commission)
  • Maximise Aged Care Quality and Safety (Aged Care Royal Commission)
  • Optimise Covid-19 pre-emption protocols – i.e. ‘society before self’ behaviour such as social-distancing, socially isolating, wearing PPE, staying at home when sick etc, maximising research, attracting the right people to the health field and ensuring respect towards our health-professionals is maximised (The National Covid-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce); and
  • Minimise and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 on jobs and businesses, and to facilitate the fastest possiblerecovery of lives and livelihoods.’ (The National Covid-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC)).

Actually, there’s not a single inquiry in which The USI is not the foundational solution, for example, regarding the National Natural Disaster Arrangements it would be a godsend to those who lost their homes plus it would minimise the two greatest causes of environmental destruction (population explosion and Materialism), and, regarding the Banking inquiry, that degree of greed and carelessness would lose its feet once Materialism had the rug pulled from under it.

Sixth, the world desperately needs Australia’s leadership.

In the same way we must delineate ourselves from North America and Europe by dropping the Covid-19 ‘suppression’ strategy in favour of ‘eradication’, we must also adopt The USI-inclusive fully-fledged Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) goal.

Should Australians be bold (and, disciplined) enough, it is Australia’s time.

Thank you.

Best regards

Paul Ross
Founder
The Universal Empowerment Organisation (UEO) AustraliaThe 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-Environment 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. Econo: 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 four cornerstones:  

  1. Universal Liberal Democracy – [In Australia] Yes;
  2. Universal Healthcare – Yes;
  3. Universal Education – Yes;
  4. 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:
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.