http://davidhobart.com/beyond-the-obvious-episode-with-paul-ross/
The Universalist’s Mission:
1) Double Australia’s prosperity via an efficient exclusively demand-driven economy
2) Solve all our Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) challenges such that those remaining are manageable
3) Unite society such that Class- & Identity-Warfare (CAIW – pronounced ‘cow’) are obsolete
Mission Achievement = Universal Survival Income (USI) + Labour Market Deregulation – excess labour market associated bureaucracy, lobbying, conflict, legislating, interpreting, regulating and subsidising.
[100% productivity improvement; Productivity Commission (PC) – Eat Your Heart Out. On May 23, 2020, the PC is to table a report into Productivity & Mental Health; however, according to one insider, the outside-the-current-system USI is too Big Change to be considered. Another anecdote to brilliant minds (not to mention other resources) being squandered.]
The Current ‘Frankenstein’ Economy: Transform the Class-Warfare-based LibNat/Labor power-toggling-Coalition’s cart-before-the-horse jobs-for-jobs’-sake own-goal Frankenstein economy, into an exclusively demand-driven one, which is dedicated to efficiently producing the goods and services we desire (i.e. food, housing, solar-panels, computers, cars, entertainment etc. not Centrelink et al.)
Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI): Natural-morality’s cooperative-competition ‘society before self’ infrastructure, which ‘maximizes citizens’ willingness and capacity to put society before themselves.’
Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI) consists of 4 cornerstones:
- Universal Liberal Democracy;
- Universal Healthcare;
- Universal Education; and,
- The Universal Survival Income (USI).
Societal Health:
Either
Perfect ‘the Society before Self’ Systems
or
Face the Greatest Societal Catastrophe since the 1200 BC Late Bronze Age Collapse.
Big Change Fear
So, what’s holding us back from implementing The USI?
Perhaps,
just fear of
‘Big Change’?
April 23, 2020
Hi
With regard to The Universal Survival Income (USI), while, as with technology, there have been early-adopters (perhaps 5%), most people seem to have an inbuilt reticence.
However, rather than this reticence representing anti-USI prejudice, perhaps, it’s predominantly prejudice against ‘Big Change’.
The greatest most compelling argument against Big Change is Conservatism’s ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’.
That is, ‘if you’re on a good thing stick to it’ and, certainly, ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’ – i.e. use what has come before and add incrementally.
Nevertheless, sometimes it’s necessary to ‘go back to the drawing board’ and to first principles.
And, given our Socio-Econo-Enviro- calamities are all exponentiating – including homelessness, bushfires, Covid-19 … – this would clearly seem to be one of those times.
[While Midnight Oil need not inform us ‘The beds are burning’, Mental as Anything should make a comeback with, ‘The blips are getting bigger’.]
Certainly, The Universal Survival Income constitutes ‘Big Change’.
Currently, in The USI’s absence, we have the Safety Net Income (SNI) System.
Since the Sliding Doors of the Industrial Revolution, instead of implementing the natural-morality consistent USI, the Safety Net Income system has been cobbled together with:
- Minimum-wage legislation;
- Pensions;
- Disability benefits;
- Unemployment benefits;
- Student subsidies; and
- The plethora of ever-changing family subsidies.
It involves bureaucracy, regulation, means-testing, friction, mistakes, gaps and other inefficiencies whose predominant manufactures are the pollutants of enormous waste and atrocious Unnecessary Suffering.
This includes breeding and nurturing Class- and Identity-Warfare (COW).
[In addition, to this SNI mess, there are those who – presumably naively – wish to add the Sovereignty-sabotaging Communism-transitioning mechanism known as a Job Guarantee (JG) as a crowning-glory.]
In comparison to the Safety Net Income (SNI), The USI possesses innumerable benefits including such towering tickets as:
- Achieving universal opportunity, which, via eliminating means-testing and the institutionalised stigmatisation of the disempowered by the empowered, unites society such that the SNI’s COW evaporates;
- Halting the current ‘society before self’ violation in which we are forced to continually initially seize our Personal Survival Income;
- Solving all our exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- challenges including vanquishing poverty – no gaps, no stigma, no means-testing, no friction, no wastage, no drama – such that the remaining problems will be manageable;
- In the market, maximising both freedom and efficiency such that everyone can say ‘no’ – i.e. everyone to paid-work (provided they are content to live on a very modest sum) and employees to employers (and vice-versa);
- Naturally achieving full-employment such that, with their survival needs already accommodated, everyone who wants paid-work at the going rate, can get it;
- Instead of our current Frankenstein economy – i.e. the cart-before-the-horse jobs-for-jobs’-sake own-goal economy – substituting an efficient exclusively demand-driven one, whose focus precisely correlates with how the USI impacts the market – i.e. entirely as Aggregate Demand rather than supply-side wastage;
- Free employers from our Frankenstein-economy’s counterproductive insistence that business have a secondary-focus of being a social-service entity;
- Unleash Citizen-Creationism – i.e. unleash the individual creativity of every citizen whether it be entrepreneurial, scientific, artistic or, humanity’s most important job, unpaid-caring; and,
- Far from costing us, akin to the gradual 260-year reform of the other 3 Universal Opportunity Infrastructure cornerstones of Universal Liberal Democracy, Universal Healthcare and Universal Education, it will make us, at least, twice as prosperous.
So, notwithstanding The Original Error of not, in the 1700’s, implementing The USI, why hasn’t the Safety Net Income (SNI) system been replaced with The USI?
In Australia, there isn’t even a mainstream debate – let alone, critical debate.
Most USI related discourse is dismissive or shallow (such as patronising feel-good social pieces) or excessively academic.
Thank goodness for Andrew Yang who has got the debate churning in the US; however, despite living in a modern interconnected world, it is yet to flow here.
And, even in the US – even in the Covid-19 twilight zone – The USI argument’s impact is still limited.
Regarding Australia, it doesn’t seem to have cut-through with any ‘expert’ – whether individual or institution.
After all, is there a single social-service provider, economist, think tank, politician (let alone political party), scientist, newspaper journalist (let alone editorial) or television current affairs journalist overtly advocating for The USI?
Certainly not a single television show, compere or journalist is championing it – not on SBS, the ABC, 7, 9 or 10 – not on any major radio station – not in the print/digital media such as The Guardian, Nine or Murdoch.
A couple of years ago, Waleed Aly had an epiphany; however, it hasn’t progressed into anything substantial.
Yet, there’s the ultimate soundbite:
‘The Universal Survival Income will
at least double our prosperity
and
solve all our exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- calamities
such that the problems remaining are manageable.’
Is there any Australian of note committed enough to put their name to a petition calling for The USI? Would you?
While social-service providers are daily dealing with the individual private tragedies of a USI-absent society, is there even one social-service CEO willing to publicly support it?
Of course, to do that they would need to put their head above the parapet – i.e. they would need to risk their credibility.
Instead, The USI is brushed-aside and its advocates, though not typically shunned, good-naturedly sidelined.
Is The USI really that complex? Is it really that debatable and unclear?
Currently, there’s discussion of what the new post-Covid-19 normal ought to be yet still little mention – let-alone in-depth discussion – of The USI.
So, could it be there’s something far more psychological occurring?
Perhaps, what matters is attitudes not arguments – emotion not intellect – after all, we are fighting against Big Change prejudice.
Relative to the other three Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI) cornerstones, which all evolved incrementally – for example, democracy started with wealthy white male landowners – from The SNI’s minimum-wages inception, rather than being an incremental step toward The USI, it has been a ‘society before self’ violating second-best substitute.
Hence, the entire 260-year history of the SNI’s construction has been a journey down a rabbit-hole wherein each addition has meant a further downward dig.
Thus, though USI implementation is increasingly imperative, because it constitutes Big Change, it’s resisted.
In general, unhealthy Big Change prejudice has seven main forms:
- An erroneous belief it can’t be done, which evokes such putdowns as ‘be realistic’ and such sarcasm as ‘sure’ accompanied by a ‘knowing’ smirk;
- Lazy dislike of change – ‘I can’t be bothered thinking about it’;
- Too substantial – the humble human mind can’t handle it – ‘I can’t get my head around it’;
- Fear of being worse-off – ‘I’m doing okay – what’s wrong with how it is – let’s not rock the boat’;
- The traditionalists’ disdain for outsider new-kid-on-the-block ideas;
- Fear of losing one’s self-identity – ‘What, I have to change my ideas and, perhaps, even my behaviour? But that means changing who I am’; and
- Expert’s fear – i.e. ego destruction especially amongst the establishment elite.
Specific to The USI, Big Change prejudice takes the form of:
- Mainstream-external hippie and/or cultist overtones – ‘All this talk of Utopia and ‘money for nothing’, don’t these people know ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’?’;
- The hard-nut cruel-to-be-kind tough-love – ‘If you do not work, you cannot eat’;
- The Class-Warfare argument: ‘Why give money to the rich? It should be ‘targeted’ to those who need it.’ [Never mind the current stigmatisation and harassment of the disempowered nor that there are other ways to siphon money from the rich – examples: ending the tax-free threshold and a full-breadth GST];
- Vested interests; and,
- Distorted realities.
Regarding vested interests, with The USI manufacturing social-unity and the SNI discharging Class- & Identity-Warfare (COW) pollutants (manure and methane), with SNI the incumbent system, there are many vested interests including many of our societal institutions, which are, effectively, Safety Net Income Class- & Identity- Warlord guardians.
Hence, with many powerful people having built their lives, careers and self-image on the perpetual struggle of our present Class-Warfare & Identity-Warfare system, rather than seeking to solve it, they seek its further entrenchment.
Certainly, the Big Change USI will mean many will need to adapt to the ‘humiliation’ of not being needed.
That is, with society structurally improved, regulators, social-service institutions, lobbyists and other third parties will all need to down-size.
Regarding distorted realities, people are used to the idea that solving Socio-Econo-Enviro- problems are complex because that’s been the experience for the last 260 years, which, of course, includes their entire life-experience.
However, it’s only because we haven’t yet tried swimming downstream (with the current) – i.e. we keep incrementalising and combating symptoms rather than implementing ‘the root and branch’ Big Change of The USI.
For example, Big change-prejudice is why the incrementalism of stopping a coal mine (such as Adani) or buying (or fantasizing about buying) a hybrid car is preferred to the real inherent change of the USI.
We are told we have a global environmental emergency, which, in order to disagree with, certainly requires a head-in-the-sand neck-stretch, and therefore we should close Adani – except, closing Adani will make no difference to our environment – the coal will be sourced elsewhere – further away, dirtier and more expensive, it will actually produce more problems – or, if somehow that doesn’t happen then 100’s of millions of poverty stricken Indians will remain without electricity.
And, with condemning people to poverty already abhorrent enough, in addition, the more poverty is entrenched, the more children produced, which means further long-term environmental disaster is locked-in.
The USI is the environment’s greatest friend both in the developed and developing worlds.
In the First World, there are two main societal groups – low-income ‘Survivalists’ and aspirational ‘Materialists’.
Regarding Survivalists, who are currently being driven into the various forms of escapism, via The USI, the metaphorical foot is lifted off their throat, such that, far more relaxed, they can consider and care about other issues such as their relationships – interpersonal, societal and environmental.
Regarding Materialists, they receive a social-status premium over and above the utility of consuming goods and services – i.e. the utility of showing-off.
And, this Materialistic social-status premium causes vast environment-destroying excess.
The USI cuts into this by correcting the current social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work.
Currently, many First-Worldists (egged-on by scientists) delusionally think gadgets are the answer.
However, imagine if every family in the world had a hybrid car, solar panels on their quarter acre block house and flew around on holidays, would the world’s environment be better-off or, at least, 15 times worse off than it currently is?
Regarding the economy, with labour market deregulation, suddenly, for example, we would have a competitive recycling industry.
With The USI, we would efficiently produce what we desire – i.e. food, housing, healthcare, education, cars, computers, entertainment etc. – rather than such jobs-for-jobs’-sake own-goal economy wastage as Centrelink and other excess labour market associated bureaucracy involving lobbying, arguing, legislating, interpreting, regulating and subsidising.
An efficient purely demand-driven economy limits paid-work – the greatest source of environmental destruction – to producing what we desire.
In sum, The USI eliminates wastage including eliminating the jobs-for-jobs’-sake own-goal economy and pulling-the-rug-out from under such environment-destroying values as Materialism, Consumerism and Wealthism.
Regarding the Developing World, The USI allows subsistence farmers to halt both clearing land and having so many children.
Hence, regarding the environment, all the Class-Warfare and Identity-Warfare vitriol and resources currently being expended is counterproductive; we only need unity behind The USI.
Without The USI, it is impossible to solve our environmental problems.
Save the Planet
– Worry not about Climate Change Denialism –
Worry about USI-Denialism.
Accordingly, perhaps, the lack of support for The USI devolves to how our minds function….
Thinking involves:
- Imagining different scenarios (including outcomes); and
- Reason – determining whether there are correlations and especially whether there are any contradictions or inconsistencies.
However, IQ tests only measure the latter and, in our education, we are also predominantly tested on the latter.
Regarding education (even in the West), it is predominantly based around learning rather than understanding.
That is, while questioning may be nurtured, it is predominantly confined to the type of questioning that helps us learn whatever it is that’s being taught.
Hence, our education system doesn’t tend to nurture, what may be termed, ‘critical-imagination’.
Critical-imagination is not willy-nilly nursery-rhyme cut-and-paste imagination – i.e. it’s not like cutting-and-pasting a flying-bird with a walking-man to come up with Superman – it’s about both imagination and reasoning intertwining to come up with what, in The Universe, is ‘beyond the obvious’ yet is possible.
Critical-imagination is about questioning first principles, which is the realm of philosophy, which, of course, in the modern Gadget-Age, is badged as impractical and a waste of time.
Hence, our economics, sociology, political and scientific institutions are full of people who think they’re smart because they’ve been told they’re smart and all their tests have been designed for their narrow skill-set; however, with their life-experience (and therefore their reference points) often quite limited, whether they are any good at lateral thinking and seeing outside the box is another matter.
That’s why the ‘experts’ don’t usually predict anything too splayed from the linear.
The economist will be able to give a reasoned projection of GDP growth of say, 3.1% year-on-year; however, they rarely predict a shock.
For example, back in the 1980’s, critical-imaginative economists, sociologists and political experts should have had an inkling Soviet Communism was in existential trouble; however, they didn’t predict the Wall’s fall.
In 1994, in Donetsk, The Ukraine, while there was no advertising, eventually, I cottoned-on there were shops on the ground floor of some apartment blocks so, wandering in, I found they typically only sold jars of pickles – pickles, that was it. Standing in a queue for a railway ticket for three hours, finally closing in on the counter, I realized people were pushing-in. Apparently, people queued in multiple lines at once for staples such as bread – after all, they couldn’t spend half a day for just one item. So, once again, why didn’t the experts predict that system was going to fall?
Another example, since SARS, we’ve been told to be ready for a flu-like pandemic; however, who could imagine the consequences of it let alone that it could actually happen? Anyone who had insisted on preparations would have been laughed at and, perhaps, called a ‘paranoid alarmist’ yet, for those of us who were, for example, living in China during the SARS lockdown, what is happening isn’t surprising.
A further example, scientists can get incremental improvements out of such items as batteries but, apparently, a Darwin or an Einstein only comes along once a century and, currently, the scientific community is so besotted by gadgets, they can’t see it’s societal-systems that most need reform.
Was Darwin or Einstein more analytical than any of their peers?
No way – however, they both were analytical and educated enough, had some life-experience and, above all, had incredible critical-imagination.
So, our intellectuals and institutions have a massive inherent problem with ‘The Big Picture’ and, especially, ‘Big Change’, which means, even when it’s spelt out, they still struggle to get their minds around it and, of course, suffer the social-status worry of being ridiculed by their peers.
Hence, rather than being unable to see the obvious; many of those wearing ‘expert’s’ hats are just experiencing the human emotions of being unsettled and frightened.
So, it’s great when an economics visionary like David Hobart arrives on the scene.
For over a quarter of a century, David has been a currency trading and economics visualising professional.
Beginning with Bankers Trust, he has had numerous accolades and other highlights including founding his own finance company, which, in 2009, won the Australian Hedge Fund ‘Best Emerging Manager’ award.
Regarding crypto-currencies, he quickly recognized that which was ‘beyond the obvious’.
Even more pertinently, he fuses his analysis with a holistic philosophy and intuition, which is captured by his website’s foremost phrase, ‘Decision-making. Change. Well-Being.’
Currently, he has a podcast called ‘Beyond the Obvious’ to which The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation was honoured to be invited – here is the result:
Finally, with our Socio-Econo-Enviro- calamities exponentiating, as a society, instead of rabbiting around, we should scamper back out of our burrow and earnestly begin the task of having a sophisticated debate re The USI such that we quickly get ourselves to the critical mass required to implement this Reform of the Century.
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
Founder
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (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 Opportunity Infrastructure’ (UOI), which consists of the four cornerstones:
- Universal Liberal Democracy – [In Australia] Yes;
- Universal Healthcare – Yes;
- Universal Education – Yes;
- 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 $18,000 per year x 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) + $5,000 x 4.5 million (children) = $350 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 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.