While the rulers themselves are not intangible.
Honestly, though, I’d rather cut up their power, and avoid cutting up anyone’s necks.
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National dividend…
(Utopian 70’s Psychedelic Plans)
Robert Anton Wilson - The RICH Economy
The RICH Economy. This was devised by inventor L. Wayne Benner (co-author with Timothy Leary of Terra II) in collaboration with the present author. It's a four-stage program to retool society for the cybernetic and space-age future we are rapidly entering. RICH means Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis.Stage I
is to recognize that cybernation and massive unemployment are inevitable and to encourage them. This can be done by offering a $100,000 reward to any worker who can design a machine that will replace him or her, and all others doing the same work. In other words, instead of being dragged into the cybernetic age kicking and screaming, we should charge ahead bravely, regarding the Toilless Society as the Utopian goal humanity has always sought.
Stage II
is to establish either the Negative Income Tax or the Guaranteed Annual Income, so that the massive unemployment caused by Stage I will not throw hordes of people into the degradation of the present welfare system.
Stage III
is to gradually, experimentally, raise the Guaranteed Annual Income to the level of the National Dividend suggested by Douglas, Bucky Fuller, and Ezra Pound, which would give every citizen the approximate living standard of the comfortable middle class. The reason for doing this gradually is to pacify those conservative economists who claim that the National Dividend is “inflationary” or would be practically wrecking the banking business by lowering the interest rate to near-zero. It is our claim that this would not happen as long as the total dividends distributed to the populace equaled the Gross National Product. but since this is a revolutionary and controversial idea, it would be prudent, we allow, to approach it in slow steps, raising the minimum income perhaps 5 per cent per year for the first ten years. And, after the massive cybernation caused by Stage I has produced a glut of consumer goods, experimentally raise it further and faster toward the level of a true National Dividend.
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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – a pro-establishment, rock-ribbed bastion of pro-market thinking – has released a report predicting a collapse in global economic growth rates, a rise in feudal wealth disparity, collapsing tax revenue and huge, migrating bands of migrant laborers roaming from country to country, seeking crumbs of work.
So … they’re feeling personally optimistic?
They prescribe “flexible” workforces, austerity, and mass privatization.
Yup.
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It’s an interesting idea, I’m just not convinced that it would be allowed to happen. I think wealth and power would have no problem with allowing the bulk of humanity to turn into a pile of shit as long as elite privilege and quality of life remains unchanged. They will have all their needs catered to through automation…These robots would simply cut out vast swaths of people and render them totally useless in a larger sense.
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Is the purpose of human life to earn a profit?
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Yes, and for someone else it seems
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Where you going with that UB40 in your hand?
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Doctor: “I see you have some quite bad burns, here. My prescription is for 20 oz of topically applied kerosene and an open flame… Yes, that should clear it right up.”
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If we are talking an apocalyptic economy, what’s to stop the roving bands of have-nots from becoming haves by taking what they need? What makes anyone think that they wouldn’t start their own sub-economy? Bartering and trading for needs and leaving out the big guy. In a situation like that, no one is going to walmart and no one will buy things, so the stock market would mean nothing, which is what a lot of the wealth is based on. Without having at least a step lower class to mooch and bamboozle, they only have themselves.
Interesting. I went to the OECD site to find out who is representing the various member nations.
http://www.oecd.org/
http://www.oecd.org/about/
http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/
There’s a very small bio on the Secretary-General, who appears to be a career politician. The thing is, nothing is listed for him before 1994. It says that he is 50 so he would have graduated high school around 1980. He’s got a Masters Degree so that’s another 8 years, maybe 6. So, who did he work for between 1986 and 1994?
And I cannot seem to find even the names of the people who are representing the 34 member nations.
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shakes magic 8-ball
“Sources say unlikely.”
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No, debt peonage. All the benefits - to the owner - of slavery, but without the paternalistic sense of responsibility slavery or serfdom imply.
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Yea it was Wilson. And he imagined the owners of the means of production would just be giving shit away because utopia. Personally, I think a better analogy from SF is House Harkonnen - which I believe began as a corporation.
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i’m a knife maker/precision metalworker. i’d be happy to hralp.
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How about declaring tax avoidance a act of economic terrorism and shipping the scum to Gitmo?
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Kind of how revolutions are born. Seething bored unpaid masses of hot-minded youngsters. No Soma to take the edge off. Watching the wealthy and powerful glam it up.
A little intellectual contribution from a philosophy major, and your kids (and mine) are suddenly part of the class warrior phalanx.
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Point is, there are plenty of people who love seeing others worse off than themselves, even if they themselves have very little. They’ll work to maintain the SQ.
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Can’t make up my mind - Guillobaskets: Traditional Wicker, or EZ-Kleen-Teflon? And don’t get me started on colours.
I do like the game of chinese whispers discussion of such articles turn into. I wonder how many people looked at what the OECD is actually recommending? (Page 60 of report)
The big guys hire just enough of the have-nots to work security to keep the rest in line. There’s never any shortage of ethically-challenged people willing to take a subsistence wage to drive around in someone else’s armored car carrying shotguns.
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