society – Page 87

A Universal Basic Income Would Pay For Itself In The Bitching It Would Prevent

The Internet is full of bitching about who is entitled to what and who is ripping who off. Endless back-and-forths that have been running for decades already, and sometimes for centuries before the Internet was invented. This bickering does a tremendous amount of social damage, fostering distrust, suspicion and cynicism at all levels. As this essay will examine, a universal basic income would pay for itself by settling much of this bitching.

One of the eternal debates relates to the pension age.

Our society is currently structured so that 64-year olds are made to work under threat of starvation, but 65-year olds are gifted $370 a week from the state until they die, no questions asked. A person’s life is radically different from the week before they turn 65 compared to the week after. Turning 65 grants you access to so much free money that it’s like winning the lottery.

The problem, from the state’s point of view, is that the pension already costs New Zealand some $16 billion dollars per year – a figure that is rising by about a billion a year. This means that there is a great incentive to cut down on costs by raising the pension age. On top of that, many argue that the current pension arrangement in unsustainable, on account of that people are in good health for longer.

Naturally, proposals to raise the pension age are bitterly resented by those close to it. Howls of outrage are inevitable every time the media raises the subject. Also naturally, those younger still, who have no hope of the luxury pension lifestyle that today’s elderly enjoy, don’t give a shit, and are happy to just laugh. Therefore there is bitter resentment on all sides.

We already have a universal basic income for those over 65. If we would lower the size of the payment to something more reasonable, and then extend the age limit all the way down to 18, would could get rid of the need to argue over the pension age entirely.

Another eternal debate revolves around making a distinction between the mentally ill and the lazy. The logic is that it’s fair to pay mentally ill people welfare because they can’t be expected to hold down a job, but it’s not fair to pay lazy people on welfare because it will just encourage them to not work.

The difficulty is, of course, that it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. It’s not at all routine to find agreement between two psychiatrists as to whether a given patient is mentally ill or a malingerer. It couldn’t possibly be, given how complicated the average mind is and how long it takes to get to understand it.

In practice, there’s essentially no way to tell whether a person’s unwillingness to work stems from mental illness (thereby demanding a feminine solution) or a failure of the will (thereby demanding a masculine solution). There is no scientific test, so the psychiatrist just asks a bunch of questions and then offers a degree of help commensurate with how much they like the patient.

This means that a large part of the welfare apparatus – that devoted to distinguishing the “deserving” from the “undeserving” – is superfluous and could be scrapped at no loss. A universal basic income would remove the need for absurdities such as the requirement to get a doctor’s certificate every year or so to “prove” that one was too mentally infirm to hold down a job.

A mentally healthy person will not choose to avoid work, for the simple reason that employment is the only realistic way to meet one’s social needs today. Some people might need to take a break away from intense social pressure on occasion, and a UBI would help them do this. Then they could return on their own terms when able. This would prevent people from being ground down into destruction through the stress of trying to maintain employment with a mental illness.

Seldom does a person stop and think about how much social damage is caused by arguments about who is worthy to receive a basic level of financial dignity and who isn’t.

A universal basic income would settle all of these disputes in one stroke. It would say: there is no such thing as public welfare anymore, only dividends. Every citizen gets a basic dividend of the nation’s wealth, enough to stave off abject misery, no questions asked. No more squabbling about who’s paid in enough and who has been promised what.

There is a lot of talk about a looming financial crisis, and how we can’t lower interest rates to fight it, and will therefore have to print money. The last time we printed money we gave to the banks, and that didn’t help alleviate the human suffering. This time we should print money and give it to everyone to meet their basic survival needs.

If 3,500,000 people received a dividend of $250 for 52 weeks, the total cost would be $45,500,000,000. According to the New Zealand Treasury, crown income was $81,800,000,000 for the 2016/2017 financial year. That same link also shows us that the current cost of social security and welfare is $30,600,000,000, currently paid for by taxation and not money printing.

This means that we could scrap the entire social security and welfare bureaucracy, shift all of the funding for it to a UBI, and we’d only be $15,000,000,000 short. This shortfall could be made up for by money printing, or from increased economic efficiencies brought about by the structural change of every person having government-backed poverty insurance.

One likely side-effect of a UBI is that is will make many things much cheaper.

For instance, without the life-or-death pressure of needing to get a job before one starves, Kiwis would be much more willing to live in places with fewer job opportunities. This would create a drift to rural areas and release some of the demand pressure on urban land. Introduction of a UBI would, of course, mean the termination of the Accomodation Supplement, as there is simply no justification to live somewhere you can’t afford if this isn’t necessary for work purposes.

The fact is that New Zealand needs entrepreneurial activity if it is to succeed this century, and much of this will necessarily be Internet-based owing to New Zealand’s extreme geographical isolation. A UBI would make it possible for small start-ups to get off the ground in the smaller centres, because these start-ups would have much lower initial costs.

The rest of the value might be made up from the social benefits of putting a definitive and official end to all questions about who was worthy of Government assistance and who was a bludger, malinger, thief etc. Everyone gets $250, and when the rate goes up it goes up for all. Because everyone gets it, and the same amount, there would be no question over who is entitled and who isn’t.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

Democracy Has Failed

It’s starting to appear that the democratic system now causes more misery and chaos than it solves. The ancient Greeks were well aware of its shortcomings, and now that our cultural decay is starting to become conspicuous, we’re learning about its shortcomings as well. This essay shows how democracy in the West has terminally failed, and what we can do about it.

In The Republic, Plato wrote about how the franchise begins with a small number of people and then gets expanded, in successive waves, to encompass everyone. When it does encompass everyone, it encompasses unwise people who don’t know how to keep their egos and desires in check, and these people cause the government to make bad decisions in trying to placate them.

Democracy leads to tyranny because people eventually get so fed up with the chaos, pandering and incompetence that they vote a strongman into power to sort it all out. This strongman usually rigs things so that it’s hard to get him out of power, and with that done, the system can become extremely brutal and autocratic. It’s a story so old that even by Plato’s time there were enough examples to describe a generalised form of it.

Democracy is to the people’s will to resist as a lightning rod is to the lightning bolt. The purpose of it is to dissipate energy so that it doesn’t do any property damage. Democracy takes the people’s anger about the way they have been abused and uses it to fuel this great ritual called an election. The point of the election is to dissipate the people’s anger by making them feel as if they are being listened to.

In order to keep people voting (and thereby not rioting), politicians have to keep up the facade that the people are in charge. If they can’t keep this facade up, then cynicism will become widespread, and people will start supporting other politicians or systems other than democracy. This cynicism, then, is the sign that a political system is failing.

Much like a fiat currency, a democracy needs to inspire confidence in order to keep existing. This can only happen if the people feel that they are in charge. Unfortunately for everyone, it’s now obvious that the people are not at all in charge.

The Brexit charade has now been going on for three years. It has been three years since the British electorate voted to leave the European Union, but not only is Britain still in, their rulers appear to have no clear plan for leaving. It’s obvious that the British Parliament has done everything they can to delay the process in the hope that it can somehow be abandoned outright.

There are many within that Parliament who appear to think it legitimate to work against the will of the people at the same time as drawing a paycheck for representing those people. They plan to force a second referendum and, if that should lose, a third. Some have responded to news of this plan with talk of civil war. Resisting Brexit has caused massive cynicism and resentment, dealing a crippling wound to British democracy.

The mainstream media, joined at the hip to the political class, pumps out propaganda as if there was a war on. The Economist magazine ran an editorial this week demanding yet another Brexit extension, at the same time as running a feature article about the danger of rising cynicism among the voters. All over the West, the mainstream media appears oblivious to how badly it has failed in its duty to inform.

In New Zealand, a similar situation is arising with refugees. It’s already more than apparent the vast majority of New Zealand do not want an increase to the refugee quota on account of that there are already 12,000 Kiwis on the public housing waitlist. Despite this, the Sixth Labour Government doubled that quota, knowing that most of the beneficiaries of doing so would be lifelong Labour voters.

Worst of all, the New Zealand First party that campaigned on a reduction to immigration is the same one that refused to table an objection to the doubling of the quota. This betrayal, among others, will further reduce faith in democracy among the very population groups whose confidence was wavering the most.

On top of all this, it has come to public awareness that pedophile rings operate at the top levels of government in every Western country. Jimmy Savile and Jeffrey Epstein were not outliers, but emblematic of a wider predilection among the ruling classes. Our ruling classes are literally raping our children en masse, and voting does nothing to stop the rot, as all of our elected representatives are on the same side as the child rapists.

It seems that the existing social contract is dead. There is no longer any pretence that the ruling class need take the opinions or even the wellbeing of the plebs into account. It’s now transparent that the ruling class make decisions based on what benefits them and their sponsors as a group, and the suffering caused to the lower classes is simply ignored as insignificant.

If it doesn’t matter when the demos gets overruled, left without shelter or raped by grooming gangs of predatory foreign men, then democracy is dead. What we have now is a tyrannical oligarchy held together by extremely sophisticated propaganda and a dogged refusal to allow any non-approved items onto the agenda.

The problem with declaring democracy dead is that there are a great many shitty alternatives to it. One of the foremost of these is the idea that the abolition of democracy constitutes a green light to getting rid of “them”. Authoritarianism is no alternative to democracy because it always leads to warfare, as authoritarianism naturally provokes all manner of people into becoming enemies.

However, that isn’t the fault of the observers, it’s the fault of those who killed democracy – the liars, the bullshitters, the opportunists, the narcissists and psychopaths whose conduct eroded faith in political co-operation. Let us not forget, the alternative to political co-operation is violence. For future co-operation to be possible, however, the three major failed ideologies must be rejected and a comprehensive understanding of inherent human rights embraced.

Mummy Politics and Daddy Politics

If religion is for those who have outgrown their parents, as Freud had it, then politics could be said to be for those who haven’t outgrown their parents. The only reason why any person would want to vote for a ruler is because of an emotional juvenility that caused them to seek after a surrogate parent. As this essay will describe, there are essentially two reasons to vote for a politician: you either want a Mummy, or a Daddy.

When you’re a kid, it seems like adults have got a pretty good handle on what’s going on. In the majority of cases, your parents manage to keep you from starvation or death. Seldom does it occur to you that they’re doing this, at best, by their seat of their pants, and at worst, influenced by a pile of unresolved mental traumas that you’re about to inherit.

To the contrary: adults initially appear as gods, and then as either angels or demons depending on how fortunate you are. In any case, they know how things are. They understand the world, life and reality and can provide invaluable guidance. Their knowledge and wisdom seem limitless, as if they can genuinely see into the future.

The realisation that adults don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, no more than any monkey climbing a banana tree knows what it’s doing, comes as immense shock to many people in their teenage years. Most teenagers sublimate their dissipating adoration for their parents onto sports stars, movie stars, writers or musicians, and then use this to springboard themselves into an independent adult career.

A great number, however, don’t ever fully recover from it.

The shattering realisation that one’s parents don’t know what the fuck they’re doing leaves a gaping hole in the lives of many people. They need an authority in order to feel secure, otherwise they get panicky. This is probably an old instinct relating to herd behaviour. If this gaping hole is too deep, those people will try to fill it with a great power – either a religion or a government.

If a person decides that they need more government in their lives, it’s inevitably for one of two reasons. Either they need a Mummy, or they need a Daddy.

Mummy is kindness. Daddy is safety. These are the two fundamental motivations that lead a person to vote for a leader in a democratic system. These motivations have led to the formation of the left and the right wings, which closely correspond to Mummy and Daddy politics. After all, the right wing originally existed to keep the French king safe and the left wing originally existed to seek a kinder, more compromising position.

If a person is poor, they want Mummy. This is because poverty means hunger, which means one is slowly dying. Mummy’s breast brings absolution from hunger, therefore Mummy’s breast brings absolution from poverty. Mummy gets resources from elsewhere (we don’t care where) and gives them to us. Therefore, Mummy protects us from neglect.

Mummy rocks us to sleep with enchanting lullabies, and tells us bedtime stories about how the good guys win in the end. Mummy tells us how our side is morally superior to those filthy others, and how she knows that we’re going to get the bastards in the end. Mummy makes us feel warm inside.

If a person is wealthy, they want Daddy. Daddy keeps the thieves away by punishing them. If someone threatens me, then Daddy gets angry at that person to ward them off. If someone wants to take one of my ten houses away, Daddy smashes their skulls in.

Daddy keeps us safe from threats by laying down the law. He brooks no challenges the his authority. Daddy is Jupiter, laying down rule and order by application of might. Daddy causes our enemies to go weak at the knees. Daddy organises things, and gives orders that get followed.

Mummy politics secures resources for the needy, and it secures the home. This it achieves through soft words and smiles. Daddy politics keeps thieves away, whether those thieves come from inside or outside of society. This is achieved by hard words and threats.

Generally speaking, the older someone gets the more they prefer Daddy politics to Mummy politics. This is especially true once they secure their own income, because then they’re not dependent on Mummy anymore. Anyone who has not achieved independence will tend towards Mummy politics. Anyone who has accumulated enough resources to attract thieves will tend towards Daddy politics.

The Western democratic system has evolved, as per Duverger’s Law, into a plurality of different parties as it moves further towards proportional representation. This has meant that the duopoly that characterised the first-past-the-post system has developed into a multiplicity of parties representing different interests.

Nevertheless, the basic division between Mummy politics and Daddy politics still exists. The Greens might constitute an alternative to the old left, but it’s really just a better educated Mummy – a scientist instead of a kindergarten teacher. Likewise, the ACT Party is just a yuppier version of the old plutocrat Daddy who runs the National Party.

Those who don’t need a parent tend to not be interested in politics, unless they are trying to play the parent to someone else. If they are, they may be running a political party of their own.

The Three Failed Political Models of Our Time

There are three very popular political models in the West at the moment, each one promising utopia through its own path, if only it is followed. The problem is that these three popular models have all failed catastrophically, and furthering any of them only brings more misery into the world. This essay explains these models, why they have failed and what we can do about it.

Elementalism holds that there is an ideal form of everything, and a practically infinite number of degraded forms all throughout the Great Fractal. The ideal form and the degraded forms exist along the Great Masculine Axis, which is itself divided into the masculine elements.

If we take a perspective that divides the Great Masculine Axis into four masculine elements, we can see one ideal political form and three major groups of degraded political forms. These three groups correspond to the three sub-golden elements of clay, iron and silver.

Clay refers to Communism or Democracy. These two terms can be equated because the masses will always tend towards desiring the redistribution of resources, and will always vote for people who promise this when given the opportunity. This is essentially the hyperfeminine model, or the slave morality model. According to this model, the collective – and the needs of the collective – are paramount.

Iron refers to Fascism or Ethnosupremacism. This is the political model that has failed because is it hypermasculine. Like a severely autistic child, the iron model seeks to put the rest of the world to order by force, and doesn’t care if the world consents. The resentment and resistance that this model provokes is usually its downfall.

Silver refers to the hedonistic consumer capitalism that the vast majority of VJM Publishing readers live in (whether they wish to or not). This model is neither hyperfeminine nor hypermasculine, but is characterised by being an insipid compromise between the two. Its fundamental problem is that it is not enough of either. Hence, people who follow this model are usually nihilists or hedonists of some sort.

All these models oppose each other, and so the world seems to be forever at war, pulled between three different poles depending on which primitive instinct holds the most sway at the time.

The clay model of Communism, true to the slave morality that motivates it, resents those who follow the iron model (who are dismissed as “racists” or “fascists”) and those who follow the silver model (who are dismissed as “greedy”). The basic motivation of those who follow this model is to rip down those who distinguish themselves either physically, mentally or socially.

This model could be described as extremist horizontalism. It fails by destroying itself, because once all the capable people are sufficiently hindered then the society becomes incapable of anything. If anyone making an effort is ripped down, people come to adapt by not making any effort for any reason. When they do this, society can no longer be maintained by the free will of its members.

The iron model of Supremacism opposes both the clay model and the silver model for being soft – the former for being natural weaklings (“subhumans”), the latter for being moral weaklings (“degenerates”). The iron model is not compromising, and people who follow it intend to kill their opponents rather than work with them. Failing that, it’s enough to intimidate them into submission.

This model could be described as extremist verticalism. In this sense, it’s naturally very similar to military rule, in which every participant knows their rank and therefore their place. As mentioned above, this model fails because of the massive resentment it provokes. It seems to be human nature to seek revenge for acts of cruelty, and the iron model eventually falls under the weight of its many enemies.

The silver model of neoliberal Capitalism is a very centrist mentality in all sorts of bad ways. This model considers the clay model and the iron model to be two poles of the same axis – the axis of brain-dead, brutal state authoritarianism. Neoliberal Capitalism, therefore, is the path of freedom. The silver position has a lot of merit – but their solutions are far from complete.

This model sees the followers of the clay model as dumb and weak, and the followers of the iron model as dumb and strong. The latter may be more dangerous as individuals and in small groups, but the former are capable of gathering by the multitude and enforcing their will through sheer numbers. It isn’t entirely wrong – followers of ethnosupremacist or collectivist ideologies tend to be dumb. For this reason, the silver model tends to destroy itself rather than get destroyed from the outside.

It was neoliberal Capitalism that arose first from the carnage of World War II, the iron model having exhausted itself, and the clay model having been crippled in the process. As a consequence, we are currently living under the silver model. It’s certainly much nicer than being in a deathcamp or gulag, but unfortunately for we who live in it, the silver model is currently hitting its limits in every sense.

The American opioid epidemic is currently killing 150 people every day, a body count that cannabis and the psychedelics put together haven’t managed in over a century. In New Zealand, the suicide rate gets higher every year, and this upwards progression shows no sign of stalling. A sense is spreading that we are living in the End of Times, as when the Western Roman Empire was falling.

These political models may all have great differences, but they also have one quality in common – they are all materialist. This is why they have all failed.

The three great political models of our age have all sought materialist solutions to the problem of human dissatisfaction, not realising that spiritual suffering is equally as important as material suffering. The clay and the iron fight each other while the silver looks on from a pile of cheeseburgers – but none are happy.

What’s missing is the gold model, one that takes into account the Will of God.

The gold model is not such a thing that can be easily described. Plato had a go, at length, in The Republic, and this essay cannot hope to come close. In short, however, it can be said that the gold model will incorporate knowledge that reflects the true, eternal and untarnishable nature of consciousness. It will return the political realm to its rightful place, under God.

Organising civil society around a ritual that reconnected people with God – something like a reborn Eleusinian Mysteries – would allow for people to suffer less in the spiritual realm. Absent this spiritual suffering, they will be less inclined to attempt to satiate themselves through control of the material world, which is the mentality that underpins all of the three failed political models.