The Master Plan

THE MASTER PLAN: The goal is for all people to have a high standard of living and real freedom. This means the freedom to spend all of our time as we choose so that work itself is optional. Certainly there is much work to be done, but not nearly enough to keep everybody working forever. And much of the work that we're doing is just a waste of time to make rich people richer, except we do it because it pays the bills, just barely.

What if we only did the work that was truly necessary to give us a pleasurable life, or the work that was personally satisfying? How much work would there be? Instead of the goal being full employment and everybody having a job, what if the real goal is for everybody to have complete freedom and enough money to live healthy, comfortable, safe, intellectually and emotionally enriching and growth-filled, happy lives? How can we do this?

If we apply all of our scientific knowledge, food and material production and distribution expertise, and bring our most advanced networking and computing tools to bear, including our mobile internet and GPS-enabled smart phones, I'm confident that we can figure out something that will allow us to bring this about in the very near future. I have faith in humanity's ability to make big things happen. But that's when the scientists are running the show, not the bankers and politicians. We need to make some big changes around here if there is to be any hope at all, and finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

It really is time to start looking at alternatives to the present way of doing things. 35,000 people die each day of starvation. Billions of people are living in poverty. Many of them don't even have clean water to drink. All the while, in America, an obscene abundance of government-subsidized corn and grain is rotting away in silos. Manufacturers of agricultural and industrial equipment are laying off workers because there is not enough demand for their machines, while they are in desperate need of farming equipment all over the world. Billionaires are playing the stock market for the sheer fun of it. Trillions are being spent in wars to fight an endless supply of ignorant people, many of whom don't even know how to read. The rest that do become literate are forced to read only a single ancient book with ruthless and primitive rules and laws. More of these angry fighters are being made each minute than we could possibly hope to kill.

Our environment is being destroyed before our eyes. Proven technologies that can solve these problems and help these people are being ignored and put on hold simply because there are still profits to be made by keeping things the way they are. Somebody has got to put an end to this. We all need to put an end to this. Today, right now. We have to join forces and put our collective foot down and say enough is enough. No more. We're done. Game over. It's our turn to play boss now, as a team.

The secret to resolving these problems is to end consumerism and for-profit banking, and to encourage conservation so the each person is not a bottomless pit of consumption. We really do have enough natural wealth and bounty to go around, if we can get the waste out of the system and restore some economic balance and reason, so that 1% of the people aren't holding more financial wealth than most of the rest combined. We truly do need to level out the economic system. It's in the best interest of our whole species and of our whole planet. This means designing things to last forever, instead of designing them to wear out and be replaced.

There's only so much "stuff" a person in the developed world can accumulate before they should eventually have enough to be happy and finally reach a relatively steady state. Except right now most people are not truly happy mainly because they are not free. We live stressful lives slaving away to get by and one of the only joys we have in life is buying new stuff. This is by intentional design of the architects of our society in order to make bankers richer and richer because they earn interest on the debt we accumulate in the process of us borrowing money to buy all our stuff. The more stuff we buy, the more we have to slave away to pay back the bankers. It's an endless cycle of misery filled with little temporary material rewards that don't last. One very simple fix for this is for the people to become our own bankers and for us not to charge ourselves any interest at all, so that we're not always in debt. Then we need to be free so that we're not always miserable and don't always want so much. This means we need to change the values that we've been programmed with by The Powers That Be.

The primary advantage of wealth is to have freedom. Given a choice, I would bet that the majority of people would be satisfied just to have the freedom without the wealth as long as they can live comfortably in modernity with enough resources to maintain their personal health and to have comfortable shelter, modern amenities, advanced communication and computing tools, and the means to travel and move around freely. I'm speaking from personal experience. If the majority of people feel the same way, here's one way we could do it right now if we choose to: Consolidate all the banks in the world into one private global nonprofit online bank that is connected to all the existing credit card infrastructure. Give all the citizens of earth one nontransferable voting share each. Forgive all commercial and public debts and start over. Let all commercial banks fail and transfer all deposits on the books to this one nonprofit bank. Let everybody keep their homes, cars and possessions free and clear without mortgage payments. Buy out the landlords so renters can live for free. Eliminate all taxes and all poverty too.

Since all the world’s money will be available at all times to all the world’s people, budgets for expenses that serve the public interest are unlimited. All the money that is spent is eventually re-deposited back into the same bank, so it just sits there recirculating over and over as an engine of commerce helping people to cooperate while getting good things done as time marches forward. If we avoided physical currency the money would never leave the bank, but instead it would just be bits of data in a computer moving between accounts for the sole purpose of helping society keep score so that producers can be rewarded.

We can even have two types of currency. One that is persistent and can be saved, and another that is temporary and just gives us short-term operating money to cover the basics. It is a closed system where money simply helps us all to get along and provides a mechanism for fairly allocating finite resources and maintaining peace. This would keep all the money in the system working for the public good at all times instead of being stagnant capital reserves that are not in use. This is how banking should work. As long it's virtual, it can be a positive sum game, as long most people agree to play by the rules, the main rule being get what you need and maybe a little extra for fun, but stop the endless consumption.

Entrepreneurs can still get rich - except for all the bankers, insurers and financial services professionals. We need to reward those that produce tangible goods and services that truly help people directly, not those who simply move money around between accounts and institutions to create wealth for the rich while skimming a percentage for themselves. Those guys really aren't adding any value to our world. They just create bubbles that eventually pop. All that stuff is just a giant confidence game of smoke and mirrors that the rich use to get richer.

Once we do away with the banking, insurance and financial services sector, we can provide Universal Health Care. We can upgrade infrastructure worldwide to help bring the poor into modernity in a way that is compatible with their own cultures. We can provide the poor, unemployed and retired with a basic income guarantee. There's absolutely no reason we should have inflation if we keep our money in one place. We use what we need to use to do the things we need to do for the benefit of everybody. The number one rule of the game is that everybody gets to play, so our money is just a social tool to be used at all times instead of something physical and finite to be collected and hoarded and coveted, like gold.

This bank will be global, nonprofit, fully transparent and democratically controlled by all. It will be, in fact, nothing more than a global database that keeps track of points, which move around between accounts. Insurance companies will no longer be necessary. Public utilities can be purchased and those services can be free if we choose. We will finally have the resources to upgrade the entire internet so that we all have fiber-optic connections to our homes. The infrastructure upgrade will keep a lot of people busy. We can fix our roads and bridges. We will have an unlimited budget for investment in green technologies and projects that benefit all of humanity, including scientific research. Jobs that really need to be done will be highly valued and those workers will be highly paid. The rest of the jobs that we all hate can go away. Eventually, we can stop keeping score and just live in peace. However, in order for this to work, we have to stop being a bottomless pit of consumption. We need to take our fill, get what we need, then relax and give it a rest while we enjoy our freedom. That's a future that is actually sustainable, and pleasant. Every now and then, we can reboot the game again and level the playing field.

Have you had enough yet? What if we could just start over today?

(This essay used to be posted on the home page of my website http://define.com. I decided to use the site to host a very serious global poll and thought that maybe this was a little too unconventional and extreme for the site and that it might scare people away. OK, I'll admit it, this is downright crazy talk, written from a weird state of mind. But what the heck, it's all just fair fodder for discussion, hopefully constructive.)

In the United States of America we enjoy something called "Freedom of Speech." That freedom is guaranteed to us by the First Amendment to our Constitution. It also guarantees us the right to Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press and Freedom to Petition the government for redress of grievances. That includes the freedom to openly organize, discuss and plan to radically restructure or even reduce or eliminate the government itself, as long as it's done peacefully. This video play list and essay are examples of one American citizen exercising these rights up to, and perhaps slightly beyond, their legal limits. You can be the judge of that. You are the jury of my peers. The goal is to create the broadest worldwide consensus humanly possible at this point in our living history.

We have finally had enough. We need to get this over with, and we now have the tools and the means to do just that. We intend to take back our freedom in a peaceful way, and in the process to return power to the people in a big way. This web page could become all of us taking over the money lenders and corrupt politicians, if we can form a consensus around this single point of focus. The word is define. This is what it looks like. Spread the word. This is how it all starts, by being curious and questioning authority on a large scale. This has never happened before, because we never had the internet before. Now that we've got it, let's do it! This could be HUGE if we all decide to make it so. Metaphorically speaking, this discussion is as heavy as a neutron star.

This web page could literally start a war. But of course, together, we will not let that happen. Luckily, you don't need to worry about this showing up in the corporately-owned and centrally-controlled television and radio mass media. They're not interested in the rambling manifesto of some crazy-optimistic unconventional thinker/futurist/dreamer on the web. They won't discuss it, lest it grow and spread much too quickly, which would be a huge risk that is just too dangerous to take. Besides, why should we all panic over nothing? It's only the total collapse of the stock market and the end of the world economy and all nation states that's at stake. Boring, trivial stuff that no one cares about. Like the end of wars, the end of poverty, the end of corrupt governments, and the end of banking as we know it.

I hereby confess to seriously and transparently suggesting that we bring about all of the above. Go ahead and tell on me. Be my guest. Watch in amazement as absolutely nothing happens at all. No news here. The silence will be deafening. This is about achieving real Freedom, not some twisted Capitalistic or authoritarian religious perversion of the idea which leaves a select greedy few holding all the levers of power and control. However, the internet-based media is another story altogether. This is an internet and print-only phenomenon. For the time being, this is directed at people who read for their information, not those who watch or listen passively. You are one of those people, so I would like to invite you to join this conspiracy.

When it comes to science, I'm definitely a layperson. But I like the goal: Seek the Truth. The scientific method consists of several steps in a logical progression.

1. Define the question (State clearly what it is that you're trying to find out. Make your first decision. Just what exactly is it that you want to know?)


2. Gather information and resources (Start paying attention to everything that might be relevant.)


3. Form a hypothesis (Make your best guess.)


4. Perform an experiment and collect data (Gather the evidence. Find the facts.)


5. Analyze the data (Figure it out. Sort it all out and discover the truth in a way that makes sense.)


6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis (Finish figuring it out and come up with some new ideas that improve upon your first guess.)


7. Publish the results (Share what you've learned with the rest of the world.)


8. Retest (See if you can repeat the same experiment and get the same results. Most often this is done by other curious scientists who have the same questions.)

This entire essay is basically Step One: DEFINE THE QUESTION. There's a little bit of Steps Two and Three to provide some food for thought and provocative fodder for discussion in order to draw interest and get a conversion started. And this whole website might be part of Step Four, since the site itself is a worldwide experiment. But it all boils down to asking a big "What If" question: What if the bottom 98% of the economic classes came together and formed a consensus to agree to forgive all debts, and start over from scratch with a new non-profit banking system? Could we do that? How could we do that? What might that look like? How could it be done without war and violence? What would happen? If we actually did run out of money, how could we all live comfortably with a high standard of living, an abundance of personal freedom, safety and security, and no more stress about having to pay the bills and struggling to survive? Would it be helpful if there was a single, easy to remember URL that served as a focal point for gathering the people together in order to reach this consensus? These are just questions that we all can answer together. I just want people to seriously think about it and to discuss these things openly without fear of being punished or imprisoned. So without further ado, this is my best effort. Here we go...

Here's a totally hypothetical question: If there was an opportunity to change the system so that you could do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else, as well as eliminate income taxes, as well as make it so you can work less or not at all and still have an income sufficient to enjoy a comfortable and safe home, healthy foods, transportation and all the modern communication and entertainment technologies, the freedom and means to travel almost anywhere, as well as cutting carbon dioxide emissions significantly by getting millions of cars off the roads at rush hour, while eliminating poverty and healing the planet, would you like to switch to that system if possible?

If your answer to this question is "Yes," then welcome to define.com, a place on the web for anarchists, extremists, socialists, gays, Pagans, Atheists, scientists and academics, prostitutes and drug addicts, thieves and adulterers, liars and killers, terrorists and cheats, subversives, Libertarians, radicals, reactionaries and revolutionaries of all shapes, sizes, colors and persuasions to come together and openly conspire to set ourselves free from The Powers That Be. Just plain normal hardworking middle-of-the-road moderate folks are welcome, too. We are all of them, and they are us.

This website is all about forgiveness. Big time, major league, deadly serious, life and death, take no prisoners debt forgiveness and financial relief on a monumental scale that includes The Whole World. That would be for all of us, including you, your family, your friends, your neighbors and your co-workers. You have now discovered the public's secret weapon in the invisible class war that has resulted from the international banking industry's stranglehold on human civilization and governments. This is a very special place on the World Wide Web specifically reserved for forming the largest consensus ever created in the history of human kind.

What follows is very unconventional economic common sense and some unorthodox ideas on how we can all give ourselves some major relief from our biggest problems. All it requires is a massive majority consensus in order to change a few rules. We need only a starting point that gets us all on the same page. Once we have that, the rest of the pieces will fall into place through the sheer power of electronic democracy. What we need to do is so simple that a child might as well be proposing it: get rid of the money lenders once and for all. Corrupt governments will follow. That will be the permanent end of war and economic slavery. So why don't we just get ourselves together and do it already? With this URL, I think we can. Here we are at last. We're on the same page. This is it. Let's just watch them try to stop us from gathering and organizing.

Humanity is approaching that point in our history where the great majority of democratic masses, connected via the internet, will be united in a simple consensus: "Enough is enough. We've had it. Game over. We're done. It's our turn now. The time is right. We are taking charge of this situation, sooner rather than later. It's time for a major change." And this URL is where it's going to go down. Responsibly. Calmly. Safely. Intelligently. This time we will not be asking. We will simply insist, politely but firmly, without wavering or compromising in our resolve. The overlords will have no choice. The age of photogenic smooth-talking politicians and lying, narcissistic, charismatic egomaniacal hero/leaders will be finished. The people, at last, will take that one giant critical leap into a better world order, and we will once and for all truly govern ourselves AND our money.

I've been guarding this magical domain for the last 16 years waiting for a good time to put it to good use. It doesn't really belong to me. It's all of ours. I'm here to sow the seeds of a civilized, high tech, democratic revolution, except this one will be done safely and in relatively slow-motion, so as not to cause too much disruption, upheaval and alarm. The situation is under control. We're all in this together, after all. In the end, nobody in particular will be in charge. It's better that way. We've seen the alternative and it just doesn't work. This is about what we could do with a few dozen trillion dollars, or the stroke of a few dozen pens and the shuffling of some stock inside the abstract virtual world of a few Wall Street computers. Either way, it's definitely doable.

I should say up front that this essay contains ideas regarding freedom and liberty (from government) that should appeal to far right-wing conservatives, and it contains ideas about a basic income guarantee, health care and education for all, and finally eliminating poverty that should appeal to far left-wing liberals. In spite of appealing to those extremes, I'm hoping most to appeal to the reason and logic of the majority of the population that falls somewhere in the middle. In the end, it's simply about achieving a more perfect democracy in the age of the internet and smartphones, and finding a civilized and peaceful way to gracefully let go of our antiquated institutions of government and those parts of capitalism that have left the top 1% of the people with more wealth than the bottom 95% combined (actually, these figures can be disputed based on semantics and various different calculations, but the broader point of the obscenely disproportionate distribution of wealth remains without question).

This system isn't working any more for the vast majority of us, We The People. We have to put our heads together, mobilize our academics and scientists, and put a stop to this tyranny. This essay is just me brainstorming on a large scale, but I don't claim to have the answers. I just want to get a conversation started about the benefits of just totally starting over from scratch. What comes out of the other end of this conversation may look nothing like what I'm suggesting here. That's fine with me. At the risk of repeating myself, I absolutely do not want to be in charge of anything. I have enough trouble just dealing with my own severe mental illness, which is called schizoaffective disorder. You can look it up on Wikipedia if you want.

Basically what I'm proposing is that the people in the bottom 98% of the economic classes come together, reach a consensus that we need to start over, pool our resources, buy up all the oligopolies that control our markets, and create a new private market (a big non-profit international co-op) that is owned and managed democratically by the members, who each have a single non-transferrable voting share of the company. It's about equality, and making the most of science and technology to change the system completely and legally by working peacefully and calmly within the current legal frameworks everywhere to give us all a standard of living worthy of our scientific advancement and modern times.

I think the only sane people who won't like this proposal are the bankers that we all owe money to. But we've got them outnumbered, so they can go away and play with their own lives and monopoly money instead ruining the rest of ours with their impossible-to-win game of never-ending debt and a constant state of war and conflict. And maybe also those elites who have somehow ended up owning our shared natural resources, such as oil and natural gas, coal and lithium mines and lumber forests. We'll help them all to retire comfortably and finally leave the rest of us alone. We don't need them. We only need each other, the internet, a large-scale consensus, some cool cell phones and a clean slate. And maybe a lot of optical fiber.

The smart phones will be for mobile banking and electronic commerce, and anybody who voluntarily agrees to openly share their GPS coordinates with enough trustworthy people to keep them out of trouble will be awarded micropayments every second that their phone is voluntarily on the grid, so that at the end of the day, they will have enough credits in their account to cover the cost of existing comfortably with a high standard of living, whether they work or not. In the U.S., GPS is legally mandatory in our cell phones. Phone companies have this data. The NSA has this data. Except they don't pay you for the privilege of violating your privacy and knowing your whereabouts. You pay them. We can change that. This would eliminate most crime and make the society safer for all. Of course, it would also make a huge swath of government bureaucracies completely unnecessary, which would significantly shrink the role of national governments and return more power and freedom to the people.

My job is simple: to act as a warm body to hold the free people's domain until society is ready and prepared to make this quantum leap safely and peacefully, and to periodically throw crazy ideas out into the herd in order to shake things up and break the spell that we've all been under since the invention of money, religion and authoritarian politics. This is a wake-up call of the highest order on the grandest scale. As for me: I am a completely expendable nobody. An irrelevant, simple-minded speck of dust that has been programmed with a singular mission. I have been prepared since early childhood to play this simple part in this grand play, and to receive unimaginable amounts of criticism, blame and humiliation. I take my job very seriously, and am completely OK with totally surrendering my personal privacy 24/7 if it comes down to it. This means ABSOLUTE TRANSPARENCY. But I doubt it will come down to that, since I'm basically just a typist who parrots other peoples' ideas - a boring, overweight, unattractive "crash test dummy" sticking his neck out because the important people are too smart to put themselves in harm's way. The ones who entrusted me with this domain weren't screwing around. They mean business.

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What if it went something like this: the bottom 98% of economic classes that is in debt to the top 1% of the economic class comes together and reaches a consensus that we need to start over. We forgive all debts, public and private. Everybody keeps the home they live in whether it previously belonged to a bank or a landlord. We form a new non-profit worldwide bank of the people controlled entirely by the citizens in a one-person one vote democratic fashion. Each person has one non-transferable voting share. This new bank has the authority to create money and it invests in infrastructure around the world with the sole goal of improving the quality of life of all citizens. The loans are at zero interest.

Instead of working within the currently corrupted system to beg and plead for new rules that slowly widdle away the wealth so it transfers from the rich to the poor, why not use the sheer power of internet populism to simply demand a better economic situation, all at once, whether the rich like it or not? In biblical times, this was called "Jubilee," a periodic celebration in which the rulers wiped the slate clean and debtors and slaves were set free. Think of it as a kind of healthy "re-booting" of the system to level the playing field and restore equality and liberty. We are fast approaching the time when it is clearly and obviously in the best interest of the vast majority of citizens to be given this much-needed, much-sought relief. And since ours is a government, Of, By and For The People, We, as our own rulers, have the power to grant ourselves this gift.

The only problem is that doing this would be illegal under the laws of our present legislators, who have become corrupted by the bankers who now effectively write our laws from start to finish. But shouldn't an overwhelming majority of the citizens have the right to bypass those corrupt legislators and to change the rules of the game anytime we want, if it is deemed to be necessary and in the best interest of the vast majority of the citizens? We have the bankers (and the legislators) outnumbered by an absolutely, incredibly, fantastically overwhelming ratio. Is there any reason why the enslaved majority of citizens, in a democracy, couldn't just fire them all, all at once, to make a quantum leap forward in human progress?

That's the short of it. What follows is a longer version that basically rationalizes this simple premise into some unconventional strategies for doing it legally in a very measured, calm, methodical, peaceful process that works within the present control structures. It introduces a new form of currency, never before possible in all of human history, that has a limited lifespan, which ensures that it is used in regular and frequent commerce in order to keep the economy running smoothly while eliminating inflation.

I should add, this website is no secret. The authorities know who I am, and have elected to allow me to continue displaying this web page, in spite of it's potential for creating a large-scale consensus in some form or another. If it looks like there's going to be a problem and things start getting crazy, I'm perfectly happy to cooperate and tone it down. We're all adults here. Nobody wants to do any harm to anybody. We all want what's best everybody. Like I said, "We're all in this together." If we reach a consensus and decide that we intend to act, we just need to keep up business as usual during a transition period, so that nobody panics and the economy keeps chugging along safely and securely while we figure out together what to do next. We just switch from thinking of our ordinary lives as a mandatory, monotonous, permanent routine, and start thinking of it as a kind of play in which we each have a temporary and important role that is essential to the Master Plan.

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With just a trifle bit of research it has become clear to me, as an American, that the whole process of how money is created and loaned out by the central banks is a criminal scam of biblical proportions. We pay rent to the landlord, who makes payments to the bank that truly "owns" the property. But who owns the bank, and where do they get their money? When you "follow the money" back through the banking system, you wind up learning something truly astounding and frightening. The central banks and governments just create it out of thin air! That's not fair. Some elite, completely private, secretive group of bankers gets special printing presses and a bunch of paper and literally makes a bunch of money, and suddenly they own all the land, homes, buildings and businesses. And nobody complains. What on Earth is going on here? Something is wrong with this picture.

So let's get this over with. Someone has got to say this. I'll just spell it out in simple terms. Most people are purposely kept unaware of the fact that they are the living, breathing, slaving property of the international bankers who own our governments. We are so thoroughly distracted by the daily struggle to survive and an endless barrage of corporate entertainment and mass media diversions that we rarely stop to question the validity of The WHOLE System in which we are living. It's a gigantic, sadistic, worldwide monopoly game of unimaginable proportions that has been completely rigged. These bankers are absolutely, positively not committed to the citizens' best interests. They are all about enriching themselves, no matter what the cost to ordinary people, even if it means encouraging wars.

If we applied our science and technology fully, the majority of us would not need to work at all. Furthermore, we could easily eliminate the conditions of poverty, hunger and ignorance throughout the world. Unfortunately though, our economic systems are based on the control and submission of entire populations through the perpetuation of individual, corporate and national debt with interest, as well as international conflict. First the central bankers print the money from scratch, then they lend it to the governments, who promise to pay it back with interest with money collected from the taxpayers through pure coercion and threat of imprisonment. And where do the taxpayers get it? In the end, it comes from work and various other sources that all wind up borrowing from the banks. It's that simple. We are the prisoners of the States' need for economic growth and the corporate imperative to make a profit, which is always at the expense of the citizens and their precious free time. This sucks big time.

Sooner or later we the debtors are just going to have to say to the nations' creditors, "Sorry, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You're going to have to be satisfied with what you've already got, because you can't have any more. Enough is enough. We are taking back our freedom." But that would be considered treason or grand theft on giant scale. I definitely don't want to get arrested for plotting to overthrow the government or collapsing the global economy in such a way. So what can be done? Is there any sort of "legal" process that could be invented that would allow us to get our freedom back without all of us winding up in prison? Somehow, we're going to need to get together and conspire to find a way to get free that doesn't end up causing a World War.

Basically humans are good-natured when given a choice. Most would choose to help others in need if they could do so without pain to themselves. This includes most of our corporate, government and military leaders, who are also unwilling victims of the same establishment monetary systems as the rest of us. Together, we are all owned by the same monumental government and banking institutions, like beasts of burden programmed to perpetuate the status quo. One thing that the rich and poor can agree on is that there's got to be a better way than this. For the vast majority of human beings living on this planet today, this system is Hell.

Maybe it's time for us all to get together and start over with a level playing field. Really level. But how can we do that without some kind of revolution? I think the answer is to change the system from within by playing by the rules in order to change the rules. First, we have to acknowledge that our current system is broken, corrupt and fatally flawed. We have to peacefully dismantle it and replace it with something better and more democratic. In the end, it's our game. We can choose to redefine it at any time, if we can manage to break the spell of habit and take ownership of our individual and collective power. We have to create a stateless democracy that can exist within each of our host nations without causing chaos. In the end, one possible option is to simply pool our money and buy back our freedom in a way that will eventually starve the economic beast of governments by depriving them of funding until they are as small as possible, posing no danger to the citizens while providing the minimum essential services, such as protecting the people and the commons (e.g. water, air, forests and other natural resources that should not be privatized).

Our governments are inefficient bureaucracies created by mostly well-intentioned people who reigned long before the creation of the internet. They are filled with paper, turf battles, infighting and politics at all levels. Twisted and tangled communication channels and favoritism, cronyism and corruption. Our systems of representation are based on old paper, word-of-mouth and face-to-face communication models that are long outdated, with feedback loops that take years instead of days to correct problems and adjust to changing circumstances and the people's will. They are all about making money, conquering territory, manipulating public opinion and getting re-elected at all costs. Sure, we love our nations and our values. But more often than not the corrupt, greedy and unprincipled people wind up with all the power and influence, and the average citizens are left with peanuts and debt that is impossible to repay. What if there was a way to do away with the need for money itself for billions of people? I think there is, but it will require privatizing massive portions of our economies.

The manufacturing and food production industries that create most of the products we use and consume in daily life have become so automated that we are actually running out of jobs for humans. This pattern is growing, not shrinking. Those corporations that own these factories and farms get rich while the workers are seeing their wages cut more and more as a result of globalization. If most people had a choice, they would prefer not to work at all. Together, we can cooperate and create a new way of doing things that truly serves the people's interests in survival, comfort, entertainment, education and health care. . In the process, we can peacefully make a transition from the old ways to a better way without massive disruption, panic or war. We can clean up this mess by applying our industrial strengths to make things better for absolutely everybody. First though, we need to stop this ridiculous farce of demanding more jobs from our leaders. We don't need more jobs. We need more freedom and a better system of allocating essential resources to the people - all of them. Obviously, this whole issue is infinitely complex, but I'm going to break it down to a simplified version using examples that are familiar to most Americans.

In my country, the small business merchants and manufacturers are disappearing as corporations consolidate and expand to take over entire markets. The corner stores have been replaced with Wal-Marts. Almost all of the local communities' money that goes into buying from Wal-Mart, with a tiny exception of the salaries of low-paid workers and some token charity, leaves the community. The same is true for our lumber yards, as they have been replaced with either Home Depot or Lowe's. Our electronics stores are nearly gone now and the winner is Best Buy. The small furniture stores have been replaced by IKEA superwarehouses. Little gas stations have been bought up by Shell, Texaco, Chevron, and BP. Our money goes into these large corporations and they use it to expand and overtake smaller and smaller markets. Most of our small, independent food stores have been replaced by supermarkets such as Safeway and Albertson's. They are filled with products that are nearly all made by a handful of corporations. The list goes on. Free market Capitalism has been a wonderful success for these businesses, but has resulted in job loss and bankruptcy for the citizens. The individual citizens are routing a large portion of their incomes into just a handful of companies, but very few of those customers are stockholders.

We are overflowing with mass-produced consumer goods and material wealth, but that wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. As a human race, we have been marvelously successful at mastering technology, manufacturing and distribution. But as humanitarians, we have failed miserably. 2.2 billion people are living in poverty. More than 25,000 people die each and every day as the result of starvation, when we have food surpluses. We can fix this. We have the technology and the wealth to help these people. We can apply all of our wonderful production and distribution capability in a way that accepts the realities of big industry and helps everybody. The reality is that consolidation is not going to go away. The big get bigger and the rich get richer, and the small get swallowed up. That's just the way it is. What jobs remain are going to be low paid cookie-cutter retail positions, but there will be fewer and fewer consumers with the money to buy things, even as goods become less and less costly.

In the U.S., we are now living in a sea of oligopolies. We are headed towards eventually accepting monopoly control of our most important markets. For the sake of keeping it simple, what if we just accepted massive consolidation as the eventual future outcome and just allowed it to take place right now, but in a way that served the citizens instead of the rich? What if a large number of people and private corporations pooled their money and resources to form a gigantic member-owned and controlled co-op called HUMANITY, Inc.? It could be managed mostly online by its members in a transparent, open source, open system, purely democratic manner. The general idea is that citizens should be able to cover most of their basic needs by shopping here.

Assume that this co-op acquired and merged companies like Weyerhaeuser (they own the land that grows the trees that are turned into lumber that makes new homes), UPS or FedEx, Costco or Wal-Mart or TARGET, IKEA, Best Buy, Samsung or Sony, Safeway or Albertson's, Home Depot or Lowe's, AT&T or Comcast or Time-Warner, a successful automobile manufacturer, and any other combination of these massive scale industrial operations (and public utilities) to create a private manufacturing and distribution machine that is dedicated to improving the human condition? I realize this may sound absurd, but for the sake of a thought experiment, let's consider what could happen if it was done right. This new co-op would have a lot of real wealth, buying power and economies of scale. What if it bought up all the property debt? If you have a mortgage on your home, HUMANITY, Inc. would take ownership of that mortgage. If you are renting, HUMANITY, Inc. would buy out your landlord. HUMANITY, Inc. should be capable of providing everything that a citizen needs to survive in good health.

Let's say this gigantic private organization was considered to be a "market" and this market had its own system of credits. GOLD CREDITS would be persistent and backed by the real assets of the co-op, and could be exchanged with existing world currencies. It could also have another type of credits (let's call them LUNAR CREDITS), which are temporary. These credits would last a month and be redeemable for all goods available in the co-op. For the people employed there, they would be paid in GOLD CREDITS, so there would be an incentive to work and contribute, and they would have the ability to save and accumulate wealth that could be used in other markets. Within this market, either kind of credit would be redeemable for products, but the "temporary" LUNAR CREDITS could not be directly converted into "persistent" GOLD CREDITS.

The idea is that this would be a global organization, although it may have different physical appearances in different cultures so as not to be offensive. All people would be welcome to shop in this market and to use its products and services. However, membership in the co-op would require a small investment of time in a really simple process of education in civility, pluralism and social standards. This should be a simple and easy training process. Perhaps all members would be required take an online interactive video class in their own language that just covers a few hours of human history, mythology and comparative religion. Sort of an initiation process that gets people thinking on a global scale, outside of their mutually exclusive tribal boxes, and welcomes them into HUMANITY, Inc.

Once they finish the course and pass the simple test that shows they understand the concepts, they become permanent members. As members, they earn exactly one non-transferable share of this corporation and it's a voting share. The big reward for being a member of this market is that you have something like an iPhone-linked account that is charged every day with enough LUNAR CREDITS to cover the daily basics (food, clothing, shelter, clean water, electricity, medicine, health care and internet access). Most importantly, if your mortgage or rent is payable to HUMANITY, Inc., that debt would be forgiven. You wouldn't have to work if you don't want to. Eventually, the credit system may become obsolete and everything will be free, but it could be used in the beginning in order to have some way of fairly allocating finite resources.

This market would be controlled entirely by the citizens themselves and would be managed in an internet-based open and transparent process. This co-op could coexist with all the rest of the businesses in the larger society, but would provide a safety net for people to join as their jobs disappear. We could apply all of the proceeds earned by this organization to expansion into smaller and smaller markets in poorer and poorer nations and communities. By the time the co-op was ubiquitous, it would be providing the equivalent of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to all of the world's citizens, and would be completely member-owned and controlled in a way that is the absolute definition of egalitarian fairness.

In the end, we will have applied all of our industrial expertise specifically and directly to the process of helping humanity and solving our world's biggest problems. Most importantly, becoming a voting member and shopping there would be completely optional, and this solution will exist entirely in the private sector. It would be like a mini-state, except it would make no laws, and it would control and imprison nobody. If this co-op was structured as a non-profit it would not have to pay taxes, and since the members are paid in LUNAR CREDITS (the perfectly legal equivalent of store coupons), their "basic incomes" would be tax free. Since these LUNAR CREDITS are electronic and have a limited lifespan, there would be no inflation, in contrast to paying people with physical money that is printed and entered into circulation.

As more people became members, the size of government would need to shrink due to a decrease in tax revenue. In the end, the citizens will be free to spend all of their time as they choose, rather than slaving away endlessly as the human property of central banks and lenders who throughout history have forced citizens to work in order to grow economies and tax revenues. Instead of being forced to "be productive", human beings will be free to "Just Be themselves" and leave it at that. Instead of growing economies, trading dollars and polluting the environment, we could just grow and trade ever more potent varieties of cannabis buds and spend more time off the freeways and in our homes with our families, learning and exploring on the web, traveling the world and learning each others' cultures, or recreating outside while enjoying nature. That would definitely cut down carbon dioxide emissions in a massive and significant way and be infinitely better for the environment and World Peace than what we're doing today.

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Define.com is a registered nonprofit corporation dedicated solely to the global public interest and the advancement of humanity. It belongs to all of us who have a desire to promote secularism, electronic democracy, science, creativity, imagination, reason, critical thinking, peace, gender equality, civil rights, equal access to education, personal liberty, free speech, animal rights, compassionate and nonviolent parenting, social and economic justice, global monetary reform, cognitive liberty and a permanent cessation of The War on Drugs. Let's see what we can do if we put our heads together.

There's got to be a better way

An Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee for Every Human: When Will Americans Support Such A Humane System for Humanity?

Abstract

Government. If you can't overthrow it, then you might as well make it work for you, rather than the other way around. The same goes for the international banking system and whole global economy. In the end, it's our game. We can change the rules any time we want, if most of us can agree on a better way. For now, we're all playing in antiquated systems designed by well-intentioned people who had no idea where technology would take us and who are long since dead and buried. These systems got us to where we are today, and many of us can be thankful for that, but they may not be the best ones going forward. The distribution of wealth around the world and within the United States has become absurdly imbalanced to the point of immeasurable tragedy. Perhaps it's time to think about starting something new that is more compatible with the 21st century and our modern technology and populations. Maybe we can use something other than physical dollars that can be created in an open process of democratic consensus among a vast network of millions of people like scientists, engineers, economists, ethicists, physicians, academics and other educated and responsible groups; maybe even any and every person who wants to weigh in and respond. Maybe not. The whole point of the new game would be to keep the citizens' trade running smoothly in all places. Maybe it's time to do a grand experiment in self-regulation. We could design a primarily electronic currency in a way which allows all people to participate in commerce, maintain optimal physical health, and become educated in rational and critical thinking. One option is to have something like an "allowance" sufficient to live on that is paid to all law-abiding citizens whether they work or not, to guarantee a minimim standard of living for everyone, including the least among us. This is a form of an "Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee." It would allow us to end poverty and starvation permanently, and to restore civility to civilization. It has the potential to transform our current economies of what amounts to state-owned human beings living as the productive money-making property of banks and rulers into economies of free people serving themselves and each other. It would enable us to get millions of cars off the roads. It would dramatically reduce crime and its motives. It would provide our species' most creative people the time they require to maximize their creativity for the benefit of all humankind, and a mechanism for rewarding them fairly for their creations. It would allow the rest of us the time to explore and develop our own personal gifts on our own natural schedules.

If we can come up with something better and decide to move ahead with it, then getting to there from here in the most peaceful and least disruptive and traumatic way will take a lot of open discussions, private conversations and intelligent planning. We haven't done this before for one major reason: we didn't have the resources to make it happen. Fortunately, we now at last have the tools to get this job done the right way. It's time for all of us to start this extremely serious conversation in earnest, rather than dismissing these ideas as fanciful daydreams and futile hopes. It's time to Think BIG.

Biography

Ken Meyering is a 43-year old undergraduate student in the United States. He is currently learning the computer technologies that he will use to develop his "define.com" website into a large scale cloud computing application which collects and serves multimedia content in most of the Earth's human languages, while providing free web-based "show and tell" language training to help improve the rate at which we communicate across cultures. He can be reached via e-mail at: feedback4 (at) define (dot) com.

Introduction

World War II and the Cold War left Americans with a strong visceral hatred of Communism and Socialism as practiced in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and elsewhere. These nations included totalitarian leadership and little freedom and democracy for the citizens and their markets. Americans became champions of free trade and Capitalism. However, capitalism in the United States is beginning to fail the middle class as a result of globalization and corporate consolidation. The great masses of middle class capitalists are finally running out of capital. This is evidenced by our $11 trillion national debt, massive budget deficits, rising unemployment and recent near catastrophic banking crisis. This is not due to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit and creativity, but instead is a result of many entrepreneurs outsourcing their manufacturing to other nations rather than paying the much higher middle class wages in America. Their reason is simple: if they were to pay middle class wages in the U.S., their products would be too expensive to compete globally and with foreign imports. There is nothing morally wrong or illogical here from a common sense business perspective, as consumers obviously prefer lower prices over "Made in the USA." It has finally become apparent to many that globalization is seriously threatening to destroy the quality of life for most Americans, as they are quite literally running out of productive jobs, money and credit in spite of much cheaper consumer goods.

The fact that the U.S. economy is still functioning today is largely a result of the help of China, a Communist state with 1.3 billion people. A complete economic collapse is being averted only by the private and secretive Federal Reserve Banks printing unimaginable amounts of currency, which they are lending to the government with interest, which is then lending it interest-free to some of the nation's most mismanaged and greedy corporations, with no formal strings attached and little accountability. Much of it is now unaccounted for and lost to history. Those too-big-to-fail corporations in turn lend it at usurious rates back to the citizens so they can stay trapped in credit card debt that pays for goods and services mostly imported from other nations. So most of the money ultimately leaves the United States, but the citizens and their future offspring are then held responsible for paying back the private Federal Reserve Banks that printed it out of thin air in the first place. Do the math. Follow the money. Wall Street has finally completed their takeover of our democracy in a financial coup d'état. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Soon, our machines and computers will have biological precision, and we will finally achieve the science fiction dream of having our creations perform our work. However, our economies are not prepared for such widespread unemployment. Throughout history, our lives have revolved around us working hard just to survive. Those who didn't have jobs were left to fend for themselves. But what do you do in an age of material abundance when all practical needs can be satisfied but earnings are so scarce that only a few can share this abundance? It may be time for the U.S. to begin considering alternatives to pure capitalism. We may need to embrace an economic system that includes an unconditional basic income to all citizens regardless of employment status, so that everyone can participate. This paper proposes that instead of waiting for nanotechnology before we are forced to create this social safety net during a state of panic, we should begin the transition as soon as possible on a global scale, by starting with the poorest populations, as it will have immediate benefits to all of humanity. The root causes of many of Our World's most urgent problems (overpopulation, widespread disease in undeveloped nations, mass starvation, and violent religious extremism) are poverty and ignorance. Both of these core causal factors can be addressed most efficiently by providing the poor and unemployed with unconditional incomes.

The Problems

Over 25,000 human beings die each and every day as the result of poverty and starvation. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US $1/day. Moderate poverty is defined as living on less than US $2/day. There are currently over 1.1 billion people living below the extreme poverty level, and 2.7 billion people living below the moderate poverty level. For most of these people, jobs are scarce or pay only what amounts to slave wages. For them, a very substantial living income would be only $10/day. That would be enough to pay for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, water, and education. Just raising their income to this modest level would begin transforming theirs from undeveloped nations into developing ones. A large number of social scientists and economists, including multiple Nobel Prize-winners, have analysed the issue of poverty and unemployment at great depth and have concluded that the simplest and most efficient solution is to completely replace the existing hodgepodge of international aid programs, domestic welfare programs, and paltry voluntary poverty relief efforts with an Unconditional Basic Income to be provided directly to the poor, without intermediaries.

In the past, before the world was so connected, Americans didn't need to worry themselves with the plight of the poor on the other sides of the planet. The tragedies occurring in distant lands were not issues of immediate importance. However, with modern travel and electronic communication, and the globalization of markets, we are all interlinked now as never before. At no time has this reality hit home harder than when foreign nationals committed acts of terrorism in our country that were so devastating they will be impossible to forget. The American public has been led to believe that this terrorism is the result of religious extremism and the cultural differences between Christianity and Islam. This is not the whole truth. There is a deeper reason that so many young Muslim men are turning fundamentalist hatred, and that is the financial inequality between America and the rest of the world. In the end, the real cause of terrorism is poverty and economic injustice.

Americans will spend an estimated $1.5 trillion dollars fighting the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, which were wars of choice launched hastily with little forethought in response to the murder of 3000 Americans. This amount of dollars is on such an large scale that it is difficult to fathom. To make it more comprehensible and concrete, imagine that same amount of money being used to provide a $10/day Basic Income Guarantee for 400 million people for a full year. This sort of expenditure to help the poor would have won more good will around the world than have the destructive wars and subsequent attempts at nation building. But most Americans would never even consider contributing to a Basic Income Guarantee for others until they themselves are forced into poverty by circumstances of history. But Americans do not like to pay income taxes, and this is especially true of the wealthy. So where will this money come from, if not income taxes? A fair solution would be to have a flat consumption tax, to replenish general accounts and prevent runaway inflation. If you save your money, you pay no taxes. If you decided to buy something, a small percentage of that gets recirculated back into the system for redistribution to provide a basic income guarantee.

The Debate over Solutions

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. devoted an entire chapter to the subject of a basic income guarantee in his final book, "Where do we go from here?" (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). He was working to convince the establishment of his time that the issue of poverty is not a racial one, but is universal, and that the public values towards the poor were misguided. He wrote, "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective--the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

Reverend King was a very practical man. He explained the problem in simple terms:

"We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution. Though there have been increases in purchasing power, they have lagged behind increases in production. Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income. They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society."

"The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available."

In these statements King was directly addressing the counter arguments to his basic income guarantee proposal. The first argument is the well-known Republican and Libertarian anti-taxation stance: coercive taxation by the government for social programs is unfair and unconstitutional, and ineffective. They feel that the private sector is more effective at delivering services. For example, recently the Libertarian U.S. Representative Ron Paul wrote, "no one can deny that welfare programs have undermined America's moral fabric and constitutional system. Therefore, all those concerned with restoring liberty and protecting civil society from the maw of the omnipotent state should support efforts to eliminate the welfare state, or, at the very least, reduce federal control over the provision of social services." The anti-taxation side claims that giving money to the poor is an unfair drain on the productive that rewards the lazy, and that the productive do not receive any benefits in return for their sacrifice. Many religious conservatives argue that from the Christian standpoint, charity is an act of giving that God wants to be of a person's own volition as a measure of their beneficence and determinant factor in the reward or punishment they receive in the afterlife.

King addressed the financial reciprocity issue by pointing out that money provided for the poor was not being thrown away into a bottomless pit, but rather was being immediately channeled back to the producers, since the poor would become new consumers of goods and services. Because the poor need to spend proportionally larger amounts of their money just in order to survive, this money is actually being used very directly and effectively to stimulate the whole economy, and is far from wasted. The irrational conservative Christian belief that God needs charity to be voluntary in order to measure a person's goodness is simply not logical and can't be countered rationally except by using some competing form of dogma that substitutes one set of unknowable conditions with another.

Other arguments implied that the poor were morally inferior to the working class, due to their lack of character. The welfare philosophies of that time, as they are still, were based in a large part on the on belief that the "character" or moral fiber of the poor could be improved, since its absence seemingly results from, as King states, "multiple evils: lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiative; and fragile family relationships which distorted personality development." These different apparent causes were, and are still are, being addressed separately. There are programs to improve housing, programs to improve education facilities, and programs to provide family counseling services. There are unemployment programs that encourage people to regularly seek work in order to continue receiving conditional benefits. The operating theory is that by correcting these contributing factors, the poor will adopt better values, be more motivated to work, and be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become productive members of the society. Unfortunately, by dealing with all of these issues indirectly through a plethora of inefficient bureaucracies, the desired solutions never reach the poorest of the poor, who are the ones most in need. These approaches all end up failing because they are indirect strategies filled with red tape and administrative overhead. On this point, the Libertarians and Republicans are correct, government is horribly wasteful and slow. Modern thinkers with much more training in economics than Rev. King have come to the same conclusions as King. In the final analysis, the best approach is to provide an unconditional direct income payment. They have advanced and extended their theories to include all of humanity, not just the American poor.

The Intelligent Solution (In the past would have been...)

James Meade, a longtime BIG advocate who won the Nobel in 1977, commented on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, the primary architect of the modern Western "Keynesian" economic system. He said we must approach the "economic-social-political-environmental problems of our time" as a whole that involves the entire planet, and not just nations. We need to think on a much larger scale than we are used to. Meade emphasizes that it is absolutely urgent that we push to create a system of global federalism at all levels, from the local on up. He argues that we need a single world currency and a mechanism for worldwide public finance, including the basic income to every man, woman, and child. He says this is absolutely necessary if we are really serious about eliminating poverty, preserving peace, and maintaining a healthy environment. He emphasizes that this task of changing our public discourse is momentous, but necessary. We have all been indoctrinated by our systems to identify first with our nations. We must begin thinking on a higher level and start changing our loyalties. Our planet depends on this, according to Meade.

Perhaps the internet will evolve into such a mechanism for worldwide public finance?
Conclusion

Times have changed a lot since the days of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. We have made tremendous social progress. However, we have not found a way to end poverty and starvation. In America, we have just experienced a near total collapse of the economy, averted only by printing money and giving it directly to the richest of the rich: the largest corporate banks. Many Americans are now questioning the soundness of unfettered capitalism and outrageous executive pay. Millions of people have voted for significant increases in public funding of healthcare and education. In spite of what a clear majority of American citizens support, we are seeing the lack of true representation in the U.S. Congress. The fear mongers are making loud cries that "Socialism," the great Cold War Evil, is on the rise. However, if for no other reason than pure self-interest, Americans may soon need to change their attitudes about the distribution of wealth and shared social responsibility.

One of our logical and reasonable options is to create an entirely different economic model that is not based on the scarcity of physical currency, but instead on credits created democratically in an open, peer-reviewed, consensus-based process which includes millions of our brightest minds. In this sort of system, income taxation would be completely unnecessary, as would be thousands of bureaucracies at all levels charged with collecting and spending the peoples' incomes. This would be replaced by a flat consumption tax. Defining that intelligent system is our grand challenge. These decisions should not be left to a bureaucracy of secretive elites.

In the search for these solutions, don't look to the U.S. Congress for guidance. The levers of power are misplaced there in the hands of a miniscule non-represantive group of people, the majority of whom put their own interests in power ahead of the people's interests in freedom, health and happiness. As Americans grow more sophisticated and informed, it has become nearly universally accepted that most in Congress have become tools of Wall Street. It seems insane that 304 million Americans are represented only very indirectly and inefficiently by a paralyzed group of 535 fallible and corruptible human beings, especially in the Age of the Internet. This is not the best democracy we can come up with. As the younger generation becomes the new majority, and if technology continues advancing at its present rate, it is becoming increasingly likely that there will be a Global Basic Income Guarantee implemented within most of our lifetimes, and the poor in the U.S. and around the world will finally have a chance of sharing the many rewards of human progress.

Annotated Bibliography

The World Health Report 2008. Geneva, Switzerland: The World Health Organization, 2008. Print.

This is the annual World Health Report from the World Health Organization. This report contains statistics about world health issues, such as mortality rates and causes of death.

"Factsheet: Global Financial Crisis and Impact on Developing Countries." Global Monitoring Report 2009. 2009. The World Bank. 5 Jun 2009

This is a summary by The World Bank of how the current global financial crisis is affecting the developing nations of the world.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. 1. New York: Viking Press, 2005. Print.

Dr. Kurzweil explorers the historical rates of progress for intelligent life. He shares graphs and statistics showing the timeline of human evolution and human technology, and demonstrates that the progress is exponential. When combining this with Moore's Law, the observation by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that computers double their power every 18 months, Kurzweil hypothesizes that it is very likely that we will have computers with more intelligence than all the people on earth combined within our lifetimes. With this level of artificial intelligence, the machines should be able to solve the engineering problems that are beyond human abilities now, which will ignite an ever accelerating advancement.

"The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: Final Words of Advice. " New Pittsburgh Courier [Pittsburgh, Pa.] 16 Jan. 1999, City Edition: C5. Ethnic New swatch (ENW). ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 28 Apr. 2009

This article reminds us that in Martin Luther King's final book, "Where do we go from here?" he devotes an entire chapter to the Basic Income Guarantee. He reminds us that there are twice as many poor whites as blacks, so this is not simply a race issue. An income guarantee would be the simplest approach to ending poverty, as efforts to fight it by addressing its many independent contributing causes have been mired in bureaucracy and have been unsuccessful. We have improved education and housing, and provided counseling to the poor, but poverty has not gone away. King was convinced that ultimately, the most direct approach would be the most effective. Turning the nonproductive into consumers by providing them with a guaranteed income would drive demand, which would keep up with high production.

Sean Butler. (2005, July). 'Life, Liberty and a Little Bit of Cash'. Dissent, 52(3), 41-47. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 873720221).

The author discusses the idea of a basic income guarantee and suggests that it would actually be highly beneficial to capitalism. He mentions the stories of some of the early proponents of the idea, and how Alaskans already receive part of the State's oil wealth through the Alaska Permanent Fund and support the idea. He states that unlike unsuccessful programs in pre-1989 communist states, the income should be guaranteed to all citizens regardless of their wealth.

Karl Widerquist. . "Rereading Keynes: Economic Possibilities of Our Grandparents. " Dissent 1 Jan. 2006: 85-87. Research Library. ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 28 Apr. 2009

The author explores some of the ideas of the famous economist John Maynard Keynes(father of Keynesian Economics). He mentions how during the depression, it was expected that future generations would need to work less and less, however, it has turned out to be the other way around. Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century, predicted in 1930 that the average living standards in the US and Europe would be 4-8 times greater in a hundred years. He was right. The real income in the US is five times greater now than in the Depression. His theory predicted that economic productivity would continue to rise dramatically, and that humanity would grow beyond the struggle for existence. This would ultimately result in our being devoted to finding ways to spend our abundance of leisure time. He guessed that the little work that was left would be spread out through the whole society, and that the work week would only be 15 hours. However, this turned out to be incorrect.

Rifkin, Jeremy . The End of Work. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995. Print.

This book is reviewed by political activist Roedy Green. The book is based on the simple premise that ultimately machines will replace many human workers, and that the profits will go 100% to the owners of the machines, and none to the workers who have lost the jobs. With nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, this trend will continue for white collar intellectual jobs. The author explores some of the potential social alternatives if this scenario plays out. The short term solution is to reduce the work week from 5 days to 4, thereby increasing the number of people employed. One of the proposed long term solutions is to provide a basic income guarantee to all. Rifkin suggests that the widespread loss of work can spell the end to civilization as we know it, or it can signal the beginning of positive social transformation.

Frankman, Myron J.. . "A Planet-Wide Citizen's Income: An Espousal. " Labour Capital and Society 37.1&2 (2004): 150. Alt-Press Watch (APW). ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 14 Apr. 2009

Globalization has resulted in the increasing dismantlement of the social safety net in the U.S.. There has been a relentless effort to label the social programs as enabling a "race to the bottom." Frankman believes that we must look at the world problems of poverty as a whole and solve it through a planet-wide Basic Income Guarantee. He also supports a single world currency and a system of public finance. This will be extremely difficult, since we have been systematically conditioned to think nationally rather than globally. We need to have a "Declaration of Interdependence." Statistics show that the ratio of income distribution between the richest 20% of nations and poorest 20% is growing alarmingly. It was 3:1 in 1820, and 74:1 in 1997. For a global BIG to work, we need to begin to think about redirecting trillions of dollars from richer to the poorer nations, rather than billions. Up to $6 trillion could be collected by eliminating international tax havens. We must begin immediately.

Paul, Rep. Ron. "Oppose the Federal Welfare State." LewRockwell.com. 13 Feb 2003. U.S. House of Representatives. 5 Jun 2009 .

Ron Paul is a leading Libertarian politician who opposes all taxation and government programs. He believes that the private sector should be held responsible for everything except for defense. He has consistently opposed all welfare programs, and has fought to eliminate them.

Useful Links

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network

Support Nanotechnology: Your Life May Depend On It

ATTENTION STEP

· In my first speech, I introduced you all to the science of manipulating things on the atomic and molecular scale, called nanotechnology. I mentioned how in the future we may all merge with nanomachines and become immortal cyborgs.

· Today, I'd like to persuade you that the goal achieving advanced nanotechnology is a vitally important, life or death issue. Nanotech has the potential to solve almost every major problem we face today.

· We are already machines. Each of us is a unique and individual arrangement of matter in time and space, created by a master designer called Mother Nature. Due to the nature of genetics and natural selection, we are all designed first and foremost to do one thing, that is to reproduce. As far as nature is concerned, we are all just sex machines. Once we've outlived our usefulness to this cause, we break down and die.

NEED STEP

· From the beginning of time, death has been the one constant of life. Every living thing eventually dies.

· For the last few thousand years, we have been fighting death with medicine. But in all that time we've only managed to extend our lives about 50 years, then it's game over!

· Our whole health care industry and Medicine itself have been treating the symptoms, and that's the wear and tear of our mechanical parts.

· But in the end, shouldn't we focus on the elephant in the room? The mother of all diseases. That elephant is "DEATH" itself.

SATISFACTION STEP

· If we want to grow beyond ancient ritual of birth and death, we will need to remake ourselves. We'll need to pick up where nature leaves off, and design better bodies. We'll need to make bodies that don't wear out in 70 years. We'll need to learn to create spare parts, so we can have periodic tune ups. We'll need to remake our minds, so that we think clearly for hundreds or thousands of years, instead of becoming senile in under 100.

· To do this, we will need to rearrange ourselves at the molecular level. We will need to redesign our cells, our blood, our tissues, our brains. Ultimately, we will need to completely overhaul our whole design, from the DNA on up. We will need nanotechnology. We need it sooner rather than later.

VISUALIZATION STEP

· Let's look at some statistics that shed a little light on the issue of death

· Here are some numbers from the World Health Organization. These are the numbers of people that die each year by different causes

o In the Developing countries, AIDS kills over 2 1/2 million people each year

o In the Developed countries, 3 1/2 million people die each year of heart disease

o Another 3 million die of strokes.

· According to the CIA World Fact Book 2005 edition, death takes 56.5 million people each year

o That's 155,000 people that die every day

o 25,000 of those are due to hunger

· All of these deaths could have been prevented if we had nanotechnology

· To get there from here, it's going to take a lot of money.

· We will need a major commitment from the governments of the world.

· Here some data from the Cientifica showing the amount of dollars spent on nanotech research per year around the world

· Imagine what we could have done with just a small fraction of the trillion and half dollars the U.S. has spent in the war on terror. Isn't science more important than bombs and bullets?

ACTION STEP

— Spread the word, tell your friends

— Support political leaders that are tech savvy

— Vote to increase funding for nanotechnology

— Learn about it by visiting http://www.foresight.org

— How about a full-scale WAR ON DEATH instead of all these stupid wars in the Middle East?

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Peterson, Christine. Unbounding the Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution. First Edition. New York, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993, Print.

This book by Christine Peterson, her then husband Eric Drexler, and their associate Gayle Pergamit is a follow-up to the 1985 introduction to nanotechnology, "Engines of Creation." It further explores the current state of the various industries working toward nanotech, and includes mention of new technologies such as virtual reality and computer-aided design. It also includes a picture of IBM's now famous logo, written entirely in atoms.

The world health report 2008. Geneva, Switzerland: The World Health Organization, 2008. Print.

This is the annual World Health Report from the World Health Organization. This report contains statistics about world health issues, such as mortality rates and causes of death.

Nanotechnology Opportunity Report. 3rd Edition. London, England: Cientifica, 2008. Print.

This is a private analysis of worldwide funding in nanotechnology. It tracks nanotech research in all key industrial sectors, as well as all government and publicly available private funding.

The CIA World Fact Book. 2007 Edition. New York, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007. Print.

This is the annual CIA publication of all the major statistics about all the countries of the world. They track things like political affiliations, religious, economic, demographic, and import/export data

Freitas Jr., Robert, Nanomedicine, Volume IIA: Biocompatibility. Self-published, 2003. Print

This series of books is the first specifically dedicated to nanotechnology's application to medicine. It includes ample amounts of chemistry, physics, and math to earn Freitas universal respect in the scientific community