Forum Post: Fixing the World's Problems

I HAVE ALSO POSTED THIS HERE. People will probably prefer to use social media to share as it avoids spamming people with emails, and people seem willing to use the sharing tools on pastebin while my browser width isn't wide enough for me to see them here so I don't know if people ever use them.

The purpose of this message is to be read by a large fraction of people in the United States. The site it's initially posted on doesn't really matter since the number of different communities is so large, so the majority of the intended audience would not be accustomed to visiting the site no matter what. The topic is fixing most problems in the world, including war and unemployment, by making it socially acceptable to spend less time at work.

Economists who are aware of this solution have not supported it because they do not have the goal of improving the world, only of making GDP as high as possible.

The US has plenty of wealth, which is why wage levels are high enough that the cost of living prevents the unemployed from competing with workers in foreign countries on the basis of price, such as Bangladesh where many workers make less than $50 per month (http://www.bbs.gov.bd/webtestapplication/userfiles/image/National%20Accounts%20Reports/OTHER_REPORT/Wage%20Rate.pdf). That would not be enough for a US worker to even afford food, much less housing or health care.

Companies can encourage people to work less to create jobs by paying them a higher rate when they do so. For example, the first 24 hours of work in a week are paid at 1.2x an employee's normal rate, and after that at a 0.7x rate so that someone who works 40 hours per week is paid the same amount.

The government is not going to fix the economy by itself. It wastes too much money on special interests (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16334798-fiscal-cliff-deal-includes-at-least-679-billion-for-special-interests) and high employee compensation (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-11/-822-000-worker-shows-california-leads-u-s-pay-giveaway.html), and people do not trust it with more money unless it acknowledges these problems.

The reason this solution was not discovered before is that we find it hard to trust people we don't know and dislike admitting that we are wrong about whether other people are nice. Some people might reject the notion that it's this easy to fix the problems of the world, causing them to look a bit stupid, but at least this means they're happy (The Secret to Happiness - http://9gag.com/gag/5769120) which is not something all intelligent people can say.

This desire to avoid making other people look stupid is why most people have avoided sharing this solution. But it's worth it as it would even address the reasons why intelligent people are often unhappy, as pictured in a short graphic novel by Ingrid Tan, retitled as "Love story": http://9gag.com/gag/5684757

There are many stories that include the idea that love can make you do bad things (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveMakesYouEvil). Some people feel that there is no way to resolve conflict between love and the goal of helping the world as long as someone is still alive, and would view lack of support for this message as proof that it will never be resolved.

We can have confidence in the importance of this message through the actions people have taken as a result of it. Both James Holmes and Adam Lanza conducted their attacks because people would not support it, with Adam Lanza doing so after people didn't respond to a post that included a link to the explanation of James Holmes' motives (http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/the-us-is-1-including-rampage-killings-among-devel/).

Adam Lanza obscured his motives by destroying his computer's hard drive. The legal team for James Holmes has not said whether they intend to use an insanity defense (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/11/james-holmes-trial/1826965/) and has delayed the procedure where he will have to enter a plea of whether he is guilty by two months. That made this message possible.

Please share this message with everyone you know, even those who won't do the same. If no one does, it obviously won't get used but some people might have special circumstances. Don't be afraid of making anyone look stupid.