Forum Post: One Direction

We belong to different parties, different unions, different clubs with different interests. Nevertheless, we all share the same common goal: a Better Life. And though each person has a unique vision of Better Life, we don’t dream of starvation and misery, or meaningless jobs that eat up our lives. Our visions include peace, meaningful life, excitement, happiness, and freedom. This is where we all want to get, one general direction.

Peace is when no people are under threat of being killed or mutilated for any reason.

Meaningful life, excitement, and happiness are private challenges that every person must be free to explore in a personal way.

Freedom is vital for all that. Freedom to organize and unite for common goals, freedom to stay independent of organisations and set personal goals. Freedom to shape one’s life any way one wants, freedom no to do that. This large all-inclusive freedom for all is possible.

I see nine features of a free society, as free country or free world. These features are goals that we can reach very soon, if we unite for them. They are in the same general direction of meaningful life, peace, happiness, and freedom. They are basically paperwork changes, upgrade to the existing system.

1. Business is an organisation where people play different roles and work together towards common goals. We need to recognize that owners and employees of all levels, managers and workers, are free individuals that partner together in the free enterprise, and are entitled to shares of the enterprise profits. Wages are merely allowances for a general level of life to make it possible for the workers to carry out their duties. The actual work should be compensated with a fair share of collective achievement — a share of profit.

2. Uneven distribution of power is what impedes individual freedom and corrupts the very notion of freedom. It is incompatible with democracy. Strong progressive income tax must protect us from uneven distribution of power.

3. We must ensure that every person gets a fair share of the results of that person’s work. For that, we have to recognize that any work takes time and physical effort. If one person honestly works hard for a day, hardly anyone can do ten times more work, but it is physically impossible to do a hundred or a thousand times more work in a day.

Progressive income tax must narrow down the gap of money and privilege between jobs. It must establish a high top margin of individual earnings. Maximum earnings limit should depend on minimum wage, and be substantially, but not unreasonably higher. If minimum wage is $30,000 a year, it may be prudent to agree on the maximum income of $300,000 — ten times the minimum.

1. Taxes other than the income tax, such as sales tax or payroll tax, should be reduced or cancelled.

2. We must ensure every person’s right not to be forced into any organisation, including not economically forcing free individuals to join business organisations to attain the basic necessities of modern life. Every person is entitled to a free and inalienable lifelong allowance that should cover average rent, food, transportation and communication (such as Internet connection), and should be equal to minimum wage.

3. No person shall be denied the right to healthcare and no person shall be denied the right to improve oneself through education. Healthcare and education must be free.

4. Essential social service workers — policemen, firefighters, medics, and teachers — should get the high-end salaries that reflect their vital importance to the society. Throughout their careers their salaries should approach the maximum income.

5. Government must be fully transparent. A taxpayer must be able to track where every tax dollar is at any time, down to departments, individual people responsible for that dollar, and particular contracts.

6. Free people can not submit other free people to any form of physical punishment. No person can be subjected to physical punishment, including termination of life.

Reaching these goals will mean Better Life based on freedom and equal opportunity to every individual. It is possible in the modern world, with our knowledge and technology, to switch to this freedom-for-all within our existing infrastructure. A few administrative changes is all that’s needed, but we don’t have much time. If you don’t agree with all of these goals, let’s unite to bring about those we agree on first. Pick a goal and let’s reach it together.

Distribute this text any way you like: re-post, publish, print, translate, quote, make a video or a song. Our task is to make these features of the free society common knowledge, in order to unite in one great general direction, and so that if you don’t see any of these features around, you know you are not free.

Daniel Malikov,

superunion.org