Forum Post: We Want a Better Life for Everyone
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 14, 2011, 7:16 p.m. EST by SaRaIam
(105)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The quality of life is determined by how we treat each other and ourselves, not by material wealth. And to want to help people in need is a noble cause. I don't understand why there are so many people filled with hate against those who bring awareness to corruption and greed and seek to make the world juster place, We really only want a good life for EVERYONE. The Declaration of Human Rights should be adhered to; food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for affordable for all. Some seem to think that "protesters" want people to sacrifice pleasures. It's just a matter of living on this earth without destroying it and each other, and helping everyone to be COMFORTABLE.
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 not 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.
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.
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.
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.
Taxes other than the income tax, such as sales tax or payroll tax, should be reduced or cancelled.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://superunion.org/m/articles/view/One-Direction
Because you're wrong. First, you use the term "greed" - which is just a pejorative term for a vary basic human drive... then, you use the term "just" which is almost exclusively used by communists in the context of economics...
Everyone? Even for those who are too lazy and don't want to work? I'm afraid it's not possible... The commies tried this thing in many parts of the world, in many different cultures, but they all failed miserably... and any similar attempts will have the same outcome once the basic principles of capitalism are abandoned: private porperty, free market, income determined by the market, competition and so on...
Everyone? Even for those who are too lazy and don't want to work?
Actually, science says that, for jobs involving cognitive work, motivations come best when there is no worry for income/survival. The whole 'better work = more income' model only works for manual labor that involves no cognition whatsoever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
As a person who's experienced the scientific research process, I can tell you that scientists can get pretty biased unconsciously to get that funding. I've met lab technicians who keep following protocol to the letter without observing anything, and the professors (since they're too busy reading literature to write up the next grant proposal to actually observe anything).
If you want to promote 'progress', you have to get scientists away from the need for survival.
You probably are one of the privileged and don't realize it. It is really annoying when people who have gotten a head start in life go around thinking they're just really special and more capable than others. For people who are born into poverty, or even the middle class, they can work sweat and toil and never get ahead, life is just a struggle. The "lazy" poor people are far less of a burden on the system than rich people who get a 1000 dollars a minute or more for a conference call.
Except for the 1%. We want a worse life for them.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&pli=1&formkey=dFlNNHJTRlZwMWs5ZjlhTWN0NlZReHc6MQ#gid=0
"EVERYONE. The Declaration of Human Rights should be adhered to; food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for affordable for all"
My complaint with this statement is that the government has not cheated you and corporations have not wronged you if this is not taking place. Ironically, America has the highest standard of living of any country - and corporations got them there, and look how the protesters act.
Technology is the impetus for the dawning of the new era. For the first time all of humanity can instantaneously communicate on a global scale. We can control our birth rate with the use of safe effective birth control. We have the resources to feed and house the world’s population. Most all human suffering is manmade or worsened by greed and lack of empathy. Technology has also given us the ability choose our destiny. We can continue the current trajectory: depletion of resources, growing inequalities and war. Or, we can choose a new way.
The path to enlightenment, equality, and sustenance is attainable with a united movement. Part of that movement is time bank. Time bank is a network of humanity. Organized on line. Completely transparent. All inclusive. Hour in. Hour out. That’s it. No person’s hour is more or less valuable than another.
A worldwide time bank can be started now. With enough participation it can catalyze the transition from the current corrupt monetary system to a society where money is irrelevant and each person is valued. Fear and greed will paralyze this movement. Hope and imagination can propel it.
Time is the Substance from which I am made. – Jorge Luis Borges
"Most all human suffering is manmade or worsened by greed and lack of empathy."
Do you suspect technology will find a way to make us more empathetic? I'm not sure how technology can possibly make us understand the human condition.
Technology, I suspect, is the catalyst by which our current economic system has been structured. Only through technology: has outsourcing been possible; has the re-manufacturing of family life been possible with the advent of automobiles; has the REQUIREMENT for us to maintain birth rates through technological controls been necessary; has the corporate takeover of farming thanks to refrigeration technology been possible; has the mass paranoia of nuclear holocaust been possible; has 9/11-style events been possible...
I could go on about how technology has harbored a very anti-human age. In order for us to start choosing our destinies, we have to stop being used by technology. Rather, we should be the ones using it.
I believe that greed and lack of empathy are learned behaviors; symptoms of an ill society in which competitiveness is valued. I also believe that we can change our culture to one in which each human is valued and their unique and innate abilities are nurtured so that all of society may benefit mutually from each persons contribution. The current system has not been brought about by technology but by a drive for profit at humanities expense.
The advancements that you list above could be seen in another light: of relieving humans from mundane labor and freeing them to pursue more fulfilling and beneficial ends.
Yes, I agree that our system can be seen that way, and if you'll allow me, I'd like to elaborate about how technology has subverted this possibility.
To start I'd like to consider the natural state of the human: the hunter-gatherer. We have come a long way from what we consider to have been a very primitive life-form. No longer are we the man who starves himself on a daily basis, searching tirelessly for both shelter and sustenance. Readily we have available to us water, food, clothing, heat, and shelter. Life is comparatively easy and relaxed, leaving us to very different pursuits.
What are these pursuits? They are very different from person to person. The one I believe you suggest is the pursuit of enlightenment. I agree with you that the pursuit of enlightenment is the greatest of all pursuits. Yet, it is our very age which assaults this pursuit into nothingness.
Enlightenment is manifest when man is want of nothing. Fear is what corrupts the man, and fear is the foundational force behind want. The Man fears he won't make money: he gets a college degree. The Woman fears she isn't beautiful enough to attract or keep her mate: she wants makeup.
These wants are contemporary symptoms of an age that has become easy due to technology. Modern farming is so ORGANIZED and so EASY and done for us by someone else. We are no longer in an era in the United States where we're at a want for food or water. We no longer have to truly scrape by with the skin of our hands; for, after all, the supermarket is merely three blocks away.
With such ease of the modern life, our mind is left to scavenge what is left to us: the pursuit of knowledge; the pursuit of beauty; the pursuit of sex; the pursuit of strength; the pursuit of money; the pursuit of the highest-tech gadgets; the pursuit of status--all of which are manifests of fear. These are wants that out of our restlessness to find something truly meaningful in our technological age have become needs. They are our perceived needs, for we can no longer function emotionally without these pursuits.
The fact is, when food and water and shelter have become so easy to come by, we forget that these truly are the only needs we have. We have replaced these needs with others, which pulls us out of our humanity and leaves us wanting and struggling for meaning.
I apologize, but I recognize my post is long and fear you won't bother reading it all, so I'll capitalize this last portion to steal your attention:
IT IS NOT US WHO USE TECHNOLOGY, BUT TECHNOLOGY WHO USES US. We have invented modern farming technology that can farm more efficiently than dozens of farmers ever could. Therefore, we displace the farmer and put in his place the Machine. We rely on the Machine, and NO LONGER DO WE NEED THE BATTERED SWEAT OF THE MAN.
We have the tools, so we use them. We have the atom bombs, so we use them.
We don't think of the human consequence of this. The way it reduces man to a state of spiritual vagrancy. No longer can the Man say, "I have grown this with my bear hands!" and beat his hunger. Things have become easy, oh so easy.
Easy for a few, not so easy for many. We enslave and in turn are slaves. Money blinds us from this.
Enlightenment too, is manifest when man is desperate, lonely, caged. Fear of obsolescence is motivation indeed. Fear of equality is paralyzing. A necessary evil to support seven billion, technology evolves with its makers. Purpose now can be found in dilution of evil and the pursuit of equality as we ponder our privileged duty to untie what binds. But, who are we claim the path of righteousness?
And since I'm in a poetic mood I give you this, but since i like it so well I hope you wont mind If i share it with the rest of the board.
elusive is joy focus magnify repeat can you see it yet?
But that still doesn't explain your position that technology rectifies evil.
However, thank for you poetry. I think we both agree that "elusive is joy," and that there is merit to keeping it elusive.
Why the presumption of my position? It is not technology that rectifies evil. Man's rectifies evil by rectifying his mores. Technology is our tool. Of this I am certain.
Merit? How? Do you fear scarcity of joy. I do not, for if all are happy, all are happy!
No, I don't fear scarcity of joy. That's why (I thought) I agreed with you. If we were all happy (with a capital HAPPY) all the time, we'd forget what happiness is. I don't feel the need to always be happy, which is why I'm quite content with life.
I didn't mean to make presumptions. But your previous posts seemed pretty clear cut about your position on technology. Technology IS a tool, but the spirit is even greater. The problem with technology is that it displaces the spirit, and we forget that we are uniquely human in our design.
"We no longer campy as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven." - Henry David Thoreau