Chapter 10: Metrics
Traditional metrics that purport to measure the health and vitality of a socio-economic community have failed miserably to paint an accurate picture. Such metrics include Gross National Product, Gross Domestic Product, the performance of stock exchanges, the value of local currency on the world market and more similar statistics.
Attempting to craft metrics that at least paint an approximately accurate picture is problematic, to say the least. For example, how does one compare the cost of living in 1900 with that in 2010? Those years describe very different worlds. It can be approximated but it is also subjective to a great degree and difficult to substantiate.
There are some basic quantities and concepts that can be translated, however. For example, a dollar in 1900 is very different from a dollar in 2019, and a typical living in 1900 is very different from a typical living in 2019. Instead of figuring out how much a dollar was worth at any particular time and how much a house, food, etc. cost, we might get a more accurate and true measure of the economy from the working person’s perspective, by looking at how many hours of work a month it takes/took to have the basics of life, which themselves change with time. (For example, in our parents' time, one needed to pay for ice to be delivered for the ice box; whereas today Internet access is a basic in many places, because it is necessary even just to look for a job and pay bills).
In the appendix of this writing is a graphical representation and analysis from this perspective. One thing that becomes clear is that the generally accepted standard work week of 40 hours is nowhere near enough to survive upon for ¼ to 1⁄3 of working Americans at their rate of pay. To survive in this context means living paycheck-to-paycheck, able to pay necessary expenses as long as no extra expenses occur, such as car repairs, dentist visits, non-covered medical expenses, or raises in rent or mortgage. It is more difficult to define the amount of hours or money necessary to purchase secure and reliable access to Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, beyond living paycheck-to-paycheck, because the kinds of events that can sink a barely-floating family or individual are so varied and unpredictable. There have also been fluctuations over the past century, which are detailed in the appendix.
There are also expenses that can be measured in terms of hours that will not show up in any analysis done in terms of currency. Commute time, for example, has a huge impact upon one’s quality of life, degree of freedom and access, as does the amount of time that one has to devote to family and to one’s own well-being. This is rarely figured into analyses of the cost of living. It is a very real cost nevertheless.
If one is unable to afford a vehicle and does not live in a city such as New York, Chicago, London, Paris, or Moscow that has an excellent public transportation system, and if one’s job is not close to one’s home, then commute times are a major cost. In cities such as Los Angeles, California in the United States, for example, commute times of an hour in each direction are considered reasonable. Indeed, a job-seeker unwilling to undertake such a commute is downgraded as an applicant. Yet if one adds an hour commute to the total of one’s work hours, it has a major impact. If you work a 9-hour day including lunch and breaks, and commute an hour each way, then your 9-hour day is really an 11-hour day. If you are fortunate enough to get the medically recommended 8 hours of sleep, then you only have 5 hours a day for anything but work or sleep. You need to get dressed, shower, eat, perform household chores, pay bills and more. By the time all is said and done, you are lucky if you have a couple of hours a day for self and family. If you have a job that requires some work at home, then even less.
Doing the math, we see that an hour’s commute each way translates to 10 hours a week, assuming a 5-day work week, or 40 hours per month which adds up to 520 hours each year, which comes to a grand total of 21.66 days a year spent commuting. In practical terms, in such a job you are spending over 3 weeks in traffic out of every year, just commuting to and from your job. That is not negligible.
When we try to establish metrics in terms of currency, we immediately run into major problems in trying get such metrics to paint a true picture of the economic reality for the typical human being.
There is a big difference between the quality of life of a family with an income of $60,000/year from one 40-hour-a-week job, and that of a family with the same income from three 40-hour-a-week jobs bringing in $20,000 each. 40 hours a week vs. 120 hours a week translates into major disparity in quality of life between the two families that does not show up when considering income alone.
This is why instead of using income as a metric, a more revealing one would be the ratio of hours worked to hours of work needed to live. This avoids the need to perform complex and fuzzy calculations to allow for changes in the values of currencies over time. This metric can be calculated for any location and time period in a meaningful way by dividing the monthly income necessary for a living wage by the employee's hourly pay rate in currency units per hour.
For example, if the median salary is $400/week, assuming a 40-hour week and the cost of living is $400/week, then it appears that 50% of employees are able to live paycheck to paycheck or better, and 50% are not.
In the above example, if the median salary is $10/hour, then employees at that level of pay must work 40 hours a week to be able afford the basic cost of living. If the median salary is $8/hour, then it takes 50 hours a week to afford a basic living. At $5/hour, it takes 80 hours a week to make the same living. At $20/hour it takes only 20 hours a week to make the same income. In this example, the employee making $20/hour is most likely able to save and invest.
The difference in quality of life is thus more readily apparent.
So if in 1970 the median salary was $5/hour and it took $200/week to afford a basic living, it translates into a 40-hour work week. If in 2010 the median salary was $10/hour and it cost $400/week to live, then it is still a 40-hour week. But if in 2010 the median salary is $10/hour but it costs $800/week to live, then even though there appear to have been salary gains since 1970, in fact the cost of living in human hours has actually doubled from 40 in 1970 to 80 in 2010. This shows a more accurate picture of the reality than currency figures alone.
When looking at and measuring income under Capitalist paradigms, if we wish to gain an accurate picture we must also take into account not just income from wages or salary, but also income generated from investments. One of the hallmarks of Capitalist paradigms is the fact that money can be used to make more money by investing in the stock market, real estate, precious metals, currency exchanges and other kinds of investments. This is money made not on one's labor, time, and/or expertise but upon that of others.
In Capitalist cultures, the saying "It takes money to make money" always arises and comes to be taken as factual wisdom, as discussed earlier in this writing. In fact, under Capitalist paradigms, there is more money-making potential in investments than in employment.
At a superficial glance, this might appear to grant all members of the community a chance to benefit, but that is yet another myth/illusion as discussed earlier. Consider the fact that at the time of this writing, in the United States of America, a 6-12% growth in investments is considered good for small investors. A typical family or individual living at sub or barely living income levels has no money left after living expenses to invest.
So let's look at an individual or family living at a little over living wage, who is able to save a little bit most months after living expenses. Such a person or family must take into account the possibility of the unexpected: a medical expense not covered by insurance, losing a job, rent or mortgage going up too far too fast, a fire, a sick child or parent, automotive expenses, lawsuits, and more could wipe out their savings in a very short time, so most people in this position will not feel safe or free to invest much.
As covered in Chapter 1, you need to be able to invest around $100,000 to generate enough return to have a significant, robust positive impact on your economic situation and secure your right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. In 2017 that was approximately the “net worth” of someone in the 51st percentile; but in practice one would have to be quite a bit farther up the pyramid. Keep in mind that for most “middle class” people, most of their “net worth” takes the form of their home. In order to realistically have $100,000 available to invest without touching for ten years, one would have to be in the vicinity of the 80th percentile or higher. Remember that the richest ten percent of the population control 84% of the stock.
One possible metric that could be used to track the impact and trends of economic factors on human life and quality of life is the ratio of change in income to change in cost of living. A ratio of 1:1 would mean a stable balance, no significant change in the amount of work needed to achieve a basic living. A ratio greater than one (1.3:1, 2:1, 3:2 etc.) would indicate that the typical member of the community is experiencing an improvement in their situation; a ratio less than one (1:2, 2.2:5) would indicate a worsening of the typical person's situation over time. A negative value in the numerator would indicate a severe decline in quality of life, while a negative value in the denominator would indicate a major improvement. Still, the best metric would appear to be the number of work-hours needed to sustain a basic living with the necessities of life secured and some left over for unexpected expenses, investments, and recreation, education, and other non-survival activities.
One major challenge is to arrive at a definition of what it takes to live, adjusting for historical time period, technology, norms and what is needed in each culture. In paleolithic times, this consisted of having sufficient food, water, clothing, tools for survival and a healthy tribe to belong to as a support system. In the 1800's in the United States, it consisted of some kind of house or tenement to live in, gas or oil lights or candles, a wood stove which also acted as a heater, a bed, kitchen table, a few chairs, dishes and cutlery, an outhouse, a horse or horses, clothing, a few household tools like an iron, a washtub and the like, food, and tools of one's trade. In the early 20th century this came to include indoor plumbing and bathrooms, electricity, a furnace for heating, horse or car, electric lights, a radio, vacuum cleaner, and tools of one's trade. In the 21'st Century it includes car (transportation), many electric appliances such as washer/dryer, computer, telecommunications devices and services, media devices such as TV's, cable/satellite, Internet access (even for job-seeking), etc.
We can possibly simplify this analysis by classifying some items into categories: work tools, furniture, food storage and preparation, transportation, communications, health and medical, home maintenance & repair, etc. A purely objective set of criteria are probably not achievable since determining what constitute "necessities" is always somewhat subjective: in 1940 a credit card was not a necessity; in the 2000's it is a necessity simply because not having one hampers one's ability to do basic things in life. One might argue whether or not anybody really needs a computer, a TV, jewelry, etc. and there are credible arguments for nearly every point of view. A good compromise might be to attempt to define what, in any given time-period and country/community, constitutes the prevailing composition of what's needed to live in a state of non-deprivation.
Certainly percentile, median, and mode are more meaningful than average as statistical descriptors. To illustrate this point, imagine a population of 1,000 people, each making $25,000/year and one individual making $1 billion. In such a community, the average income comes out to $1,023,976.20 for that population. This statistic gives a very distorted and optimistically misleading impression when delivered in a news story stating that this community is an example of a healthy and thriving economy, with an average yearly income of $1,023,976.20.
In contrast, the median salary in that population is $25,000, and the mode is also $25,000. The range here is 999,975,000. The combination of median, mode, and range tells a more accurate picture than simple average. Another useful data point is to compare the median and the mean (average). The more the mean exceeds the median, the greater the disparity in the population.
Stock indices, GNP, GDP and similar metrics as measures of the economic health and viability of a population are illusory, only marginally meaningful, and misleading. For example, under Capitalist paradigms, an economy is generally considered healthy if stock prices are high and climbing, the Gross National Product is growing, along with other financial indices. Sadly, in most situations, these indicators of a Capitalistically-defined "healthy economy" actually come at the expense of the well-being and safety of the vast majority of the population.
The core logic is that if large corporations and ultra-wealthy are gaining wealth, the economy is considered to be in good condition. Yet as we have seen, given the pyramidal structure of Capitalist paradigms, by design every time the few entities at the top of the Pyramid make gains, it comes at the expense of those beneath them on the pyramid, hitting those at the bottom of the Pyramid the hardest.
Therefore for the purposes of crafting and implementing a win-win-win-win synergistic empowering socio-economic paradigm, classical economic concepts of what makes a healthy economy need to be discarded entirely. Any metric that seeks to show a true picture of the economic health of any community must measure how many hours citizens must work to make a living, the degree of happiness, empowerment, thriving, and quality of life of the community and the individuals comprising it, long-term sustainability, and adaptability of the paradigm to continually self-modify under changing conditions to maintain the optimal achievable quality of life for all individuals.
The interaction between government and economy must also be examined carefully, comprehensively, rigorously, and fearlessly. There can be no democracy or freedom without both government and economics of, by, and for the People.
In the Soviet Union and some other Marxist-oriented countries, the lack of political freedom and democracy, as well as the stratification of the community into Party members and non-Party-members, ultimately undermined the original goal of a free and classless society.
In the United States and other purely Capitalist countries, the inevitable stratification of the population into neo-Feudal Lords and Serfs, the disproportionate and erosive degree of influence of the ultra-wealthy and mega-corporations on government, and the rigid, relentless extent to which one's degree of freedom, options, respect, and well-being is determined by one's place on the economic Pyramid, disenfranchises an ever-growing majority of the community. This situation similarly undermines and sabotages any intention of a free, democratic society based on government of, by, and for the People.
It would be useful to develop metrics that compare psychosocial representations of the desires and priorities of the people to the actual legislation and other performance of legislators and other elected and appointed officials, and to compare elected and appointed officials' estimation of their own performance in terms of citizen satisfaction to actual citizens’ estimation of same. The former could be represented in tables with one column representing input from the people and the other column containing actual legislation, actions and positions taken by elected and appointed personnel in another. Perhaps a useful approach to the latter would be to survey both elected legislators and officials and the public to rate significant parameters on a -5 to +5 scale with -5 representing complete dissatisfaction and +5 signifying complete satisfaction.
Under Capitalist paradigms, wealth is often regarded as an approximate measure or determinant of a person's productivity, contribution, moral fitness and worthiness of trust and respect. As a metric, this has absolutely no real value.
The illusion of "meritocracy" - the myth that income and wealth are directly or even approximately proportionate to one's contribution to society, to one's productivity, or to how hard one works - is a constantly-reiterated myth employed very cleverly as propaganda in Capitalist societies. This very partial truth is used to achieve nearly universal compliance by perpetuating the belief that anybody at the top of the Pyramid is there because they have worked that much harder and contributed that much more to the community than those at the bottom of the Pyramid.
In other words, if a CEO makes in an hour what a typical employee of the same company makes in a year, assuming a standard 40-hour work week which translates to 2,080 hours in a year, the myth suggests that the CEO is 2,080 times more hardworking and contributory to the community than the typical employee. This is at best an arbitrary assumption based on unfounded assumptions, ignorance, and lack of information. At worst it is a deliberate and systematic manipulation to suppress challenges to the Capitalist paradigm. In reality, the “productivity” of a CEO is often primarily measured in terms of how much they have enriched investors, who are almost exclusively members of the ultra-wealthy sector. This kind of “productivity” almost always comes at the expense of the economic and overall well-being of both employees and customers. The socio-economic paradigm reinforces this dynamic and makes it virtually inevitable.
The thinking goes something like this: If the CEO is way up there, then if I want to get there I have to work harder and contribute more than anybody else. If you are on the bottom of the pyramid, then there must be something morally or constitutionally wrong with you; you must be lazy and undisciplined, weak, stupid, lack dedication or drive, or be shortsighted. If you are at the top of the pyramid, then you must be overall a better person than someone at the bottom. This postulate keeps those lower down in the pyramid blaming themselves rather than challenging the paradigm, keeps them compliant with the paradigm, and keeps them subservient to those at the top of the Pyramid. If you are that rich and powerful, you must have done a lot to earn it. If you are that poor, then you must be doing something wrong or not doing something right.
In reality, under Capitalist paradigms, employee compensation is almost completely decoupled from employee productivity. If we look at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the fourth quarter of 2018, we see that the business productivity index was $106.27 per hour. That means that the average employee is producing $106.27 per hour ($220,480 per year) in value for their employer; yet the average salary was $27.53 per hour, and the median salary was around $18 per hour ($37,440/year). Remember that average is skewed upwards relative to median because of the extreme amount of income in the upper one percent. What this means is that the typical employee is producing $106.27 in value but being paid $18 – $28 per hour. Since 1970, employee productivity has increased roughly 200% while wages have increased barely 12%. Health benefits, 401K and other “benefits” are not taken into account here because of the steady trend in all industries to reduce and eliminate these, both directly and by shifting from direct hiring to outsourcing as well as engaging employees as “contractors,” thus relieving employers of any obligation to provide any benefits.
Of course, this analysis does not take into account the danger and gross inaccuracy of measuring productivity in terms of currency alone, which is at best problematic. It is possible to generate tremendous income by taking or participating in actions that cause tremendous harm to human beings and the environment. It is also possible to make tremendous contributions to the community or even the world without generating any money for anybody.
Combining this picture of steadily rising productivity alongside stagnant wages, with the steadily increasing concentration of stock, land and other resources into fewer and fewer hands of the ultra-wealthy neo-Feudal Lords, plus the ongoing pattern of stock gains and inflation outpacing wage growth of at least half the population, we can readily see some of the main mechanisms by which Capitalist paradigms funnel ever-increasing amounts and percentages of resources and wealth upwards to the top of the economic pyramid and away from everybody else. This dynamic is structurally identical to classical feudalism and inimical to any form of democracy.
If we look at the data for inflation, salary/wage growth, stock market growth, productivity and other significant determinants of economic growth and distribution, the trend over time is clear as we can see in the table below. Growth data is based on average yearly growth since 1970. If the economic paradigm does not change fundamentally, it will not be long before the neo-Feudal lords at the top of the economic pyramid will control all of the wealth and the median salary will come nowhere close to covering the cost of living. Note that the ultra-wealthiest dwarf the rest of the top 1%, just as the top 1% dwarfs the bottom 99%. One will need to be in the 90th or 95th percentile to make a living wage.
Quantity 2018 Dollars Annual Growth Per Capita Productivity $220,480 / person year 1.78% Median Employee Share of Productivity 17% or $37,440 / year 0.28% Employer Share of Productivity 83% or $183,040 / year 1.5% Stock Market Growth 10% Inflation Median Living Wage: $25,106 3% Percent of U.S stock ownership of top 1% 50% of all U.S. stock Percent of U.S. stock ownership: next 9% 42% Percent of stock ownership of bottom 50% 0.25% Richest U.S. American’s wealth $160,000,000,000 Approx. 25%
For the purpose of this analysis, the “employer share of productivity” functionally represents the share taken by the neo-Feudal lords of what the median employee generates in dollars. As the stratification accelerates, the top .001% will soon have total control of all processes and resources, while the rest of the top 1% will be equivalent of the fief-holders of the Medieval feudal period, enjoying a certain level of privilege at the pleasure of the neo-Feudal Lords. The rest of us will be the serfs and peasants.
To grasp the biggest picture, consider that out of every hour or year of productivity, the employee takes home 17% and the neo-Feudal lords (employer/owner sector) take 83%. That proportion is also steadily shifting further to the benefit of the employer AKA neo-Feudal lords at the expense of the employee. Then, functionally, the employee pays their living expenses to the neo-Feudal lords, since the lords ultimately own and control the goods and services consumed by the employee. When the neo-Feudal lords pay their cost of living, it is essentially paid back into the same sector even if it changes hands within the sector. So the lords recycle their own living expenses and collect payment from employees. The neo-Feudal lords also increase their wealth through business interests and investments while the median employee has negligible or no income from those sources. Meanwhile inflation outpaces everything except both take-home pay of the wealthiest neo-Feudal lords and the stock market of which the lords control 50% and their vassals another 42%. The rate of acceleration of stratification is itself accelerating. While it is true that there are small businesses and small landlords, this described pattern is overwhelmingly dominant and becoming more so as mammoth enterprises push smaller ones out of business, consuming them in an ever-expanding cycle of predation. According to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve, from 1989 to 2018, the top economic 1% of the population has gained $21 trillion in wealth among them, while the bottom 50% have actually lost $900 billion, when adjusted for inflation.
If we do not completely shut this paradigm and its mechanisms down and replace it with a truly democratic paradigm that actively resists stratification while empowering and actualizing the potential of its inhabitants, and do it very soon, then we will most certainly see the establishment of feudal dictatorship that could last much longer than the ones of the Middle Ages. There is no time to waste.
The degree of deception in the assumption of capitalism as meritocracy is mind-boggling. Remember that an employee is routinely required at hiring to sign an employment agreement that includes acquiescence to terms in which any innovations, inventions, or ideas developed by the employee are the intellectual property of the company. Thus, if an employee working for $20,000 per year invents or devises something that both saves and earns the company millions of dollars, the employee is not rewarded in any financial way while the CEO will certainly be handsomely rewarded for the gains that happened on his or her watch. The myth of Capitalism as a “meritocracy” is at best a self-deception. At worst it is a deliberate propaganda ploy.
These myths are comparable to the myths used to stimulate compliance under slavery in the United States and in Medieval Europe.
In the case of slavery, the myth was perpetuated that the African dark-skinned slaves were inherently inferior to their light-skinned European-descendant masters. Slaves being superficially very different from owners, and having been brought from a part of the world perceived at the time to be backwards and primitive, made it easy to propagate the myth that Africans were essentially apes slightly more evolved than gorillas or chimpanzees - animal-like, lazy and less intelligent but physically stronger than Europeans, and therefore naturally suited for being slaves, needing the "superior" masters to "civilize" them, give them purpose and keep them from running amok.
To some degree, many slaves, especially those born into slavery during that period, being constantly immersed in the messages of their inferiority, observing themselves being illiterate, dirty, and unsophisticated compared to their masters, internalized that perception of themselves and played the role into which they were cast. Of course from our perspective, it is obvious that these observable differences were due to the conditions in which slaves were forced to live at a time when it was actually a crime punishable by death to teach a slave how to read and write.
In the case of the European Middle Ages, peasants and serfs were constantly bombarded from birth with the message that it was the will of God, the Divine Order for kings, queens and other royalty to rule over them. To question or rise up against that paradigm was to go against God and Nature, assuring one a wretched place in Hell. Keep your head down and obey your "betters" and you will be rewarded in Heaven when you die (which you will do pretty soon from a life of being overworked and underfed).
The concept of Meritocracy under Capitalism is merely a remake of the same myth, and a poorly-written one at that. One does not have to look far to see the reality. For every case where employees are promoted or rewarded for their hard work or contribution, there are a plethora of employees working just as hard and contributing just as much who remain unrewarded and sometimes even punished for making someone above them look bad.
Capitalist systems abound in managers unfamiliar with the processes that they oversee and utterly incompetent as leaders who nevertheless enforce their will upon the profoundly more competent and productive employees under them.
There is an unending parade of cases of CEO's and others high up in companies’ Pyramidal hierarchy who cause grievous damage to employees, customers/clients, the community, the country, and even to life on earth and are richly rewarded. Among these cases, the ones we know about are probably dwarfed by the multitude of well-hidden cases that never come to light.
Witness the pharmaceutical CEO whose company did no work whatsoever to develop a life-saving medicine but maneuvered itself into a position to control the rights to this medication developed by someone else, then promptly raised the price of the medication by thousands of percents. Though a crime was committed against Humanity, nobody was charged. The perpetrator unashamedly gloated over what he had done. (More on this later)
In fact, it is not even possible under Capitalist paradigms for more than a very few to advance to the upper reaches of the pyramid from the lower reaches. There simply isn't that much room that high on the pyramid. Consider the physical structure of a pyramid, and transpose it onto the pyramidal structure of a corporation or a Capitalist economy as a whole. If too many stones are placed too high and too few placed under them, the pyramid will collapse. If all attain the top, then it is no longer a pyramid; it is stones all on the ground at the same altitude, which is what the socio-economic structure will look like after the Transition. In order for all to make it to the “top,” the paradigm must be changed; the Pyramid must be dismantled.
In the Capitalist world, one's hard work and contribution play only a small part in determining one's position in the Pyramid. There are just enough anecdotal instances to keep the myth alive by showcasing real-life rags-to-riches stories that people can point to in order to believe in the myth.
In multiple studies, subjects indicate that they rate job satisfaction, a sense of purpose, and a balance between work and home life as more important than high salary. The myths must be exposed, debunked and deleted from consciousness in order to empower the people to challenge the paradigm and create one that truly affords all members of the community the fulfillment of the rights of Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and all the other rights encoded in the Constitution and embedded in the hearts of all human beings.
To establish practical metrics in order for all members of the community to express and gauge the general level of happiness, well-being and overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction of people in the community, a distributed Web application and database will be set up that will enable any individual or group to express their perceptions and experience of living in the community. We will collect and analyze the data using existing psychological testing tools adapted to the purpose, expanded and designed to differentiate between satisfaction/fulfillment and well-being levels that arise from the social environment, and those that arise from individuals' personality make-ups. A goal of this is a lively, productive discourse among all members of the community. This could take a form resembling social media but its purpose would be a medium for community introspection and evolution.
We would also do well to design this distributed database to include channels for suggestions, ideas, feedback and requests in every aspect of life: social, governmental, legal, technological, logistical, cultural, scientific and more. Teams of individuals in the various disciplines will peruse, analyze, evaluate, respond to, and when appropriate and logical, arrange for implementation of these incoming ideas and suggestions.
Some Capitalist apologists argue that the typical member of the community is better off than they appear to be, citing the fact that some employers include non-salary benefits such as health and dental insurance, bonuses and retirement plans. While these do have value and there is a degree of truth in these assertions, we need to see this for the sleight-of-hand that it is in the biggest context.
This is especially apparent when we look at trends over time.
Let's look at health insurance as an example.
Under Capitalist paradigms, health insurance becomes a survival necessity because the cost of medical diagnosis and treatment is entirely out of reach of all but those at or very near the top of the economic pyramid. As discussed elsewhere in this writing, this parasitic insurance industry imposes a constant and significant drain on the survival resources of individuals, families, and businesses alike.
Health insurance is not a true need like medical care itself. It is a made-up need, generated out of the uncontrolled inflation in all things medical and dental. The individual or business pays the insurance company a lot of money every month, whether or not any medical procedures or treatment is needed. Yet often when medical needs arise, the insurance company denies treatment, even life-saving treatment or dictates that an inferior treatment be given. Accountants and claims adjusters with absolutely no medical training dictate how and whether doctors and other actual healthcare professionals may practice medicine. The doctor takes an oath to do no harm. The insurance company has a commitment to maximize profits, stock prices and market share, which among other behaviors reinforces the denial of claims wherever and however possible. Stockholders, not patients, are their highest priority.
The insured person has no guarantee of being covered, yet some chance is better than no chance. The premiums for a health insurance plan that has real practical value often rivals the cost of rent or mortgage.
When an employer provides health coverage, they provide a limited selection of options which all entail an employee "contribution" which amounts to a significant portion of their pay being deducted to cover the employee’s “share” of the premiums. While the amount is typically less than the cost of a comparable plan on the private market, it is still a large portion of one's pay.
Thus while employer-based healthcare coverage does help the employee in a sense, it is analogous to the employer playing a portion of the protection money that the employee is forced to pay to the local Mafia to avoid fire or injury. In other words, in a truly healthy and functional environment, there would be no gangs or Mafia, and healthcare would be a right enjoyed by all as it is in the socialist democracies comprising much of Europe and other areas.
Imagine a Capitalist culture where all persons were given a highly addictive drug as part of their rite of passage into adulthood, and were required to take it in order to be employable and socially acceptable. If a person “pees negative” then they would be out of the running for a job, place to live, credit, college, even marriage. It would become a "necessity" in that culture, and people would have to pay to get it.
Imagine that an employer would pay part of the cost of the drug. Yes, that would be helpful, but the real solution would be to abolish the drug and provide rehab to all persons to eliminate the "need" for this drug.
It is like offering to exchange a slave's ball and chain for a slightly lighter ball and chain. In reality, one cannot in practice legitimately claim that such "benefits," while preferable to not having them, can be added onto one's salary/wages and be considered equivalent to that much more income, except to a very limited degree.
Being given pain relievers to control the pain of an untreated festering wound is not the same as treating the wound and facilitating its healing or, better yet, preventing it.
Think of a slave with infected welts on his/her back from being whipped by the slave-owner, being given painkillers so they can keep working. One cannot thereby say that the slave-owner takes good care of their slaves. That is an oxymoron. The true solution in that scenario is to abolish slavery altogether. If that inconveniences the slave-owner, it is not a credible argument for allowing slavery to continue.
As long as Capitalist paradigms and systems dominate a community and dictate its parameters of operation, no metric can obscure the fact that the Pyramidal structure inevitably leads to escalating disparity in terms of freedom, options, quality of life, health, power over one's own life, respect one is afforded, and access to the ear and consideration of those in government. This disparity may be temporarily slowed by legislation and popular pressure at times but it inexorably leads to the enthronement of a tiny minority at the expense of the overwhelming majority.
While it is true that the most durable happiness is generated from within the individual and the community rather than from external stimuli, it is also well-demonstrated that disempowerment, disenfranchisement, abuse, and unrelenting stress are among the most destructive factors in human experience with respect to physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
To recap and summarize: under Capitalist paradigms, control of almost all resources is firmly and increasingly in the hands of the very few neo-Feudal Lords at the top of the economic Pyramid. This comes at the expense of the vast majority who must accept whatever the ruling sector will pay, and then pay members of that same sector for every necessity including a place to live, to simply occupy space, thus curtailing the ability of most of us to exercise our Constitutional rights.
We have already seen that in the United States and many other countries, land ownership originally came about largely through murder, brutality, treachery, bullying and dishonest means. It is rooted in blood, deception, and inhumanity. While it is not possible to undo past injustices, crimes, and atrocities, there is no conceivable justification for one person or entity to own or control land or other resources that they are not directly using, in order to presume to demand payment in some form from other people in order to allow them access.
When a person is denied access to even a place to live, then they have no way to exercise their Constitutional rights, starting with Life itself. The only solution is to change laws, practices and norms in such a way that every person, family or other social unit has a right to ownership of a reasonable residence and shared control over their own workplace. It must become impossible for any person or entity to claim ownership or control over any resource that they are not using for their own personal or production use. Those who currently own multiple properties will have to choose one for their residence; the rest will become the property of whoever is living in them or of those who formerly worked for the former owner. Otherwise such properties will be available for occupancy. Those who travel regularly as part of their work or lifestyle will not be deprived, since former hotels, motels, and extended-stay facilities will be freely available for the purpose. Production facilities will be owned and administered democratically by all involved in production and distribution. A unique case will be large farms, which will mostly be phased out. Those that remain in operation will typically have the residence of the former owner on-site. In these instances, whoever lives in the residence will keep ownership of the residence while the farm itself will be owned and administered democratically by all involved persons, who will also have the right to construct houses and live on the premises. Former luxury suites and residences in former corporate headquarters will be converted for use by all involved in the enterprise. Country clubs, golf courses and the like will be opened and accessible to all persons. Any who vandalize – be they former elite who wish to destroy rather than share the resource, or other persons seeking to protest former symbols of the former ruling elite – will be charged and prosecuted accordingly.
Land and other resources not currently in use or protected as nature preserves will be the common property of all citizens and so accessible to all, in a manner similar to the traditional “commons”. To knowingly or through negligence damage such land (as by polluting, starting a fire that leads to a major blaze, needlessly killing wildlife etc) will be a crime or infraction. When a person, family or other core social unit needs to use such land for habitation or production, they will in almost all cases be able to do so. There will have to be prescribed legal limits on the size and extent of land and other resources that can be claimed by an individual, family, or other core social unit, guided and informed by seeking a balance to make sure people have a reasonable amount of space to live and/or work while preventing some from claiming disproportionate tracts of land and amounts of resources to make themselves a new kind of wealthy class. Careful thought will need to go into it, and there will need to be some flexibility built in to accommodate individual situations. Legal mechanisms and channels will be established to facilitate the process of occupying, transferring and/or using unused land or other resources and to mediate disputes that may arise when there are multiple claimants. National parks, hazardous areas (due to hazardous pollution or other man-made or natural hazards) and areas with endangered or at-risk ecosystems will be under appropriately protected or restricted status for safety and environmental reasons.
The Transition will involve shutting down and blocking communications of all financial institutions and departments, the universal refusal of persons to pay rent or mortgage, and the shift of control in workplaces to those working in them through the simple peaceful but powerful act of ignoring the command hierarchies that they have obeyed until the Transition. Any system or paradigm only functions through the participation and acquiescence of the people in them. When the people in them change, on a large and massive scale, the paradigm by changing their behaviors and responses, then the old paradigm fades away and a new one emerges. Once the new paradigm is established in practice, legislators will have little choice but to align themselves with the will of the People.
Some would say that since landlords and business owners worked hard to get where they are, it would be unfair to take their supremacy away from them by granting their former tenants ownership over their dwellings, thus taking away landlords’ income from rent. Some would say that it would be unfair to business owners to strip them of control in favor of democratic management and decision-making by all involved (including the former owner on a peership basis with all others in the enterprise). But this is a specious argument with no basis in reality.
We must keep in mind that in the new Paradigm, the former landlords, small businesspeople, CEO’s and other neo-Feudal Lords will not suffer. Nobody will force them out of their residences, though they will not be able to claim more than one residence. They will still share in the operation of production facilities that they used to rule, but as valued peer members, if they are willing. Currency will no longer be a necessity for anybody, including the former neo-Feudal Lords. They will not experience deprivation of lack. The only thing they will lose will be opulence, control over others, and the cooperation of others in maintaining their delusions of superiority over the rest of the people. They will also lose the burdens of being solely responsible for decisions and operations.
The above argument of unfairness to landlords and business owners has been presented as an objection to the overthrow and extinction of Capitalism. One might as well make the argument that the slave-owning plantation-owners in the Southern United States, or the mine-owners in South Africa who reap boundless profits from gold and diamonds mined by child and slave laborers, worked hard to build their businesses and that, therefore, to deprive them of slaves or child laborers paid pennies a day is unfair.
Elsewhere in this writing, the history of land ownership is traced but to review, in the United States as in most Capitalist countries, thriving populations of people were present before the arrival of the populations who eventually claimed ownership of the land. This claim in almost all cases came after the original inhabitants were slaughtered or forcibly driven from these same lands. Therefore all subsequent claims of ownership are rooted in a bloody barbaric brutality that does not warrant the aura of sacrosanct legitimacy that land ownership assumes in Capitalist societies.
Even in the present time, the predatory, adversarial dynamics between banks/landlords and renters/home buyers is destructive to all parties. Abuses abound among all involved parties.
Land is often, even if not always, acquired by banks, speculators and contractors through predatory, dishonest, even outright bullying tactics, most times causing untold hardship to hardworking individuals and families struggling to survive. Capitalist paradigms reinforce this behavior, and so it predominates.
All too often, land ownership comes about not necessarily through hard work and fair dealing, but through shark-like ruthless business practices on the part of out-of-control wealthy individuals and businesses higher up on the Pyramid at the expense of those lower down on the Pyramid, who are at the same kind of permanent disadvantage as a small business owner against the armed power of a well-established Mafia extortion outfit.
It is true that there are a few landlords who depend on rental income for their own bare survival, those with small properties including some retired or disabled individuals who may not be able to work. In considering this argument as it applies to this scenario, we must keep in mind that once Capitalism is left behind and the community Transitions to the new paradigms, such landlords will no longer require currency in order to survive, so they will not be negatively impacted by losing claim of ownership over those former rental properties. They will also be freed from having to resolve tenant disputes and from being responsible for the maintenance and repair of rental properties that they formerly owned.
The new Paradigms will start with the presumption of worthiness rather than the presumption of unworthiness of each individual. The strongest reinforcers will support co-working to mutual, shared and individual benefit. One person's gain will be the gain of all and one person's loss will be the loss of all. Currency will be irrelevant and unnecessary, and every person and family will be guaranteed not just Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness but also the means to achieve these, which include a safe and optimal place to live, food, medical care, energy, transportation, education etc. In such a paradigm, nobody will need currency in order to survive or even to thrive.
Former landlords will lose claim over properties that they do not personally use and the income that they currently generate; but they will also lose the need for money to pay their own living expenses.
In reality, the only things that landlords will truly lose will be the headaches of dealing with properties they don't even live on and the issues/complaints of the people living on them. They will lose the sense of power over others and of superior entitlement currently conferred by their status. They will lose the burden of expenses associated with those properties.
Landlords who are currently exploitative and abusive towards tenants will lose the resentment of tenants that they have exploited and abused. Landlords who are currently honest and respectful of tenants will lose the stresses and expenses of being responsible for those properties.
Bear in mind that former landlords will retain their own homes, cars, healthcare, friends, families and all of the necessities and amenities except being deferred to because of their status. Former landlords and others higher up the Pyramid will have to learn to live with and accept the basic human respect and camaraderie that naturally occurs among mutually-respectful, symbiotic human beings in any healthy community. The benefits will far outweigh the downsides, even for former landlords and employers, in the new Paradigms.
The metrics for this will be abundantly clear in the form of plummeting crime statistics, diminished violence, greater peace of mind, improved quality of goods and services, the contributions of a Community of fully empowered individuals, superior productivity, diminished waste and pollution, cultural renaissance, and more.