Chapter 42: More Thoughts on the Transition to the New Paradigm
On Business
Under the current paradigm, “It’s just business” is routinely used to justify and explain all manner of policies, practices, norms, and actions that harm employees, clients and customers, communities, whole countries, and the environment in order to maximize profits, market share, and stock prices, the holy cows and trinity of business. This concept is accepted as unassailable logic, though in fact it’s an unexamined article of faith. Similarly, “It is written” has been used in theocracies to justify atrocities in the name of religion, and “I was following orders” has been used to justify countless atrocities under various dictatorships. Many times, those using those justifications actually believe these cultural myths, as they’ve been conditioned to.
We must therefore ask ourselves, if “business” is something that necessitates harming, abusing, oppressing, parasitizing, disempowering, and otherwise hurting people and the environment, then wouldn’t we be better off without it? If we substitute “heroin” or “cocaine” for “business,” it becomes much clearer.
– “Why did you rob and kill your victim?” – “Duh! I just needed heroin.”
Both drug addiction, and addiction to power, privilege and wealth, are treatable conditions. Enabling any addiction is disastrous. Enshrining it in cultural mythology is suicidal.
Any sport or activity that routinely, when played as designed, resulted in death, injury and other harm to participants and spectators, would be shut down in short order, by popular demand. Such a socioeconomic paradigm should be treated no differently, especially since, unlike a sport or recreation, socioeconomic paradigms are inherently binding on all residents.
On strikes
Strikes have been deprived of much of their traditional effectiveness for a number of reasons, including:
1) Many labor Unions have gradually lost touch with their purpose and reason for being, taken on a life of their own aside from these, and become corrupt to the point of failing to protect the rights of their members. Some labor Unions have even allied with employers to suppress other unions. This has the added side-effect of alienating members and losing their confidence. 2) More and more large employers have found creative ways to side-step the effectiveness of unions. These include hiring employees at just under the number of weekly hours that would make them eligible for union membership, hiring people as “contractors” rather than employees in order to avoid respecting rights and benefits legally due to employees, actively interfering in efforts to unionize, and keeping hidden negative performance reviews on employees that can be used as justification for firing them, rather than laying them off. Lobbying by mammoth corporations has generated a plethora of “at-will employment” laws which give employers the ability to fire any employee at any time, for any reason, with our without cause. While it’s illegal to fire someone due to race, creed, gender and other protected categories, proving such motivation is notoriously difficult for the broke, unemployed victim confronting the permanent legal army of a former corporate employer. 3) More and more laws have come into being, defining strikers as “economic terrorists,” effectively making striking a crime. In the event of a strike, employers publicly portray strikers as lazy hooligans, misfits, and malcontents and themselves (employers) as the benevolent guardians struggling to protect the public good, a spin that’s increasingly dutifully repeated by the press lately. This results in declining public support for strikers or understanding of the real issues. 4) Traditional strikes are based on the assumption that the existing paradigm will continue, after Labor and Management hash out a contract that both are grudgingly willing to work with. The new strategy of the Transition and new paradigm, will be forceful but non-violent employee takeover of enterprises, neutralizing the current chain of command and replacing it with peer-based governance. Deposed managers and officers will be invited to remain as part of this peership. Current shareholders will, of course, lose their investments; but in the new paradigm, this will in no way compromise their survival, freedom, or ability to thrive or access resources.
On Corporations
Corporations will, of course, cease to exist as entities at the time of Transition. The modern feudal lords in charge of them will likely resist the change. We expect them to try to sabotage their own enterprises rather than relinquish control. Therefore, on the day of Transition, we will need to quickly, forcefully, and as non-violently as absolutely possible occupy all corporate headquarters, facilities, records and other resources and gain immediate access. All records will be opened for public scrutiny.
When we encounter physical opposition by the feudal lords and their vassals whom we’ll be deposing, we will probably have to fight them. We must do so with a strong ethic of seeking the minimal harm possible to all combatants, always respecting the humanity and dignity of ally and opponent alike, and immediately rendering aid to any injured as soon as the situation is secured.
Where it is found that corporations and other businesses have engaged in criminal or harmful activity, such as price gouging, suppressing scientific knowledge harmful to their profits, bribery or blackmail of public officials, use of sweatshop labor or doing businesses with those who use sweatshop labor, interfering in other countries’ internal affairs to further their own business interests, toxic dumping and pollution, exploitation of employees or customers, prioritizing profits and economic growth at the expense of human or environmental well-being, and other similar crimes, then individuals responsible for such acts will be charged with the applicable crimes, tried by due process and, if guilty, experience the legal consequences. This includes instances of crimes against humanity. Guilty parties will no longer be protected by “corporate personhood,” or by wealth or privilege, though they will, of course, have the same rights to due process as any accused person.
The jurisdictions of such trials will be appropriate to where and how the crime occurred. Crimes committed in other countries will be tried in those countries once domestic trials are complete and extradition is performed. Some crimes will lead to trial in the International Court. Evidence and proceedings will be kept prominently publicly visible. Trials will be conducted with dignity and equanimity – there will be no kangaroo trials, and all verdicts will be based on actual evidence. The world will see in clear detail the inner workings the newly-defunct corporations, and thus recognize, on a deeper level, why the paradigm that powered them was itself dysfunctional, toxic, and unsustainable. This whole set of proceedings will also show the world that the Transition and new paradigm are strongly rooted in reasonableness, humanity, compassion, honor, and equity.
The intention will be resolution and healing. The current paradigm has reinforced the behavior leading to such crimes. The new goal will be to make sure that no person is ever in a position in which such behaviors will be reinforced. Sentences will focus more on restitution and reconciliation, and less on punishment. The Norwegian prison system is a good model to study, with its well-established balance between quarantining people who are a potential threat to their fellows, and offering therapy and rehabilitation.
Inventions, innovations and technologies that have been withheld or suppressed to protect profits, will be made public and freely accessible. In Transitioned countries, currency will cease to exist or have any function. Assets in offshore and other accounts currently used by the feudal lords and their corporations to evade paying taxes, will be seized and converted to resources needed for infrastructure, development, or to be added to currency reserved for use by citizens traveling abroad, and in the context of some trade arrangement with pre-Transitioned countries. If feudal lords want to retrieve currency from their domestic accounts, they will be able to do so, but it will have no use and no function other than sentimental attachment.
On Family
In the current paradigm where we all must constantly come up with currency in order to hold off the relentless default denial of our right to occupy space, eat, drink, or access any resources, finances figure heavily in many people’s choice of mates and family planning. Under these conditions, a tragic percentage or people choose a mate (or friends, for that matter) for their financial attributes, rather than due to love and compatibility. Some choose their mates almost exclusively based on fiancés.
Financial stresses are one of the biggest stressors involved in the breakup and sundering of domestic partnerships, friendships, and familial relationships. When each of us is putting in our best effort, yet it’s still not enough, it’s predictable that we may begin to resent each other and each feel that the other isn’t pulling their weight. This keeps us further fragmented, divided, controlled, conquered, and playing our roles as serfs and peasants, squabbling among ourselves instead of joining together to focus on the source of the problem, the modern feudal socioeconomic paradigm, and act together to shut it down and replace it with a more viable one that will empower all of us to thrive.
Post-Transition societies will be freed of all financial issues. Rights and access will be affirmed by default, rather than denied. All stresses stemming from financial issues will, of course, disappear. This doesn’t guarantee that all partnerships and friendships will succeed, or that everybody will get along. We can, however, foresee that the overall longevity, success rate and quality of all human relationships will improve dramatically.
On Choreography and Logistics
To reach the maximum level of efficiency of coordination of need, production, and distribution, a centralized but distributed database and web forum will be developed, accessible to all. This will prevent over- or under-production or consumption.
Wherever practical, products will have embedded passive RFID chips. When they move from factory to warehouse, warehouse to distribution center, and from distribution center to consumer, interacting systems will be able to automatically track, coordinate, and learn to predict with increasing accuracy, the flow of goods and services. To respect people’s privacy, these chips won’t be linked to individuals. Targeted inventory levels will be adjusted according to heuristic algorithms interacting with human users.
The intention here is to facilitate mutual responsiveness between producers, distributors and consumers, not as a means of totalitarian control as seen under Soviet style communism and under corporate hierarchies. In this context, automation will enhance our efficiency and quality of life in every sector, with no harmful affects such as displacing people and, in so doing, depriving them of livelihoods.
On “commission work”
Commission work is another word for a form of disguised near-slavery. Another related term is “performance-based” pay structures. Like players in casinos, commission workers are kept motivated by the prospect of big payouts when (and if) they make sales, maintain high business volumes, or meet other metrics all translating into how much money they make for their employer. No matter how much time and work you put in, if it doesn’t yield a sale, you are basically working for free, or for sub-living or barely-living wages, in between successful sales. In some industries, failure to meet metrics can quickly lead to termination.
This setup creates an environment that strongly reinforces closing sales. This generates a hard-sell culture where customers are routinely pressured, misled, rushed and tricked into signing on the dotted line. It’s the only way for such employees to survive.
Examples abound. At Wells Fargo bank, not long ago, unrealistic sales quotas led to widespread fraud, with accounts opened in clients’ names without their knowledge or consent. At Closet World, Home Depot and many similar companies, you may be given names of potential clients to visit. You drive to their homes or businesses, spend hours taking measurements, making drawings and proposals, and calculating costs, and presenting them to them. If they accept your proposal and sign, then you get paid; if not, then you’ve been working for free, no matter how much time you spent in the effort. Even if they accept the proposal, if they later cancel, then your employer does what’s called a “charge-back,” and take back what they paid you. This is also common in the insurance industry. If a client buys a policy, then later cancels it, weeks or even months later, then your commission is charged back.
Another form of commission work is the plethora of multi-level and network marketing companies. You are lured in with the prospect of being your own boss of your own business with an impressive-sounding title. You hear true testimonials of some of the very few people who make a good living at the business. You are paid only when you sell products and/or recruit more people into the business. Many have minimum sustained business volume requirements. In order to continue being paid, you must continually make more sales and recruit more people. Here again, if a recruit or client drops out, expect a charge-back. You may also be paid when people whom you signed up make sales or recruit. In fact, however, over ninety-nine percent of recruits actually lose money and, statistically, fare slightly worse than they would gambling in a casino.
Valets and restaurant servers are other examples of another kind of commission work, especially in the United States. Such jobs usually pay, and are legally allowed to pay, less than the minimum wage. These employees are expected to supplement their wages with tips. In Oklahoma, some of these employees are allowed to be paid two dollars an hour. Restaurants frequently commandeer tips and either keep them, or distribute them as they see fit.
Incidentally, in Oklahoma, some students, farm and ranch hands, railroad workers and others are also allowed to be paid two dollars an hour, in roles where tips aren’t in the landscape.
In the new post-Transition paradigm, these scenarios of strongly-reinforced exploitation will completely disappear. Such schemes will literally become impossible.
A Better Way of Live, Versus Payback and Revenge
During and after the Transition, we must absolutely never focus our energies on vilifying, brutalizing, or extracting revenge on the modern feudal lords at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. It is crucial that we focus on the paradigm and the systems it generates, on the game rather than on the players. As much as it may feel and look otherwise, this is not an ‘us-versus-them’ situation. Feudal lord, vassal, artisan and peasant alike, we are all in our roles due to the inevitable functioning of the paradigm in which we live, work and operate. Change the paradigm, and the dynamics will fundamentally change.
The new paradigm is intended to give rise to a socioeconomic environment where each and every one of us can thrive in dignity and make our best contribution to our communities while fulfilling ourselves as unique individuals. If we are to avoid a dark age that could last for thousands of years and the possible extinction of most life on earth, we must Transition soon, and we must make certain that it does not come in a bloodbath or reign of terror. If it does, then all of our efforts will end tragically in vain before it gets started.
On Taxation
Under the current paradigm, governments are as controlled and limited by currency as are private citizens. Lack of funds has killed countless government works and undertakings that would have dramatically benefited everybody. Governments are forced to prey financially upon their already struggling citizens.
The new paradigm will sweep this dysfunction away like a bad dream. Where the will and the means exist, there’ll be nothing stopping beneficial projects from happening. The only limitations will be real-world ones, such as safety, availability of resources including workforce, and environmental impact. Such projects will not take anything away from any of us who today are called ‘taxpayers.’
On Initialization
Strategically, we’ll have to decide on a day to initiate the Transition, which will have to be communicated widely among Transitionaries both in the affected country and globally. Choice of date will ideally come through a large-scale consensus process, mediated over the Internet and other communications media, while hidden as much as possible from government and the feudal lords. It will be most successful if we act all at once.
At around mid-day on Transition day, we’ll release the Declaration, which will clarify what’s going on to those who don’t know and are feeling anxious and confused, and reassure any who are fearful.
On the Perceptions of Life, Work and How they Fit Together
Under the conditions of the current paradigm, our lives and perceptions have become destructively, artificially fragmented and alienated in ways that negate and stunt our healthy, natural engagement with the processes of living, with each other, with our communities, and with ourselves. Work becomes an odious burden that we’re forced to bear in order to ransom our lives every month, often stressing and draining us physically, mentally and emotionally, leaving us little time and energy left over. This triggers a motivation to avoid or reduce work as much as possible, in order to have time and energy for the things that have meaning to us. We’re only too conscious that, with few exceptions, employers only care about how much we produce in financial terms for them. Our well-being and happiness doesn’t enter into employers’ thinking, beyond what the law may mandate. Our physical survival is set at odds with our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being under this colossally dysfunctional paradigm.
This perceptual division of human activities into obligatory ‘work’ and desirable ‘play’ is arbitrary, capricious, and damaging, without contributing anything positive to the human experience. Children are eager to engage in ‘adult’ activities, from cooking, to chopping wood, to driving, to going to a job. When they get the chance, they enjoy doing them. The dynamics of the modern feudal paradigm lead to us ‘learning’ the work-play dichotomy, usually starting in adolescence.
In contrast, in many hunter-gatherer and other societies very different from the dominant paradigm, hunters don’t experience hunting as a burden to bear; nor do weavers, fishers, craftspeople, herbalists, or potters. They experience pride of workmanship, a sense of accomplishment, and are strengthened by a sense of belonging to a community whose members work together to support each other and the community. Taking on adult responsibilities is a badge of honor and an affirmation of a young person’s worth. It is a positive, empowering experience.
This is empirical proof that the modern feudal socioeconomic paradigm is most definitely not inherent in human nature or an inevitable human condition or predisposition. We have a much wider palette of possibilities, from which we can choose, rather than perpetuating what we inherited out of inertia.
How the work-play distinction arises is a bit complex. One of the biggest factors is that, in adult life, the norm is that we come to associate ‘work’ with being driven, stressed, disempowered, devalued, and exploited while doing tasks that have little or no meaning, interest or enjoyment for us. Towering in the background is awareness of the “wolf at the door,” ready to deny our lives if we fail to make the rent or pay the bills. In a well-intentioned effort to prepare their adolescent children to survive in this environment, many parents insist that they do chores, framing it as an obligation and a way of defending their worth against an implied default negation, rather than framing it as a greater engagement in life, an empowerment, a symbiotic act in a supportive organic whole. Punitive religious and cultural concepts of original sin, and the attitudes that arise from them, also contribute to this destructive mental construct.
So how do we organize and form norms for the interactions, activities and processes of our societies and communities, including those currently defined as ‘work’? That is entirely up to us. If we observe the results of human experience under monarchies, dictatorships, Medieval and modern socioeconomic feudalism, and other strongly hierarchical paradigms, it becomes clear that they are immensely harmful. They reinforce our most destructive potentials and suppress our most constructive ones. They just plain don’t work. Trying to keep trying to make them work is one definition of insanity.
In the new paradigm, the perceived distinction of ‘work’ and ‘play’ will fade to insignificance, as we each become empowered to pursue our greatest passions and talents, and in the process, making our best contribution to our communities. Work will no longer be experienced as a burden imposed by the need to appease the wolf at the door. Even work that no one wants to do, will be shared among everybody who’s able, and will deepen the shared social bond and connection as members of a profoundly social species.
On the Evolution of Systems
Our transition from hunter-gatherers to modern technological societies has mostly been slow and haphazard. Major innovations and discoveries that positively and negatively revolutionized human existence have come about spontaneously and randomly.
Once our forebears realized the power of our observational and analytical abilities, and of our ability to widely share information as a social species, our rate of innovation and change accelerated exponentially. We’ve gotten to a point where our rate of change and innovation has begun to exceed our ability to adapt to the technological and lifestyle changes that we ourselves have brought about.
We’ve mastered our ability to problem-solve and innovate in the physical world. We have the same ability with respect to social systems and as individuals, which we have not fully grasped to nearly the same degree. Some innovations have been implemented, such as communism, democracy, social democracy, capitalism, and theocracy among others.
For the most part, however, we tend to treat our social and cultural systems as though they were physical realities beyond our control. In that regard, our awareness is comparable how our Bronze Age ancestors viewed the physical environment. It is time for that to change. We have thousands of years of experience and observations from thousands of different social models and paradigms. We will only begin to thrive when we sift through that experience to identify which paradigms work and which don’t, which spawn the most thriving human beings and communities, and which don’t. Based on that understanding, we are fully capable of designing and implementing social paradigms designed to maximize individual and community well-being, thriving, safety, empowerment, fulfillment, peace, and sustainability, just as we would design a better airframe based on growing aeronautical data. It is imperative that we do so as quickly as possible, since the current dysfunctional paradigms are destroying us, putting us in a position where we must metaphorically devour each other in order to survive. For a species whose core survival advantage is our cohesive social nature, such a paradigm is species-suicidal.
Though the new paradigm resembles socialism in some ways, it also differs from it in important ways. In socialism, the State oversees the distribution and deployment of resources, in order to ensure equitable access. In the new paradigms, most resources will be owned and controlled by the people or social entities using them, with clear legal limits placed on how much one party can control, and guaranteeing access for all. Many resources will be held in common, similarly to the concept of the “commons.” The role of government will be more to prevent abuses and excesses by any party, and to facilitate the flow of information and coordinate efforts among innovators, producers, distributors and consumers, all of whom will be treated as the same human beings playing different roles, to ensure maximum efficiency, well-being and sustainability. Some resources, those that require large-scale facilities and operations, such as national defense, space exploration, some medical research, high-energy physics research, infrastructure, and national parks will be administered by government, under conditions of strict transparency and accountability to the population. Government will have a role similar to an orchestra conductor, and sometimes a referee, but not ruler over the people.
On Compulsive, Obsessive Growth
Under the current modern feudalistic socioeconomic paradigm, businesses must be profitable and have the highest possible stock price and market share in order to survive; but that isn’t enough. Profits, stock price and market share must, also grow, and the rate of growth must accelerate. This inevitably gives rise to the massively destructive and dysfunctional self-devouring cycle, which is utterly unsustainable.
To see this clearly, try a thought experiment. Imagine an industrial process that starts out using a pint of water to produce an ounce of product and a pint of waste, per day. The product is one that gets used up every day, like a beverage. The manufacturer must keep growing their profits, which means increasing production and making products with short lifespans, forcing frequent replacement. Six months after going into production, the company is using a gallon of water to produce a pound of product and a gallon of waste, every day. If seven the seven billion people in the world buy a gallon each, then we see seven billion gallons of water used every day to produce seven billion pounds of product and several billion gallons of waste. The current paradigm compels open-ended growth and expansion for a business to survive. It is easy to see that such a situation would sooner or later exhaust the world’s water supply and overwhelm us with waste.
This is literally what is happening in just about ever sector, regionally and globally. If we don’t completely shut down this paradigm and the systems it engenders, and Transition to a sustainable, life-affirming paradigm, as quickly as possible, then the current modern feudalism will ultimately break down anyway, due to the impossibility of sustaining endless growth and expansion. In that case, instead of a Transition to a successful paradigm, there would be a descent into chaos, mass starvation and privation, the rise of local warlords, and a brutal, bleak dystopian landscape. We’re looking at an extinction-level catastrophe if we continue using the current paradigm.
The Danger of “It Can’t Happen Here” Thinking
In a country that has some degree of freedom, prosperity and democracy, it’s natural and common to believe that dictatorship, totalitarianism, normalized brutality, genocide, ecological collapse, and other similar catastrophies “can’t happen here.” Such a mindset is as dangerous as watching TV while driving, because you’re sure you know the road like the back of your hand. Such atrocities aren’t unique to any one country, people, time-period, religion or political party. They represent the escalation and enshrinement of the most destructive potentials on the spectrum of human motives and behaviors. They aren’t who we are, but they are there on the dark side of our palette of potentials. Our best defense is to be highly aware of that potential, aware of how to recognize the signs and symptoms in one’s self and others, and to remain vigilant. If or when such patterns appear, we must recognize it and de-escalate it before it ever has a chance to metastasize and become endemic and institutionalized.
It’s just as dangerous to slip into an “It can’t happen here” mindset with respect to the possibility of Transitioning to the new paradigm that will embody and reinforce our most positive potentials
In countries culturally and socioeconomically shaped by the dominant modern feudalism, such as but not limited to the United States, a majority of people are aware that their society is broken. Yet when you point out them the benefits of things that work well in other countries, such as universal healthcare or no-cost higher education, many people vehemently say: “That could never work or happen here!” We see similar reactions to any description of a peer-based, non-hierarchical society with no need for currency. Some of this reaction is due to residual echoes of Cold War propaganda, and some of it is due to an inability to think outside of one’s familiar cultural context.
This response is akin to a sick person who declines treatment because “That won’t work for me” or a person in an abusive relationship who stays because they believe the couldn’t survive on their own, and suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. It is like a person who wants to be a dancer but believes that they can’t learn to dance, and so never makes the attempt. This kind of “it can’t happen here” mindset is utterly destructive in this context, as it curtails even trying. In order to counter this phenomenon, we will need to learn from all that is known about Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, and addictive conditions, and adapt that knowledge to treat and heal ourselves, each other, and anybody held back by “It can’t happen here” mindsets. The bad news is that worst-case scenarios can happen anywhere. The good news is that best-case scenarios can also happen anywhere. In each moment, the choice is ours.