A Look at My Philosophy from the Viewpoint of Proving a Theorem
Definitions of terms used in Theorem
The Parable of the Shipwrecked Brothers
Description of a Natural Economy
Emergy and Scarcity of High-Grade Primary Energy Stockpiles
A Quasi-Steady-State Environment
The Necessity To Control Population Growth
Probability, Macrofacts, and Microfacts
The Truth Axiom and Its Corollaries
Proof that Tyranny Arises Whenever Competitionism Is Present
The Secondary Theorem: The Hypothetical World W* Is Our World
A Specific Case: The Solution of the Health-Care Problem
Fundamental Theorem. In a hypothetical world (to be described in a moment) pretty much like our world, a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable (not ending because of human social factors but rather because of astronomical events) happiness (really the conditions under which happiness in the colloquial sense is likely to be the normal mental state of everyone) is the abandonment of competition (i) for wealth or surrogate wealth, e.g., money, (ii) for power and negotiable (able to be traded for wealth) influence, and (iii) for negotiable fame and abandonment of the other features of competitionism (use of wealth as a reward for things given, done, or said or for good behavior or treating of money as points in a game, etc.) including anything that creates artificial economic contingency (people being required to work to live, differences in wealth existing and depending on what people do or accidents of birth or anything at all).
Secondary Theorem. The hypothetical world is our world.
This Fundamental Theorem is the central item in a humanistic social-political-economic philosophy – my philosophy. The theorem is set in a hypothetical world identical to our world in all of the features about which there is no dispute or about which nothing is known. However, certain open questions of our day are decided according to the author’s viewpoint. When the theorem has been proved, the author will attempt to validate his viewpoint by proving the Secondary Theorem appealing to modern psychology, proper science, everyday experience, and common sense. Still, many unproven assumptions will remain, which, of course, are irrelevant to the correctness of the theorem but affect its applicability to our world. Some of these assumptions might be accepted by everyone without giving them a thought, but others will require careful consideration or even religious faith.
Thus, it’s no good disparaging religion or trying to separate religion from public policy. Perhaps, not all moral rules for human conduct should be considered religious in nature, but I do so consider them, which I may do if I wish. In addition, the philosophy derived from my moral axioms passes the demarcation test of Popper, which entitles it to be considered a science. Thus, religion and science need not be inconsistent after all, but not for the reasons usually given. Moreover, science requires faith worthy of a religious zealot as we shall see momentarily. I could have avoided calling my philosophy a religion without abusing language according to my dictionary, but, some critic is bound to say, “What do you think you’re doing – starting a religion?!” So I’ll cut him off at the pass.
Lemma: In any rational social contract, laws (other than procedural laws, e.g., on what day a public servant retires to private life) must be identical with morals.
Proof: Suppose not. Either the law is evil or the morals are incomplete. Contradiction.
But, most religions are harmful. My solution to this problem employs the concept of proper and improper religions. (Popper, too, uses the phraseology “solution to a problem” in doing philosophy. I like that and it gives me great pleasure to imitate.)
My first inclination is to dismiss all religions as improper; but that will not do. In the first place the theory of morals that I propound in this essay is, in a certain sense – a religion. I claim it is a proper religion, that is, it is not an improper religion. Improper religions are easy to identify. I shall list a few of their characteristics, which should suffice to disqualify all of the religions that threaten the world currently. A religion shall be said to be an improper religion if it has one or more of the following characteristics or if it is inconsistent:
1. It claims to be absolutely true – for all time – never in need of revision. Although most improper religions have undergone considerable revision, they are always in a state of reaction to enlightenment. They lose one position after another to science, but they adjust and continue to assert absolute validity. [Bertrand Russell]
2. It claims to be the sole correct religion and disbelievers are placed in an inferior position to believers. If the claim is that nonbelievers are in some sense doomed, this constitutes fraud as well as child abuse.
3. It relies on circular reasoning, e.g., such and such doctrine is written in the Holy Bible and the Holy Bible is the inerrant word of God, therefore the doctrine is true.
4. It comes with an excessive amount of intellectual baggage that must be taken on faith. It makes claims that cannot be substantiated by observation or experiment, which it justifies by unfalsifiable statements. It claims to know what no one can know – in particular the nature of God. Often it incorporates some sort of belief in magic.
5. It attempts to increase the number of adherents by unethical means such as childbirth or outright lies – frequently preying on human weakness.
6. It has a priesthood that claims to be invested with special knowledge sometimes received directly from God and, therefore, not open to debate.
7. Typically, it will shun all debate with nonbelievers even though it will claim not to.
8. Frequently, money is involved in one way or another.
9. Usually, its code of ethics will accommodate evildoers if they subscribe to its church.
Proper religions have none of these characteristics. I believe a simple heuristic may be employed fairly safely; namely, if it has a church, it’s improper.
Definition (Minimal proper religion). A minimal proper religion (MPR) is a proper religion, i.e., a religion that is consistent and has none of the characteristics of an improper religion, that has a minimal number of conditions consistent with “sustainable happiness” for all of humanity.
The MPR proposed by me makes no statements about the nature of any god or gods. It has no unnecessary intellectual baggage; and, although it is designed to gain nearly universal consensus, it prohibits unlimited procreation and any form of trade or commerce (in keeping with the freedom axiom). Therefore, it will not be accepted by everyone immediately. Nevertheless, it has a set of conditions none of which can be removed without destroying the possibility of sustainable human happiness; so, it is minimal.
A minimal proper religion, either mine or someone else’s, has the potential to be the basis for a social contract among the people of a community, which might be as large as the United States, although it would be better if communities were smaller, more decentralized, and, indeed, quite local. It is recognized, though, that some sort of contract among essentially all the people of the world is necessary eventually, in particular so that resources can be shared without introducing contingency. Again I point out that I could avoid the term minimal proper religion and go directly to social contract, but I like to anticipate my critics. It is important to prevent improper religions from trying to pass themselves off as legitimate candidates for social contracts because we shall be indoctrinating very young children with our social contract so that we won’t need a government. No one has ever tried to indoctrinate children with the truth before. Naturally previous attempts to indoctrinate children with falsehood have failed and we still have governments – all bad.
The important thing is to achieve nearly a universal consensus about how people living in a community will behave and, for that difficult goal, one needs the fewest conditions possible. The social contract must deal in a humane and enlightened manner with a few people who do not accept the social contract (based on a minimal proper religion) no matter how reasonable, beautiful, and practical it may be. It will be assumed that something close to a universal consensus can actually be achieved. This is like Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. You don’t have to sell it. People accept it when they understand it. Eventually almost no one thinks it’s wrong whether they understand it or not. Of course, it will have to be modified eventually because, although it’s the best thing we’ve got, IT IS WRONG.
In addition to the conditions in the social contract, people may place themselves under any number of other conditions (so long as the conditions are consistent with the social contract) and may believe in a God, or a Life Force, or Élan Vital, or whatever they wish to call it. I find, upon close introspection, that, whether I wish to or not, I do believe in a personal god, but that belief is not part of my religion because it cannot be accounted for by any rational process. It is, in fact, a superstition! The position of my religion is that I don’t know, you don’t know, no one knows, and it can’t be known, whether or not there is a god and, if there is, what it’s like. I call this position hard agnosticism.
Definition (World). All that exists can be conveniently divided into (i) the Universe, which may or may not be considered to include all of time, (ii) Mind, itself, regardless of its connectedness and its intersection or disjointedness with the Universe, (iii) the Ideals (or Relations), and (iv) Everything Else, which makes room for divinity. This is logically true because of the inclusion of Everything Else and the linguistic way of defining what exists. (“Everything exists unless it is said to be something it is not.” In fact, this is really nothing but linguistics.)
1. We assume the existence of the real world.
2. We assume that we ourselves exist as do the events in our own minds.
3. We suppose that events occur in other people’s minds just as they do in our own minds. Each person is capable of observing the events in his or her own mind; however, normally, they may not be introduced as evidence in debate on public policy.
4. Intrinsic motivation is assumed to be the preferred form of human motivation. This is the basis for a scientific theory.
5. Happiness is assumed to correspond to mankind’s needs and desires. People who enjoy the preconditions for happiness, which in this theory was for technical reasons identified with happiness itself, will by-and-large allow that they are happy in the colloquial sense. Thus, we retain a phenomenological view.
6. The fundamental laws of reasoning (logic) as expressed by set theory, sentential calculus, symbolic logic, etc. are reliable.
7. Macrofacts are reliable. Microfacts are unreliable.
8. We assume that the ability to reason can be developed in the normal undiminished human being.
9. Man is naturally capable of independent thought and action, unless something has been done to him, some sort of conditioning, that weakens his (or her) natural self-confidence.
When we claim (later) that this hypothetical world is our world, the reader should scrutinize these assumptions carefully. Moreover, the warning that additional assumptions may be “hidden” or unstated should not be ignored.
I shall replace the questionable notion of cause and effect with the simple concept of occurrence equivalence. In this essay, the symbol ↔ is used to denote occurrence equivalence. By default, then, A → B means that B occurs whenever A occurs. If A be present, then B is present too. So “A” means “A occurs” or “A is present” or “we have A”, etc.? Do you see why our teachers said that “There is ...” is only a placeholder and discouraged its use? (The following statements are equivalent: (i) A implies B, (ii) B if A, (iii) A only if B, (iv) not-B implies not-A, (v) B is a necessary condition for A, (vi) A is a sufficient condition for B, (vii) if A then B.)
Definition (Happiness). By happiness we do not mean a continuous state of bliss. We agree that happiness requires a reasonable satisfaction of the usual tissue deficits. One can be happy while one is a little hungry, but one cannot be expected to be happy in the technical sense while starving to death, or, as we shall make clear in a moment, while one’s child is starving to death.
Following Deci and Ryan, we say that happiness is a state of mind that often occurs when the following necessary conditions are met: (a) autonomy, (b) effectiveness, and (c) relatedness. (We prefer this phenomenological definition because we cannot measure the state of a person’s mind.) Autonomy means that the requirements of the Freedom Axiom, discussed in detail below, are satisfied. Effectiveness means that we must be interacting with our environment and fellow creatures in a positive way. It gives us the feeling that we have worth; it gives us feelings of satisfaction from time to time that make up for the feelings of frustration that sometimes accompany worthwhile endeavor; and it ensures that mankind will not perish in a world where no one is required to do anything to live. Everyone must do something to be happy! The need for relatedness makes cooperation worthwhile and accounts for the unhappiness of a woman whose child is starving although she may not be. Surely, we are affected by the unhappiness of those close to us first; but, since we are intelligent reasoning creatures, we cannot be happy while others are miserable even though they be far away in space. We can’t ignore their plight. They are out of sight but not out of mind! This is part of the basis for the Fundamental Premise. The reason they are not out of mind even though they are out of sight is our love and respect for truth, which may not be flouted by moral persons, as enunciated in the Truth Axiom.
Finally, happiness in this technical sense requires that the conditions discussed above exist in perpetuity. Happiness requires safety. We must be free of worry that the other requirements for happiness can ever be taken away – except, of course, in the event of an astronomical catastrophe. Most of us don’t devote much of our concern to worries that the sun will burn out or that earth will be struck by a huge comet. And, we should not be influenced by desperate scientists, about to lose lucrative defense contracts, to invest in a gigantic big-science, Star-Wars-type asteroid-defense project.
This technical definition of happiness does not mean that we cannot enjoy temporary moments of great joy or any of the other sublime emotions while still being dissatisfied with the state of the world and all of the misery in it. We might experience moments of artistic pleasure and intense gratification when we have been effective in completing a difficult project. In particular, we might experience great joy and temporary satisfaction when we are able to alleviate the misery of others or when we achieve a political victory that will permanently reduce the misery in the world. But, this cannot compare to the satisfaction and joy we would experience if we achieved a permanent victory over all man-made human misery.
Money is not equivalent to material wealth. Material wealth consists of the things we need to live, including art to enhance our spiritual lives, and a few luxuries to take the drudgery out of life. It is measured in units of emergy – with an m. Examples of material wealth are (i) food, (ii) clothing, (iii) housing and other infrastructure, (iv) tools and other capital goods (things used to make other things), (v) medicine and drugs, (vii) stockpiles of high-grade energy, (viii) works of art, (ix) books, (x) computer programs, (xi) correct, useful, and non-trivial information, etc.
Definition (Emergy). Emergy is a measure of energy that is adjusted to account for temperature and entropy and is normalized so that equal amounts of emergy can be transformed from precisely (or approximately) equal amounts of sunlight. For now, it is sufficient to say that emergy is energy adjusted to account for usefulness; that is, one kilowatt-hour (kWhr) of high-grade energy like 110 volt A.C. electricity contains much more emergy (measured in kWhrs) than one kWhr of warm water, which is not very useful as an energy source. Manufactured objects are conceptualized as carrying along the emergy that was required to produce them by an efficient process. Thus, emergy, as opposed to money, is the basic economic entity.
The important thing for this essay is to acknowledge that some forms of fame and influence might be non-negotiable. Then, excluding these (which might not exist), we can make our generalization about the equivalence of wealth, power and negotiable influence, and negotiable fame; that is, they form a commutative triangle. I need refer only to material wealth when I mean material wealth and anything that can be converted into material wealth. Because of the above commutation equivalence, we might consider lumping all of these things together and giving them a name. The name I have chosen in the past is importance, but, since I meant worldly importance as distinguished from true importance, it might be better to choose a different term. Perhaps status is the best choice we can make. Again, though, I mean worldly status not philosophical status. Any suggestions?
[Note in proof (1-28-06) taken from “On Social Problems and Solutions”. Many readers who have been influenced by evolutionary psychology have come to recognize the word 'status' for an indicator of position in the inevitable dominance hierarchy that forms whenever human beings come together for any reason, in particular, when they form a society. Therefore, I need a new term to indicate relatively greater wealth and relatively greater political or economic power. As usual, every word, even in our relatively large colloquial English vocabulary, has been given another meaning that will impede understanding of materialism and dematerialism. Since the reader will have to get used to it sometime, I will introduce the symbol S* to stand for what I formerly referred to as status, namely, relatively greater wealth, relatively greater economic power, or relatively greater political power. It is not necessary to mention fame because we intend to disallow the conversion of fame to S* as discussed elsewhere in these essays and in On the Preservation of Species. We may now write the main theorem as follows: The abandonment of competition for S* is a necessary and sufficient condition for the sustainable happiness of all of humanity.]
We should note at once that if one of the three aspects of S* never occurs, then none of them can occur; whereas, if any of them is permitted to exist in a hypothetical society then all of them will be present. We refer to this kind of relationship as occurrence equivalence; i.e., wealth, power (including negotiable influence), and negotiable fame are occurrence equivalent.
Definition (Competitionism). Competitionism is defined to be any system having the following characteristics or the belief in, promotion of, dedication to such a system:
● Competition for wealth, power and negotiable influence, or negotiable fame, i.e., S*, in any form.
● The use of S* as a reward for achievement or good behavior or as a measure of success.
● Any institutions that permit people to influence the amount of S* they themselves or anyone else (especially their own children) may accumulate, consume, or possess because of who they are or what they do or because of any aspect of their beings whatsoever.
● Differences in the amount or rate of accumulation of S* whether derived from competition directly or not, e.g., inheritance of wealth. (Ultimately, competition is involved – at least indirectly, because people who are deprived of the necessities of life must compete for them and those who equate wealth with status must compete in the money game. In fact, so long as competitionism exists everyone will have to compete in the money game – at least from time to time. Even if you inherit wealth, the business of hanging on to it involves competition with every schemer who is trying get it away from you.) Small differences in the values of homes or their furnishings are not included in the definition. (Normally, homes of similar value are not strictly comparable; i.e., it is impossible to say which possesses the greater real worth. Techniques employed by real estate appraisers might be useful to determine whether or not the differences in value are sufficiently small to be exempted from this definition.)
● The existence of institutions by means of which wealth can be hoarded in the form of paper money, financial instruments, or ledger entries – usually in a computer.
● The acceptance of S* for anything one does, gives, or says.
● Contingency upon something extrinsic and artificial (as opposed to the amount of rainfall) affecting one’s ability to live abundantly.
Definition (Artificial economic contingency (AEC)). Artificial economic contingency is the same as competitionism. The term artificial economic contingency will help some people get the idea faster. It is simply amazing how many people do not grasp this concept quickly.
1. We assume the existence of the real world.
2. We assume that we ourselves exist as do the events in our own minds.
3. We suppose that events occur in other people’s minds just as they do in our own minds. Each person is capable of observing the events in his or her own mind; however, normally, they may not be introduced as evidence in debate on public policy.
4. Intrinsic motivation is assumed to be the preferred form of human motivation. This is the basis for a scientific theory.
5. Happiness is assumed to correspond to mankind’s needs and desires. People who enjoy the preconditions for happiness, which in this theory were for technical reasons identified with happiness itself, will by-and-large allow that they are happy in the colloquial sense. Thus, we retain a phenomenological view.
6. The fundamental laws of reasoning (logic) as expressed by set theory, sentential calculus, symbolic logic, etc. are reliable.
7. Macrofacts are reliable. Microfacts are unreliable.
8. We assume that the ability to reason can be developed in the normal undiminished human being.
9. Man is naturally capable of independent thought and action, unless something has been done to him, some sort of conditioning, that weakens his (or her) natural self-confidence.
Theorem (Fundamental). In the hypothetical world described above, a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable happiness for all of humanity is the abandonment of competitionism (or artificial economic contingency).
The fundamental theorem implies communism, which requires the restraint of natural leaders, which implies anarchy (almost).
A man A and his brother B were marooned on an isolated island, such as Jules Verne’s Mysterious Isle. A, wishing to survive, began to extract a living from the earth. His brother, B, did nothing except wander through the lush forests of the island. When harvest time came and A had built suitable shelter against the approaching harsh weather; he shared everything equally with his brother without conditions or reproaches – because he was a generous man (perhaps a follower of the Sermon on the Mount), and one’s brother is, after all, one’s brother. (To be perfectly honest, the thought did not escape him that it might be unwise to create a grievance against himself in such a remote region far from the courts and the laws of man.) What do you think of the behavior of the brothers so far?
The industrious brother, A, prospered and the lazy brother, B, continued his idle wanderings with A’s tacit approval. One day A fell dangerously ill with malaria. Normally, he would not have survived; but, as it happened, his brother, B, in his wanderings, had discovered a patch of quinine and B engaged his skill in chemistry, learned years ago at the university, to save A’s life.
This is an example of a small isolated natural economy; but, after all, we are all brothers and sisters and this small isolated incident should be the natural state of the world.
In a natural economy people are motivated intrinsically to do what interests them or what gives them great pleasure by being of use to those whom they love. Either mode of behavior is admittedly consistent with self-interest. Why would one wish to act on some other basis? People are motivated by love and generosity (as opposed to greed and fear) – sometimes the love is of other people; often it is the love of a pleasurable activity such as an act of creation. No one accepts compensation for anything one gives, does, or says. That would spoil the good feeling associated with the activity. Power, particularly political power or power over other people, would be rejected as compensation quite as readily as wealth. Fame is slightly different. One would reject what I choose to call negotiable fame, i.e., fame that can be converted into wealth or power. On the other hand, excellence is bound to be noticed and so long as no one uses that recognition for any extrinsic purpose, I see no reason why some people might not be noted for talent, genius, good behavior, honor, nobility, friendliness, or just being good company.
It should be noticed immediately that in a natural economy it is impossible for large accumulations of “paper” wealth to occur; moreover, wealth is guaranteed to be divided essentially equally. While one man may own an expensive tool – a grand piano or a microscope – his housing, clothing consumption of food, availability of health care, and access to information are bound to be roughly equivalent to that of every other person, especially if the infrastructure is in place to ship essential natural resources from resource-rich regions to resource-poor regions under a weak world-federalist organization, say. In a natural economy, political power and fame tend to be distributed evenly too. Power over other people would be unthinkable.
Of course, in a natural economy people will still be faced with natural economic contingency such as drought, forest fires, and floods; but, with proper planning and sharing of resources, things ought to be much better than in an economy where people must cope with artificial economic contingency as well.
It is not clear that some of these are not aspects of our world that can be proved and thus discarded from the MPR.
1. To avoid infinite regression, we assume that aesthetics, reasonableness (or reason), and utility are a valid guide for making philosophical judgments. We recognize that judgments that satisfy these tests may not be infallible.
2. The laws of physics are reasonably invariant for all practical purposes. The fundamental laws of physics are not changing under the pressure of inquiry.
3. Unconceived humans have no philosophical status.
4. Newcomers to this world have a right to expect to find a rational society governed by rational morals.
5. Human beings belong to themselves. No one can assign an extrinsic purpose to another individual.
6. The doctrine of Original Sin is assumed to be a hoax.
7. Human beings are assumed to
be good but corruptible. (We have become good in pre-history because
virtue is a survival trait. During most of recorded history we have
become increasingly corrupt. The men who besieged and defended
8. People are assumed to be good enough to satisfy the conditions of this theory without further evolution. (Ditto remark on why we have become good. Items 7 and 8 might be moved to previous list if we can prove them.)
9. We agree that our laws, if we have any, should be congruent with rational morals. If we do not have laws, our behavior should be governed by rational morals.
10. We assume three moral axioms that can be used to define rights and, in turn, justice.
11. We assume that all rational morals can be derived from our three moral axioms without gray areas arising. Such morals will be consistent and withstand the tests of aesthetics, reasonableness, and utility.
12. We reject arbitrary, personal, or taboo morality as a basis for public policy.
13. Unverified events whether taking place exclusively in the Universe, our Minds, and in the realm of the Ideals or not are excluded from the discussion of public policy – just as they would be discarded as evidence in a legal hearing. Any knowledge based on events that cannot be replicated or observed by impartial observers under any circumstances whatever are to be excluded from discussion of public policy. This prohibits the introduction into public policy of the miracles ascribed to certain religious figures and the religions or religious beliefs based upon them.
14. “We shall assume that a social system that retains unavoidable residual institutionalized injustice is unacceptable as a basis for permanence; i.e., it must be rejected as an ideal. If we can show that injustice, at least institutionalized injustice, can be eliminated, then we must not rest until the goal of eliminating institutionalized injustice is achieved. It is unacceptable to say, ‘The world is unfair,’ as though it always will be.” One of the primary goals of mankind should be to ensure justice for everyone, everywhere, including plants and animals.
15. I assume that there exists at least one feasible path of constant improvement connecting this society with a cooperative (ideal) society. This path can be traversed by a long series of small steps. The end, normally, does not justify the means, therefore each step should be an improvement. Thus, we should not permit leaders to guide us on this path. Strong leadership would be a step backward and any leader may become dangerously strong if we rely upon her. We must rely upon ourselves – sharing responsibility equally and isocratically according to the methods outlined in this thesis. The generic world-bettering plan described above is assumed to be possible under this restriction. There are no “divergent” problems in society. (This is a huge assumption and I make it in the first-person singular, however the doctrine that good fruit does not grow from evil seed is an assumption I share with the historical Jesus.) More than any other assumption, this assumption requires a leap of faith – in humanity. Thus, this philosophy, like every humanistic philosophy, is essentially – a religion – a minimal proper religion.
These axioms can be derived from the fundamental theorem, but that’s not how I got them.
Definition 1 (Freedom). Freedom is the exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc. It is the power of determining one’s own actions or making one’s own decisions. These are dictionary definitions, but, for political purposes, there must be a temporal component to the definition. The exemption from external control, for instance, must be in perpetuity. Political freedom must include freedom from fear that the freedom can ever be abridged.
Note. As discussed by Deci and Ryan [1], freedom involves
internal conditions as well as external conditions. Normally, people who
are involved in the competition for wealth and power are acting under
psychological conditions that preclude freedom. In the language of Deci
and Ryan they are extrinsically motivated. We are sorry that rich and
powerful people are not truly free, but we are sorrier still that they prevent
us from being as free as we should be, regardless of our internal psychological
state. The truth may make us free to some extent, but it cannot grant us
access to the beach at
Definition 3 (Adult human being). An adult human being is a mentally self-sufficient person. (At this point I don’t want to cut it any closer than that.)
Definition 4 (Child). A child is the offspring of a human being still dependent on and, normally, living in the abode of natural or surrogate parents.
Note. We have omitted the case of people who are neither children nor adults.
Definition 5 (Human social link). A human social link is an adult human being and any dependent children.
Definition 6 (Personal sovereignty). Personal sovereignty is complete control over one’s own mind and one’s own body and its interior, defined so as to include the digestive tract, the interior of the head, etc., in analogy with the supreme and absolute power of a king or queen over his or her domain. Personal sovereignty permits the individual who possesses it to enter into treaties and contracts with individuals, with society, and with social institutions or to refuse to do so and to continue to be treated with respect.
Axiom 1 (The Freedom Axiom). The adult members of human social links are free (have freedom), provided that the human social links to which they belong do not commit acts that interfere at any time with the freedom of other human social links in the present or in the future. Further, the adult members of human social links possess personal sovereignty, which is nontransferable (inalienable), except when they permit their personal sovereignty to be placed in the custodianship of others under the exceptional circumstance that they have violated morals or rights to which they subscribe. Adult members of human social links are the custodians (or co-custodians) of the personal sovereignty of children in their social links until the children reach the age of reason. They may transfer the custodianship of that personal sovereignty to other adults from time to time provided the rights of the child are not abused. After children reach the age of reason, they may elect to leave one or more of their human social links and reclaim their personal sovereignty or to remain in one or more of their human social links and to transfer voluntarily their personal sovereignty to the relevant adult(s) who continue(s) to hold it in custodianship or stewardship. Up until the time the child reaches the age of reason it belongs to the same moral category as animals and is protected by Axiom 2, below.
Corollary 1. No one shall force or attempt to force another person to embrace or to be bound by any morals whatsoever including these morals.
Definition 7 (Justice). Justice is the state of human society wherein one of two conditions prevails: (i) all relevant moral requirements have been met or (ii) in case there has been a breach of morals the following events have occurred: (a) the damage due to the breach of morals has been repaired and restitution has been made to the victim(s) and (b) the violator has been dealt with in an appropriate manner, which might not involve punishment or revenge.
If a transgressor does not accept the moral basis of our social institutions, he or she must be treated as a prisoner of war rather than as a criminal, and as such is entitled to all of the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war, better than the way officers would be treated under a liberalized Geneva Conference, i.e., they may not be forced to work, etc. Actually, society must provide them with their legitimate needs and more. They must be treated like captive heads of state - perhaps even a personal chef is in order. The person with his own moral code is the moral equivalent of a Napoleon. They may, indeed, be the only persons in society who have servants, who, needless to say, keep an eye on what they’re doing.
Theorem 1. It is immoral to accept material reward in return for what one does, gives, or says.
Proof.
I. Violation of the freedom of others
Accepting material rewards creates competitionism, which violates the Freedom Axiom, since, if one person accepts material rewards, others must do so as well to avoid having their freedom abridged by anyone who accumulates excess material wealth. This might be avoided by keeping the material rewards the same for all gifts or deeds, but some people give or do nothing for which anyone wishes to compensate them, which leads to a contradiction. (Such a person might be an artist such as Van Gogh who received virtually no compensation during his life but whose paintings now sell for millions – a little late from Van Gogh’s viewpoint.)
II. Interference with one’s own freedom, which, if you remember, is inalienable
A. Compensation for extrinsically motivated activity tends to create a bias toward that activity, which delimits freedom, in particular the freedom to become intrinsically motivated.
B. Compensation for intrinsically motivated activity tends to undermine intrinsic motivation according to the theory of Deci and Ryan [1].
Industrial civilization has been based on fossil fuels. Currently, society is challenged by two opposing trends: (1) fossil fuel is running out and (2) developing nations (and poor people in rich nations) want to live the "American dream". Americans have been bingeing on fossil fuel for 150 years - particularly on oil since World War II. We have behaved like the heir who squanders in a day a large fortune built up over dozens of generations. Even conservative analysts such as Wolf Häfele [1] predict severe oil shortages beginning around 2030. The most "optimistic" estimates of total reserves - both discovered and undiscovered - would have us running out in about 100 years at the present rate of consumption assuming (1) no population growth and (2) continued disproportionately low use of oil in the third world. This scenario is in severe conflict with the aspirations of many people. Americans use 25% of the world's energy budget while comprising only 5% of the world's population. Moreover, the American dream is an environmental nightmare.
Some people (usually not technologists) believe that shortages of fossil fuels will be relieved by technological breakthroughs. It has been noted that these people are like smokers who won't quit because by the time they get cancer a cure will be found! It has taken nature millions of years to evolve the tree. The likelihood of man developing technology superior to a tree is only slightly greater than the likelihood of developing an artificial human being. Actually, the horrifying plentiful-energy scenario with its excessive motion, alienation, and stress, if not pollution and the wiping out of nearly every species of plant and animal, is unlikely. Reasonable quantities of renewable energy will be needed to support human life. But, money is an inappropriate measure to determine which sustainable energy technologies will be feasible. Prices are distorted by fossil-fuel subsidies. According to Odum and Odum [2] we purchase the 1700 kilowatt hours (kWhrs) in a barrel of oil with the money obtained by expending only one-sixth of 1700 kWhrs. Money does not account for the work done by nature; moreover, it does not satisfy useful conservation laws. We need an energy-based measure of value such as emergy - with an m. The Odums show that nuclear fission and, for that matter, photovoltaic cells are net consumers of emergy.
Emergy efficiency is emergy out divided by emergy in. This efficiency is 1.0 for an optimal process because the emergy of the output is defined to be the emergy of the inputs. Energy production efficiency is often taken to be energy out minus energy in divided by energy in with the energy supplied by nature ignored! One can have negative energy efficiency, but emergy efficiency lies between zero and one. To compute the total emergy input of nuclear fission, we must consider all phases of the operation from discovery of uranium to the disposal of the decommissioned plant and the storage of radioactive materials for thousands of years. If the emergy costs overwhelm the emergy costs of sustainable routes to electricity, nuclear fission should be rejected. If we hypothesize a world wherein all the primary energy is electricity from fission and the energy input exceeds the output, our hypothesis is untenable.
By 2030, the population of the world is expected to exceed ten billion souls [4]. We have approximately 10 billion kilowatts, which must be distributed equally among 10 billion people to avoid widespread famine and misery, i.e., 1 kilowatt/capita. (Besides the obvious immorality of policies that tolerate widespread misery, Machiavellian pragmatism dictates that large numbers of miserable people will be a continuous danger to people who are well off - unless genocide is employed.)
It is easy to see that fewer than 10% of the projected population of the earth in 2030 can spend energy at the current American rate, under the condition that the remaining 90+% subsist on 0.3kW. Moreover, for each person within the subsistence class who exceeds his allowance someone must die! If the current populations of the U.S., Europe and Japan survive and all else perish, the surviving population must still spend less than 90% of the current American energy budget.
Suppose everyone alive in 2030 spent energy at the present American rate. This would require an increase of five times (to account for the "improvement" in the lives of non-Americans) and an increase of double (to account for the increase in the population) giving a factor of 10 without counting increased energy use to prevent air and water pollution. Even with the generous estimate of 10,000 billion barrels of oil left, we would run out in fewer than 20 years, i.e., before 2050. Of course, the environment would be destroyed before then - unless perhaps half of the energy were devoted to reducing pollution, in which case we would run out in ten years. Therefore, fossil fuels should be used to eliminate the need for fossil fuels and for no other purpose.
Definition (Strong quasi-steady-state environment). A strong quasi-steady-state environment is one whose storehouses of material and energy and whose flows of material and energy, at least those that influence the important periodic processes that support life on this planet and are of chief concern to ecologists, are constant in magnitude or undergoing only minor perturbations about an acceptable average value, accounting properly for their natural periods.
Definition (Weak quasi-steady-state environment). A weak quasi-steady-state environment is a strong quasi-steady-state environment except for a slight diminution in the storehouses of readily available high-grade energy.
Theorem 3 (The Token Theorem). Each person is born with one (abstract) token, which may be spent to replicate her- or himself or may be transferred voluntarily to another person to so do. This state of affairs shall persist until such time as the human population of the earth shall be less than optimal, at which time the number of tokens shall be increased in a just, possibly random, manner.
Proof. That the population must remain constant or shrink slightly follows from the Environmental Axiom. It remains only to show that the proportions of posterity must be shared equally by the progeny or the surrogate progeny of each individual. The human being should be defined to include in an abstract way his or her progeny, i.e., as a human social link. Thus, the usurpation of more than one’s fair (equal) share of posterity should be interpreted as a violation of the Freedom Axiom.
Example. A woman can have one child without the permission of anyone; but, to have a second child, she must arrange for someone else to spend his or her token.
Discussion. The Token Principle is an example of a concept for which I would have been able to construct a more compelling proof if I had derived the environmental principle from the Freedom Axiom. We have shown that population growth has an undesirable impact on the environment. Undoubtedly, this has been going on for many generations since we have long since passed the optimal population size. Let F be the Freedom Axiom; let E be the Environmental Axiom; let T be the Token Principle: and let P be population growth. Logically, F → E implies not E → not F. (It is easy to convince oneself that A → B implies not B → not A for all A and B.) Now, not T → P → not E → not F, therefore a violation of the Token Principle is a violation of the Freedom Axiom.
I must explain why I am correct to forbid trade and so-called reproductive rights, but not taking drugs and having whatever forms of sex one pleases (so long as an axiom is not violated). Otherwise you will suspect me of sophistry.
Non-Imposition Principle. If an action imposes on the freedom of another social link but it would not if the members of that link adjusted their mental outlooks appropriately without any other adjustment being made, no violation of Axiom 1 has occurred. If their mental outlook is irrelevant, Axiom 1 has been violated.
Axiom 2 (The Environmental Axiom). Each adult’s share of the population is s = t/P, where t is himself (or herself) and any dependent children that resulted from the expenditure of his token and any tokens that were given to him and P is the number of individuals in the population.
Over a suitable averaging period (one year, say), the share of the population corresponding to each adult shall not have consumed more emergy than s times the emergy the sun has provided. [During the weak q.s.s. period (must be replaced by strong q.s.s before 2035, say) the emergy to be shared may include fossil fuel that is used to decentralize appropriately in order to eliminate the use of fossil fuel in the future.]
No one may impede the natural cycles of the earth without remedy within a lunar month. The emergy required to superpose the new trajectory in phase space over a likely candidate for a proper (undisturbed) cycle is charged to his share.
Every kindness must be extended to plants, animals, pre-reason children, diminished adults. Only in case of pressing need may the happiness of an animal be disturbed and then multifold pre-compensation must be awarded beforehand and the moment of the sacrifice delayed as long as possible. Pressing need is a technical term defined in the text.
Tell the truth to those who have a right to know it. – Ernest Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa
I. Exterior or factual truth
A. Truisms
B. Nonfalsifiable statements (excluded)
C. Fictional truth
D. Mathematical and logical truth
E. Empirical truth: verifiability and induction
1. Under our noses
2. Scientific and historical truth
a. Probability, macrofacts, and microfacts
b. Must be said with a British accent.
c. Occam’s Razor
3. Truth about events in our own minds
4. Truth about events in other people’s minds
F. Metaphysics
II. Inner or personal truth
In “Truth and Falsehood” [5] Russell makes a good case that the verification of historical truths does not differ as much as one might imagine from the verification of scientific truths. Both are very much like looking up a quotation in a book.
We think we know everything. What we actually know is almost nothing and most of that is false. What we know is an infinitesimal fraction of what can be known. The only absolute truth (other than fictional truth) is mathematical or logical truth and that is so because mathematics is essentially self-definitional. Most statements having truth value, i.e., being either true or false, are in the nature of conjectures. Nevertheless, we may attach to them a probability of their being true or not – at least roughly. Some people believe that every statement should come with a tag that gives the probability of the statement being true according to the best lights of the statement’s author or communicator. We do this very roughly when we precede our statements with words like presumably, plausibly, perhaps, certainly, undoubtedly, indisputably, etc.
Iraq is a country in the Mideast. The ruler is a man called Saddam Hussein. If I wish, I can find out if he is left-handed or right-handed. These I term macrofacts. They can be discovered by anyone and they may be believed without reservation. If I am told what was said to Saddam by our ambassador, how Saddam came to power, what his intentions have been toward Saudi Arabia, I am inclined to discount what is said one-hundred percent. These are microfacts. They involve details that are difficult if not impossible to verify.
If you tell me that President Kennedy was killed by gunfire in
1963 while riding through the streets of
[L]et us never accept as a cause for what we do not comprehend, something else we comprehend even less. – Marquis De Sade, Juliette
If a statement and its opposite, both having truth values, can be deduced from a set of unverifiable premises and we are faced with the necessity to make a choice between one statement and the other (a choice we would prefer to avoid), then the statement that can be deduced from the simplest set of premises is taken to be true. This rule is known as Occam’s Razor. Let us say that the statement based on the simplest assumptions is provisionally true. (I would like to have used the example of the statement that the earth turns on its axis and revolves around the sun as opposed to the statement that the heavens revolve around the earth, but both of these statements are equally true (unfalsifiable?). If the heavens revolve around the earth, the planets must take cycloidal trajectories and the motions of the so-called fixed stars become more complicated still. [Actually, if our methods for determining astronomical distances are correct, the stars must travel in excess of the speed of light, which, according to the theory of relativity, is impossible; however, in that theory, that (impossibility) is a premise and is not proved.] Thus, the former statement is more convenient as a model. I intend to use Occam’s Razor to favor scientific explanations over ecclesiastical explanations in the development of my philosophy. This doesn’t mean that we have to believe either statement.
Let us employ Occam’s Razor to determine whether or not Christianity is true. If Christianity be true, we must assume a virgin birth of a man who is both God and the son of God (as well as the son of Joseph, a descendent of kings), i.e., his own father, who rose from the dead, and who was correct when he said he would return to earth walking on the clouds after the stars had fallen from the sky during the lifetimes of people within sound of his voice despite the nearly indisputable fact that no one who was within the sound of his voice is now alive and these events have not occurred. Moreover, we must assume that virgin births, avatars, resurrections, and miracles are true in the Christian context while they have been false when believed by the adherents of hundreds of other superstitious, barbaric tribal religions, cf., The Golden Bough [6].
On the other hand, to conclude that Christianity is false, we need assume only that an itinerant preacher with moderately advanced ideas, when he began to be deified by his overzealous followers, lost his head, like so many others before and after him, and began to make extravagant claims for himself (and, by the way, began to treat ordinary people with less than common courtesy). Occam’s Razor disposes of Christianity rather brutally. (In our discourse with people who know it’s true because they know it’s true, we might best confine our remarks to hello and goodbye.)
Let us attempt to provide a list of the attributes of both observed and derived external truths and then see to what extent these attributes apply to inner truth. Hopefully, the attributes I list will be complete, independent, and, perforce, minimal.
Definition (External Truth). External truth shall be defined according to its properties:
Property 1. External truth applies only to statements, thus it is a subcategory of language, which is assumed to be understood by induction (experience) and deduction. All statements either have a truth value or they do not. Truth applies only to statements that have a truth value, i.e., statements that are either true or false.
Property 2. Scientific, empirical, factual true statements must have been verifiable independently by experiments or by the observations of several disinterested people. A statement that is corroborated independently a large number of times without a contradiction arising, even though none of the corroborations by itself may be regarded as conclusive, may be accepted as true with a high probability according to the principle of induction. A similar criterion may be applied to historical truth except that verifications are of a slightly different nature – although not as different as often supposed.
Property 3. A nonfalsifiable statement may be either true or false; it is undecidable. (It certainly cannot be said to be true so it cannot be introduced into debate on public policy.)
Property 4. A statement is true if it can be deduced from one or more true statements. (If a false statement can be deduced from a test statement, then the test statement is false.) If a false statement can be deduced from the negation of the test statement, then the test statement may be regarded as true. (reductio ad absurdum)
Definition (Inner Truth). Inner truth shall be taken as the fidelity of one’s behavior, as described and delimited above, to one’s aesthetic standards and to one’s personal moral standards.
1. Basically, everyone knows intuitively what a true statement is. I realize this is a dangerous assumption; but:
2. In this essay, we shall rely mainly on macrofacts, which are easily verified, as opposed to microfacts – as discussed previously.
In point of fact, we are most often concerned with statements that are false. Obviously, whatever technical difficulties lie in assigning truth to statements having truth value are shared by the problem of falsehood. But, in the normal case, the difficulties do not arise. Although it may be difficult to define rigorously a true statement, no such difficulties exist in the case of falsehood – at least in the case of the falsehoods in which we shall be interested. “Falsehood is so unexacting, [it] needs so little help to make itself manifest!” [Proust]
Axiom 3 (The Truth Axiom). Every person shall promote the truth, the whole truth, and (in the class of statements that possess truth value) nothing but the truth. Truth shall be exalted to the greatest extent possible – to such a great extent, in fact, that it must be withheld from those in authority, who are unworthy of it. Telling the truth to a cop, boss, judge, leader, or bully (not a teacher whom we accept voluntarily, though) is precisely analogous to throwing pearls before swine – and this is the first opportunity of my long life to use that cliché. (We don’t expect a member of the French underground to tell the truth to the Gestapo!)
Corollary 8. One’s behavior must be congruent with one’s moral and aesthetic sense.
Corollary 10 (The Fundamental Premise). It is violation of the Truth Axiom for a reasonable person to be happy while he is aware of the misery of another person no matter how far away the miserable person may be.
Note. It was called a premise because it could then be used to distinguish between people of good will and Conservatives, Christians, and other sub-human types. [In every jest, lies a hint at the joker’s true feelings.]
Definition (Proper Game). A proper game is a fair competition that satisfies generalized game rules: (i) the score is tied when the game begins, (ii) the rules are stated in advance and are known to all contestants, (iii) the contestants are evenly matched (roughly, e.g., same number of players on both teams), (iv) all contestants begin at the same time or the order of play is determined by lot, (vi) the winner is determined in an unambiguous fashion, usually by accumulating the most points, whatever points are called, or by crossing the finish line first, etc., (vii) normally, the rules do not change during the playing of the game, but, if they do, the change or changes occur in a canonical way that affects all players in the same way, (viii) the winner is not predetermined. This list of game rules may not be complete, but it is sufficient to distinguish between a proper game like baseball and an improper game like the stock market.
Definition (Improper game). An improper game is a competition that is not a proper game.
Note. If everyone be required to play an improper game, we have C. If one of the stakeholders does not know the game is improper, we have F. If all stakeholders agree, no violation occurs.
What is to be done with that section of the possessors of specific talents whose talent is for moneymaking? History and daily experience teach us that if the world does not devise some plan of ruling them, they will rule the world. Now it is not desirable that they should rule the world; for the secret of moneymaking is to care for nothing else and to work at nothing else; and as the world’s welfare depends on operations by which no individual can make money, whilst its ruin by war and drink and disease and drugs and debauchery is enormously profitable to moneymakers, the supremacy of the moneymaker is the destruction of the State. A society which depends on the incentive of private profit is doomed. – George Bernard Shaw, The Millionairess
We do not have time to prove all of the theorem; we shall have to content with the proof of just one part. I would like to show you the web of commutative triangles connecting C, T, F, and G.
1. “The money and power seekers put the professional/amateurs in the unenviable position of either giving up fulfilling and spiritually rewarding intrinsically motivated activities or giving up economic and political power over their own lives and the affairs of their community or nation.”
2. Forced to play an improper game regardless of inclination.
3. Greek warrior class to business class not much improvement and some regression.
4. Consider the exceptions, e.g., prof. basketball player, boxer, ...false hope to Black youth, current ad offers art as an alternative. Hah!
5. Suppose composers of verse ruled.
6. Greatest contributors?
7. Meritocracy? Where? Even if so, it’s all accidents of birth.
8. Most worthy? Not Hausdorf. Humans not better than mice. Introduce that to abortion debate.
9. People work too hard and neglect family and aspects of life other than their careers. The world has become a work camp. Many forms of work impact on the environment undesirably. Business isn't even good for businessmen. Witness the incidence of cancer, heart disease, ulcers, and divorce among them.
10. The waste of many talented people whose lives are consumed in schemes for avoiding taxes, cutting a slicker deal, getting around the law, etc. is caused by C.
11. In the rush to accumulate wealth, which our system has changed from a choice to a necessity, people must neglect many important aspects of our culture. Allan Bloom states that there is no university in America capable of imparting an acceptable liberal education. In fact, there is no one left to teach it.
12. C influences people's behavior, what they study, read, what they do for a living, how they treat other people, who they marry, and other things that should be influenced only by the heart and one's natural inclinations. People try to buy love.
13. Not all forms of endeavor result in the same gain in material wealth. There are dramatic inequities. Investment bankers earn much more than mathematicians, which is ridiculous. This is better than their Item 24.
14. C causes crime. Middle-class and rich people cannot go into certain parts of the city. Even the downtown business districts are unsafe at night and on weekends. Does that sound like a social system that is working!
15. C causes poverty. People are forced to accept charity. Poverty impacts negatively even on the wealthy who must breathe fumes from poorly maintained cars, turn their homes into fortresses, etc. Eventually, if the poor become sufficiently dissatisfied, they may riot, this time destroying the homes and property of the rich, or they may achieve a revolution during which many of the wealthy may be killed and after which some may be brought to trial. This subsumes their Item 35.
16. Gradients in wealth subvert democracy as some can buy influence in the legislatures and the courts. It is possible that the president of the U.S. could be influenced by the wealthy. Actually I think it's much worse than that.
17. People cheat to get ahead. Farmers and processors of food tamper with the food supply and treat animals inhumanely to increase their profits. Industrialists pollute. The corporate ladder is an institution that disgusts nearly everyone who knows anything about it. It is the subject of obscene jokes.
18. Lesser men (and women) gain ascendancy over greater. The unenlightened rule the enlightened. (We cannot point to individuals because of noncomparability.) This covers TCM Item 40.
19. C teaches people to follow their base animal instincts. People survive not by intelligence but by low animal cunning.
20. Nearly everyone worries about money. The majority of marital disputes are about money.
21. People who are rich are accorded status and prestige they do not deserve. They harbor illusions about themselves. C is really as bad for the rich as it is for the poor. The unhappy rich kid is a proverb.
22. People are forced to move about from place to place because of job changes, to get work, because rents are allowed to rise, because neighborhoods are destroyed. Frequent relocations have many undesirable effects.
23. Nations seeking new markets adopt imperialistic foreign policies that often lead to terrorism and war. Actually, foreign trade has become war.
24. Entrepreneurs are forced to take serious risks that sometimes imperil their families. Gambling is supposed to be a vice. Why should gambling on business ventures be encouraged or even tolerated?
25. C leads to a complicated system of laws both civil and criminal and endless legislation and litigation. Ignorance of the law is not only an excuse, it is the unavoidable condition of every single person.
26. C compromises the trustworthiness of nuclear power plants, which, when operating normally, produce no pollution, provided we can solve the problem of disposing of nuclear waste. (The problem of nuclear waste does not arise in fusion plants, but not all of the technical problems associated with such plants have been solved.) Fortunately, even people who support capitalism do not trust the operators of nuclear power plants under the profit motive. Nuclear power will not be safe until the only motivations for producing it, above and beyond public service, are scientific and technological prestige, which, of course, would be severely compromised by accidents. [Nuclear power is probably hopeless anyway. TLW 2-5-92]
27. C leads to socialized industry, which, in turn, leads to managers who are not practitioners. This leads to uninformed decisions and inferior product quality.
28. It is difficult to get rid of useless or harmful jobs because jobs are equivalent to livelihoods. We find it difficult to close an army base that is no longer needed. We would like to provide free medical care for everyone, but that would displace workers in the health insurance sector. The concept of jobs leads to many absurd contradictions.
29. Artists, scientists, and scholars must have freedom to create. We all suffer when their sponsors exercise control over what they do. Truth suffers. And yet, under any competitionistic system, capitalism or socialism (in America we have both), artists, scientists, and scholars must live by handouts from someone. We have no guarantee that that someone will not abuse his influence, in fact, unless we are very naive, we expect him (or her) to abuse that sort of relationship. The current crisis at the National Endowment for the Arts represents precisely the type of tampering that we find unacceptable.
30. Science is one of the most important activities of man, actually one the most successful as well. It is transcendent in that, like art, the ordinary activities of man are justified by it. We don't paint pictures so that we can grow corn; we grow corn so that we can paint pictures. The same is true of science when it is viewed correctly. Thus, any political or social system that is harmful to science (or art) cannot be accepted as a permanent solution to mankind's needs. Both socialism and capitalism and systems like the American system that are a mixture of both are harmful to science. In fact, any competitionistic system whatsoever is harmful to science. Socialism, because bureaucrats have power over what science is done; capitalism, because the rich and powerful do. No one should have that power save the scientist himself. Thus, C is rejected.
31. Competitionism makes possible the bidding up of junk to the status of art.
32. We don’t believe that accidents of birth such as race or gender justify greater material wealth. Why should we accept accidents of birth like higher intelligence or even good character as justification for greater material wealth. On the contrary, intelligent people of good character should renounce wealth.
33. Legal and illegal impunity of rich.
34. Tyranny of money itself, cf., Henry Miller
35. Many losers to make one winner
36. EMPLOYMENT “What is the murder of a man compared to the employment of a man.”
The proof is omitted. Perhaps the interested reader would like to supply a proof.
Definition (Decompetitionism). Decompetitionism is shorthand for a collection of reforms that are intended to prevent gradients (differences from person to person) in S* from existing or arising. It might just as well be called anti-competitionism or non-competitionism or something else or nothing. (Perhaps it would be better if no term at all were employed, but that would be inconvenient for writers.) S* is the symbol for the concept I have chosen to subsume wealth, power, and fame that is converted to wealth and power. We must abandon competitionism as defined above. People must voluntarily stop competing for S*. This means, perforce, that all human beings will enjoy equal wealth and power. Nearly half say they would like this, but no one else would!
We must stabilize our population. I believe these reforms will facilitate a stable population without coercion (or famine, war, and epidemic disease) because people tend to have fewer children when they expect all of them to live and when they do not intend to rely upon children to support their old age or assist them in their middle years. More importantly, we need a strong quasi-steady-state economy, which cannot be achieved without a stable population. Also, it would be desirable to replace giant national bureaucracies by nonintrusive part-time communicators to manage relations between (among) small decentralized communities that barely recognize national borders but rely upon practically nothing that is not within walking distance. To achieve these goals, I suggest the following:
1. Worker custodianship, in equal shares, of the means of production. (I have not used the word syndicalism to describe decompetitionism because syndicalism sometimes connotes trade unionism, which requires conspiracies among workers engaged in similar activities but in different enterprises. In this system, trade unions would be unnecessary; but, as in syndicalism, workers do own the means of production.)
2. The elimination of competitionism, which might be achieved most easily by abandoning money and other fiduciary certificates that facilitate the hoarding of wealth.
3. The abandonment of “leadership” and traditional management and the replacement of leaders and managers by communicators selected randomly. (People who are emulated by others or whose suggestions are solicited frequently and followed voluntarily are not the “leaders” I have in mind. Elected officials, corporate and military officers, and demagogues exercise power over people who do not wish to have that power exercised. This is tyranny. Perhaps I should not refer to it as leadership, but that’s what it’s called in common parlance.)
4. The replacement of laws by morals derived from moral axioms, perhaps by expert systems. [Note in proof: I don’t think expert systems will be needed. Even a child can tell what is moral in this system.]
5. Decentralized planned economies lightly coupled to each other to effect a few minor economies of scale.
The results of these reforms should be:
1. Replacement of employment by involvement, coercion by volition, greed by generosity, fear by love, and ignorance by knowledge.
2. Renewed respect for leisure and a vast improvement in the quality of life such that the word education would take on a useful meaning (actually its dictionary meaning).
3. Quite naturally, the equilibration of wealth and power, hopefully with sufficient abundance of life for everyone.
4. The establishment of a strong quasi-steady-state environment.
An ideal solution to the health-care crisis is a case in point that could be implemented quite soon. We must decide, first, who belongs to the health-care sector: the doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and their drivers, of course, but also the manufacturers of medical equipment, even surgical steel, the producers of pharmaceuticals, the designers and constructors of their plants, and so on. I do not believe that the health-care sector should have its own electric power plants, water suppliers, or iron mines, therefore these facilities must supply the health-care sector at no charge and pass on the cost to the other sectors. Now, health care can be free (but rationed – we wouldn’t spend 10% of our budget on the last week of a doomed man’s life) and every member of the health-care sector may have his or her fair share of the production of the other sectors without paying. At first, it might be necessary for health-care workers to carry a national credit card to keep track of their expenditures in units of emergy, say. We might have to allot a little more for the highly skilled surgeons until everyone gets used to the idea of equality, after which people would be ashamed to consume more than the least they can get along with. The difficulties with this solution are tremendous and I don’t expect readers to accept it until they have read much more.
But, after all, who better than physicians and surgeons to take the first step toward renouncing wealth? Presumably, physicians are more intelligent and better educated than most of us and consequently they are (1) better qualified to understand the importance of giving up wealth, (2) more qualified to live life abundantly while minimizing consumption (it takes brains to live well without money; any idiot can live well if he is rich), and (3) physicians are better positioned to retain the respect of their worldly friends without wealth (I dare say someone would move to allow old Doc Feelgood to retain his membership in the River Oaks Country Club without paying dues just in case someone should fall ill). Moreover, they need to make a show of good faith in this national crisis to retain the respect of the general public, who are beginning to regard them as vultures and parasites. (Marian Hillar has pointed out that, nowadays, what passes for education rarely prepares one for the austere life of the contemplative person. The first reforms will take place where they are needed most, namely, in education.)
Eventually, this solution can be applied to every sector of the economy and we will have achieved the cashless economy we desire. When, in addition, it is no longer necessary to keep track of who consumes what, we will be able to escape from the tremendous burden of accounting under which we now suffer. (I would like to describe in detail the sequence of payments and trail of paperwork generated by one visit to a gastro-enterologist, but the reader can easily imagine such a nightmare. Now, for a moment, imagine medicine without the process of acquiring insurance, deciding among competing plans, paying for insurance, accounting for the payments to and from the insurance company, correcting the clerical errors, following follow-up letters with still more follow-up letters only to have a claim denied for no particular reason. I have seen my doctors’ medical files on me. They are about one-third as voluminous as my own files accounting for my payments. Money takes more paperwork than medicine?!)
January 6, 1995
Revised for a presentation at the meeting of Humanists of Houston on February 11, 1995.