Dacia Iluministă

The Midas Gang:

There are 1,200 billionaires in the world (as of beginning of 2011). Why does anyone need to be a billionaire? How much money does someone need in order to live well? Should it be up to super rich individuals to decide, or is it actually something that is relevant to a whole community and hence should be decided by the community? When it comes to a State that has no say over how much private individuals are allowed to earn, cui bono? Is it the State or the super rich individuals who benefit?

A world has been constructed where a tiny number of individuals dictate to governments. They always get their own way. Politics and economic systems are designed to suit them. WHY?!

If the State cannot tell greedy individuals to take a running jump then the State has no power at all and we are all living in a plutocracy where our lives are shaped by the whims of extraordinarily rich individuals. What sane, rational person would wish to be the slave of the rich? The State, in the name of the people, must wrest control from the rich, and it can only do that by explicitly controlling their wealth. Why should the richest person on earth have more than say 100 million dollars? Would he be able to claim that he was being hard done by and forced to live in penury, or would he in fact still be able to enjoy an inconceivably luxurious life that others can only dream of? When is enough enough? We must derail the gravy train. We must stop the Greed Machine. If we don’t, we deserve all we get.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale…The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” –Thomas Jefferson
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What Price?:

“Hollywood is a place that pays a $1,000 for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul.” –Marilyn Monroe

We live in a Price Tag society where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We inhabit a Sisyphean world where we toil during the day at some soul-destroying, alienating occupation. At night and weekends, when we are “free”, we consume junk TV, go shopping for junk, watch Hollywood junk, drink and take drugs to numb the pain, get out our iPhones, iPods and iPads to distract ourselves. And then the cycle begins all over again, day after day, week after week, year after year – until we die. Like Sisyphus, we never finish pushing the boulder. The task always wins in the end. It doesn’t die, we do! Isn’t it time we smashed the Sisyphean boulder? Who is making us push it? – the super rich capitalist ownership class, that’s who. They have chained us to it by piling debt on us: debt to them.

Decades ago, futurologists spoke of a coming “leisure society”. The idea was that technological innovations would eliminate countless dreary jobs while maintaining, and even increasing, productivity. People would still enjoy the same quality of life but would have to spend far fewer hours at the workplace. So the question was how they would spend all of their extra leisure time.

Why didn’t the leisure society ever materialize? People have worse jobs than ever. Imagine working in a call centre like a lab rat on a treadmill, robotically reading out a script to try to sell some junk product to reluctant customers.

The reason is that all the time we saved was re-directed into bringing out new product ranges faster and faster. Our masters created a world of hyper consumerism in which they sell to us round the clock. What is the internet? – a 24/7 shop-front. There isn’t a single moment when you are denied the opportunity to buy.

Rather than enjoying a leisure society, we have been manipulated into accepting a ferociously paced consumption fest which creates bigger profits than ever for the ownership class. Why don’t we step off the treadmill? We are free to do so whenever we want.

One of the most autonomous individuals in history was Diogenes the Cynic, who lived as a beggar in a barrel in the streets of Athens. He refused to let anyone be his master. The Illuminati have a “Diogenes Division” – these are members who have agreed to dedicate two years of their lives exclusively to Illuminati undertakings for the equivalent of a minimum wage. All members of the Illuminati must serve in the Diogenes Division at some stage, and it is deemed highly beneficial for the soul to endure a period of near poverty.
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What are we?:

First of all: what we are not. We are not anarchists nor socialists nor libertarians nor ultra-capitalists nor communists nor democrats nor advocates of negative liberty.

We are MERITOCRATS. That is what defines us. We advocate strong government by the most meritorious men and women. We don’t want unmeritorious people in charge, nor greedy people out for themselves, and nor do we want no one in charge (as anarchists, libertarians and ultra-communists advocate – a position of so-called negative liberty).

We are advocates of positive liberty. By that we mean that we have an extremely powerful vision of what humanity ought to be and we want humanity to dedicate itself to reaching its omega point of dialectical perfection. We refer to that final state as the Community of Gods and the Society of the Divine. It logically follows that if we wish to attain that goal, the most meritorious amongst us are those most likely to get us there. We won’t succeed via the greedy or unmeritorious or those who have no vision of what humanity ought to be.

So, no we don’t advocate making common cause with any type of anarchist, libertarian or democrat – except as a short-term expedient to get rid of a common enemy. But the anarchists, libertarians and democrats would themselves become the enemies of our cause in due course since they would object to strong, directed government that actively promoted the pursuit of the perfection of humanity. What anarchists and libertarians oppose is all government. They oppose authority per se regardless of whether it is good or bad. We are enemies of wrongful authority but not of the authority of those whose talents qualify them to be in charge. The Illuminati is full of smart, creative people but we all acknowledge that the Grand Master and the Ruling Council are those best able to lead us to where we want to go.

Only a fool would ideologically oppose the principle of the wisest people being allowed to lead. If you require brain surgery, you want the best brain surgeon to perform the operation. You don’t choose the worst brain surgeon because you are opposed to “fascist” hierarchies of brain surgeons. Similarly, if you want the best society you seek the means of identifying those best qualified to deliver it. You don’t arrogantly decide that you are as well qualified as anyone else. Anyone who adopts that attitude is opposing the whole concept of merit and expertise. Anarchists and libertarians are invariably those who think that they are so great that no one could possibly be in a position to have better ideas and ways of doing things than they. They are deluded fools, with a massively inflated sense of their own abilities. The world would fall apart under anarchy or libertarianism. We would succumb to the grimmest Hobbesian war, everyone fighting with everyone else, and soon enough a Leviathan – a dictator – would rise up to impose order, and would be eagerly embraced by the masses. Anarchism and libertarianism are a complete joke. They have no vision of optimised human beings – in fact they would regard that aspiration as some sort of fascist dream.

We love Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman. We see the Superman as the necessary precursor of the Divine Human. If you are not enthralled by the idea of attaining perfection – of all human beings attaining perfection – then you are no ally of ours. Anarchists and libertarians despise the Superman. They just want to be left alone to pass the time as they see fit. Their vision of humanity is as dismal as capitalist consumerism.

We hope we have made our position crystal clear, and the scope of our ambition. If you prefer anarchism or libertarianism then you should join one of the vehicles for those ideologies. You certainly won’t be of any use to our mission.

Our key words are meritocracy, the transformation of quantity into quality, the pursuit of excellence, the alchemical project of turning base metal into gold, and the desire for perfection. If you don’t want to be perfect, go somewhere else. Our ideas are not for you. If you think you are already perfect and know the answers to everything – which is what the anarchists and libertarians effectively believe of themselves (they think they need no help from experts and the wise) – then, again, our ideas are not for you.

Everyone must approach knowledge with humility. There are those who know more than we do and we would be fools not to attempt to seek them out and gain their knowledge. Every member of the Illuminati understands that we can achieve remarkable things if we are part of a united society dedicated to the furtherance of knowledge and if we allow ourselves to be guided by those who are further along the path to enlightenment. Every member aspires to be Grand Master one day, but only if we deserve it because we have become the best, because we are the member of the Illuminati with the most merit. And then it is our sacred duty to lead the Illuminati ever closer to its omega point. The Grand Master is the servant of the Illuminati, not its dictator. To desire to be of service to others is to attain true wisdom. To be obsessed with serving yourself – like all of the present leaders of our society – is to prove that you are completely unfit to be a leader.

Society must protect itself from the types of people who are currently in charge. The easiest way is to ensure, by law, that the leaders are not super rich and can never become super rich. Any rich person who seeks to lead should first of all be compelled to surrender most of their wealth. If they refuse then they have proved that they are unworthy. They have demonstrated what their motivation is, and it’s obviously not public service.
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Media Manipulation:

The media, said Noam Chomsky, is “a machine for manufacturing consent.” That’s not quite right. It creates the illusion of consent by the simple expedient of only allowing certain voices to be heard. It doesn’t so much make consent as pretend that it already exists. People are never given the opportunity to realize how little consent there actually is.
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Social Capitalism:

The system we advocate may be called public or social capitalism. Its central idea is that rather than capital being concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of super rich, it is relatively evenly distributed across society. Profits do not go exclusively to the privileged elite but instead to everyone – or at least everyone who’s willing to work hard.

The banking system will be under public control but will nevertheless have capitalist features. Competition is one of the essential drivers of capitalism, and meritocracy will seek to identify the optimal ways of harnessing competition (in current capitalism there’s some healthy competition but also a great deal of wasteful competition and inefficient replication). The new banking system will be based on a large number of competing banks, all of which will have the opportunity to adopt different banking strategies. No bank will be allowed to be “too big to fail”, but each bank will have significant autonomy and the employees of the more successful banks will make more money than those of the less successful.

Similarly, the corporations of present-day capitalism – where the ownership class earn inordinate amounts of money – will no longer exist. Corporate ownership, like capital, will be much more evenly distributed.

We have said all along that the system we advocate is a synthesis of socialist and capitalist elements, and it should absolutely never be characterised as purely socialist. No socialist would recognise our system as belonging to their ideology. We are essentially capitalists who assert that the State should dictate to private capital rather than private capital to the State.

In the UK, the banking leviathan HSBC has threatened to relocate its headquarters from London to Hong Kong because it disapproves of what it sees as anti-banking measures being taken by the government. It is utterly unacceptable for any private institution to blackmail the State and demand preferential treatment. Our version of capitalism would kill off arrogant institutions like HSBC and replace them with capitalist institutions that owe their existence and loyalty to the State rather to the paradigm of “stateless Globalism”.

Contemporary capitalist multinational corporations have become extra-national i.e. they operate beyond the reach of any State. This means that the OWO – the super rich elite – can tell States all over the world what to do. This cannot be tolerated. Groups of private individuals cannot be allowed to favour their particular will over the General Will of the people. Our “State” version of capitalism reins in capitalism and re-establishes who’s in charge – the People, not small, privileged elites. Public capitalism recognises its obligations to the State. It does not immediately relocate to another part of the world if it fails to get its own way. Public capitalism is about ensuring that the citizens own the means of production. So, if American citizens are the owners of their own companies, they won’t be relocating to Mexico or China any time soon, will they?

A rich capitalist couldn’t care less in what nation he chooses to locate his sweatshop factories. He simply wants to maximise his profits and screw everyone else. He has no commitment to his fellow citizens whatsoever. We seek to eliminate that kind of international capitalism and replace it with national capitalism, based on a nation’s capital residing with its people and not with an itinerant elite who have no national loyalty. German capital should remain in Germany, British in Britain, American in America, Finnish in Finland, and so on. We don’t want any international playboys moving their money around at will to maximise their personal profits regardless of the interests of their home nations.

Our project is about reforming capitalism by removing the bulk of the capital and power from a tiny elite and redistributing it amongst the people. To do so, we need to introduce socialist elements, but these are simply to allow the State to regain control of the economy from private individuals, not to start nationalizing everything in sight and creating huge, inefficient, uncompetitive State monopolies and bureaucracies that ignore markets. Given that we support all of the essential features of capitalism other than that private individuals should dictate to the State (as they do in contemporary capitalism), no one could validly accuse us of being socialists.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild said, “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws.” What he ought to have said was: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I will make her laws.” In other words, the people with the money are the power behind the throne: the secret lawmakers who make the world dance to their tune. But why do people let them? It’s not as if stopping them is hard – you simply prevent private individuals from controlling the banks, hence the money. You put the banks and the economy under the control of elected, accountable officials. What could be easier?

We are the advocates of the truest form of capitalism – the version that operates according to the General Will of the people and not the particular will of the elite. Public capitalism is the only acceptable form of capitalism.

“In other walks of life, people can take pride in their world without expecting to earn huge salaries. They feel good about themselves because of what they do, not what they are paid. And they take satisfaction from contributing to the public good as well as their employers’ profits. None of that applies in banking, which has been reduced to a narrow calculus of profit and bonus. It is this blinkered view of the world that has made bankers unable to understand why they have to change. They live in a parallel, self-perpetuating universe in which they meet very few people outside their tiny circle. They work so hard that they rarely have time to socialise, and, when they do, it is with other stratospherically rich bankers and lawyers. Their views all reinforce each other’s. And the few outsiders they do encounter, they tend to disdain – usually because they have less money. Bankers are used to getting their own way, because they can wield a chequebook, and collectively, because of the importance of their sector to the economy.” –Mary Ann Sieghart, The Independent

We cannot allow the elite to dictate to us. We will dictate to them. If they don’t like it, they can leave, but they will then be declared enemies of the State and never allowed back in. They will become pariahs. That’s exactly what they deserve and they have brought it on themselves.

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There have been benevolent employers before – people like Robert Owen in Britain in the 19th century – but they manifestly failed to overcome the prevailing system. Why? Because if there are 99 malevolent employers to every benevolent one, decent employers don’t have a prayer. Evil cartels can put them out of business one way or another. How do you imagine the Old World Order came to power in the first place?

Robert Owen bought a chain of textile mills called “New Lanark”, near Glasgow. He created a village for his workers and provided a school, healthcare, childcare and so on. His employees loved him. He wanted his workers to receive all their needs as part of their working conditions, very much in the manner of the benevolent lord described in the thesis. Although he has been described as one of the founding fathers of socialism, he was really just a conscientious capitalist. As soon as he died, his worker communes collapsed. No one else supported his model.

The benevolent employers always lose to the more numerous evil ones. The only way to beat the bad guys is to make it impossible for them to exist, by taking control of the levers of wealth.

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A correspondent stated: “Quite frankly, the masses don’t want to study the teachings of Nietzsche or Hegel or hear scientific theories about the nature of the universe. Instead, they want money. Money is their prime motivator, so we should concentrate our efforts on it. Imagine huge crowds holding up signs with the red M-logo in them and shouting time after time: ‘We want money! We want money!’ What an exciting vision! And it can be transformed into a reality. It has been truthfully said that the people can be bought, so let’s buy them.”

This is in danger of being the most cynical and mercenary statement ever made. The super rich have traditionally bought the people in one way or another. Now, our response is supposedly to offer money on a much wider scale than ever before.

WE WANT MONEY! WE WANT MONEY! That sounds like the slogan of Wall Street, not of any movement connected with meritocracy and the spiritual improvement of humanity. Instead of creating a society where people DO want to study Nietzsche, Hegel and science, we are simply to bribe the masses like the cheapest hustlers.

It is not our ambition to pander to what is lowest in people. There are plenty of others happy to do that. We are the party of excellence, of quality, of a higher type of humanity. Our cause is utterly lost if we reject the highest culture – as represented by the likes of Nietzsche, Hegel and science – and spend our time dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.

It’s true that the masses couldn’t care less about the truth of their lives, the world and the cosmos. It’s true that many people would rather shop, watch TV and gossip about celebrities than contemplate the fundamental nature of existence. It’s true that the masses are sheeple, not people.

Nevertheless, it is not our place to join them in their desperate race for the bottom. We are ascending to the top. We are not in freefall in the bottomless abyss of consumerism and celebrity culture. We are the people of the summits, of the highest heights. We are those who seek to see further than ever before. We look to the stars and beyond. And we look inside. Because there we will find God.

If you do not have values then you have nothing.

If we have to resort to distributing money to the masses to gain their support – if that is the sum and substance of our vision – then what’s the point?

We will appeal to the highest aspirations of people, not their basest instincts. We seek to make all people into Gods, no matter how retarded, deluded and dumb they may be at the moment. We will transform their consciousness. When we are finished, it won’t be Hegel and Nietzsche who are unknown amongst the masses, but the vacuous celebrities.

There will come a day when statues of Hegel and Nietzsche are in the centre of every town and city, and there will be no celebrities and no super rich. In that sign we shall triumph, or victory is not worth achieving.
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The Robin Hood Tax:

The correspondent further stated: “Most people reject outright concepts such as 100% inheritance tax and the nationalization of all privately owned businesses because they don’t see how these things would benefit them at all. They suspect that this would mean a dictatorship of some sorts.”

If you were in a bar discussing 100% inheritance tax with a stranger and you said that it was about taking all of his hard-earned money away from him at his death and preventing him from leaving it to anyone of his choice, he would indeed think you were a totalitarian nutcase.

You NEVER try to persuade anyone of anything by highlighting what they may lose. You always emphasize how they will gain. It has been said that everyone gains from basic income, but since this income is far below what most people are already earning, they would not perceive it as any kind of gain, and, rightly or wrongly, they would invariably associate it with freeloaders and scroungers – no average member of society wants to perceive themselves in that light. People on welfare are generally held in contempt. And those on welfare often try to take as much as they can from the State without thinking for a second of how to give anything back. It becomes a way of life for them and, since it’s reasonably tolerable, there’s no incentive for them to change anything, especially since they know they lack the qualities that conventional society requires. The “consciousness” becomes that of the lazy scrounger, and they even start to take a defiant pride in it, and are always talking about their “entitlements”, never about their duties and responsibilities. The UK has a huge underclass of people who have spent their entire lives on benefits and never contributed anything to society. NOTHING AT ALL! Would basic income be music to their ears? You bet it would. They would vote for it in a flash. And everyone who hates them and regards them as parasites would vote against basic income. It would be dead in the water.

As for 100% inheritance tax, it has to be sold as a benefit, not a loss, and it has to be sold as a moral and righteous measure that any good and decent person would support and any evil person oppose.

Start the debate with the stranger in the bar by discussing Robin Hood (a person loathed by Ayn Rand, the supreme apologist for the super rich). Ask the stranger if he would have supported Robin Hood’s campaign to take the wealth of the rapacious, greedy, cruel and unjust king, nobles and barons and give it to the needy sick and the hardworking ordinary people. If he says he’s on Robin Hood’s side then you’re in business. If he says he’s not then call him an evil, greedy bastard to his face and walk away.

Ask the stranger whether he’s on the side of the Wall Street fat cats or the ordinary people of Main Street. Who should be running the country – the people or the bankers? Ask the stranger whether or not he supports a two-tier society with two classes of citizens – the privileged elite on top and everyone else permanently beneath them.

Ask the stranger if he would like his children to have a fair chance in life, and not to have to compete in a system rigged against them. Ask the stranger if he supports the obvious fact that the rich keep getting richer and many of the poor keep getting poorer. Does he think that leads to a healthy, fair, meritocratic society?

Ask the stranger if he supports people getting something for nothing – welfare. When he says, “No”, ask him what the difference is between those who inherit wealth from others without doing any work themselves and those who take money from the State without doing any work themselves. Aren’t they morally equivalent? They both want and expect something for nothing.

You should then say to the stranger that you have a way to ensure that no one who does no work will get something for nothing, and moreover your innovation will release all of the money of the super rich to the hardworking ordinary people. It will transfer the money of the Wall Street fat cats to Main Street.

It is 100% inheritance tax, the bedrock of meritocracy. It ensures that privileged, spoiled kids don’t get to inherit lives of luxury just because they are related to people who made lots of money (and by the same token that decent kids are not forced to live in poverty because their parents didn’t manage to make any money).

It creates an even playing field. It ensures that everyone sets out from the same starting line. It brings to an end the rule of the dynastic elites that have always ruled the world. For the first time ever, it gives everyone an equal chance to go as far as their merit will carry them.

Everyone benefits other than the super rich and their parasitical offspring. Everyone gains. It is morally, economically and socially right. It is the Robin Hood tax that redistributes the wealth of the fat cats to the decent people.

The wealthy can enjoy their riches during their lifetime. It is taken from them only when they have no further need of it because they are dead. It is not any sort of attack on people earning a good living. In fact, it’s designed to give everyone a good living.

There will be far more wealth in circulation because there will be no reason for the super rich to hoard their wealth. They will spend, spend, spend. And soon, 100% tax will be irrelevant because everyone will make sure they have spent all of their money before they die.

Everyone will enjoy a much higher standard of living thanks to all of the extra money available. Inflation won’t take off because there’s no reason any longer for the elite ownership class to always be seeking to increase their profits by raising prices. The vast majority of people will join the ownership class.

100% inheritance tax unlocks the Bank of the Super Rich and lets the ordinary people enjoy its benefits.

100% inheritance tax is on the side of nature since it restores the law of the regression to the mean. In ultra capitalism, the rich keep getting richer in defiance of the law of regression to the mean, and contrary to nature. Super wealth is an unnatural phenomenon, a kind of disease that attacks the whole of society. 100% inheritance tax is the natural remedy.

Andrew Carnegie, once the richest man on earth, declared, “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.” That’s absolutely right!

So, 100% inheritance tax is the Robin Hood tax, the Carnegie Tax, the Tax for taking from Wall Street and giving to Main Street, the Tax that restores nature via regression to the mean, the Tax that stops scroungers getting something for nothing, the moral and egalitarian Tax that allows everyone to set out from the same starting line.

Only the greedy, the immoral, the lazy, the mad, the stupid and the anti-meritocrats would oppose the Robin Hood Tax.

“So,” you say straight to the stranger, “Are you for or against 100% inheritance tax – are you moral or immoral?”

Rationally, the 100% inheritance tax cannot be contested. It is EASY to force any enemy of this tax into a corner where they look like an immoral monster. If you can’t walk into a bar and persuade any stranger of its merits then you don’t understand it or you yourself are immoral. You are taking next to nothing from them and giving them EVERYTHING.

Far from being a hard sell, it should be the easiest sell imaginable. No member of the Illuminati has ever voiced any opposition to it. We pride ourselves on being rational, moral and meritocratic. The people who don’t “get it” are the irrational, the super rich, the privileged, the anarchists and libertarians.

We understand that we are trying to overcome centuries of indoctrination, of people with a false consciousness who live in bad faith. But we know for a fact that any rational person who hears about the Robin Hood Tax immediately becomes a fervent advocate of it.

It addresses the fundamental problem of how to redistribute the excessive wealth of the greedy elite without resorting to communism. The Robin Hood tax is the ONLY means for achieving non-socialist redistribution of wealth, hence the only means of achieving a fairer, reformed version of capitalism that gives everyone a realistic chance in life and allows the merit of the people to flourish in an unprecedented way.

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We completely endorse the statement of another correspondent, who wrote: “Meritocracy is not a pass-fail system, but rather a system that allows each person to find their own highest attainment. There is no shame in being less than first in a particular field or endeavour – it is simply that the other person had more skills suited for that particular event.”

Meritocracy gives everyone the best possible chance. It doesn’t promise victory for everyone. Only the very best will win.

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From the perspective of dialectical meritocracy, we are in some sense committed to being neutral in the basic income debate. Both sides have points for and against, and the whole essence of the dialectic is not to reach any dogmatic stance one way or another (there is no a priori means of showing one view to be wholly wrong), but to test both scenarios in real life and compare and contrast the data that is subsequently collected. If one method is clearly better than the other then we drop the loser. If both are comparable but one is cheaper then we would adopt the cheaper.

Dialectical meritocracy should avoid dogmatism and should not commit itself to any particular policy stances other than those that relate fundamentally to meritocracy. The two contestants in this debate have both done what dialectical meritocracy demands: they have presented their cases articulately and eloquently and demonstrated that there is a substantive issue here that demands resolution. Both reflect radically different views of human nature, so it’s imperative that we reach a resolution of the debate. It cannot be achieved rhetorically or theoretically. Only real-life evidence from a controlled experiment would definitively decide the matter.

So, the meritocracy movement should not declare itself for or against basic income. It can have the best of both worlds and say that this is the sort of idea that would be tested out. We in the meritocracy movement will be bold and daring and give all plausible ideas the fairest of hearings. But, equally, we will give the counter case the same respect and same opportunities.

We are committed to dialectical progress, not to any ideological stances. We have no a priori certainty as to what will prove to be the best outcome. What we have is the METHOD for resolving the impasse. The method is what we are promoting as the greatest good, not the particular policies. We are emulating the scientific method. At its strictest and best, science couldn’t care less what hypotheses are put forward since they are all dealt with in exactly the same way: they are subjected to tests and they prove either successful or unsuccessful in their ability to account for the data.

Nor do we care. Any and all policy initiatives are welcome. The dialectical method will sort the wheat from the chaff.

The only elements of meritocratic implementation that are not up for grabs are those that concern the defining principles of meritocracy, and there are only five of these, all of which are closely related.

1) Everyone must be judged on their own merits and not on those of others such as family, friends or colleagues.

2) No one should inherit wealth that their parents or relatives generated since that is a fundamental contradiction of the first rule of meritocracy.

3) All means of intentionally rigging the system to give some people an inbuilt advantage over others are unacceptable.

4) Money and power can never be used as weapons to secure the advantage of “chosen ones” at the expense of everyone else.

5) All forms of privilege as a means of creating a two-tier society of the privileged and the non-privileged are anathema. By “privilege”, we mean an active programme for attempting to secure the permanent advantage of “chosen ones” at the expense of the non-chosen; in particular to buy a superior education unavailable to others, to buy influence, to create networks of “top jobs” that will be allocated only to the privileged elite, to create systems of signs based on status and snobbery that are favourable to one group but not to others. We will identify, expose and punish all people who attempt to subvert the meritocratic model through the use of privilege.

Basic income is not a core meritocratic principle. It would be possible to argue that it is both for and against meritocracy. It is for meritocracy insofar as it provides an equal financial starting line for everyone. It is against meritocracy insofar as it allows scope for people who do nothing to parasitically live off the efforts of others. Even though we might have our suspicions one way or the other, it is impossible to say definitively in advance whether the anti-meritocratic ingredient would outweigh the pro-meritocratic ingredient.

Society will be utterly transformed under a meritocratic government and education system. The sorts of problematic behaviours that are in evidence in liberal democracies may vanish completely once people are educated, raised and treated properly and respectfully, and are given full encouragement and support to be all they can be.

If the proponent of basic income can find enough supporters to implement his proposal then it’s his and their right to give it their best shot…but it’s up to them to make it work. They, collectively, will be the State. Those who consider it unworkable would sign up to a different Social Contract.

It’s vital that everyone should be passionate about the State they choose. The supporters of basic income might create a paradise if they all commit themselves to it with the same passion as the proponent for the case. But they cannot be allowed to impose their passions on those who don’t share their enthusiasm. That would be tyranny, and that’s what we’re trying to escape from.

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In some ways, the basic income debate is misconceived. The ultimate aim of meritocracy is to deliver a resource-based, technology-driven economy that has no need of money – so the concept of basic income would be rendered redundant. All of the aims of the basic income advocates would be met in a moneyless society.

Also, the arguments put forward are essentially a critique of contemporary capitalism, but in a meritocratic society, none of those features would be present.

In our article about the New World Order, we described an entirely new education system, the entire point of which is to identify what makes each person tick and give them the best possible education in the areas in which they will shine and be most fulfilled. The concept of people wanting a basic income so that they don’t have to be wage slaves in an oppressive capitalist system would not apply.

In a rational, meritocratic society, we would expect to eliminate virtually every ill to which basic income is proposed as the solution. Basic income is the answer to TODAY’s miseries, but these won’t exist in the meritocratic world of tomorrow.

The whole point of the New World Order is to give everyone the chance to optimise themselves. If that results in anyone at all being keen to accept a basic income from the State then the project has failed. No “optimised” person should be doing anything other than productive work and making a full contribution to the State. In a meritocratic State, there will be zero unemployment. The idea of anyone not doing productive work is anathema. In fact, the idea is that people should find such fulfilment and self-respect through their work that we can practically abolish the idea of retirement. Many authors never retire. Why not? Because they are doing what they love – expressing themselves. When you are in the right job, you wouldn’t want to retire.

Everyone in the State will have to explicitly sign a Social Contract, which is, of course, a two-way agreement. The State has duties and responsibilities and so does each citizen. The idea that anyone could be paid for simply being a citizen without offering anything at all in return would be incompatible with any sensible Social Contract.

Being a citizen is not a job; it is a contractual status. Who would expect a State to survive if it had unilateral obligations, but no guarantee of anything in return?

The basic income proposal often looks dangerously like a communist policy: “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs”. What you have in Marxism is a flow of resources from the able to the needy – in what way is that different from basic income? And we all know how Soviet communism turned out. No able person wants to be breaking his back supporting other able-bodied people who simply choose not to work because they don’t find any job satisfying. The able bodied would quickly leave that society, and who could blame them? Then what will the others do?
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