Dacia Iluministă

The thesis asserts: “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. Their “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.

******

We ought to be honest about where our sympathies lie in this debate and they are unquestionably with the antithesis. The proponent of basic income has argued his case as well as anyone could, and we applaud him for that, but we think the stronger, more pragmatic and realistic points reside with the counter case. The antithesis better reflects the tenor and spirit of the articles on our website. We would certainly endorse the type of family upbringing and value system described in the antithesis case. We completely endorse the statement: “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.

******

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.

******

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. Nor would much of the rest of the analysis about crime and so on. These undesirable aspects of society are the products of contemporary capitalism. 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?
__________

Work versus Jobs:

The basic income thesis accurately describes the many ills from which contemporary society suffers. Basic income is proposed as the solution, but in fact the answer lies in the total transformation of society that will be brought about by the new meritocratic form of government. A central aim of the new society will be to eliminate every “wage slave” job whereby people toil away at grim and unsatisfying jobs for a pittance in order to make some super rich capitalist even richer. Can anyone seriously imagine that the new hyper-educated, unsubmissive workforce that the new bespoke meritocratic education system will produce will be content to work in call centres, in factories and on assembly lines? It is IMPOSSIBLE.

The new education system is designed to alter the consciousness of the people so that they will no longer accept being second-class citizens and the puppets of the wealthy. Marx said, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness.” In other words, the nature of the society we live in shapes our consciousness. In a radically different society with radically different values, we will have a radically altered consciousness. The whole world as it appears to us now will we swept away. None of the things we routinely accept now because it’s the way the “system” works will be acceptable in the meritocratic future. There won’t be any monarchs, popes, super-rich elites, Abrahamist pressure groups, junk consumerism, celebrity culture etc. – all of these will vanish. That’s why it’s a New World Order!

We will be producing a new type of human being: enormously more educated, capable, self-confident, independent, unwilling to kowtow. None of the ways of doing things that are possible now because of our dumbed-down, docile, deferential, submissive society will be possible when the people emerging from schools and colleges have none of these negative traits. Basic income will be the last thing on their minds – they will have the highest possible expectations and aspirations. Who in their right mind would aspire to receiving “basic income”? No one in the new society will want any sort of minimum wage or basic existence. The new society has failed utterly if anyone thinks there is anything good about living at the “safety net” level. We are trying to create a Community of Gods, not a hippie commune of work-refuseniks and social drop-outs. Marx, following Hegel, emphasized the key concept of alienation. Marx said that almost all of us are alienated from our jobs and derive no satisfaction from them. The only people having a good time are the rich bosses with all of the power who don’t have to suffer the degrading treatment that everyone further down the food chain must endure.

We have to abolish this soul-destroying alienation. Hence all soulless, droid jobs must be eliminated. Over time, through superior technology and design, all such jobs will be automated. If we define a job as something you do to pay the bills then we aspire to live in a jobless world. If we define work as something through which you express your identity, exercise your creativity and attain fulfilment then we aspire to move instead to a world of work. Everyone should be doing work that makes them happy, and into which they can pour their efforts and be in their element. We want to build the Society of Excellence.

We will be moving away from the international capitalist model of mass production (quantity) and constant consumerism – which serves no other function than to make the super-rich even richer – to national capitalism involving designer, bespoke production (quality). There will be no inbuilt obsolescence, no new upgrade every six months to keep the consumption machine moving. All of the multinational leviathans – McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken yada yada yada – that bestride the world will no longer be able to set up shop. Instead, for example, there will be bespoke food outlets where those who love making and serving food will be able to devise their own menus and dishes and pour their own culinary creativity into the enterprise. We want huge numbers of profitable, bespoke small businesses full of committed people who love their work and make a good living rather than huge faceless corporations with a formulaic approach that channel enormous profits back to a handful of super wealthy individuals. There will be no grim call centres full of drones reading out scripts.

International capitalism is about standardisation in order to lower costs and raise profits, about having a consistent “brand” experience. Standardisation = Drone World, Droid Land, Zombie Central. International capitalism proclaims that big is beautiful. National capitalism is about the bespoke experience and promotes the opposite message: small is beautiful. The idea of excess profits and constant corporate growth will vanish because the State will cap the amount of money any individual can make, and will of course apply 100% inheritance tax at death. What we are implementing is, in effect, a mechanism for preventing multinationals from ever coming into existence ever again. National capitalism will be based on small and medium-sized enterprises. There will be no leviathans, no super-rich private individuals using their money and power to dictate to the State.

We will turn capitalism into something healthy, creative, productive and fulfilling rather than a monstrous sausage machine churning out bland gloop all over the globe. We will be converting international capitalism of a few super-rich global players into national capitalism of many well-off players. Ours is true capitalism rather than the out-of-control, super greedy contemporary version. Ours is socially responsible and prevents any possibility of private individuals opposing the General Will and dictating to the State to satisfy their selfish, particular will.

No more Rothschild and Bush dynasties! No privileged elite. International capitalism is hyper-capitalism for the sake of a tiny ownership class and we will replace it with public capitalism for the sake of all the people. Everyone will, more or less, be working for themselves rather than for a boss. Groups of people can combine their capital and become group owners. We seek to massively expand social ownership. At the moment, the multinational leviathans can quickly put any small competitors out of business. This will become impossible in the new society: it will instead be the multinationals that are put out of business.

Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by British economist E. F. Schumacher is a classic text opposing contemporary capitalism, which Schumacher regarded as dehumanising. He argued that the workplace should, first and foremost, be a place of dignity and meaning. He advocated “smallness within bigness”, meaning that large companies should be decentralized and operate as a related group of small organizations. He was keen to emphasize the importance of scale and the idea of “enoughness.” Western capitalism always aims for the biggest scale (lowest production costs), no matter how much damage ensues. Why were banks allowed to become too big to fail? Cui bono? Why did no one challenge the dangerous scale of the banking leviathans, so big they dwarf entire economies?

No one cares as long as the profits keep rolling in. The Profit Principle trumps everything else. And when it comes to enough, nothing is ever enough. The super-rich have no concept of having enough. Like Oliver Twist, they always want more, but Oliver was starving in a workhouse and they’re not.

Schumacher attacked the conventional economic wisdom that growth is always good and that bigger is better. He asserted that society should aim to obtain “the maximum amount of well-being with the minimum amount of consumption.” Isn’t that eminently sensible? Schumacher’s ideas were quite fashionable for a time but were of course completely ignored by those in power. Isn’t it time for Schumacher’s ideas to be back on the agenda? We would never have suffered the Credit Crunch if his economic thinking had prevailed. It was multinationals, global leviathans and banks too big to fail that brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Are we the dumbest humans in history or will we finally wise up and take action against all of the leviathans, monarchs and super-rich?

Schumacher said, “The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.” Other quotations by Schumacher are equally profound:

“Character…is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.”

“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”

“The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one’s ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.”

“The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic.”

The human race has never lacked people with brilliant insight and wisdom. What it has always lacked is leaders with insight and wisdom. It has been cursed by greedy, selfish, self-interested leaders always looking out for themselves, their friends and family. Nepotism, cronyism and privilege have always been their watchwords. Why do ordinary people never stand up to power? Why do they never question the legitimacy of monarchs and the super-rich? Why are they cowards and slaves? Why are they so docile and submissive? There is nothing rational about contemporary society. Marx said, “The real nature of man is the totality of social relations.” It cannot be stressed highly enough how important this statement is. If we create unhealthy social relations, we create unhealthy men and women.

Most of us exist in various states of alienation. Abrahamists are alienated from God. Employees are alienated from their jobs. Everyone is alienated from their political masters. In a society that worships money, most people are alienated from themselves and continually gaze enviously at those with enormous amounts of money and total freedom. We have to address all of these different forms of alienation, and the primary target is the super-rich because they are the ones who control our world. The existence of any class of super rich is simply unacceptable. The super-rich automatically cause society to fragment.

It is impossible to maintain social harmony and cohesion when some people are thousands of times wealthier than the average. How can anyone talk of any kind of equality when such financial disparities exist? As soon as unbridgeable inequalities are created, the world becomes a pyramid rather than a round table. People start gauging themselves with respect to others and they become obsessed with status. As soon as you have status wars you no longer have a community. The essence of a community is that its members have respect for each other. That mutual respect disintegrates in deeply unequal societies. The happiest societies are those in which inequalities are contained within a narrow range. Wide inequalities should be regarded as fundamentally anti-social.

The supreme problem for our society is that those who control it are profoundly anti-social and anti-communitarian. They are doing fantastically well and want nothing to change. They don’t want to see their wealth or power being eroded in any way. They can do whatever they like since no one has the guts to stand up to them. They see people as nothing but means to their economic ends, and not as ends in themselves. One simple fact ought to be patently obvious to everyone. Society works brilliantly and does everything required of it for one group of people – those at the top. They are the people with the power to change things yet they are also the ones least motivated to change anything since they have everything they want.

Therefore, the people must a) change themselves and b) change those at the top of society. Any society is crazy if it doesn’t ensure that the leaders of society care about society and wish to serve its interests. Can anyone look at the leaders in any part of the world and fail to conclude that they are in it for themselves? They are GENIUSES at grabbing money and power for themselves. They are hopeless at helping the people. In fact, improving the lot of the people in any significant way would be counter-productive for them. Anything that the elite do that seems to help the people is an illusion.

In the 19th century, capitalism was about production – grim factories full of people doing shit jobs for twelve hours a day seven days a week. The owners wanted to squeeze out every penny of profit. They had no concern at all for the welfare of the people. No one ordered them to be inconsiderate bastards treating people like scum. They did it naturally. They had inbuilt contempt for ordinary humanity.

Now, capitalism is about consumption – people shopping rather than producing. Production is mostly automated, but someone needs to buy the goods. So we have shopping malls full of zombie consumers! The capitalist ownership class still hate the people, but their contempt is now expressed differently, and with the utmost hypocrisy. The corporations spend all of their time flattering and seducing the consumers, or filling them with fears and anxieties – the tactics depend on the nature of the product being sold. Corporations wage psychological war against ordinary people with a single aim: to get them to consume. They couldn’t care less about the welfare of the people. That just gets in the way of the Profit Principle.

Why do we allow people who hate humanity to be the leaders of humanity? Why do we allow psychopaths to become rich and powerful rather than putting them in therapy? We have to stop letting the crazies dictate to us.

We need an economy based on both production and consumption, but this time production and consumption should revolve around creativity and quality. There is nothing to stop us having an economy based on self-improvement, art, science, mathematics, literature, philosophy, design, film-making, music-making, psychology, and so on. The world would be full of self-employed people – acting as their own bosses – or small ownership groups. People could come together on a contractual basis to carry out projects of mutual benefit. The whole economy should be based on Schumacher’s principle that small is beautiful. We could have endless diversity, a profusion of small, specialist, bespoke companies offering unique products and services.

The aim is to gradually eliminate all “wage slave” jobs via better design and technology, and to get everyone involved in creative work in which they can express themselves and feel proud and fulfilled. We want to switch from big is best to small is beautiful, from mass production to bespoke production, from drone and droid jobs to creative and diverse work portfolios. We need active, enthusiastic, productive workers, not passive workers doing the bare minimum. Workers need to express who they are through their work: not who someone else is. They should profit from their own endeavours; not create profits for others. They should become their real selves through their work. They shouldn’t be faking it and wearing masks. They should no longer be alienated from religion, education, politics, psychology or the workplace.

This enlightened type of thinking has been held back by one force only – the Old World Order who will not concede any of their power or wealth. The State must have the guts to confront these monsters and lay down the law to them. Their Age of Tyranny is over. It’s time for the people to be authentically free.

******

Summary.

Basic income is a debate for today’s society, not an issue for tomorrow’s. The new society is designed to address all of the ills detailed in the thesis, and the concept of basic income will be superfluous in such a society. Capitalism is not evil per se. It is the particular implementation that is evil – the one designed to cater for a small super rich elite who call all of the shots and create global empires outwith the control of the State and the people. This model of capitalism is not a servant of the people, but a Dictatorship of Mammon.

The world can be free only when the controllers are removed from power. Only one policy guarantees the end of the super-rich – 100% inheritance tax.

******

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

In 1789, the French revolutionaries issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. In 1793, a second and lengthier version was adopted.

The full text is provided here and still represents a triumph of sensible principles:

The French people, convinced that forgetfulness and contempt of the natural rights of man are the sole causes of the miseries of the world, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration these sacred and inalienable rights, in order that all the citizens, being able to compare unceasingly the acts of the government with the aim of every social institution, may never allow themselves to be oppressed and debased by tyranny; and in order that the people may always have before their eyes the foundations of their liberty and their welfare, the magistrate the rule of his duties, the legislator the purpose of his commission.

In consequence, it proclaims in the presence of the supreme being the following declaration of the rights of man and citizen.

1. The aim of society is the common welfare. Government is instituted in order to guarantee to man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights.

2. These rights are equality, liberty, security, and property.

3. All men are equal by nature and before the law.

4. Law is the free and solemn expression of the general will; it is the same for all, whether it protects or punishes; it can command only what is just and useful to society; it can forbid only what is injurious to it.

5. All citizens are equally eligible to public employments. Free peoples know no other grounds for preference in their elections than virtue and talent.

6. Liberty is the power that belongs to man to do whatever is not injurious to the rights of others; it has nature for its principle, justice for its rule, law for its defence; its moral limit is in this maxim: Do not do to another that which you do not wish should be done to you.

7. The right to express one’s thoughts and opinions by means of the press or in any other manner, the right to assemble peaceably, the free pursuit of religion, cannot be forbidden. The necessity of enunciating these rights supposes either the presence or the fresh recollection of despotism.

8. Security consists in the protection afforded by society to each of its members for the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property.

9. The law ought to protect public and personal liberty against the oppression of those who govern.

10. No one ought to be accused, arrested, or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms that it has prescribed. Any citizen summoned or seized by the authority of the law, ought to obey immediately; he makes himself guilty by resistance.

11. Any act done against man outside of the cases and without the forms that the law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; the one against whom it may be intended to be executed by violence has the right to repel it by force.

12. Those who may incite, expedite, subscribe to, execute or cause to be executed arbitrary legal instruments are guilty and ought to be punished.

13. Every man being presumed innocent until he has been pronounced guilty, if it is thought indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be strictly repressed by law.

14. No one ought to be tried and punished except after having been heard or legally summoned, and except in virtue of a law promulgated prior to the offense. The law which would punish offenses committed before it existed would be a tyranny: the retroactive effect given to the law would be a crime.

15. The law ought to impose only penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary: the punishments ought to be proportionate to the offense and useful to society.

16. The right of property is that which belongs to every citizen to enjoy, and to dispose at his pleasure of his goods, income, and of the fruits of his labour and his skill.

17. No kind of labour, tillage, or commerce can be forbidden to the skill of the citizens.

18. Every man can contract his services and his time, but he cannot sell himself nor be sold: his person is not an alienable property. The law knows of no such thing as the status of servant; there can exist only a contract for services and compensation between the man who works and the one who employs him.

19. No one can be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, unless a legally established public necessity requires it, and upon condition of a just and prior compensation.

20. No tax can be imposed except for the general advantage. All citizens have the right to participate in the establishment of taxes, to watch over the employment of them, and to cause an account of them to be rendered.

21. Public relief is a sacred debt. Society owes maintenance to unfortunate citizens, either procuring work for them or in providing the means of existence for those who are unable to labour.

22. Education is needed by all. Society ought to favour with all its power the advancement of the public reason and to put education at the door of every citizen.

23. The social guarantee consists in the action of all to secure to each the enjoyment and the maintenance of his rights: this guarantee rests upon the national sovereignty.

24. It cannot exist if the limits of public functions are not clearly determined by law and if the responsibility of all the functionaries is not secured.

25. The sovereignty resides in the people; it is one and indivisible, imperceptible, and inalienable.

26. No portion of the people can exercise the power of the entire people, but each section of the sovereign, in assembly, ought to enjoy the right to express its will with entire freedom.

27. Let any person who may usurp the sovereignty be instantly put to death by free men.

28. A people has always the right to review, to reform, and to alter its constitution. One generation cannot subject to its law the future generations.

29. Each citizen has an equal right to participate in the formation of the law and in the selection of his mandatories or his agents.

30. Public functions are necessarily temporary; they cannot be considered as distinctions or rewards, but as duties.

31. The offenses of the representatives of the people and of its agents ought never to go unpunished. No one has the right to claim for himself more inviolability than other citizens.

32. The right to present petitions to the depositories of the public authority cannot in any case be forbidden, suspended, nor limited.

33. Resistance to oppression is the consequence of the other rights of man.

34. There is oppression against the social body when a single one of its members is oppressed: there is oppression against each member when the social body is oppressed.

35. When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.

******

The modern Universal Declaration of Human Rights is clearly inspired by the original French Declaration.

Note that Islamic nations are opposed to the Declaration. They deny that people should be free to change religion, they deny that women are men’s equals, and they deny that neutrality should be maintained when comparing religions (since Islam is always to be favoured).
__________

7/8