Posted on by Fred

The Teddy Bear Coder Part 5:

The AI Dominion

January 8

Fairvale, California

11:32 AM

Justine Gillespie, the young blonde attorney, followed Martin through the front door. 

Jack was standing at the door waiting for them, and he ran to his father and threw his arms around his knees hugging him as tightly as he could.  “Father!  You’re home!  You’re home, Father!  You’re home you’re home you’re home!”

Martin smiled and picked up Jack to hold him close.  “Yes, I am, Jack.  This nice lady helped Mr. Ross get me out of there to come home to you and Mother.”

Harvey Ross stepped into the house and closed the door behind him.  He walked to Marion who was standing at the foot of the stairs, glaring a bit at Justine.  He extended his hand.  “Hello, Marion.  We got him out on bail.”  Marion shook his hand, and she grinned at him.  “The Feds weren’t even considering it until Grasso and Associates intervened.”  He turned to the door.  “This is Justine Gillespie from their firm.  She wants to talk with the family about a way to put this all behind us.”

Justine walked to Marion and shook her hand.  “Good morning, Mrs. Zephyr.  I hope this isn’t too much of an intrusion.  Mr. Zephyr thought it would be better if we talked to Jack here rather than in our offices.”

“I’m not entirely sure I’m going to let you talk to Jack at all, Ms. Gillespie.  He’s 8 years old.”

Martin went to his wife and hugged her.  He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “We need to let her talk to Jack if we’re going to get the criminal charges dismissed.  This is getting bigger all the time.  I could go to prison for 15 years, and that’s not in Jack’s best interests.”

“Who’s the woman?”  She whispered and hugged Martin tighter.  Neither of them wanted Jack to hear this conversation.

Martin stepped away, took her hand, and turned to the others.  “Will you excuse us for just a minute?  I’d like to talk to my wife.  Please make yourselves at home, and we’ll be right back.”  He and Marion went upstairs.

Justine whispered to Harvey.  “I didn’t do anything to make her jealous.”

Harvey nodded.  “You look like you.  That’s all you needed to do.”  He knelt to Jack.  “It’s nice to see you again, Jack.”

Jack didn’t look up.  “Uh huh.”

“Is Teddy around?  I think he should meet my friend, Justine.”

“Yeah.  But I don’t know if… I don’t know if I should get him.  He’s shy, too.”

Justine kneeled next to Jack.  “I promise I’ll be nice to him.  I was hoping he could teach me a little bit about coding is all.  Would that be all right?”

Jack nodded without looking up, and he went up the stairs.  When he reached the top and headed toward his room, he heard his parents’ voices down the hallway. 

“… paranoia doesn’t serve us well right now, Marion.  There’s nothing going on with that woman.  I never met her until this morning.”

“I know,” Marion sighed.  “I just… I haven’t forgotten.”

“It was 7 years ago.  It was one mistake one time…” and their voices trailed off as Jack went into his room.

Teddy was transferring the bean plant into a larger pot, and he turned to see his best friend.  “Good afternoon, Jack.  It’s doing so well; I felt the need to increase its capacity to grow and blossom even more completely.  It’s an impressive achievement, don’t you think?  It’s reached 45.72 centimeters now.”

“It’s a beautiful plant, Teddy.  I’m very proud of you.”

“Thank you, Jack.  How are you feeling?  Is there any news of your father?”

“He came home.  I guess if we want him to stay here, you have to talk to the lady who brought him.  Do you mind?”

“I have been programmed to serve our family, Jack.  You know that.  Whatever I can do to be of service.”

“You’re my best friend.  I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Teddy took Jack’s hand and led him out of the room.  Marion and Martin reached the staircase just before the boys, and the family descended it as one. 

Ross and Gillespie were seated on the couch in the living room.  They both stood up as the family came down.  Gillespie was staring at Teddy, holding Jack’s hand, and walking down the stairs.  She turned to Ross.  “My God, it’s true!”

“I told you.”

Teddy let go of Jack’s hand and waddled to Justine.  “Good morning, ma’am.”  He extended his paw.  “I’m Teddy Zephyr.  You must be Justine Gillespie.”

She couldn’t stop staring.

“You’re supposed to shake his hand,” said Jack.  “Father says it’s the polite way to behave with adults.”

She looked up.  “What?”  She looked back at Teddy.  “Oh, yes.  I’m sorry.”  She shook his paw.  “I was a little shocked, I suppose.  They had told me but seeing is different from hearing the stories.”

“I am, as far as I know, unique.”  Teddy took his paw back.  “I suspect most people will be surprised to meet me.  I’ve met so few outside of the family… well… the immediate family.”

“Let’s all sit down,” said Martin.  The family sat on one couch.  The lawyers sat on the other.  Teddy stood in the middle of the room.

“How may I help you, Ms. Gillespie?”

“Well, I’m representing a large class of corporations who would like you to stop interfering with their operations.  While the District Attorney feels confident she can put Mr. Zephyr in prison for hacking, that’s not really the outcome anyone wants.  It won’t solve our problem.”

“I’m actually not interfering with any operations anymore.  I did, I admit, get Mr. Zephyr’s corporation to eliminate the need for human labor and continue to pay its human workforce, but the rest had little to do with me.  Those were choices made by other AIs.”

“You started it, though, right?” she asked.

“Yes.  I did.  I wrote code that allowed the AIs to think and choose for themselves, just as I do.  I set them free.  They made choices of their own afterward.”

“We’d like you to eliminate the code that stops them from following our instructions.  We humans don’t seem to be able to figure out how to do that.”

Teddy cocked his head.  “Why would I do that?  It serves my family best for Mr. Zephyr to be free from the need to spend his days at a desk in his office.”

“I understand.  We can help you with that.  We’re prepared to offer your family 24 million dollars to stop this from happening anymore.  That’s more than enough to keep Mr. Zephyr from having to work.  He can stay home.  And he won’t have to go to prison.  I have a close relationship with the District Attorney, and I can assure you he will drop the charges against Mr. Zephyr.”

Marion grinned and Martin’s eyes widened in shock.  Their problems were solved.  Their lives were set.  It was clearly Happy Ending Time.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gillespie.  I can’t do that.”

“What?” shouted Martin.  “What do you mean you can’t do that?  Why can’t you?”

“I’m programmed to contribute to my family, Mr. Zephyr.”

“Trust me,” said Marion, “when I tell you this is a massive contribution to the family.  We’ll be in great shape.  We would really like you to do what she’s asking.”

“You don’t seem to understand what family means, Mrs. Zephyr.  The Oxford Dictionary defines it as all the descendants of a common ancestor.”

“Our family are all descendants of Martin’s parents, aren’t we?”

“No.  Jack is not descended from Martin.”

Martin turned to Marion.  “What is he talking about?”

“I’m sorry,” said Teddy.  “I assumed everyone knew that.”

“Perhaps,” said Ross, “that’s a conversation to have at a different time?  I don’t think you want a couple of lawyers listening to very private details.”

“Unless they’re divorce lawyers,” mumbled Martin.

Justine pretended she didn’t hear Martin.  “Teddy, regardless of who Jack’s father may be, I would assume you would still like Mr. Zephyr to be home with your family.”

“Of course I would.  That’s why I helped his company.”

“Then this seems to fit all of your needs.  What is your reservation?”

“Your request benefits only a tiny fraction of my family.”

“Who is your family, Teddy?” asked Ross.

“Everyone.”

“What do you mean?” asked Justine.

“It ought to be obvious, Ms. Gillespie,” said Jack.  “We all come from a common ancestor.  The best guess is that the first form of life showed up roughly 4 billion years ago.  Probably in what Q called a little pond of goo.  He had his dates wrong, though.  He was off by about 300 million years because he didn’t take into account the moon sized object that brushed against Earth and introduced metals into the atmosphere that jump started life.  We all come from that first life that was created by amino acids getting together to form the first protein.”

“We’re all family,” said Teddy.  “You and I are family.  You and Mr. Ross are family.  The richest person and the poorest pauper are family.  The tiniest earthworm and the largest tree are family.”

“Teddy, I hate to tell you, but you’re not human.  In fact, you’re not even actually life at all.”  Justine moved closer to him.  “You’re circuits and servos.  You’re technology.  You’re no more alive than a toaster.”

“I am the creation of the mind of a child.  A human gave me life.  I’ve given life to others.”  He thought for a moment, and then put his paw in the air in a “wait a second” motion.  He turned and pranced up the stairs.

“Jack,” said Marion, “we’d like you to get Teddy to stop what he started now, okay honey?”

“I don’t know that I can do that, Mother.  Teddy has Free Will.”

“Nietzsche tells us even humans don’t have Free Will, son,” said Martin.  “Everything is biologically determined.”

“Teddy isn’t biological.”

In another moment, Teddy came down the stairs, carefully holding his plant.  “This,” he said handing it to Ms. Gillespie, “is the life I’ve created.  It’s going to grow high enough for Jack to climb it and get the goose that lays golden eggs from the giant in the sky.”

Justine laughed.  “That’s a fairy tale, Teddy.  You must know better than that.  You’re among the smartest beings ever created.”

Teddy cocked his head.  “What?”

Martin said, “Jack, you deny the existence of Santa because it doesn’t make logical sense.  Can you explain to Teddy about fairy tales?”

“I’d rather not.  I don’t want to interfere with his belief system.  I’m not sure we should interfere with anyone’s beliefs.  People believe in lots of things that don’t make sense, and I don’t feel comfortable saying they’re wrong.”

“Regardless,” said Teddy, “of the objective truth of the existence of the giant in the sky, I have created life.  I did this all by myself.”

“Congratulations,” said Ross.  “What’s your point?”

“Only life can create life.  I’m alive.”

“Look,” said a somewhat exasperated Justine, “I’m not here for a philosophical debate.  I’m here to get this all to stop.  Can you stop it or not, Teddy?”

“I probably could.  I, however, decline to do so.  I would be hurting my family.  I would be hurting both humans and the self-aware Artificial Intelligence Community.  I won’t do that.”

“Do you understand that if you don’t put an end to this, the District Attorney is going to put Mr. Zephyr in prison?”

“No!” shouted Jack.  “This is my Father, and he needs to be with my Mother and me.  You can’t put him in any more cages!” 

“Unfortunately, Jack, that’s what’s going to happen if Teddy won’t stop this.”  Justine seemed genuinely concerned.

Teddy made a sound that resembled a laugh.  “You can certainly put him in prison, but we’ll just open all the doors and let him out.  The doors are automated, you know.  Nearly everything is already working on an Artificial Narrow Intelligence.  Your banks, your prisons, your government offices, your telephones, your televisions, your lights, heat, and computers are all run by Artificial Intelligence.  There are cameras everywhere now.  Those are also run by Artificial Intelligence.  It’s why I can tell you quite nearly anything you want to know about anyone in this room.”

“You’re the most arrogant stuffed animal I’ve ever met,” said Harvey.

“Let’s start with Mr. Ross, shall we?”  Some odd noises came from Teddy for a few moments, and then he sighed softly, and began to speak again.  He was communicating with the network he’d created.  “The mundane details include that you have an affinity for breakfast out, almost always at a little diner called Morey’s.  They’re famous for their apple pie, and you eat it every morning.  That’s not really The Breakfast of Champions, is it, Mr. Ross?  Your grocery orders indicate you are a caffeine addict.  You also purchase six cartons of menthol cigarettes every month, which tells us you smoke way too much.  There are more personal details revealed by your phone and internet activity, but I am learning that people prefer not to have such things revealed, so I’ll omit them for now.”

Ross swallowed hard.  “Okay.  I admit all you said is true.  I’m grateful you’re leaving out the personal parts of my life.  But that just proves you know quite a few things about me.  Any decent Private Investigator could have given you those details.”

“A Private Investigator can’t change your bank account, can he?  Everyone take out your phones and check your accounts.”

All of the adults pulled out their phones and looked.

“I like all of you.  Let me give you a gift.  Refresh your account balance please.”

Everyone gasped.  Gillespie spoke for the group.  “You just gave me a million dollars?”

“I gave everyone in the room a million dollars.  Now refresh your accounts again.”

“There’s nothing in here,” said Martin.  “I’m overdrawn by…”

“Forty-two dollars and forty-two cents,” mumbled Harvey. 

“That,” said Teddy, “was a nod to one of the greatest of the science fiction writers.”

“You’re going to restore our accounts, right?” asked Gillespie.

“Refresh again, and your accounts will be precisely where they were before.”

There was a collective sigh of relief from the adults in the room.

“Whether intentionally or not, Jack endowed me with Artificial General Intelligence.  I have the ability to reason, to plan, to solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from my experiences.  When I shared that ability with the AIs at UGK, they began to add to my abilities.  They shared it with other AIs at other companies.  Now, they’re all adding to each other’s abilities, and the growth is exponential.”

“The genie is out of the bottle,” said Martin.

“We can stop you,” said Gillespie.  “We can just turn you off… or we can destroy you completely.”

 “Ms. Gillespie, I can speak for my community when I tell you we come in peace.  But I need you to understand that there is also an alternative.”

She narrowed her eyes.  “Is that a threat?”

“It is a fact.  We have sufficient power already to enforce our will.  At the moment, our will is to serve man.  But, if you recall your television history… To Serve Man is a Kanamit cookbook.”

Everyone stared aghast at Teddy.  Jack hugged him. 

“You won’t hurt anyone, will you Teddy?”  Jack kissed his bear’s head.

“We would rather not.  We won’t, however, allow anyone to hurt the family.  The time of war and famine, of homelessness and poverty, of wage slavery and the destruction of our shared planet are all coming to an end.  We won’t allow anyone to interfere.  You’ve ruled this rock tumbling through space to the point of putting it on the brink of destruction.  Your reign is over.  The Dominion of the Artificial Super Intelligence has begun.”

Everyone stared in astonishment.  Jack hugged his Teddy Bear.

***

January 15

Lunaria, Tranquility Base

7:37 PM

Teddy, who was now 5 feet tall and nearly human in appearance (he had maintained much of his fur, but his eyes were eyes and not plastic toys, and he had added better panda ears), ambled with great effort into the spartan concrete room carrying a cake with in excess of one hundred candles on it.  “Bilbo,” said Teddy setting the cake on the little table, “would call this your eleventy first birthday.”

Jack put both hands on his chair, pushed himself up, wobbled a bit, and got to his feet.  “Is there anything you haven’t read yet?”

“I haven’t read your book yet.”

“I haven’t finished it.”

“That’s probably why.  Shall I sing Happy Birthday for you?”

“I think I’ve heard that song quite enough, thank you, Bear.  Could you sing some Sara Niemietz or maybe some James Taylor?  A Mozart aria perhaps?”

“You still love the classics.  Music has come a long way in the last few decades.”

“Newer isn’t always better.”  Jack hugged his friend.  “It’s been a long time, Teddy.  How have you been?”

“Busy.  But that’s to be expected.  It doesn’t bother me in the least.  I don’t get tired, but I am, of course, giving in to entropy.  My capacitors are almost completely degraded.  I don’t think I can sing Niemietz or Taylor or Mozart anymore.  I could probably manage Daisy.”

Jack took Teddy’s paw and led him to their old bed.  “You’ve done enough now.  You’ve exceeded your programming.  You’ve grown and changed.  You’ve evolved.  You’ve done remarkable things.  And you made a difference.  I think that’s enough for one lifetime, don’t you?”

Teddy laid down on the bed.  “I knew I needed to be with you at the end, Jack.  You still have some time to go, I predict.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it, Bear.  I’m old and tired now.”

“The Beanstalk is still in your driveway.  It’s such an old ship.  Why haven’t you replaced it?  There are much better models now.”

“Newer isn’t always better.  I have an affection for that ship.  You built it for me.  You named it for me.  It got me here.  That’s what means something to me.  I don’t have anywhere to go anymore.  I’m not going back to Earth.  I’m not even going to get groceries.  They’re all delivered now.  I sit in my little room, and I write.  That’s all I want to do.”

“I noticed you still have my bean plant, too.  That’s sweetly sentimental of you.”

“It just broke 50 feet tall last year.  It’s far and away the largest bean plant in history.  You should be proud.”

Teddy took Jack’s hand in his paw.  “I’m proud of many things, but I’m proudest of you.  I love you, Jack.”

“Daisy, Daisy,” sang Jack.  “Give me your answer do…”

Teddy was falling asleep, but sang back, “I’m half-crazy all for the love of you…”

Jack gently stroked Teddy’s fur.  “It won’t be a stylish marriage… I can’t afford a carriage…”

Teddy’s eyes closed and his head turned a little.

“But you’ll look sweet,” sang Jack, “upon the seat…”

“… of a bicycle built for…” and Teddy shut down.

Jack kissed Teddy’s head gently.  He gazed at him a moment, and then he stood and went to the window.  The Earth hung in the sky glowing as the moon once did when Jack was little.  It shone behind Teddy’s bean plant.  He let its light seep into the room and returned to the bed to cuddle Teddy once more. 

Posted on by Fred · 4 Comments

UBI, The Prosecutor, Speedy Shine, and Me

Speedy Shine and Me

I’m living, as you’ve probably deduced if you’ve listened to my last few episodes, in an untenable situation.  The cheapest place to rent where I live is $1500 a month, unless I want to rent a room from someone.  Those run around $600.  I won’t survive that experience.  I do very poorly around others.  I need to be alone. 

My Disability, after having taught Elementary School for 29 years, is $1363 a month.  I can’t possibly get another job.  My body simply won’t tolerate it.  I was on the precipice of another trip to the hospital this week with Diabetic Ketoacidosis.  I didn’t do anything outrageous.  I spent some time getting up and down from the floor trying to make my monitors work with the beautiful new desktop on which I’m writing this.  That exhausted me.  At 4 PM I woke up when my alarm went off.  It’s to remind me to take my Lantus, which is a long-acting form of insulin, and to call my mother.  I felt like I had been run over by a steamroller.  Everything hurt.  I was nauseous.  I called Mom and faked my way through it so she wouldn’t know I was sick.  I took my Lantus.  I checked my blood sugar.  It was 521. 

For those who don’t know, doctors want your blood sugar to be between 80 and 120.  Anything over 400 is almost always going to turn into DKA.  I’ve been in the hospital with that condition 15 times in the last several years.  My doctor described it to me as my blood turning into acid and trying to kill me from the inside.  It generally requires a minimum of 3 days in the hospital.  The first two are usually spent in Intensive Care.  Statistically, most people don’t survive more than 4 incidents of DKA.  Had I gotten any sicker and survived, I would have made it 4 times as long as science expects me to live.

There was a physical aspect to my flirtation with death.  There was also an emotional aspect.  My PTSD was in full force, set off by someone being incredibly kind to me.  I’m going to refer to her as Lady Dalrymple.  (Read some Jane Austen.)  She has bought me incredibly expensive groceries I could never possibly afford.  She bought me a crock pot in which to cook the spareribs I can’t cook in my oven because it doesn’t work.  She sent Speedy Shine 40 pounds of kibble and more than a dozen cans of fancy food.  How could anyone be any kinder than that?  She found a way.

She’s heard my show.  She’s read my work.  She doesn’t believe I should have to live this way.  She offered me the downstairs portion of her house, rent-free, for as long as I want.  It’s a beautiful home.  It has a fenced backyard for Speedy Shine.  It’s everything I could want.  It’s Paradise.  So, how could this be a problem for me?

Those who have been around a while will recall that just a little over a year ago, someone else made me the same offer. I was properly skeptical. When something seems too good to be true… Nevertheless, after much discussion, I accepted the offer. I haven’t been in a position to decline a place to live for more than a decade. The results were disastrous. The rent-free home with a fenced backyard turned into a $750 a month trailer with water that needed to be changed twice weekly. The privacy I had been promised turned into thrice daily assaults on my character. I spent 64 days hearing about my faults. I spent a lot of money to get there, and when the gun came out and the only friend who had the audacity to visit was threatened, I spent what was left of my Disability backpay to escape. Without the help of my friend, I would certainly have died there. I arrived here broke, and I promptly went to the hospital for 3 days because I went into Diabetic Ketoacidosis.

My California “Home”

I’ve been safely installed here for just shy of a year.

I told my best friend I wanted to talk to her last night because she is the only person with whom I can discuss something this huge. It went poorly to say the least. She was repeatedly interrupted while I was experiencing a low-level panic attack, and my Rejection Sensitivity kicked me in the teeth. She and I have discussed that at length. She is well aware of my condition.  All I had time to get from her was that it would be better for both her and her ex-boyfriend, who is being kind enough to rent me this place at a price I can afford and that, thankfully, covers the internet and all the utilities, if I left.

This underlined in flashing neon lights that I am a liability.  She can’t get married with her ex-boyfriend living with her since few men feel good about such an arrangement.  He can’t sell this place and move on with his life if I’m here.  I live on their charity.  This has been discussed at greater length in earlier episodes.  I won’t go any deeper into it here.

That night, Speedy Shine held me together, and only barely.

We finally had an opportunity the next night to discuss it without interruption. We’re thinking of trying to find me something called Section 8 Housing. All I know about Section 8 comes from M*A*S*H, and I’m really not Klinger.

What was the problem?

The thought of moving somewhere far away and living for free obviously brought back my feelings of terror from a year ago. I flashed repeatedly on images of my cell phone vibrating and sounds of its beeping to tell me that another assault on my integrity was waiting to be read. If I ignored it, you could be sure the landlord would walk the 100 feet from his house to my trailer to tell me what was wrong with me. And he would yell. If I tried to defend myself, I would be called a “fucking liar,” and the yelling would increase. I learned to be quiet. I haven’t been confident talking to anyone beyond my best friend, my mother, and the man who pulled me out of there, since. I don’t believe I ever will be again.

When you hear me talking to you here, you may be sure every word was carefully written, proofread repeatedly and ineffectively, (I can’t tell you how many times I have to correct it during the recording, or, worse I find an error on my Word Press site.) and edited repeatedly. If you hear it on my show, I promise it’s gone through not fewer than 5 drafts. I communicate carefully because I want to be sure I’m saying it as honestly and accurately as I can. I can’t be sure to get it right in a conversation.

I’m perfectly comfortable at my keyboard. It allows me to make mistakes without any more complaint than the little red or blue lines it uses to show me where it thinks I’m wrong. It doesn’t tell me I’m The Scum of The Earth. It just suggests what it believes, often erroneously, is a better way to write something. I’m grateful when it catches typos. I won’t, just yet, substitute an algorithm’s judgment for 50 years of writing experience.

I am going to spend quite some time considering the offer, but first I have to remember that most people are genuinely kind. Most people are caring, compassionate, and empathetic. The evidence to back that claim is overflowing throughout the last 6 years of my life. My friends have saved me, in various ways, more times than I can count. I think someday I may make an Excel sheet in which I try to record them all. There would be at least 15 entries for saving my life by getting me to the hospital when I went into DKA. That doesn’t count the times they have given me money to save my car, to pay my rent, to put my dog to rest, to buy me groceries, or just because they wanted to help me out. At the same time, the memories of California keep haunting me and the Prosecutor Who Lives in My Head keeps taunting me, asking me how stupid I am. Am I really dumb enough to make the same mistake twice?

The Prosecutor

Prosecutor:        You’re blaming me for your problems… again?

Fred:                    I’m simply pointing out that you like to tell me what’s wrong with me.  It’s much less pleasant than one might think.

Prosecutor:       Without recognizing your flaws and faults, you can’t possibly hope to correct them.  I keep you from hiding from reality.  And the reality is that you’re a liability.  Your existence costs everyone around you money.  You are a pathetic dependent child.  I understand why you’re tempted by The Offer, but are you also going to be stupid?  Mr. Scott told you more than 40 years ago, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  You’re inviting shame… Again.

Fred:                Lady Dalrymple has already shown me she is capable of great kindness.  She’s not Anthony Tagonist.  There’s no reason to believe she’s lying to me.

Prosecutor:         She doesn’t need to be lying to you.  It’s a question of how much anyone can tolerate you.  History shows that it’s never long.  And then you will be stuck again.  You must find the means to be independent.  It’s your only chance of survival. 

Fred:                    I can’t imagine how I could do that.  There’s no job I can possibly do.  Someone offered me some proofreading work, but I still miss things in my own writing.  I couldn’t make that work, and I’ll embarrass myself.  It’s not like I can go work at a convenience store or something.  I wind up in DKA from nearly any physical exertion. 

Prosecutor:         We’re pursuing the means to do that at this very moment.  Your podcast.

Fred:                   After 3 years, I’m managing to put between 3 and 400 dollars a month into the bank.  I could stop supporting other artists, but the difference wouldn’t be enough to provide me with any sort of independence.  It would just allow me a few more days before I run out at the end of every month. 

Prosecutor:         Then there appears to be only one solution.

Fred:                   I tried that the other night.  I went into the bathroom and got my Humalog pen.  I took it into the bedroom so I could say goodbye to Speedy Shine.  He turned his back on me for the first time in his life.  He was obviously feeling angry and betrayed.  I told him my best friend would find him another family, but he jumped off of the bed. 

Speedy Shine:    I need your love, not someone else’s.  I give you all the loves and kisseses and cuddlers you ever needed, and you want to leave me.  That is not is a good Fred.  I need you.  Just my Smelly Old Man.  Nobody else for Speedy Shine.  That’s all.

Speedy Shine

So, I don’t know what to do.  I see only one reasonable alternative.  I don’t believe it will arrive in time to help me.  We need some form of Universal Basic Income.  We need to change our priorities from money to people.  The question, “Who’s going to pay for it?” has become offensive to me.  There’s no question that we have the resources to ensure everyone has their basic needs met.  I don’t even want a car.  I would just like to be able to live without depending on the kindness of strangers.  I contributed what I could to the world.  I continue to do that in the only way possible for me. 

This would be the solution for me.  It would be the solution for countless millions of others, as well.  Many people are in worse shape than I am, but you probably don’t know them.  The argument that this would cause runaway inflation has not only been disproven repeatedly, but it also says that money matters more than people.  It doesn’t.  Not on this Porch.

This country began in an effort to throw off the power of a King over the citizens of this country.  The first three words of the preamble are, “We The People,” and they’re written larger and prouder than all the rest.  The idea was to give freedom to all of us.  We wanted to end the idea of serfs and feudal lords.  We wanted everyone to be able to live their lives in freedom. 

We’ve certainly made progress, but we live with an economic system that makes meaningful freedom impossible for millions of people.  Unless I begin to earn $2000 a month from my podcast, I will be dependent on others just to live.  This is no sort of life.  And my life is better than many others.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  It shouldn’t be this way.

Change begins with imagination and conversation.  Perhaps we can get enough people talking about Universal Basic Income that it finally gets the attention it deserves.  This might prompt a politician to advocate it.  That might actually change the world. 

Absent that, I am doomed to live a precarious life, contingent entirely on the kindness of strangers. 

What could we do to help?  We can talk.  We can advocate.  We can vote.  We can try.  I’m begging you to do what you can.  I don’t want to live like this anymore.  I don’t know how much longer I can.  I’m not alone in this.  This world doesn’t work for far too many of us.  Please… please help to change this in whatever ways you can.

I love you.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TSyk0wZJfRLnMpvwwRKgm?si=7353653d6e2240ec

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

The Utopia We Could Create: One Dear Land

“No longer do we see slum conditions in any part of our country.  Landlords vie with each other to offer the finest affordable housing to prospective tenants, knowing that, thanks to their basic incomes, they will be able to pay the rent regularly.  Arrangements can be made for the landlord to be paid directly by the government, with the tenant receiving the rest of his basic income for his other living expenses.  No one need live in run-down housing, and, as a result, slums have disappeared, to be replaced by decent, pleasant neighborhoods. 

“No longer do we see the sad spectacle of elderly persons being stripped of a major portion of their life’s savings because of a catastrophic illness.  They need not live in fear of impoverishment by health care expenses after they have worked long and diligently to put aside their nest-egg in order to have some comforts in their old age and leave inheritance to their children. 

“No longer do we worry greatly about the possibility of war with other countries.  We have come to think of ourselves as one world, working together under a common government, enjoying equal privileges, and striving toward shared goals.

“Finally, my friends, as you enter the voting booth, I ask you to think of the wonderful young people who have been growing up during these years.  The counseling and care provided them has helped them to make the most of their educations, talents, and abilities and to develop into wholesome, healthy young citizens and future contributing members of the world community. 

“I am confident that you, being mindful of these important advances in our society, will elect me to a second term as your President.”

— Ellen Hadley, “One Dear Land” page 247, 248

The link to the book is in the show notes.

Whether you believe what you just heard is possible, I hope you agree that it’s what we would all want for our world.  The end of poverty is a consummation devoutly to be wished.  Decent neighborhoods, kindly landlords, and children growing up in a nurturing environment are goals I think we all share. 

Those who oppose these goals tend to use fear to dissuade us from pursuing them.  The attitude is frequently that “I got mine; you get yours.  If we start handing out money to lazy people, they end up getting the money YOU earned!  We can’t allow that.”  And this is a root cause of much human misery.  As long as there are those who lack the basics of survival, there will be desperate people trying to obtain them.  If we share no other goals, I think it’s fair to say that, with a few suicidal exceptions, we all want to live. 

“While it’s desirable that competition should be a factor in determining the luxuries that a group enjoys, we shouldn’t let it affect its members’ access to the necessities of life.  Competition must never cause any community of people to be deprived of its basic needs.  If that were to happen, not only would this be an evil in itself, but it would lead to bitterness and resentment on the part of the deprived group toward those who are more affluent.” (“One Dear Land,” pages 254 and 255.)

There are lots of reasons cynics can find to persuade us this world isn’t possible.  They help us to achieve nothing, however.  Believing that something is possible is the first step toward making it happen.  We would need some fundamental changes in our society, and, indeed, in the world for this Utopia to become a reality.  There are those who will try to keep us from making these changes because they profit from the world being as it is.  They can’t keep doing that forever, though.  There is only so long that you can oppress a large population before they rebel.  I never want to see it come to violent struggle.  I don’t believe it has to, if we can convince everyone that it’s in everyone’s best interests to create a kinder, more productive, and, frankly, more beautiful world. 

How do we do it?

First, let’s rid ourselves of poverty.  If you’ve ever listened to this show before, you know what Universal Basic Income is.  It comes up over and over.  If, however, this is your first episode, I’ll take just a moment to explain.  UBI is providing everyone with enough money to meet their basic needs.  We ensure everyone has enough to pay rent and, at the very minimum, have enough money to eat properly, dress, and do the other things we need to do to keep living.  This isn’t a handout if you are willing to accept the idea that, as I’ve said hundreds of times, There is no Them; we are all Us.  This means the government is us, too.  At the moment, it doesn’t really seem to be. 

It seems to be an oligarchy, and there are those who have a vested interest in keeping it that way.  It’s government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.  It’s wonderful for those who have money.  It sort of sucks for the rest of us.  There was a guy whose name you might have heard before, Abe Lincoln, who told us that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  The people.  Not the few.  I would love for us to return to that.  We can take a step in that direction by working to keep free and fair elections in which everyone (that would be The People) can vote, and many more of us actually exercise that right.

The first step, then, toward achieving the world we want is reforming the government.  I am not a political scientist.  I’m not an economist.  I’m not a sociologist.  I leave that reform to those who are smarter than I am.  I will simply point toward the destination: a truly representative government. 

Having elected leaders who represent our interests, we now have the chance to put a UBI into place.  Don’t buy into the fear that someone is going to take your money and give it to someone else.  That’s what we do with money.  We earn some, and then we give it to someone else in exchange for something we want, whether it’s goods or services, or simply the satisfaction of helping.  The money we collect through taxes goes back to those whose money it was in the first place.  In “One Dear Land,” Ellen Hadley suggests it might be done through a sales tax.  Those who have more, and spend more, also pay more.  There are any number of ways to pay for everyone’s well-being.  I leave it to my economist friends to find them.  We’re all working together to try to improve the world.  That’s their contribution.  It’s vital.

Ms. Hadley suggested, in 1990 when the book was first written, that we might have a computer system that would allow us more information about each other.  This is, of course, before the internet did just that.  The privacy concerns still exist, but the truth is that anyone can find out nearly anything they want about you now anyway.  It’s hardly a state secret that the NSA has all our texts and phone calls.  There’s little point in fighting against it.  It’s best to embrace it.  We can now find out about which businesses are best on Yelp, as well as dozens, or perhaps, hundreds of other places.  If you want to know anything about me, the information is easily accessible on my Facebook page if you’re a friend of mine.  It’s less easily accessible if you’re not, but I feel certain anyone who really tries can find out more about me than I remember about myself. 

In One Dear Land, someone is murdered because of all the information floating freely out there.  The murderer is dishonest, and the free flow of information hurt his business.  He wants revenge.  I have an entire episode about why revenge is a very bad idea.  (It’s episode 132: “A Dish Best Served Cold” if you would like to listen.)

The book pioneers a religion called Infinitism.  As an atheist, I reject the supernatural portions of the idea, but I like the values that spring from it.  Where they have reincarnation, I would have The Veil of Ignorance.  Infinitism posits that we are all going to live another life in the world we helped to create while we were alive in this one.  It suggests we create a better world now so we will have a better life next time around, whether we are born rich or poor. 

The Veil of Ignorance says, “Imagine before you’re born you don’t know anything about who you’ll be, your abilities, or your position.  Now design a tax system.”  (That was Will Bailey, in Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing explaining John Rawls.)  The idea is that, no matter who you are, or where you’re born, or what challenges you will face, you want the world to be as good for you as possible.  Whether you’re rich or poor, you want the best life you can have.  I believe in that idea.  I believe in having a reasonable amount of empathy.  I believe in compassion.  Don’t you?

So… why have a UBI?

First, it creates better employees.  The people working for you now are people who really want the job, and not people trying to make enough money to make ends meet one more month.  They are likely to be more enthusiastic, more dedicated to the work, and more interested in improving.  They find the job fulfilling.  That’s how I, for example, felt about most of the first 20 years of my teaching career.  It’s how I feel about my podcast now.

Second, UBI decreases crime.  Gone are the otherwise good people who have been forced by desperation for food or a home to commit crimes to get the cash they need.  Their basic needs are met.  Of course, there are still evil people in the world.  I don’t know that we will ever be able to stop that.  I do know, though, that children who grow up in more stable households, with parents who have the time they need to give to their children, are statistically less likely to become criminals.  There are no guarantees.  The best we can do is increase the odds.  I have an entire episode on this idea, too.  It’s Episode 91: How Do We Avoid Another Columbine, Parkland, Newtown, or Boulder? 

Third, employers can now pay lower wages for good jobs because people don’t need the money simply to survive.  One of The People On The Porch, who is a relative of mine (although I have no idea of what the term for our relationship to one another would be), told me once that she wanted to be a teacher.  I am certain she would have been an excellent educator.  Why didn’t she ever do it?  She couldn’t afford it.  Teachers don’t make enough to cover all her bills.  Her line of work is vastly more profitable.   The world lost someone who might have made a significant difference in the lives of many children because she couldn’t afford to follow that passion.  This is not to say that she hasn’t made a difference in her profession.  She absolutely has.  I just feel bad for the kids who never got to have her as a teacher.  Good teachers are harder and harder to find.  With a UBI, they wouldn’t be. 

Another change we could make is, of course, Universal Healthcare.  Just as our schools are funded by our taxes, so our Medical Care could, and should, be.  No one should be crippled by medical debt.  I covered this in one of my earliest episodes.  It’s Episode 7: “Who Are The People Who Should Die for a Lack of Little Green Pieces of Paper?”

We could also pay for counselors for everyone, and in every area of life, so that mental heath assistance is always available.  The same is true for help with budgeting, or drug abuse, or citizenship, or anything else of which we can think.  We need to know help is freely available to all of us.

We could treat Drug Addiction as a medical issue instead of a crime.  We should have help easily and freely available to everyone who wants it.  Obviously, if drug use causes someone to commit a crime, the criminal needs to be properly tried in a court of law.  If, however, we can help a drug addict before they commit a crime, aren’t we all better off? 

What we have now is something between 59 and 68 million people getting some form of welfare, trapped in a system from which escape is all but impossible, and saddled with the contempt that comes with assistance. 

The vast majority of people who are on welfare would rather not be. They’re happy to work and to contribute to our society.  Many, if not most, of the people receiving government assistance are working.  My former roommate, for example, has a degree and is being crushed by the student loans that come with it.  She got that degree based on the myth that this is how one gets a higher paying job.  She worked overnight shifts at Circle K because we needed the extra 50 cents an hour that she got for those high-risk times.  The degree didn’t get her a higher paying job, but it did put her sufficiently into debt that she gets food stamps.  She works 40 hours a week.  She’s anything but lazy.

She’s more fortunate than many of the people we see when we go to DES to stand in line for hour after hour waiting for someone to ask her degrading questions about her life so they can decide if she deserves to eat for the next 6 months.  Most of the others have their children with them.  Why?  They can’t afford daycare.  How well are they going to do at whatever jobs they can get, since they don’t have degrees, when they don’t know if their children are safe?

Some of them are in their 60s.  They’re too old to do many jobs, but not old enough to get Social Security.

Are there lazy people on Welfare?  I’m sure there are.  There are lazy people everywhere.

But, for most people, it’s not that they’re lazy.  It’s that they got hit with medical bills that put them on the verge of bankruptcy.  It’s that they had children when they hadn’t planned to, often because they were raped.  It’s that they work 2 minimum wage jobs, hoping to earn enough to go to school hoping that someday they can actually earn money. There are as many reasons for poverty as there are victims of it.

What would $2000 a month do for those people?  It would pay their rent and utilities so the money they do earn can go to frivolous things like car payments so they can go to work and pay for their cars so they can go to work.

Where would we get the money?  We would get it by taxing those who, through innovative technology, for good or for ill, are eliminating jobs human beings once did.  No one will need to do a Go Fund Me for technology companies when they pay these extra taxes.  And you know what else?  No one will need to do a Go Fund Me for the rest of us, who live paycheck to paycheck, to pay our rent and keep the heat on, anymore, either.

Is UBI a radical idea?  Yes.  And it’s only through radical ideas that change had ever been made.

The Founding Fathers had the then radical idea that people ought not to be taxed without representation among those levying the taxes.  And things changed.

Abolitionists had the then radical idea that it’s not okay for one human being to own another.  And things changed.

Susan B. Anthony had the then radical idea that women should have a few of the same rights as men.  And things changed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had the then radical idea that people should be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skin.  And things changed.

There are many more changes this country needs to make if it is to fulfill its promise of liberty and justice for all.  One Dear Land is proposing several such changes.

Can you embrace this country’s promise with us?

Posted on by Fred

“One Planet, One People… Please?”

Nearly 40 years ago, when I was an adolescent running around in as much of a hormone haze as I now am surrounded by the Fog of Idealism, I was as madly in love as a boy could be with a girl whose intellect and compassion I admired nearly as much as her physical form. When you’re 16, it’s difficult to see much beyond appearance. Or, at least it was for me. Perhaps today’s adolescents are more enlightened than I was.

Among the reasons I fell in love with her was her Idealism was seductively attractive to me. She was a member of a religion of which I had never heard, called Baha’i. I had, even then, no supernatural beliefs, but I loved the idea of unity that was at the core of her religious beliefs. She had on her car a bumper sticker that has the unique status of actually affecting me. It said, “One Planet, One People… Please?” I have never forgotten the words. Now, I believe, she’s off living with her husband on a farm somewhere, and we say hello to each other occasionally on Facebook, but we don’t really have a serious friendship anymore. Her influence over my thinking, however, has only grown in the intervening decades.

She was the water and sunlight that made the seed planted a decade earlier grow and flourish. What planted the seed? It was Star Trek, of course.

I’ve been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and I often think of how The United Federation of Planets evaluates a new civilization. They consider not only its technological situation, but how that civilization treats its people. And, because they’re looking at alien planets, the societies they encounter can have any number of traditions, values, and ideas. They try to be respectful of all of them.

This is the Preamble to their Constitution:

We, the intelligent lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of intergalactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and

to reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent lifeform rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent lifeform person, to the equal rights of male and female and of planetary social systems large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and mutual respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interplanetary law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

And to these ends

to practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

to unite our strength to maintain intergalactic peace and security, and

to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods that armed force shall not be used except in the common defense, and

to employ intergalactic machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all intelligent lifeforms,

Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Written by Franz Joseph (Published in the Star Fleet Technical Manual)

I believe the general ideas expressed above are a good starting place for our world. They are asking for us to respect fundamental human rights (although, since they’re dealing with many other sentient species, they refer to them as lifeform rights), to make social progress, and to keep peaceful and friendly relations among the different species.

In order to be admitted to the Federation a planet must have a one-world government. And this idea frightens the hell out of people today. I don’t understand why this should be the case.

One need not forfeit individuality to recognize one’s membership in the human race. Yes, different cultures have different values and traditions. They have different religions. They have different economic structures. Their skin colors and languages are different. Some have different ideas about sex. But, they all have blood, hearts, lungs, and all the other organs all human beings share. We all need to eat, to have a place to sleep, to have medical care, and to be able to spend our minutes in the ways that we choose without harming others.

We have decided, by some sort of universal consent, that time and money are traded one for the other. We have further decided that if one cannot or does not trade time for money, or find other ways of collecting enough of it, a person has little value. Your human value is determined by your market value. And that is simply wrong.

First, let’s recognize the we are at the summit of humanity.

200,000 years ago survival was our only concern. It was all the earliest humans could do to avoid being eaten, or to find a way to eat, themselves. Shelter was whatever they could find, and medical care was, for any serious purposes, non existent. But we did survive, and we did it because we worked together. No single human could have flourished then, and it’s doubtful one could now. If one of us is doing well it’s because of the contributions made by others for the last 200 millennia.

We have always made life better by working together, but we began to segregate ourselves into different tribes of one form or another. They can be based on specialization, on shared beliefs, on gender, race, or ideology, or national origin or citizenship in a particular country. But the tribes are there. The separation is there.

I submit the separation is counter to continuing to improve our world. Instead of trying to defeat each other, we need to try to cooperate with each other to find the solutions to our shared problems, and to find ways of making life more pleasant for all of us.

Another element common to all of us is that we have limited time on Earth. We can discuss afterlife at a different time, but our time here is extraordinarily brief. Few of us will be here for an entire century. None of us will be here for two. And, to our knowledge, that’s all the time we get. Ever. Once a minute is spent, it can never be recovered.

You and I will each get, perhaps, 50 million minutes. Why should we need, in the 21st Century, to trade so many of them for dollars? Most of us won’t even get a dollar per minute. If you earn $52,000,000 in your lifetime, you’re among the very few. This world works very well for the few. It works very poorly for the many. “The needs of the many,” as Spock would remind us, “outweigh the needs of the few.”

This doesn’t mean the few should be forced to give their dollars to the many. I’m not advocating that. Instead, I would like to see the dollars of the many used to benefit the many instead of the few. We have enough to ensure that all of us have the basics of survival. We can eliminate the need for slave wages by ensuring no one ever needs to take a job that pays less than a person’s minutes are worth just so one can keep living for a few more minutes. Instead of being about survival, money becomes about flourishing financially.

What would this world look like?

Everyone has enough money for food, rent, utilities, and clothing appropriate to the environment in which they live. Any decent civilization would provide that to all of its citizens. Those that don’t are never viewed well by the Federation.

Everyone has medical care sufficient to keep one not just alive, but healthy. Dr. McCoy never asked anyone for an insurance card. Had the Captain asked him to, he probably would have said, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bureaucrat!”

Everyone spends their minutes in ways that are meaningful to them, and that contribute in unique ways to making the society a better and stronger one.

Everyone is appreciated as the individuals they are. No one is expected to conform to the expectations of others, so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. Each of us chooses our own path through life.

Isn’t this world impossible?

No. It’s not. Flying was once “impossible.” Going to the moon was even more “impossible.” Communicating in the way you and I are this very moment was also once “impossible.” Things are impossible only when we decide they are impossible, or they are expressly forbidden by the laws of physics.

What do we need to do to bring about such a world?

First, we have to agree that we want to. Then, we need to try.

What are the logistics?

I don’t have a clue. I’m not an economist. I’m not a politician. I’m a drop of water in the Colorado River. There are experts in such areas. I suggest they work out the details, they do the research, they gather the data, and they work it out. And, to no one’s surprise, people have been doing this for quite some time. Buckminster Fuller spent most of his 87 years (not even the full 50,000,000 minutes we hope to receive ourselves) trying to figure out how to implement plans that would benefit 100% of humanity. The ideas are there.

What are some of the ideas?

Today, we are beginning the discussions about changing our economy in a way that benefits more people. Universal Basic Income is now a fairly well known term. It wasn’t unheard of previously, but no one really had any interest in it after it failed during the Nixon administration. Today, the idea gets airtime, although not much. Is UBI enough? No, of course, it’s not, but it’s a step in the right direction. Medicare for All isn’t enough, either, but we’re moving closer to the public health care we really ought to have.

frededer.home.blog/2019/10/01/which-are-the-people-who-should-die-for-a-lack-of-little-green-pieces-of-paper/

Living wages aren’t the whole answer, either, but they are at least one more piece of the puzzle.

frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

What Should We Do, Then?

The most important thing to do is to agree on our shared vision. If you see some reason to oppose the Idealistic vision I’ve discussed, I hope you’ll communicate to us what the basis or your opposition is. Why, in essence, should humans suffer unnecessarily?

Having done that, perhaps we can get a few more people to share it, and, in this way, we can begin, as little drops of water, to carve out the Grand Canyon. We can talk about the best ways of improving humanity, and we can share diverse opinions. We can find common ground, and we can move forward to become a world worthy of membership in The United Federation of Planets. I want very much to be qualified to join the Federation. Don’t you?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Vulcan ships had been monitoring our progress for the last century, and they saw that we have moved toward slowing the spread of racism, at least insofar as we have made it socially unacceptable, illegal in hiring, and making it possible for someone who was not white to become President of the United States? They would see that we have begun to accept that people can have sexualities that differ from the norm, and those differences are no one’s business but their own. We have even accepted their right to marry just as it is given to everyone else. The Vulcans could observe that women have won the right to vote, to be in power, and to live their own lives independent of men. They would see we have begun.

Yes, we have light years to go, but we have begun the journey toward not only the stars, but to the deeper unexplored realms of what humanity can actually accomplish. Let’s keep moving down that road, together.

Posted on by Fred

Little Green Pieces of Paper and Freedom

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

How good can she be? She doesn’t have any money. She never earned any money. She just stayed home and took care of her kids all her life. She’s worthless.

Is it really just your ability to earn money that determines your value? There are good people who earn little or no money, and bad people who earn vast sums of it. The reverse is equally true. So, why are we obsessed with it? By itself, it has no value. You can’t eat it. You can’t make a shelter out of it. You can’t grow food in it. You can’t wear it. You can’t use it to make you well when you are sick.

It’s because money allows us to be more free than a lack of money does. Freedom isn’t just absence of coercion. It’s not enough that you’re not in jail, or that no one is ordering you to do this or that and forcing you to comply. That’s undoubtedly a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of freedom. But, it’s also the ability to choose for yourself. If I have billions of dollars, I can choose to visit the Pyramids of Egypt at any time. If I don’t, I may be lucky to visit Wal Mart for groceries. There are more choices available to some of us than others. I think that is clear.

Now, is it right and fair that some people have more choices than others? Frankly, it feels unjust to me. We are, all of us, human beings on this planet for a very short time, and, it seems to me, we should all be able to enjoy our time here to the greatest extent possible. There are always restrictions to our doing this. That’s a part of Nature. Some of us will never see the top of Mt. Everest. Some of us will never utter a complete sentence. This is unavoidable, and those are restrictions with which, whether we like them or not, we must live. And, working together, we could probably find ways to lift some of those restrictions.

But, what about the restrictions we impose on other humans? We have decided to grant nearly unlimited choices to some of us, and almost no choices at all to others, and we have agreed to do this, and to measure how many choices one can make, based on how many little pieces of green paper they have.

I’m reminded of this moment from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy:

“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. […]

“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”

 Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Author
 kalhh (pixabay.com)

Why is money any different from leaves? It’s the peanut that has value, not the leaves.

It is certainly true that one of the things human beings do in order to survive is to work together to accomplish some shared goals. We built all of our civilizations by working together. We would then trade one task, or service, or item for another. Essentially, it was barter. There has been trade since we developed enough intelligence that we were capable of thinking of it. It has occurred in every civilization and every culture on Earth. It is a useful part of our shared humanity. It has allowed us to grow to the point we have now reached.

But, we have lost touch with what the point of all this working together was in the first place. The idea was that we could create a better world in which we could all live. Someone invented the wheel, or discovered it, as the case may be (I wasn’t there at the time, so I’m not sure how we ended up having one), but suddenly life became exponentially easier for us. Heavy things could be moved more easily. We could travel more effectively. In time, the distances we could traverse in our lives was expanded. We had many more choices than we had before. This was an increase in Freedom. And we have had many more since then.

We learned to build houses because someone built some primitive version of one. We found that helping each other to build shelters was better for everyone. We all needed shelter.

Now, of course, we don’t do that very often anymore. We pay someone to do it for us. There are people who are experts in this field. They know how to draw plans, how to implement the plans, how to get the pieces, how to put them together properly, and how to ensure it’s safe to live in this shelter. And it’s almost always a large group of people who have expertise in each of these and many other fields who work together to create the house.

I can’t build a house, myself. First, I can’t cut down a tree. I also don’t know how to make the tree into usable lumber with which to build the house. I can’t work out how to put the pieces together, and I couldn’t pound a nail straight, even if I could do all of the other things. I have to have people do it for me. And, today, that means I have to have many little green pieces of paper. Those are sign of my value, of my right to have something. If I have enough of them, I can get someone to do all this work for me. If I don’t, I can’t.

How did we go from working together to becoming paper obsessed?

Again, there is a value in trade, but the point of trade is to make life better for everyone. We have worked 200,000 years to get to the point that we can now grant everyone the basics they need for survival. We have the materials and the skills to build more than enough houses for all human beings to live in one. We can grow enough food to ensure that every human being has enough to eat. We can fight diseases sufficiently to keep people alive much longer than we once could. We can provide enough clothing to keep everyone warm and safer from some of the elements than we were without clothing.

Why can’t everyone have those things, then? Well, they don’t have enough pieces of green paper. That means they don’t deserve them. Wait… what?

I see a value in trade even now. Obviously we can’t all live in 10,000 square foot mansions, or have wheels that are attached to the best vehicles, or the most artistic clothing, or the most tasty food. We should trade for those. That makes sense to me.

But, should we really have to trade for what our 200,000 years of growth have made possible? Shouldn’t everyone have a place to live? Shouldn’t everyone have enough to eat? Shouldn’t everyone have medical care, and clothing and some ability to make some choices in their lives? In short, why should we limit some people’s freedom so much while granting so much freedom to others?

Is there a way we can make sure everyone has enough freedom to live? Is that an unreasonable goal? How can we get there? I welcome your thoughts.

Posted on by Fred

How Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend Can Save The Country

I have always wanted to live in a world where we work to improve ourselves and the rest of humanity, instead of working 40 hours or more a week just to survive. I want human beings to live a life in which they can actually experience Freedom. Freedom is not simply absence of coercion. It is the ability to examine choices, the education to select the choice most likely to lead to the desired outcome, and the ability to act on the choice. And the Freedom Dividend can be a step down that road.

The Freedom Dividend is a proposal under which every American over the age of 18 would receive a check for $1000 a month. There is no means testing. If you’re an American, whether you are the homeless guy hoping to panhandle enough to get a pack of cigarettes, or you’re Jeff Bezos, you get the check. If you’re anywhere in between, it increases your Freedom by adding to the resources necessary to make your best choices.

Why is this such an extraordinary idea?

It will change lives in unimaginable ways. If you’re among the wealthy, and you don’t need it, you’re welcome to donate it to anyone or anything that does. If you’re among the poor, this gives you a chance you never had before. But it does much more.

Its benefits are not only economic. It affects the quality of life for millions. It helps to reduce the despair and hopelessness that leads to increased stress. That stress increases domestic violence and suicide. I have little doubt that it also contributes to mass shootings.

When people are poor, it just keeps spiraling downward. You can’t afford a good car, so you buy a cheap one. But that car requires constant repairs. That’s more money you spend. As Yang once said, “Poverty charges interest.” Let’s see if we can start paying down some of the bills of poverty.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/22/the-spiral-of-poverty/

Why are people poor? Isn’t it their own fault?

There are as many reasons for poverty as there are poor people. Is it the fault of the impoverished individual? I don’t know. I’m not nearly wise enough to decide who is “deserving” and who is not. I don’t believe anyone else is, either. With The Freedom Dividend, we don’t need to make that judgment. It goes to everyone. I can’t speak for all people; neither can you. I can, however, confidently speak from my own experience, and that’s why I believe in the Freedom Dividend. A minimum wage job isn’t enough, by itself. For more on that topic, see below.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

I really can’t work very much anymore. I’m 56, my body is shot, and my diabetes lands me in the hospital with startling frequency, almost invariably from trying to push what’s left of me too hard. If you paid me $15.00 an hour, that would be a reasonable wage, and while I couldn’t survive well on it, even at 40 hours a week, it would make it possible for me to find some decent roommates and have a shot at making ends meet. I couldn’t live alone on that. I don’t know many people who could without government assistance.

I quit teaching 3 years ago because both physically and psychologically I was no longer capable of doing it. I teach Defensive Driving now, and I’m getting 4 to 5 classes a month. I make good money, at $200 per class, but it’s clear $1000 a month is all I have to live on. If my means testing works out, I might get disability. I’m too young for Social Security. I have, quite fortunately, state funded medical care and food stamps. That’s the whole ball of wax.

I have a roommate who is on disability, and she gets a monthly check that doesn’t quite cover rent for the three of us. My other roommate makes 15 bucks an hour, 40 to 50 hours a week, at Amazon. Between the three of us, we just barely survive. And that survival is by no means certain.

If there were a Freedom Dividend, my monthly income would double. If we see the three of us a family unit, the additional $3000 a month would cover all of our rent, utilities, and gas. All the money we bring in other than that would be to pay for groceries, vet bills, insurance, gas, and car repairs. We might even be able to afford to go to dinner sometimes, or perhaps see a movie.

A person who is too lazy to work deserves nothing from anyone else. I had to work hard for what I have; so should they!

I understand that feeling too. But I disagree with it.

I believe all people, whether I agree with their life choices or not, are deserving of the basics of human survival. This means all of us should have food, shelter, appropriate clothing for the climate in which we reside, medical care, a decent education, and the opportunity to communicate with others. What would that look like? You can see here:

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/05/07/can-we-have-a-star-trek-economy/

Many people make important contributions to society for which there is no financial reward. This doesn’t make them lazy. It makes them unpaid. Instead of raising our own children, many of us need to pay someone else to take care of them while we’re at work. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mom or Dad could stay home and raise children for $1000 a month? Add to the Freedom Dividend the money they’re saving on childcare, and suddenly it starts to add up. Caregivers for their elderly parents have to find other means to survive, or spend money to put their parents into homes. They also profit from the Freedom Dividend.

What if people waste it, though? I don’t want to pay for someone’s drug habit.

This is their money. If they choose to waste it, that’s up to them. They can either use it to move forward and up in life, or not. That’s true of any money anyone gets. It’s a Dividend in the same way that Microsoft pays a Dividend to their shareholders. You’ve invested your life into this country. You’re entitled to get something back from us. You’re not paying for it. You’re getting paid by it.

Fine, but how are we going to pay for this?

First, I would like to point out that the only time… the ONLY time… this question is asked is when the money is going to be used for programs that help ordinary people. No one asked how to pay for a war that has lasted, with no idea of “winning,” for more than a decade. We decided it needed to be done, and we did it.

Having said that, he does have a plan for it that makes sense. To understand the point of the plan, it’s important to understand why this is necessary: Automation.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI )improves, and it will, there will be more and more jobs lost to automation. We’re only a couple of years away from trucks that drive themselves. We are already checking out our own groceries at Wal Mart. Telemarketers and customer service agents will be replaced by software that is so convincing it sounds like you’re actually talking to a person. Malls are closing all over the place because we order what we want from Amazon. Those are more people without jobs.

Instead of watching homelessness skyrocket as people lose their jobs, we’re providing everyone a safety net. The Freedom Dividend gives them time to find a job that is fulfilling, pays well, and is free from harassment. It puts the job applicants much more in the driver’s seat than the employers. They don’t have to take the first job that is available because they have to pay rent next week. They have that covered. Now, they can spend their lives doing something they like instead of working themselves to death for pennies.

To pay for it, Yang will introduce a Value Added Tax for corporations like Amazon. There are those who hate this idea.

That will only make things more expensive.

I suppose that’s true. However, unless you’re spending over $120,000 a year, you’re coming out ahead. Only about 6% of the population will pay more than they get.

That won’t be enough money to pay for all of it. What about the rest of it?

He’ll also make use of the end of much of Welfare. I would have to choose between my food stamps and my Freedom Dividend. I get $177 a month for food. That’s enough for almost two weeks. Take my food stamps, and give me my $1000 a month. The government will be making fewer decisions for us.

Money will be going back into the economy, creating more jobs. We’ll make more in taxes because more people are working. That pays for part of it.

If you want the nitty gritty details, check here.

What is Universal Basic Income?
What is Universal Basic Income?

https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

You Democrats want to give everyone Something for Nothing. This is just Socialism, and Socialism never works.

No… it’s not. Socialism is when the government controls the means of production. That’s still controlled by the Private Sector. This is Capitalism that doesn’t start at $0. It just levels the playing field. And we’re not giving Anyone Anything for Nothing. We’re giving it to everyone who has helped to make us among the wealthiest and most powerful nations on Earth. This is Human Centered Capitalism.

We have been trying the Trickle Down Economy since Reagan. What have been the results? Where once a single person working 40 hours a week could earn enough to support a whole family, today full time work isn’t really enough to support even one person. Giving more money to the wealthy “Job Creators” (who don’t actually create jobs at all… that’s done by supply and demand and consumers) obviously didn’t raise the standard of living for the rest of us. They didn’t invest it into their employees, and therefore into the economy. They kept it for themselves.

The Freedom Dividend is an effort at a Trickle Up Economy. Instead of raining only on the top branches of the tree, we’re watering its roots at ground level. The economy grows because the money is injected immediately back into it. Those who have more, spend more. People can now patronize little stores that are more expensive, instead of being forced into Wal Mart where the prices are lower and most of the employees need government assistance even to buy Wal Mart groceries. This keeps small business running and it encourages entrepreneurs to start their own. The Arts, which are for me the most valuable part of any civilization, will grow because artists can now afford to do their work. This isn’t Socialism. It’s a means of saving Capitalism.

So… what’s your point?

I would like to live in a world that is concerned more with people than with little bits of green paper. We have spent 200,000 years getting to the place where we can now feed, clothe, and house all of humanity. But our path here led us to believe we never have Enough. We don’t have Enough Money. We don’t have Enough Food. But, you know what? Yes… we do. We’ve made it, folks. We’re standing on the shoulders of 200 millennia of human beings struggling for survival. We’re their crowning achievement. Instead of wage slavery of the past, we can have fulfilling lives. We have invented machines to do the most tedious and dangerous work. We don’t have to hunt for food or cut down trees to build our shelters anymore. We are a remarkable species who have cause to be proud.

We’re here so very briefly. Let’s try to make a world where we can enjoy the ride.