This being the final edition of this series of posts and it being Friday, I thought it would be a good time to think about some radical reforms the ruling class could implement to address present problems. It is hard to imagine the ruling class making radical reforms, given their inability to manage small reform to this point, but events often force the issue. A century ago, giving women the vote was a crazy idea in 1919. It is a crazy idea now.
Anyway, I mentioned previously that a big problem for the American political class is the influence of the mega-rich. At the end of the industrial revolution, the answer was to bust up the great fortunes. Maybe this time, the answer is to embrace the great fortunes. Instead of having billionaires buying politicians, perhaps the answer is to create a chamber for the mega-rich. A third chamber of Congress could be something like the House of Lords. It is open only to those with a net worth in the top-1%.
The idea here is to get the mega-rich out of the shadows, so to speak. Instead of pouring money into campaigns and political action committees, guys like Mark Zuckerberg could claim a seat in the Patrician Assembly. The trade-off would be no other participation in politics. The top-1% would be banned from politics other than running for office. Since the ultimate spot would be membership in the Patrician Assembly, the mega-rich would compete for one of the spots.
The thing that makes divided government work is each branch has a unique power. The House has the power of the purse. The Senate confirms judges and executive appointments. The Patrician Assembly would need a unique power in order to be worth the office. The most logical power to give the super-rich would be the power to borrow. This would, in effect, be a veto over deficit spending. Raising the debt limit and authorizing new debt would be the job of the Patrician Assembly.
Another nagging problem in modern America is mobility. Americans move around for all sorts of reasons, mostly for work, but also for family. Of course, foreigners move here for economic reason. This makes maintaining local communities difficult and is a growing source of instability. A big reason Donald Trump is having so much success is that millions of Americans feel like strangers in their own neighborhoods. The place where they grew up is now alien to them.
A solution to this is to change how people vote. The new rule would require you to vote where you were born, in addition to where you reside. That means those Yankee lunatics born in Massachusetts can still move to sensible places like Texas, but they will not be able to start voting for drunken Hibernian politicians. If Mass lets them vote absentee, then they could vote Kennedy that way. Otherwise, they give up voting in exchange for the good life in Texas.
This solves two problems. One is it solves the problem of lunatics moving to a new unspoiled place and then spoiling it by voting lunatic. The other important feature is it solves the immigration issues. This rule means those fifty million foreign born will never vote. Their kids can vote, assuming they are born here to citizens, but the foreign born will never gain the franchise. This removes the benefit of citizen replacement that is so popular with liberal lunatics.
Finally, we are on the cusp of the great automation. No one reading this will see the robot future. Your children and grand children will not see it either. We will, however, see more and more jobs replaced by robots. That means fewer and fewer people working and earning money. An obvious way to fix this is to get women out of the workplace, but that is only going to come when Islam is the official religion of the West. Look for London to pass such laws in the coming decade.
A more plausible solution will be a guaranteed income. Instead of a welfare state designed for the poor, a new system of a monthly salary for all citizens could be implemented. Alaska pays its citizens a royalty from oil sales each year based on the idea that the oil is a public good. Maybe the same approach must be taken with the robots. The robot future is a communal good so everyone gets a royalty from the robot economy.
The Swiss are about to experiment with this idea. One excellent benefit is it applies to citizens, thus depriving one incentive for migrants. The bigger issue is it junks all the social engineering ideas from a bygone era. Social welfare programs are a solution to poverty in the industrial age. In the technological age, poverty is not the issue so much as the lack of work.
Here is where it can become even more radical. The annual income could also be an incentive for marriage and stable family formation. Married couple would get a bonus for every year of marriage. That way, Yolanda here in the ghetto has no incentive to breed outside of marriage. Her stipend would not change with more kids. Her chance to boost her income would be to marry and stay married. For ghetto women, children stop being a symbol of success.
In a matriarchy, this is a powerful incentive for the males to behave. All of sudden, Darius is not such a valuable mating option when he can’t stay out of prison, while the bookish Urkel comes with the bonus of extra cash in the monthly check. The welfare state broke this relationship and black crime went along with black illegitimacy rates. Restore those family incentives and let nature take its course.
Some very interesting ideas. But the missing ingredient is motivation for the pols and ruling class to make change is overcoming their greed. You change their world by leveling the playing field. You take away a lot of their “power.” Also, I think the unintended consequences are so what if people have an “income,” what are they going to do with their free time? I believe people NEED to work. Need to be busy, be productive, need to be creative, need be tired at days end, need to anticipate the challenges of the next day, have short and long term goals, work towards something in order to be fulfilled. Just what will fill that void? A robot or virtual reality will be no substitute.
Look at the crumbling infrastructure of the country, of any country. Their are lots of shovel ready jobs at every level simply maintaining the infrastructure to keep civilization moving. But instead, government is wasting so much money on frivolous, useless, ridiculous causes and ignoring the rot beneath our feet. That is work that simply has to get done. Put people to work. People want to work and Americans have the desire, the will and the talent to do it. We don’t need H1B1 Visas or other illegal immigrants to do this.
You’re probably familiar with it but if not Charles Murray’s In Our Hands is a book-length argument in favor of that monthly stipend idea.
Milton Friedman put out for consideration a negative income tax proposal back in the sixties. His preference was no income tax but he knew such an idea wouldn’t be considered. The same is true today thought I feel no income tax is the right way to go, but the negative tax idea sill might be wort dusting off and considering.
She may marry Urkel and stay married, but even now, the married ones tell the State that they are not. They have to get an affidavit signed by a neighbor attesting to their solitary life. The neighbor gives false testimony and the State’s F*cks Given meter doesn’t even budge.
The illusion of democratic government is exactly that – an illusion. And it’s all wrapped up and sold to us “dirt people” in a pretty package called the ‘right to vote’ promoted and publicized by the corporately controlled media. Our political elites, whether in the US or Europe, are nothing but puppets – they always have been and they always will be. It’s just that simple. American, German, British governments function only as the corporations see fit because corporations, unlike the dirt people, actually have the power and it is they who determine who rises and who falls in Washington, Berlin and London.
Even our respective Constitutions are meaningless when a government can change them anytime they want by changing Supreme Court Justices or by Presidential edict. It’s why Europeans just smile when Americans rant about your 1st and 2nd amendment rights. Those rights are already gone for all practical purposes so stop pretending they have any real meaning. Yes, you can carry a gun. So what? No American militia has shown up on the Texas border to stop illegal immigrants and protect your country like your founding fathers lined up at Bunker Hill to stop the British. Even your own military isn’t interested.
Governments can only take and redistribute because they make nothing and they have no allegiance to the “dirt people”. Politicians allegiance is to corporations, and corporations’ only allegiance is to the boardroom and the all mighty dollar or Euro. Their alter is the bank, their high priest is consumerism, thus the shift away from America and Europe to India, China and the African continent – why? Because western garages and closets are full and we simply can’t buy enough new stuff anymore.
Think about it. The working class has always been the problem to the elites. When we became too many, they promoted wars to reduce our numbers to create a new generation of consumers. Fight and die for democracy? I think not. We are being systematically eliminated so our voices can be silenced. Forget about the term “robots”, it’s automation you need to worry about – from automated factories, Amazon fulfillment centers to ATM teller machines, and self checkout stands. Cash will be the next thing we see disappear. Don’t think so? Ask the average college kid how much cash they have in their wallet. They don’t need any because there’s an App for that.
So go ahead and enjoy the show with the media’s “political debates”. I suspect you will find The Simpsons reruns more honest and factual. And when you want to feel like a good citizen, stick a Trump sign in your yard and go and vote. Because it doesn’t matter who gets elected. America and Europe are done. We’re old news. We have nothing to offer the corporate elites anymore so we don’t matter to them.
Next up – Africa. Just look where power production and consumerism is headed. GE and Siemens biggest goal is the African continent and the US military already has boots on the ground there. First you provide reliable power and infrastructure and everything follows. The Chinese already proved that business model works and they are hard core Communists. Despots and corrupt African dictators? No one cares, they’ll all be removed in due time. America was a despotic country after 1812 with range wars, land grabs, a lawless west, a civil war and even two World Wars to kick-start industrial mass production in America and then in the only remaining European economic power – Germany.
Just like American political leaders, European politicians are merely a distraction from the collapse of the west and corporations don’t care even if Islamists take over Europe and leftists vote to let pedophiles in kids bathrooms, why? – Because there are over 2-billion potential customers in Africa and India alone. And even jihadists and perverts need big screen TVs.
Leviathan needs all sensible right wingers on deck to keep this boat afloat .Being Leviathan also has the advantage of openly despising the crew that periodically makes it’s continuation possible.
Democracy elevates sociopathic political discourse to unexplored levels. That is the true delight which keeps the ruling class on their game–mind fucking. Conservatives got no game because they hate that game. As they should. Tinker all you want, but know we are working for the other team, like slaves pulling oars in a storm. A culture of guaranteed income is a culture incapable and unwilling to experience any reality. You may not have such a thing and expect to soberly deliberate on other things when that cow has left the barn. Fear is a great motivator and sometimes the only one.
Your reform ideas are excellent and you’re a super smart guy whose older post I’ve gone back and read with delight. Tremendously good stuff but I believe you’re wrong about this, “…No one reading this will see the robot future. Your children and grand children will not see it either…”.
I commented here,
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=6815#comments
about the increase of computing power and there’s no indication that it’s not moving along just as shown. Here’s a link to a power point.
https://archive.org/details/FutureStrategicIssuesFutureWarfareCirca2025
and a few points,
Page 19 shows capability of the human brain and time line for human level computation.
Page 70 gives the computing power trend and around 2025 we get human level computation for $1000.
2025 is bad but notice it says”…By 2030, PC has collective computing power of a town full of human
minds…”.
I’m old enough to remember when there was essentially no computers. Only for highly specialized task. The original AI scheme was a kind of all up intelligence that would be hatched like a baby and then trained. That failed but AI is actually getting better a task at a time. Much like evolution it tackles one problem at a time and then networks the results. I’m astounded at what’s been done already.
I would rather see a reality show: “pit bulls v. billionaires.” Zuckerberg would be perfect for the pilot.
” lunatics moving to a new unspoiled place and then spoiling it by voting lunatic”
That is the key phrase in all of this. Colorado – especially Denver – has massively suffered from this.
Anywhere Californians go to flee horrible governance suffers, too. They can’t figure out that voting blue ruins things, and is why they had to leave in the first place.
You missed the biggest problem, even though you named it – the “ruling class”. Something America, a republic with a representative democratic government, was never supposed to have.
My solution would be to abolish Congressional elections and select Representative and Senators through a random, computerized draft. Basic background check to ensure citizenship, no felonies, etc, and off you go for 2 terms. Takes ALL the money out of it, which is why it can never happen.
Texas already has a similar office: comptroller. The comptroller certifies the tax income. The legislature cannot spend more than that.
I’ve suggested elsewhere that most of us would probably be fine with a guaranteed income, or some other radical expansion of welfare — right now — if it came with ironclad voting and residency restrictions. The voting part should be obvious – you’ve agreed to be managed by the technocracy, so you’re no longer a free citizen of a constitutional republic. You don’t get to vote yourself a raise, or anything else. If you want your vote back, go off the dole. The residency provision comes with the unstated (because raaacist), but obvious, corollary that it keeps ghetto dysfunction in the ghetto. Spend your allowance on whatever (including all sorts of legal drugs, because we’re fantasizing), but know that if you bring your shit out of the ghetto (or down the holler, for the trailer trash), you get comprehensively stomped by the cops. Again, you go off the dole, you get a get-out-of-a-cop-stomping probationary pass. What’s not to like? The ghetto bangers stay in the ghetto, the hillbillies fry themselves on meth and Oxy away from decent folks, and all for the low low price of a few hundred bucks and cops who think they’re Delta Force… so, you know, pretty much the same cost as now.
You don’t need the oligarchy. That there is the crux of the problem. Billions think they need the sonsofabitches somehow. When the exact opposite is the truth. They need the dirt people.
It’s those fuckers who created this unmitigated disaster to begin with.
Let it all burn. Pick up ourselves. Start anew. What’s to fear but a world ruled by a bunch of spoiled brat psychopaths. They wouldn’t have the wealth if it wasn’t for us dirt people to begin with.
Nothing like a good old fashioned tribulations to get the dirt people to set things right.
It is the only way. unless you have generations of time to spare.
Sign me up for common-sense world! So radically sensible.
Zman is a bloody frickin’ genius, aye?
Instead of intellectual status-signalling, noodling with arcana, he makes the large simple.
That’s true genius.
All good ideas that will never happen. I would like to see a Heinlein style house of Repeal that would get to dive through Federal law and regulation, repealing whatever they want with a 1/3 plurality.
We will see the guaranteed minimum income. I would not be shocked if a decade from now every Western government is racing to implement it.
When you get the chance, read Robert Gordon’s “Rise and Fall of American Growth”. While he focuses on role of fundamental innovations and social construct changes on labor force productivity, it also partially explains why the old belief that while innovations might destroy current jobs, generally the replacement with higher value employment produced a net benefit, no longer hold. Personal belief from working on the FinTech side of things is that we are now simply in a job destroying phase, with very little replacement. At least for what were traditionally seen as middle class jobs.
That wouldn’t surprise me – but it augment, not replace the welfare state. Pournelle’s Iron Law and all.
Except these ideas offered by the Z man are not “good” ideas, nor are they practical, nor are they going to see the light of day.
Do whites themselves have the liberty to associate with non-whites, with Jews, to live with them in peace and harmony? Or are these whites “traitors”?
Dumpster diving? why? Junk the pile of crap and start over. If you are going to “… dive through Federal law and regulation” you’ll never get started.