Money
We today have a system of money that allows total freedom to abuse.
I could be different.
I would divide financial into two catagories.
1) needs
2) wants.
Needs are food (includes fresh water and clean air) clothing and shelter (includes safe space to be civilized)
What basic needs does a person really "need" to be alive and maintain health.
A "needs debit card" provides those needs, its use is to provide the needs, the holder's needs only. the holder in using that card attests to the validity of that need.
Abuse of a needs card is taken from their "accumulated wants card points"
Wants card points are accumulated by providing needs and then wants to those who have accumulated wants points.
The concept of money earning money ceases to exist.
Scary not really, will talk on the subject and explain fully how it actually works, it is very green.
- Adrian De Jong's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Comments
You're really just offering a guaranteed tax credit.
Bottom line, there are three economic choices and consequences:
(a) price-control = discriminatory behaviour -- I will find a way to do business with people who will enrich me the most, and will avoid doing business with others.
(b) inflation adjusted "needs" credits = runaway inflation -- Zimbabwe is a good example of a government that tried to "create" wealth.
(c) government-provision = poor and expensive implementation -- The USSR is a good example of the government trying to provide for its people. You could substitute for Cuba, or any other socialist nation without resource wealth. Everyone ends up very poor.
Also, how do you control how much is need vs. want? What if I am an athlete and need more water than you? Does that mean you get to take longer showers to compensate? The government is not a good arbiter of what is really a need vs. want. Between need and want is a large nebulous cloud of subjectivity. The ultimate arbiter of need vs. want is always you. If you need something, you are willing to work to attain it.
Governments are not even good at providing things like water. Ideally, water would be UV treated and ozonated, instead of chlorinated. There is no reason for water shortages in Canada. We have so few people with access to so much water. Yet we have shortages each summer. Contrary to popular opinion, most shortages in Canada are caused by a lack of treated water, not a lack of accessible water.
Anyway, I don't mean to say the idea is not good, but I'd like to hear some real economic solutions to problems arising from giving things away for free. Otherwise I will consider this idea akin to giving away free candycanes and chocolate bunnies.
What we really need...
What we really need is to begin investing in the proper areas, instead of investing billions into a failed corporation we could have used the same money to fund a fledgling electric auto industry, we could become the world leaders in electric car production and export them around the world.
We could begin the process of converting to green energy and funded a program to encourage municipalities to fund local power generation, local food production and other community level projects.
We could invest in hemp production and the whole array of the hemp industry to replace lost jobs in the lumber industry.
We could work with communities to upgrade housing which would reduce power consumption, our carbon emissions and improve the quality of life for a large number of people.
We could pass laws which protect consumers from a lack of corporate responsibility and work to create a more balanced economy based on savings and wise investment instead of a cycle of ever deepening debt.
We could establish a universal post secondary education system denying no one access to education by making most courses available online and replacing course schedules with self directed courses and online tutors to answer questions.
We could create a government P2P network which allows unlimited access to books, movies, videos, music, video games in exchange for a small monthly subscription fee which works on a fair profit system for the artists that create the content. This alone would generate a lot of income for the government even at 10 million canadian users (and by all means export this world wide as well, so 10 million is a low ball estimate) @ $5/catagory/month is $250 million a month, how many people would pay $5/month for all the music they could download DRM free, and another $5 for any video game they want and all perfectly legal, so this service could eventually expand to billions of users world wide. Prices could be adjusted to the market and the whole library of media would be open to the world. This also increases the ability of independent producers to share their works and make a living for doing so.
We need to end the drug war and make drugs a social health issue rather than a criminal issue, we need to reduce poverty and increase the quality of life in order to reduce crime.
We need to find a way to switch from a harvest raw materials, process, sell and trash society to a repair, replace, recycle and upgrade economy with a focus on removing designed obsolescence and still maintaining a level of economic stability which allows all people to afford the necessities of a good life. We need to have a public discussion and question the human justice issues of allowing one persons desire for unlimited profit in any field if that profit supercedes the rights of other people not to have to live in poverty. Are some elements of society too important to leave them subject to market forces and profit motives? If all systems in nature experience entropy should we seriously expect every service and industry to be profitable? Would it not be wiser to use gains from smart government investment in it's people and it's industry and international trade to cover the cost of areas of society that must run at an expense to be of good enough quality to meet the needs of people.
What we would have is the beginnings of a sustainable system, a lot of well educated people, a system friendly to small business and innovation, the end of the debt based lifestyle that more Canadians join every day. We create a lot of jobs and enrich the lives of average people and protect the environment in the process.
We need to think with our minds and our hearts. We need to act with respect for the world and the rights and dignity of all people and shape our policy accordingly. We need to elect politicians who give a damn. These are the kinds of things we need to do.
-Kris Oud
Whitehorse, YT
The GPC needs to figure out how it wants to conduct itself.
There many things that can be done, and many things that can be done, already are known to work in other jurisdictions. Why can't we work with those first?
...
I'm not really assigning anytime line here or saying these are the only things that need to be done. There is a lot to be done and a lot more past that, but right now those important issues have impact on most people but recieve little to no attention from those who practice traditional governence. We need to have a Rational Revolution, to consider the practices of the past few decades and consider what the human cost of these actions are instead of just looking at things in a strictly economic sense and to find a balance between competition to encourage innovation and competition to prevent exploitation.
The time has come to start asking uncomfortable questions because we need to get some serious answers about our future on this planet. We need to appeal to every individual and empower them in knowing that a single vote does matter and there is a viable choice for the kind of true change we've needed for decades now but for which some have been too comfortable to change. We need to appeal to the 40.9 percent of people who are too disenfranchised to bother voting, to all those people who realise that decades of liberal conversative seesawing has not yielded a government which serves in the best interest of all Canadians.
They need to know that there are those willing to set back and take a rational look at the war of terror and find ways to have security and respect the rights and freedoms of Canadians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEV2EzCwR6Y