What is a valid contribution to society?

In the current system, the distinction seems largely to be whether you are in paid work or not. Although some paid work is taboo - drug dealing, say,  pretty much any paid work is seen as contributing to society - even selling cigarettes / tobacco.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, as there are people of course who give of their time voluntarily and do things that are socially necessary and/or socially constructive. These will tend to be people who have the money and therefore the time to do something socially constructive without being paid specifically for doing so. Even as I write, I see the true logic of how society should be operated arising from what I am writing, even though I'm not writing exactly what I originally intended.

No-one should be doing anything that is not socially constructive. We put people in prison for some socially destructive things, but for others we pay them a salary. Lunacy. Let's go back to the volunteers. They're doing something socially constructive, because it is socially constructive and for no other reason. Does it not seem likely that the vast majority of people, freed from waged slavery, would do the same?

Under the current system, consuming is contributing to society, because of cyclic consumption:  I have to work to get money to spend to keep you in work so that you can consume and keep the next person in work, and so on. Lest we should see the foolishness of all this, advertising/marketing steps in to keep us thinking we must consume more. What is this system (or those that operate it) trying to achieve? Are they genuinely trying to use up resources as quickly as possible? Do they just not care that the system is consuming the resources ever more rapidly?

Making life difficult for ourselves on purpose is good - ?

In Rail magazine, issue 646 (16-29 June 2010) 'Industry Insider' (pseudonym) writes that because of the recession/cuts "there will be some gains [in rail use] from people who have to travel longer distances to find work". Not sure if he really means to find work - perhaps he means to get to their job, with there being fewer jobs, but what a perversity of the current system!

It seems pretty basic that all the things that need doing should be in a database, along with all the people that can do them, so that the two can be matched. The idea of "finding" vacancies is quite ridiculous in a technological age. Why are we hiding them? Do we not want to find the best person for the job? Why do job seekers - even the name suggests the wrong-headedness of the system - have to trawl through umpteen separate sources of vacancies, some advertising the same posts. It's just a waste of resources.

But the idea that it is somehow good to waste time and resources travelling further because it benefits the railway is just absurd. I am not criticising 'Industry Insider' particularly, but a system in which we apparently make it deliberately harder to do the things that need doing to be done and wasting resources is OK if it makes money or creates jobs. I am assuming for the sake of argument that these people are doing or seeking to do things that need to be done - ie things that have a social return. If not, it's worse still. Further true progress would be to get machines / computers ("cybernation") doing as many of the things that need to be done ("have a social return") as possible. Whyever not?

Soldiers on parade

Soldiers paraded through Barking town centre this week. A fair few people came out and waved union flags. A group of Muslims protested against the wars the west has fought in Muslim countries and some right wingers including the English Defence League showed up to counter the Muslim group.

I don't wish to denigrate or dishonour these soldiers (or those who have died in service) for doing what they believe to be right, but as Jacque Fresco says, sort if, how can we call ourselves civilised if our highest achievements - celebrated - involve killing each other?

One woman, commenting on the protest, said on the BBC that her son had just come back from Afghanistan and he was "doing his job". That's not enough. This doesn't just apply to the forces, but to any job. We should be able to do what is right - has a social return - for humanity and the planet and not be constrained to do 'any' job just to access the necessities of life (via money).

How to help people into employment in rural areas

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=19225665

I only saw the header for this article and it prompted me to write to Idea about Resource Based Economy and the ideas of The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). I'm writing my response here in the public domain, rather than just on the closed discussion boards of Idea.

My first point is practically verbatim from The Venus Project (TVP): It is not jobs/money that people need, it is access to the necessities of life. Peter Joseph, founder of TZM says that if a job does not have a 'social return' it should not be done. A 'social return' is something that benefits humanity / the planet - that is it helps us in - or at least does not hinder us from -living sustainably on this planet within the resources available to us as we quite plainly must do - hence Resource Based Economy (RBE).

In an RBE, it's only jobs with a social return that get done - and they get done the most efficient way possible, which means automation / mechanisation as much as possible - 'Cybernation' in TVP language. Remember, it's not jobs/money that people need but access to the necessities of life - so we must access 'the necessities of life' as efficiently and sustainably as possible. Such jobs as can't ever be cybernated- which would be few - would be done by humans.

In the current system, people have to get a job to get money to access 'the necessities of life'. This may take them away from doing something with a social return - bringing up children, say, to doing something with no social return, say giving out leaflets at the station. In our value system the second is worthwhile as it's a job earning money but the first is undesirable as it's not (unless it's a paid child carer, paradoxically). It's plainly nuts.

To step it up several levels, does anyone really accept that it's OK for millions of people to be starving - even die of starvation - because they haven't got enough money to buy food, because they haven't got a job? This is an utter disgrace. Some people argue that the planet is overpopulated - but who says it's the people with the money who get to say who lives and who dies?

Or take it from a political stance. Working in the armaments industry is a job, but to use arms, we need wars. Therefore there's an incentive to start or escalate wars to generate jobs in the arms industry. How sure are we that the fighting our forces are carrying out is entirely to rid the world of 'evil dictators' or 'terrorist organisations' and not at least in part to generate work in the arms industry?

The need for people to work to get money to access the necessities of life is completely opposite to the need to be efficient as only 'cybernation' can bring efficiency - look at automation in the car industry and agriculture for obvious examples. Also the need to keep people in work means that companies need to compete with each other to sell things. Those things must not be as reliable and durable as possible because that won't keep people in work repairing or replacing them. This means they land up as waste - maybe even in landfill - but no matter, the waste industry creates more work.

If you work in a company that produces anti-cancer drugs, you need people to get cancer so that you can sell your product and stay in work.

On a more human level, people doing jobs with no 'social return' are wasting their lives "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" as Wordsworth put it. People doing jobs with a negative social return are wasting other people's lives.

To add to all this, the money system is totally broken. Practically every country owes money and not enough money exists to pay back all the debts. Therefore one or more countries have to go bust.