"We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home." ~ Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (1981)
First of all, I readily admit that I know next to nothing about money. The word “economics” leaves me cold. The concept of busyness (as in business) makes me yawn.
Second of all, if you look at the self-appointed phynancial wizards who have each claimed to be some sort of “foremost authority” in his field (and it’s still pretty much a male precinct; can’t think of any female economic advisors offhand) it’s obvious they have completely screwed up at every turn.
If these economic experts were worth their own weight in salt, would there be so many starving children in some countries – and so many obese ones in others?
Doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out that these “economic strategists” are essentially a bunch of conmen who serve the narrow interests of a tiny elite cabal and not humanity as a whole.
The deep background to this out-of-whack state of affairs makes a fascinating study but I won’t delve into it here. Those interested are encouraged to do a bit of Googling on the Anunnaki colonization of Planet Earth and how they manufactured a slavish subspecies (Homo sapiens sapiens aka the Adama) to perform menial tasks - and inadvertently got genetically entangled with Adamic humanity’s evolution towards autonomy and spiritual consciousness.
Coming back to my appointment as Minister of Phynance, here are some good reasons why I feel I’m the best person for the job.
For a start, I’ve become expert at minimizing overheads. I quit my last full-time job on April 1st, 1977, and have managed to live modestly but comfortably since. In those 32 years I’ve acquired intimate knowledge of the true value of everything.
If you‘ve been trekking up and down several hills through the forest for four hours, you most certainly will appreciate what shelter means: to arrive finally at a cosy lodge with facilities for boiling water and making tea, and to be able to put your weary feet up and sip sweet black tea and listen to the jungle – that’s certainly an enriching experience. Moments like these, what’s a cup of tea worth to you? Or a warm bed to lie in? How about the company and conversation of a few good friends?
In the real world – and I don’t mean the dog-eat-dog “real world” cynically alluded to by moneyed folk and crime syndicates – where nature reigns supreme, our understanding of what constitutes wealth becomes grounded in tangible experience. For instance, if you find yourself lost in the desert and you’ve been trudging in circles up and down sand dunes under a blazing sun for hours on end, which would you rather stumble upon – a well containing potable water or a bag stuffed with currency notes or even uncut diamonds?
Our sense of values has become distorted over many generations with the introduction of money as a symbol of wealth. To a hungry man, a bunch of bananas and a pitcher of cool, sweet water are worth infinitely more than a gleaming new Porsche or a platinum credit card with unlimited access.
As Minister of Phynance I would shut down the stock exchange and turn it into a budget hostel for young travelers. It’s totally absurd that people think it’s okay to make money with money. It’s not okay, folks – because money isn’t real!
It’s just a puerile game wherein folks with surplus cash are lured into investing it in big corporations, thereby giving them sufficient financial clout to wreak total havoc with their endless expansion schemes. Giant corporations are an unhealthy phenomenon as they tend to grow and grow like a cancer, devouring everything of genuine value – especially natural ecosystems - in their path.
What do people with surplus cash do with the stuff then? Well, they can donate it to a community trust fund managed by a panel of respected citizens and this trust fund will supersede the parasitic insurance companies and the Employees Provident Fund. Anyone who requires financial support and funding for adventurous and worthwhile projects may apply for a grant from this fund. If they accrue a financial surplus from any of these projects, they are expected to donate it to the fund so others can benefit from it.
What constitutes a financial surplus? If we calculate the cost of supporting an adult human for a single day and multiply the amount by ten to make sure that his or her quality of life is at least ten times better than basic – anything above that amount would be considered as surplus.
For example, I estimate that an adult human can manage comfortably on a budget of RM50 or €10 a day. Ten times that is RM500 or €100. So in a month of 30 days an adult human would be more than comfortably supported on a income of RM15,000 or €3,000. If he or she lives frugally, at least half the monthly income can be saved in an interest-free account. This way, those who tend to be spendthrift will end up with hardly any surplus; whilst the thrifty ones will have plenty of surplus to donate to the community trust fund.
Those who donate their surplus to the community trust fund will acquire the status of community elders and therefore share the responsibility of governing their communities. By living well within their means and managing to accumulate a monthly or annual surplus, they would have demonstrated their maturity, inner discipline and freedom from self-indulgent habits and addictions.
Essentially, this will help resolve destabilizing imbalances resulting from generations of financial mismanagement at the hands of those who tend to be most extravagant and undisciplined in their misuse of energy. To be sure, they won’t be overjoyed about this – since this class of humans has traditionally set themselves up as the ruling elite by dint of the fact that they were descended from the Anunnaki creator gods – or were able to become leaders of armed gangs that routinely plundered the land, terrorized the populace, and proclaimed themselves overlords.
And where will the guaranteed income come from? It will accrue from harvesting free energy and effectively converting and rechanneling it for specific tasks. Back in the early 1970s, whole systems thinker Buckminster Fuller calculated that if we could efficiently tap the daily universal income of raw energy from our nearest star, Sol or Ra, and convert it to its monetary equivalent in US dollars – we would receive sufficient energy from the Sun alone to pay every living human on Spaceship Earth a daily wage of approximately USD400,000.
Now that is way beyond my recommended basic daily wage of RM500 or €100. Buckminster Fuller was merely stating a point in very broad terms. It’s unlikely that we could harvest 100% of the daily energy income we receive from the Sun. 60-70% would already be more than sufficient to provide a daily energy income to each human worth approximately USD280,000. And since each human will be guaranteed only RM500 (approximately USD142) per day, it means that at least USD279,858 per human would accrue to the planetary energy pool for infrastructural design, development and maintenance.
In effect, after deducting the basic daily cost of maintaining each adult human, there would still be an enormous amount held in reserve for large-scale operations like the building and maintenance of transport systems, ecosystem rehabilitation projects, educational networks and a state-of-the-art planetary communications grid.
Notice that I have omitted any mention of defence systems or military forces. We really don’t need these archaic institutions anymore. If we haven’t matured enough as a species to resolve our conceptual differences through philosophical engagement, interpersonal interaction and conflict resolution, then Homo sapiens sapiens truly deserves to become extinct. And the rest of the universe won’t shed a single tear to be rid of such a virulent and warlike lifeform.
In order to make such a planetary scale transformation possible, it would of course be much easier if there existed an enlightened planetary administrative body modeled after the United Nations – but minus the political bullying that currently makes the UN a mere symbolic gesture rather than an authoritative unifying and coordinating force.
Many of us are disturbed by talk of a New World Order or One World Government and rightly so – because the ones pushing this nefarious agenda are merely perpetuating the ancient caste system wherein the most aggressive egos form themselves into an overpowering elite cabal and systematically exploit and enslave the rest of humanity.
What I’m discussing here is the cosmically kosher counterforce to the Illuminati’s One World Order agenda. In effect, the most aggressive and immature egos will no longer be allowed to plunder the Earth for their own aggrandizement and the enslavement of the ignorant masses.
Instead, because of their lack of self-control, they will be allowed to do what they wish within the generous means granted them – but will have no say in the management of their communities, since that responsibility will be assigned only to those who have developed sufficient inner discipline and wisdom to accumulate a surplus and donate it to the community trust fund.
Give this some serious thought and if you still think I don’t deserve to be appointed Minister of Phynance, I shall be forced to use the pschittapump on you.
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Literary footnote: The spelling of “finance” as “phynance” and the introduction of the pschittapump were inspired by the pataphsyical works of Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), originator of the infamous Ubu plays.
[First published 26 November 2009]
APPENDIX: Notes by Libby Hubbard
Wealth is defined by Buckminster Fuller as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life." The computer will show us that at least 70% of jobs in Western private-enterprise countries are work that creates no life support, therefore no real wealth. Examples of these jobs are: "inspectors of inspectors, reunderwriters of insurance reinsurers, Obnoxico promoters, spies and counterspies, military personnel, gunmakers, etc." It is more economical to pay these people to stay at home and not drive their cars to work since it cost "nature well over a million dollars to produce each gallon of petroleum."
The Sun does not make us pay for the energy the Earth imports. It wants to us succeed in the cosmic scheme by using what Fuller calls "cosmic costing accounts." Cosmic accounting can never go bankrupt, since the sun is always shining, accept when humans make the mistake of withdrawing our critical "capital" assets as we are doing presently with fossil fuels. So one can see how we are living in a bankrupt state of affairs, wasting our fossil fuels and burning fusion and fission nuclear energy which Fuller says is "burning our terrestrial production equipment," when we should be living syntropically by the sunlight being imported to Earth.
When we begin living in a syntropic way on a "cosmic-energy wealth income" by wind, wave, and solar power, big businesses will see no way for putting a meter on these forms of energy to run their bureaucracies and war machines. National governments and big business continue to use up "nature's energy savings account," that is, fossil fuels and by atomic energy which is what Fuller calls "Spaceship Earth's physical hull," even though scientists can find no solution to the problem of nuclear waste. (Fuller thinks we should rocket the waste back into the sun). But because of our intuitive wisdom strongly forming an anti-nuclear energy movement, the energy owners have turned back to the coal and shale mines to convert them into meterable and pipeable liquid fuels. Fuller writes: "This selfishly exploitable energy fuel strategy will inexorably destroy the atmosphere's capability of supporting biological life on planet Earth."