Letters to LIFE

Who says there's not enough money?
from Austrailia

by Sharon Lee Robertson - May - 2006

  Dear People:   well, well, well...!    Not enough money to go around?   Why is that, do you think...?   Because all the world's Reserve Banks have their very own licence for printing and distributing money - and, of course...too much of it about would reduce its market value - by definition, it HAS to be a "scarce resource".

  Humanity, as resource, requires it's own resource base, its own currency. Today, started a letter outlining my notion of a 'basic income', NOT derived from tax revenue, but created/distributed on a stictly per capita basis with the individual recipient representing the actual 'value base'. At more or less 'poverty level', but no conditions.   Buys food, shelter - and, time.

Work (right livelihood) would be encouraged - but if one chooses not to take on a silly job making cheap thingies at a poverty wage and sweat shop conditions - fair enough. Free to walk away from it.   Some kind of economic crash is on the social (world) horizon - that same basic income stipend may be what keeps basic levels of power, food, etc production systems ticking over.   We are looking at keeping the ESSENTIAL goods and services within each domestic population surviving - if not making banks and corporations huge profits.  

Our early ancestors didn't have any 'free lunches'. They used their time, their wit, their collective social capital transmitted through generations to live sufficiently long to raise their next generation.   No banks to borrow from.   If the banks and economies fall, like our ancestors we CAN use our bodies, our wit, and our time to keep ourselves and one another alive. But the social environment is very different, and their are few 'tribes' capable of building power plants, scientific labs, or hospitals.  

The 'collective' infrastructure has made a quantum leap. How that might be handled is anybody's guess BUT with enough food, etc and hence enough TIME - those 'anybodies' will emerge.   The likes of Thatcher and Rand - well, theirs is not a livable life space for most 'ordinary' people. They are like 'hot house flowers' - and their scent...?   Death, to the bearers of ordinary human virtues.   Economics and all their 'think tanks' have morphed into some kind of Bond "Chaos", building private empires through the agency of access to massive amounts of 'legal tender'. Was it Dylan who sang "I had to rearrange their faces, and give them all another name".  

It is we, the ordinary people, who have to create the 'free lunch'. Don't we, as parents and partners provide an endless number of 'free meals' to our loved ones?   Valued in dollars.. or time, effort, but FREELY GIVEN.

A long time ago I was looking at a candle flame in a dark room when suddenly the wick which was almost burned away to a kind of lumpy stump turned into the figure of an old man, carrying a heavy sack on his back, with the flame coming out of his body.   And the words that came to mind were:   "And my burden is light" (from the Messiah).   It struck me that that was a true statement about our very lives.   We live in the body, and eat so as to fuel the body, but as we live we express our lives and our beings as a kind of light and, in doing so, are very lives are 'consumed'.  

Life, itself, carries it's own 'costs', inevitable 'costs'.   We are consumed in bearing the very light that informs our being.   Without that light, we go down to death.   We have to come up with out own "10 Reasons".   Years ago I did present the 'basic income' idea to an 'economics forum' - oh boy!   Was it ever knocked back - and the reasons given?   The first one was 'inflationary effect' and the 2nd one was "we don't want to encourage lazy people".  

The 'inflation' argument is a joke.   Worst case inflation was probably the Weimer Republic (wheelbarrows of money for a loaf of bread!) BUT the problem wasn't the money as such, but the fact that the war had prevented farming, harvest, etc - all the money in the world won't buy bread if there AIN'T ANY.   War was the basic problem.   Just as 'climate change' (AND WAR) may be the problem of 'supply' we might have to confront (or, that Africa is itself confronting even as I write).  

As to 'lazy' -- what's worse?   a nation of slobs, or a nation of slaves? Besides, most people aren't 'lazy' - they might just make difficult slaves!   Point is, we just don't know.   Just as we don't really know the possible 'downsides' of an Earth freed from the "WAR" virus. But we CAN imagine what might be the consequences of a 'growth' in the WAR agenda.   Which is worse...?   A bunch of peaceful slobs OR...??? Personally, as long as I have a garden to potter in undisturbed, I am not likely to be disturbed by any peaceful slob(s).   But, gas, poisons - no, no escape from those in my quiet garden.   Basic Income is a MEANS of defining 'human rights', of advocating a 'human first' political agenda, a LIFE agenda for all peoples of earth, now and in the future.

  Oh dear!   I do seem to be 'blogging' on!   And using YOUR SITE at that...! Still, all the 10 Reasons cited - well, reflect a world of value that I've been trying to 'think out of' - trying to work out ways to 'bypass' all the authorative institutions and their honourable representative.   I have been 'poor' all my life, yet...I could understand 'the burden of light' that even the poor might bear.   So it is that I count myself as 'rich', in something more precious than gold or a botox injection or a flash car.   And I could never be a Thatcher, proclaiming tht there was 'no such thing as Society'.

  It's a very curious world (but, even as I write so comfortably - there is Dafur...and no comfort in that, and no personal means to put an end to it. It isn't just Basic Income for us - such an income could be created and distributed worldwide.   And SHOULD BE.   The ruling economic paradigms need to be turned around.   No one has to lose anything they currently 'have', as individuals.   It's not a french Revolution solution.   All the developed nations with their access not only to money but also to the means of influencing their societies - they have disowned their own people.   They are corrupt. Their game plan is 'terminal'.   Chavaz is possibly the only one actually thinking of 'humanity' in his policies/intentions.   (And, East Timor).   Anyway - thank you for sharing your "10 Tops"   with me - hope you have at least 100 responses like my own!

Let your light burn/shine (it will ANYWAY).   Cheers - Sharon Robertson

Email Sharon Lee Robertson or write to her PO Box 36, Koolunga SA 5464, Australia.

See Sharon's first letter about her idea for a book: FailSafe Humanity, more on the 1% movement in letter #2. or Letter #3