‘An Immodest Proposal’ Informal Question Survey
Do you work? Do you enjoy the work you do? Do you feel your work benefits other people and provides you with a sense of purpose and fulfillment?
Question 1: If you were guaranteed a Universal Basic Income (UBI) of $160.00 per day of self-issued interest-free fluid credit that would pay for your daily basic goods and services (~$40.00 for food and education, ~$40.00 for shelter and housing, ~$40.00 for comprehensive medical care, and ~$40.00 for transportation, communication, and entertainment) would you do the same work you are currently doing for your current wage or would you not work at all?
Question 2: And, if you had the option to earn an additional $160.00 to $320.00 per day (@$20.00 per hour) fixed Universal Prevailing Wage (UPW) of self-issued interest-free fluid credit working up to eight to sixteen hours per day, at whatever vetted job that most suited your ability, skillset and interest, would you?
If you answered “yes” to either or both questions, I have a proposal for you. An immodest one, yes, but sincere.
Introduction
Before you continue reading this blog, I must reveal that I am not an economist, nor a financial advisor, a gambler nor an investing dues-paying member of the Wall Street party. My interest lies in freeing society from the constrictions placed upon caprice and wishful thinking by the dominant economic ideology and embracing the creative imagination of economic innovation. A sanguine sober look at what needs to change in society to move it past the severe economic log jam it is currently experiencing.
I am an artist, by nature and by trade, following my calling as defined by what James Hillman in his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling is my Daimon.
If you are at all interested in reading this blog further look up Daimon and Hillman’s book. I’m not here to do your work for you nor entice or convince you to read what follows as absolute truth. This is your job, so I leave you to it.
The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.’
– ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ By Lewis Carroll (1865)
Many times, every day each person decides an action to elicit an effect, and there are only one of two effects any action is designed to do: maintain the comfortable status quo, or elicit a necessary change to it, most times small and modest, but sometimes bold and immoderate change is needed, a profound and comprehensive renewal, a reordering and reformative restoration.
That change is what An Immodest Proposal seeks to address and outline.
“The problem with you is you think everyone is as nice as you are. They aren’t.”
This was said to me by a dear friend as a warning against being too gullible and unprotected when called upon to deal with the monsters in the world. I appreciated the concern of my friend toward my welfare, but the truth is I believe nearly everyone in the world is as nice as I am, if given access and opportunity.
Feelings may be clouded by fear as response to pain and hurt, but I believe at least 90% of human beings know and understand that doing one nice thing for one person each day is the only value there is in being human. And, of the remaining 10%, the effect of fear-reaction runs across a spectrum of willingness or resistance at performing that one act of kindness each day, reserving the 1% remaining as the realm of the truly damaged; the sociopathic, psychotic, those irreducibly damaged beyond reparation. These are the individuals, for the sake of themselves and the society as a whole, need to be isolated from healthy society and humanely take care of.
My choice of title for this missive is adapted from ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick’ by Dr. Jonathan Swift (1789), a darkly satirical essay that suggests poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children to the elite class as a food source. Using hyperbole, Swift anonymously mocked hostile attitudes towards the poor committed by the Protestant Ascendancy and the British rule of Ireland.
As Swift essayed a satiric “Modest Proposal” toward the darkly absurd, this “Immodest Proposal” is immodest in its attack on the conventions of Laissez-faire “leave them to do it” capitalism which advocates for minimal government intervention in the free market, open competition economies of business.
In this BrentBlog, I will share with you some of my ideas and formulations on how we, as a society, culture and democratic group of local communities, might seek to address the massive incongruity of wealth and concentrated power dominance in our world, as led by the most powerful nation (currently) the United States of America.
Follow as you will or tell me to go to hell and pursue other interests. If you choose to stay, you might find this proposal thought-provoking, inspiring, maddening, ignorant, or merely distasteful, I invite you to experience my personal journey with me.
Until next time, I am immodestly yours.
– Brent E Anderson
