No profit motive. Just doing a job.

Equality of compensation means that any personal profit motive, or ability to satisfy greed, tends to go away. Many who only work for selfish reasons may become unmotivated to contribute up to their potential in a Rich society, and that is their choice, as it is today for many talented and intellectually exceptional people. Just because some people have potential does not mean they are obliged to use it for the good of society, or even for their own good, if they don’t want to. They are at liberty to choose some other job where they contribute only that portion of their abilities they believe is worth what every job pays.

Here is a thought experiment to suggest the anticipated loss of personal greed will not be mourned. Imagine the situation when the topmost person in any enterprise dies, retires, or otherwise vacates the position: will there be anyone available to step up and take pos place? Will there be more than one candidate for the position who thinks pel is ready for the job, and with ideas on how to do it better? I think you know that the answer always seems to be ‘yes, there are lots of people’ who want to be the new boss, and they exist at every such opening at every level of an organization. If, by chance, a new boss cannot be found and the entire enterprise fails for lack of an able replacement, there is no doubt that a competitor will step up and supply what the failed enterprise can no longer produce or deliver, which is just free enterprise in action. New bosses are always found, despite well publicized searches and evaluations of candidates, and as far as I can tell multiple people are always ready and able to step up and fill the position. Some are better than others but that is normal, like any workforce. None of this makes me think that even the topmost person in an enterprise is all that exceptional or deserving of more than I make,

Here’s another thought experiment: imagine a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) or other boss swapping positions with a clerk or lower supervisor while retaining the same pay. Will the CEO swap the control and responsibility and high profile for a more routine and structured job as an important cog in the gears of the enterprise, even for pos same pay and not the clerk’s pay? Will pel be happy in such a position? Will the clerk swap up to the meetings and negotiations and administrative oversight of the CEO, for pos same pay? Probably not for pos current pay, but will pel be tempted if the change includes the CEO’s higher pay? Will the clerk be happy in such a position? My guess is that both of them will prefer to keep their current positions, each performing jobs that are better suited to their personalities and abilities. Richness predicts that equal pay will make almost no difference in who does what in society. Richness will cause very little shifting of executives within and between companies. High-powered people with vision and drive will want to stay where they can guide development and see their ideas succeed. Their political and other business skills will ensure they are not ‘deposed’ just because everyone now makes the same pay. The only difference will be that all citizens are Rich, no matter their contributions to a Rich society.

The major changes expected from Richness are recognizing the importance of the various jobs and categories of work in an enterprise or project, and appreciation of each person’s individual importance as reflected in equality of compensation. Nothing says Equality like equal pay. There are traditional distinctions in work like art vs. craft, or design vs. construction, or management vs. labor, but each division just describes different categories of work within the overall endeavor, and there is no reason for the hours spent for one job to be more ‘valuable’ than the hours spent on another job, because all hours are needed to complete it. A few designers and groups of engineers need armies of skilled and manual labor before a project is completed. A few executives and managers need armies of clerks and financial specialists to keep an enterprise running. Everybody needs an army of data processing and communications specialists. And so on.

To clarify: when I talk about ‘equal value for time expended’ I am talking about take-home pay, the net amount after taxes, deductions, withholdings, etc., for any given amount of time on the job, usually an hour as a typical interval. Your pay for an hour of your life spent on a job is the amount you get to put in the bank, and it will be the same amount as an hour of anyone else’s life spent on their job. A ‘job’ is work done which is of value to someone else (because they pay you), and is thus, in a small way, ultimately of value to the whole of society. A person is paid only for the hours expended on a job. This means that there can be no additional benefits, perks, options, commissions, kickbacks, bonuses, parachutes, dividends, double-dips, etc. to artificially increase someone’s compensation. The point is that everyone’s take-home pay for an hour’s pay is the same, and it is enough so that everyone is Rich.

The justification for equal pay for everyone’s time on the job is because each hour of everyone’s life is to be fully and equally compensated when it is expended in service to others. Any attempt to deny or prevent such equality is an attempt to prevent me from being Rich, and whoever makes the attempt is both my enemy and the enemy of a Rich society.

Thanks for the favor.

That’s the end of introducing equal pay for an hour of work. I thank you for the favor of plowing through it because it took longer than I had hoped, and it was tedious. I truly appreciate your willingness and effort to consider such an idea, and enduring my attempts to make it sound reasonable. If you disagree with the idea of such equality and it is a deal-breaker for you, if you would never accept being Rich because of what Equality means and requires, then I accept that response. I expected that some of you would react that way and that is why I thought it polite to ask the favor of you; so, again – thank you!

If you think that you would be unhappy as an Equal of others within a Rich society, you might consider Richness as nothing but a sort of inversion of the current arrangement, swapping who and how many are happy, with who and how many are not. Now, the vast majority of non-equal, second-class, marginalized, disenfranchised, unhappy Subjects are struggling under the system created and enforced by the power and influence of relatively few Masters, at various levels across many sectors. Richness would swap the situations, becoming a large population of Equals where the majority are assumed to be happy because they are no longer Subjects and are Rich, coexisting with a small segment of dissatisfied and grumpy ex-Masters who are angry at being equals and only as Rich as everyone else.

If you don’t want to continue reading I hope you will still give Richness some further thought: perhaps you can come up with an alternative approach, something that implements Richness but is superior to what you just suffered through. If you do, please let everyone know about it! Everyone should Want To Be Rich, and you should have a huge audience for a better, practical, way to attain it!

Now we continue on, accepting equality of pay for each hour of every person’s life spent on a job as reasonable and necessary. Where we go next extends from such Equality, so things will continue to be a little difficult to accept. Worse, there is the danger that some derived concept may become a new (or another) deal-breaker for you, a conceptual brick wall that stops you dead in your mental progress to being Rich. Now or then, I encourage you to tag along with us, perhaps as an observer, as we continue exploring Richness and its further concepts and ramifications.

Making a living

When equality is extended to all it means that Richness is enjoyed by everyone in the society. Here are some secondary benefits of Richness which stem from equal hourly pay. These benefits kind of ‘sweeten the pot’ and make the idea of Richness more desirable.

We’ll start with the situation where you lose a job by being fired or downsized. It will not be a problem for you, or traumatic in any significant way, because (1) you are Rich, and (2) your next job will pay just as well. There is no stress, fear, or worry associated with a change of jobs. If your employer doesn’t need you, or if you are not acceptable to them, you may be disappointed in not succeeding at the job, but there should be no additional emotional turmoil to affect your life. It is true that every stress in life cannot be totally eliminated, even within a Rich society, but ones like this just disappear.

If you find you are being fired often, you may want to reconsider the kinds of jobs you pursue and find something where you are more successful and appreciated. In a later section we will discover the interesting conditions where being removed from the workforce and having to change jobs is a welcome and supported aspect of a Rich society.

The reverse of this benefit also applies: in the case where you dislike a job and want to quit, you will incur no hardship or economic punishment when you choose to leave. You are Rich, so you do not need, nor can you be forced, to work at an overly stressful or dissatisfying or abusive job, or work in a dangerous or hostile environment without adequate safety precautions. There is no coercion to remain because any other job you find pays just as well. Being Rich means that you have the freedom to quit without hardship of any kind. Currently, every hardship you must endure when you quit (or are let go) makes you a Subject to the system at large, the system that is your Master, and the hardships are your punishments.

So what happens when employers cannot ‘force’ people to work for them? If the working conditions or the management repels employees then the business will fail for lack of workers. If the business provided a product that is truly important, or is desired by others, then a free economy will motivate someone else to create a new or competing enterprise, and good working conditions will attract employees, and that business will produce whatever is needed and/or desired, and it will flourish.

So what happens when a person quits every job just because pel don’t like to work? Basically, pel will starve. As always: there is no such thing as a free lunch, you will need to work at something where someone is willing to pay you for your time. The number of hours you choose to work will vary depending on your desired lifestyle, but a certain minimum is required to achieve and maintain your Richness, enough to maintain your independence and not be a burden to others. You are not permitted to establish yourself as a type of Master where you can obtain the benefits of society without effort, thus making others your Subjects.

Theoretically there is no restriction on how you can make a living, so if you can find a way to generate an income with no effort and/or no discernible value to anyone else, it is not necessarily prohibited. As the derogatory saying observes, ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’, and if you can convince people to give you money for nothing substantial in return, fine. Some people will always prefer to rip others off instead of doing honest and useful work. Such people prey on the gullible and fantasy-prone, so a primary goal of education is to provide the potential suckers with the information and skills they need to recognize the tactics, to ignore the bait, and reduce the predator’s ability to attract and ensnare them. The concept of ‘stealing’ might extended to promoting and selling something which has been demonstrated to not possibly work, or which does not exist. Even today ‘theft by deception’ is a valid legal charge in some locales.

So it is assumed that some people will be able to obtain money from others for doing nothing, or almost nothing, and for those of us who are offended by such scammers and racketeers, Richness imposes an economic limitation on them that follows reasonably from equal pay for hours spent. There is an absolute maximum number of hours per week that can possibly be worked, which means that there is a maximum limit to the amount of money that a person can make during any typical accounting period. Accounting and enforcement of such upper limits are considered later, but it must be obvious: charismatic orators and all others whose skill is emotional manipulation, and who inspire people to throw money at them, are simply prevented from keeping the excess income they acquire beyond the hours it is possible to work at it. So if you can persuade someone to pay you for doing nothing, or persuade multiple people to pay you multiple times for any given hour of your life, then your accumulated pay from the suckers will eventually be limited by the maximum possible physical hours a person can work, and your income will top out accordingly.

Many people working useful jobs are expected to reach maximum hours as well, like farmers and others whose normal work requires long hours throughout most of the year; sports athletes and other performers in the entertainment businesses; politicians, entrepreneurs, executives, all those people whose lives are synonymous with their jobs and who spend almost every waking hour training for, preparing for, or performing their job. Also expected are unusual but temporary efforts that require maximum hours, like being involved in a major project that needs to be completed by a looming deadline, or providing disaster relief during emergencies. The concept of maximum hours is elaborated later, with simple adjustments to such situations to spread out their excess hours over time.

A different side effect of equal pay for hours of work is the elimination of tipping for services. By definition, everyone makes the same as you do for their hours on the job, so additional compensation for any reason is not allowed. Quality of service will not degrade because, as noted above, a manager will have no qualms about firing a person who does not provide the desired performance on the job. If, as a customer, you are dissatisfied with the service, if your complaints and feedback to management are not heeded, then you will go elsewhere, and the business will either fail or will cater to people who are satisfied with the level of service provided. Personally, I think attentive and efficient service is a fun thing for everyone involved, and it will continue to be so in a Rich society.

These few specific examples suggest the kinds of changes that will occur to a society, perhaps to a culture, when equality of pay is applied to everyone.

Business and Competition

The Constitution seems to declare its purpose as supporting community goals immediately, in the preamble: “We the People… in Order to form a more perfect Union… provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare… to ourselves and our Posterity…”. Unfortunately the USA did not adhere to this overly general goal. Our history is full of huge plantations and ranches, big industry, robber barons, manifest destiny, might running roughshod over any sense of right, monopolies maximizing their profit by any means possible including child and slave labor, even supposed competitors secretly agreeing to fix prices and engaging in other unethical and unfair practices, etc. Worse, we embraced the class separation of Masters and Subjects imported from our parlands. [par = generic mother/father, from parent] There was no revolution against greed and acquiring wealth at the expense of friends and neighbors, no Declaration of Equality for everyone to demand, and cutthroat competition was allowed to run rampant throughout our history.

It is argued that competition is a requirement for, even the foundation of, a healthy – what? The economy, perhaps, but is it? Businesspals and analysts often assert their strongly held opinions, like ‘competition is the economic foundation of our country’s prosperity’ but it is never demonstrated to be true, never actually justified. Similar statements are just as nebulous and unsupported, like ‘it’s competition that motivates a business to succeed’ without mentioning the failure of over half of new businesses across all sectors, each of which almost certainly was competing its heart out. So we’ll replace ‘competition’ with a simple description of what is really being described: ‘having many providers of a single product or service’. Then ‘competition’ is reduced to the trivial observation that some businesses in the same sector will fail because they didn’t attract and retain enough customers to succeed, where other businesses in the same sector will attract and retain customers. Competition is only saying that some will succeed and some will fail, and it doesn’t even explain the possible reasons. Perhaps it is intended to describe the general business environment, wherein some will succeed and some will fail – again, a trivial observation.

Some think the value of competition comes from how it drives science and discoveries, technology and engineering progress. The fact that there are multiple businesses in the same field does not, by itself, explain progress, nor the creation of new products and services and markets. The only way that businesses speed the normal process of discoveries and improvements is when they are willing to pay for more scientists and engineers and equipment, and provide them the time and resources to experiment and make discoveries, or engineer some new product. What is hypocritical about such efforts is the goal of obtaining a patent that provides exclusive use of what the patent covers, that is, protection from competition.

Such protections are the goal of every business, eventually to become a monopoly, often by the employment of underhanded practices to stifle competition. There is one valid observation about being the winner of such a contest in a non-Rich society: a monopoly has no incentive to improve anything, except to lower expenses and raise prices and satisfy greed. There is a conflict of interests for the concept of competition: it is good for businesses, but the goal of each business is to put the other ones out of business and become a monopoly, thereby squashing competition. That progression has happened so often that laws have been enacted to make monopolies and other unfair business practices illegal. Most of those were practiced by the businesses that were already the biggest and most powerful in their sectors.

Richness allows any monopoly to evolve. It allows any business, monopoly or not, to raise prices and gouge the public, it’s just that equality of pay for one’s time applies to everyone in the company, and to the business itself, preventing excess income from being retained. Monopolies might have the advantage of economies of scale and be able to produce huge amounts of high quality goods and services just as well as a bunch of smaller, competing, companies. If a monopoly can charge honest prices for its products and services, and remain nimble and adaptable to new technology or other progress, and generate enough quantity with the best possible quality to satisfy demand, then multiple smaller companies won’t be able to do any better. If it fails because of obvious wastage, or inability to incorporate new (cheaper and better) technology, then competitors will arise in response. Competitors may arise for other reasons as well, because Richness embodies a free market.

It is expected that the lack of increased rewards resulting from equality will allow worthwhile motivations to drive progress and growth, instead of greed and Mastership. Perhaps a society just needs to provide the ability for anyone to easily start a business without restriction, including protection from unfair business practices by large existing businesses, enforcement of the same set of rules for everyone who participates, equal access to resources, and otherwise create the proverbial level playing field. Such is a goal of a Rich society.

Summary

We got here by assuming, for the sake of discussion, that we Want To Be Rich. Rich means abundance, and it is applied to everyone, to every ‘you’. The root concept of ‘abundance’ was extended beyond simple physical ‘amount’ to include as much of everything else as possible, and is expressed as Freedom & Equality. Freedom & Equality was then extended to three sub-concepts: Get What You Want; First Come, First Served; and the Equality of each person’s time. Each of these three topics were extended to derive and present additional concepts, and basic goals, of Richness.

I do not see how you can be Rich without all of these basic concepts and goals instituted and supported by a Rich society.

Government and the economy

Prerequisites

Do not start reading the book from here. If you are looking for the ‘bottom line’ to see what is being proposed, that was earlier: you need to start at the beginning in order to learn it. The justification for what follows has already been presented and is accepted for the sake of discussion. From here on we are extending that foundation to describe a government and economy that supports it. That prerequisite information is essential because if you don’t know the justification, whether you agree with it or not, you will just become confused and will misinterpret what you think is being presented, from here to the end of the book. You will think that what follows is crazy.

If someone references segments of what follows out of sequence and out of context (that is, not relating it to, nor supporting it with, all that has come before), then that person is misrepresenting the subject, pel is lying to you, pel is deceitfully manipulating you, and pel is despicable for doing so. If pel appears to be shocked by the sensational effrontery of what pel selected from anything that follows, without tracing it’s justification or it’s context, then pel is trying to induce and provoke some kind of emotional reflexive revulsion from you as a response to what pel says is being presented herein.

I hope that little rant is not relevant to you, dear reader, because I assume you are exposing yourself to the ideas and concepts and goals of Richness without prior interpretation, or mis-interpretation, by someone else. I expect your intent is to learn about it and maybe understand it better, and you started at the beginning. Along the same lines, if you have read up to this point and want to discuss something that follows with your friends, make sure that they, too, have read from the beginning and that you both have a common understanding of the prior content, even if you don’t agree with it.

Assertion of originality

Anyone who interprets anything herein, meaning this entire book, as a rehash or repackaging of some existing and reviled “ism” is incorrect, despite any superficial similarities pel may think are equivalent.

To the best of my knowledge, Richness as the basis for a society is my idea only, and is my offering to my countrypals. Many of its component concepts have been presented elsewhere by others, in different forms and for different reasons, and any such correlations are because ‘great minds think alike’ on some things. I unconditionally disclaim any association with any other group, simply because I have never heard of anything else significantly similar to Richness, at least as something known by an interested average person like myself. Do not find a single small similarity with something else and attempt to tar Richness with the same brush used to discredit the other thing. You would have to match more than half of what is presented herein with your other thing before Richness could be considered the equivalent or offshoot or a derivation of it. If you have a complaint or disagreement with anything about Richness, address Richness directly.

I am adamant about this because Richness is the result of my efforts, and only my efforts, and I want all the credit. I am greatly upset that I had to be the one to do this, I am disappointed that I never heard of anyone else promoting such a goal and guide for society, and I am disheartened that someone else who has been properly educated and is intelligent didn’t write it decades ago. Why did I, a high school graduate with some junior college but no degree or certificate, and who is not a writer or communicator of any kind, have to spend the years it took to slowly develop these ideas and hammer them into moderate coherence. Perhaps I am holding a grudge and need to let it go, but I did not like writing this and I don’t want anyone saying that this derives from, or is based on, or is a modification of, anything else.

If it turns out that you don’t like what Richness means, or what it seems to require of citizens, or my lack of education being obvious and pitiful, then I hope you are smarter than me and will offer a superior approach for achieving Richness that will improve or replace what is offered here. The only thing you need to do is explain how our common Want To Be Rich can be satisfied.

Introduction

We will continue to expand and extend the basic concepts of Richness to create additional goals, just as we have been doing, although they weren’t always stated as such. Up to this point the concepts have been the same as goals. For example, extending the concept of Get What You Want led to a Rich concept of privacy as a goal, and Wanting to have fun when not at work having no repercussions no matter who knows about it, as another goal. As we continue, new goals will extend from those fundamental concepts, and also from the ‘lessons of life’. Additional concepts and goals should be obvious extrapolations from one or more of these. We will confront, analyze, and overcome the aforementioned failures of our current society to create Richness.

What will not happen is extensive explanation. I need to introduce a bunch of attributes and address some obvious questions so we can get on to Part Two. They may appear as pronouncements, and be a little scattered, and be described with tortured analogies, but they form the armature upon which Richness will bulk up, shape, and add detail later.

The intent is to design and describe some basics of a government and an economic system that will support a Rich society. The concepts and goals will serve as something like a ‘requirements specification’ and a ‘functional specification’, which should define Richness more clearly. We must describe what a Rich government and economic system needs, and how they must behave. Each concept and goal clarifies just what it means to be Rich and to live in a Rich society.

These are not implementation specifications – those will be addressed in Part Two.

Government is the final authority of any society

Government is an enforcing tyranny

By self-definition, nothing trumps the self-asserted authority, self-created laws, and self-appointed sovereignty specified by the government of a society. There is no higher authority, all citizens live under its management, and it controls the military which, when needed, is used to protect and maintain the government. Unfortunately there is no requirement for a government to be fair or considerate or anything, it is simply and overwhelmingly the legal implementation of ‘might makes right’, an ultimate example of that Lesson of Life, and perhaps an institutionalized expression of human nature.

Governments have been founded on many concepts. Some are intended to keep a minority of enfranchised people in power, whereupon that voting ‘majority’ comprises a tyranny, which has been used in the past to legalize slavery and other abominations. Some governments are based on a philosophy or economic system, like communism or fascism. Governments relying on imagined higher ideals, like a religion, seems like a good basis except that everyone needs to conform to its dogmas down to oppressive (and usually pointless) details. Many governments are based on, or combined with, the military which gains power and maintains control with superior weaponry and force against its own citizens, just like the good old days.

Some governments justify the power they vest in themselves as nothing more than the structure needed to provide value to its people. For example, you will pay taxes and the government will maintain a military force (palled by eligible taxpayers [palled = genderless “manned”]) so as to protect both them and the government against external governments, thus preserving their government’s right to levy taxes. The people of any society have always had such responsibilities imposed on them by the government. Even representative governments maintain the requirement for taxes and military service and certain minimum acceptable social behaviors.

Basically, the government can stack the deck however it sees fit, and ultimately backs up its claims of authority with force of arms. As long as the government has control of the superior military force then it will survive, including against the will of its people. Every government locates, trains, and arms a large number of brutal males and convinces them that defense of the current government is both justified and essential. It manages to convince a majority of influential citizens that maintaining the status quo by force, internal and external, is the essence of patriotism, despite how repressive and detrimental the government may be to the vast majority of its people. The status and living conditions of the average person never seems to be a high priority for any government.

Lest there be any doubt, the government for a Rich society will operate with the same iron hand, but only because the people have created a founding document that specifies the implementation and maintenance of a Rich society. The document enumerates administrative positions that some of your friends and neighbors will hold and exercise, to enforce the goals of the founding document which they are tasked to attain and maintain. Neither the ‘government’ nor the ‘state’ will define it’s own authority, create laws, or appoint itself as sovereign of any kind. Nevertheless, the authority of the founding document which they administer is absolute, which is the authority to implement and maintain a Rich society, as created and specified by the members of that society.

This section discusses the primary concepts that support a Rich society, most of which suppress predatory and manipulative human nature, including some practices that are currently both socially acceptable and legal. Since Richness requires an unprecedented reduction of the deleterious behavior of Human Nature, enforcement of Richness will be traumatic, harrowing, and brutal to those who choose to rebel against the personal limitations that are needed to provide Richness for everyone. That is, their attempts to keep some current unrestricted Freedoms will be legally restrained and curtailed by Equality. Because of this, Richness may prove to be the most divisive and society-disrupting idea yet proposed in the already tumultuous history of civilizations.

A Rich government must be secular

Most nations are already secular so this should be an easy goal to meet. Unfortunately, as this is being written, the USA is struggling with religion-based legislation threatening to impose Christian ‘values’ in all aspects of our society, replacing the intended secularism of the founding pals. Many other governments may be struggling to maintain their secular status in the face of continued onslaughts by various religions, each one clamoring for their dogmas, creeds, canons, doctrines, tenets, and interpretation of the words of their deity to be made into the law of the land. To forever terminate such attempts it is necessary to justify and explain why a secular government, and only a secular government, is practical or possible for a Rich society.

Lest there be any questions or doubts: Richness enforces freedom of religion. Anyone may practice any religion they choose, within the limitations of Richness, because everyone is Rich, Free & Equal, and thus empowered to Get What They Want. Freedom & Equality, by definition, prevents any concept of governmental Thought Police to exist so you may live out the fantasies and realities of your life as you choose. But Freedom & Equality does restrict the Thought Police of your group from any influence outside of the people in your group. (Incidentally, it also requires that all members of your group are on record as willingly accepting the authority of both the group and its Thought Police, and provides a means of escape from the group for any member who does not accept those authorities, for any reason.)

Because the general goal of Richness is abundance for everyone, it is required to prevent religious traditions and dogmas from legalizing their ideals of poverty, abstinence, penance, adulation, and (for some) their self-stated and possibly self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, disaster, Armageddon, etc. upon infidels, and possibly upon everyone. Anyone who attempts to cause earthly disaster based on their faith, anyone who forcibly attempts to thwart the goals and laws of a Rich society, are subject to prosecution and the legal consequences of such actions, just as today for any government.

Enforcing maximum Freedom of religion results in a secular government completely isolated from religions, because government recognizes that agreement of the various religious dogmas is not possible. The government is aware that religions cannot determine between themselves which is the One True Religion, even among those which believe in a single god, because it is impossible to tell the difference between the One True religion and any of the false ones.

Worse, unless the One True religion is known, anyone can hold up a holy book and declare “What God is really telling us is ______” or without a book, declare “God told me, personally, directly, and unequivocally, that ______”! Just that quickly and easily a new and competing religion may be created, with just as much basis in reality as any other, with an authoritative message directly from a deity just a valid as any other. The creation of ever-newer religions, cults, sects, factions, offshoots, schisms, denominations, reformations,  revelations, and inspirations, has been continuous throughout history and persists to this day.

A Rich government knows that no religion has ever managed to establish Richness after centuries, even millennia, of power, influence, and opportunity to do so, and there is no evidence that it ever would. Every religion’s sole approach is “If only everyone would do what we say” then society would be perfect, and such an approach is the antitheses of Freedom & Equality and of Richness. Therefore religion has no say in governmental affairs, despite their claims that it has served as a guide to higher ideals, or provides the basis for ‘successful’ societies, or whatever else it tries to take credit for.

Attempting to base Government on religion

There must be One True Religion

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that Richness, with a secular government that encourages and enforces freedom of religion, based on the concepts of Freedom & Equality and associated goals, is not an adequate basis for government. Let us also assume that the only other valid basis for society is a religion.

As I understand it, the reason a government should heed the advice proffered by a religion is their claim of access to a divine absolute authority whose dogmas need to be followed and made manifest on the earth. Since there are hundreds of religions with competing and contradictory rules and laws to be followed, and a government must be certain that it chooses the correct one, it needs to determine which is the One True Religion. Before attempting that, government needs to explain why there must be only One True Religion, otherwise they can simply skip the whole issue, ignore all religions entirely, and let Richness determine the goals of society.

Here is the issue: If there is not One True Religion then you are left with two other options, each of which prevents a government from taking religion seriously.

1)      All religions are equally valid and true

 This option asserts that no religion has any more claim to divine authority as a guide for government than any other religion. Neither may any religion complain about a government enacting legislation based on some other religion, because you accept that their authority is equally as good and justified as yours. You trivialize the dogmas of all religions, including yours, into interchangeable and useless advice that might as well be from different feel-good self-help gurus.

Embarrassingly, you admit that yours is not the One True Religion and thus you have no real reason for a government to consider your input. You also presume to speak for every other religion by denying them the claim of being the One True Religion, which surely one of them will have the ‘courage of their convictions’ to claim, and not be reduced (by you) to a random choice among a sea of equivalently invalid options.

If there is not One True Religion then any fool can start a new religion, belief, or cult at any time and have just as much claim to religious truth and divine authority as any other religion, ancient or otherwise. Anyone who believes their personal and deeply held faith and religious experience has no more value to others than the spontaneous, superficial, and capricious claims of a new religious ‘authority’, suggests that both are so arbitrary and flimsy that neither of them can be seriously considered as a justifiable basis for a government.

2)      No religion is true

This is the remaining option, if there is not One True Religion. This option admits no religion has any justifiable authority over people, and thus no place in legislative decisions. The newer religions are just as false as older ones. None have access to the divine authority on which to base a government.

Determining the One True Religion

In the interests of avoiding physical confrontations between religions, and offering an alternative to ‘might makes right’ in policies to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of people, I propose the following standard single-elimination tournament as a way to weed out the false religions and determine the One True Religion. It is a contest where each one will try to convince other religions that it is the One True Religion, and try to accept some other religion as the One True Religion. Each contender will ask and answer questions of each other for a limited time and reach a conclusion. It shouldn’t take very long to accomplish, and certainly all religions will want to participate, since any religion that does not participate must exclude itself from any claim of divine representation, and from being the basis for a government. Generously, a religion is not required to have the deity unambiguously manifest itself on the earth.

The criteria

The final condition of each contest will be determined by the contestants. The following are not so much hurdles to be jumped, but attributes that will help each religion determine which is the One True Religion, and determine a contest result. There are only three attributes the One True Religion needs to possess.

1)      The One True Religion must be knowable to people

 This does not mean someone accepts what they claim, only that their claims are knowable to others. If the religion is so secret that it can’t be known to those outside of it, or if it claims to harden the hearts of everyone who does not come desperately seeking it, then that religion isolates itself out of competition because it is, for practical purposes, hidden to the point of nonexistence and uselessness in human affairs, especially as a guide for government. Would it even try to compete?

2)      The One True Religion must be plausible.

This may be difficult for a religion to satisfy. It means that the documents, history, talismans, artifacts, scriptures, relics, etc. are made available for inspection and verification that they exist and that they may be imagined to be what they are claimed to be. If such exposure to, and investigation of, the foundational justifications of a religion do not convince others of the validity of their claims then that religion cannot be the One True Religion because it is not believable. Typical implausabilities include internal contradictions within and between holy books and sacred practices and faithful traditions, and information or descriptions that are verifiably known to be false.

If a religion is deemed implausible by others then the religion may not use that rejection as ‘evidence’ that it really is the One True Religion because “it is written (or whatever) that the deity hardens the heart (or whatever) of some people and they will be forever lost” or something similar. That claim is admission of being unconvincing and unbelievable, and the religion using that argument fails (correctly) as the One True Religion.

3)      The One True Religion must be convincing.

This is the step beyond being believable, beyond being seen as possibly true, where it becomes overwhelmingly obvious as the One True Religion, where it speaks directly to the hearts and minds, perhaps the very souls, of everyone who learns about it. If it requires only faith then that faith will blossom uncontrollably in the questioners, compelling them to understand and accept it as the One True Religion, and such a revelation will certainly inspire instant conversion.

If it cannot do this reliably then it is indistinguishable from any other false religion, including those that require faith. If a religion cannot convince people of its validity and veracity, if it is too weak and ineffectual to inspire belief and recognition as the One True Religion, if it cannot inspire faith, then it makes no difference if it really is the One True Religion or not. If it cannot compel people to accept it as the true teachings and authoritative guidance of the supreme master of all creation, then it remains as just another religion that cannot convince anyone of anything, including to use it as a basis for government.

The tournament

The contenders for the One True Religion must be the head of each religion, the leader, backed by a small team if desired. Their validity must not be in question so that, when convinced and compelled by the One True Religion, they possess the authority to inform their followers that their faith was wrong and that the One True Religion will soon be obvious, at which time they will help their rudderless followers with conversion to the One True Religion.

Certain tactics or arguments disqualify a religion from the contest, because it identifies a false religion. For example, a person that asserts no one can understand the truth of pos religion without faith in it or its deity, is a requirement that their opponent accept the truth of pos religion (with faith) before pel is willing to defend or discuss it. Such refusal to engage in the contest, by insisting that their opponent admit defeat before starting, is a failure to meet the criteria that identifies the One True Religion. If both contestants use it then both are eliminated.

As in any such tournament there are many individual contests between two religions, and the winners advance for their next contest with one of the other current winners. At the end only the One True Religion will remain.

For each contest between two religions there are three possible outcomes:

1)      One admits they are wrong because they are convinced and compelled by the other that it is the One True Religion. The one that is wrong is out of the tournament and waits for the final contest(s) to agree with pos recognition of  the One True Religion. This will be an easy set of contests for the One True Religion to win.

2)      Both insist they are right but neither can convince nor compel the other, in which case both are eliminated. Mutual losses are expected to be the conclusion of most contests, because only one contest will be with the One True Religion.

3)      Both are convinced they are wrong and the other is the One True Religion: they are both eliminated since each has denied theirs as the One True Religion, despite their acceptance of the other’s (self-admittedly false) religion. This is expected to never happen.

The tournament continues until the single winner is triumphant as the One True Religion.

Here are some questions to stimulate some thought experiments on the tournament. Should the various sects of a single religion compete among themselves first, so the best and most likely One Truest Religion of Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Christianity, Catholicism, etc. is determined first before competing across religions? If initial contests are across religions, will the ones most closely related to the One True Religion win over competing religions, so later contents are between sects of the same religion? How many rounds before the One True Religion is found? Is it reasonable to expect a decision in only one contest, because all of them will eliminate themselves except for the One True Religion? What is a reasonable amount of time needed for any religion to satisfy the winning criteria: hours, days? Certainly not weeks – is it convincing or not? Do you imagine that the contestants will be exclusively male, and old? Will the actual leader of a religion send an assistant instead, so if they lose the competition the leader can say they did it wrong, and their religion is still valid? Will people bet on the outcome? Will they dare?

After the tournament has been won

If the One True Religion is revealed, what a great result from a simple, interesting, tournament! I wonder if a government based on the winning dogmas and creeds would create a heaven on earth, and if it would resemble a Rich society? We’ll probably never know because I am certain that no religion will even consider a situation where they could be shown to be false (by virtue of their being unable to convince, let alone compel, other adults), and not one religion will stand up and take the idea of a tournament slightly seriously because of that.

So the tournament is nothing but a thought experiment, which in itself justifies a different conclusion: that religions have nothing to offer a government or a society, and no acceptable authority from which to claim any influence. We are free to proceed with our discussion of a secular society that permits freedom of all religions (within the limitations of Richness) by a government that ignores the advice of all religions.

Can adults choose to be not-Rich?

For a government promoting Richness, the essential question is: can some people choose not to be Rich, to voluntarily choose poverty, repression, or willingly relinquish Freedom & Equality? The short answer is: yes, but there are limitations. For example, no one may voluntarily choose to become a slave, even to provide products so the majority of society can live in splendor, helping to provide ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Neither may a willing and pious human volunteer ponself to be sacrificed, even to ensure the survival of the earth. Any person’s desire to behave below minimum standards would probably be cited as evidence of pos inability to make good decisions for ponself.

If you are taking a test to become a Competent Adult and answer that you should make yourself a Subject of any sort to any other person, that answer is probably a deal-killer and you will fail your bid for self-reliance and independence as an Equal member of society. If you have been raised with such a deficiency of self-worth, and an excess of animalistic subservience (that is, groveling before a top dog) then such a response would be evidence of society’s failure with your education, personality development, and access to professional help.

You may sacrifice your life as much as you choose, perhaps to some ideal, which is different from being someone’s Subject and doing something for your Master, but you must be a Competent Adult with the knowledge and ability to choose Richness again whenever you finish your work, or change your mind. You are Free to decline the goals of Richness, perhaps to live as a feral mountain pal. Just as dramatic would be adults who decline the verified practices and treatments of diet and exercise that are demonstrated to support personal health and emotional happiness. Adults may starve themselves on unhealthy diets, indulge in risky vices, participate in dangerous activates, refuse both safe and effective medical treatments (which do not adversely affect others), and may abuse themselves as desired in any number of other ways, accelerating their physical and mental decline and hastening an early death, as they Want.

Those who choose to live and/or behave in such ways need only assure the society that their choice is truly voluntary and unforced. As they degenerate they may become incompetent, but that is a known effect of their known choices. People choosing to slowly dissipate and disintegrate will need to legally commit to refusing interference by various government resources whose mandate is to insure Richness, permitting themselves to suffer and die as desired. Their non-Rich status will need to be reviewed or re-registered regularly so they can be reminded that they are free to be Rich whenever they choose, and may cancel their prior ‘commitment’ at any time. The review also insures they are not being prevented by others from their option to be Rich, and to verify they are not being restrained by family, friends, historic culture, religious dogma, or whatever. As long as they were once willing and informed, and remain committed to their choice, they are free to disintegrate even into mental derangement and physical agony and preventable death, monitored by those who support their choice.

Here’s a less drastic example of rejecting some or all of Richness. It is possible that women looking through slits in burkas can see other women walking in whatever they choose, strong and happy, unmolested and equal to others around them, yet remain unwilling to join them. It’s possible that they really don’t want to accomplish anything outside of the home, or have fun with others, or express themselves, or learn more about anything. The problem is that such a choice appears the same as someone who is subjugated as a result of training, indoctrination, or coercion. This means, again, people who refuse Richness will need to be certified as such, with recurring recertification to look for evidence of involuntary restraint, or forced brainwashing, and may include an evaluation by mental health professionals or psychiatrists. Such routine checks verify that everything is going as the person wants, but doubles as an opportunity for a person who has changed pos mind to safely escape.

Some of these anti-Rich examples fall into the category of having the freedom to ruin your life as you choose. Not all choices to reject Richness are bad, and most are acceptable and encouraged, because the intent is for everyone to Get What They Want.

Can children be not-Rich?

The short answer is: no. Children must be raised Richly and with all of the advantages of Richness, perhaps in outright opposition to parental choices and lifestyle which may be less than a child’s Rich minimums.

Adults may do what they choose, but children generally may not, even today. As a child grows and matures pos education constantly provides pel with age-appropriate choices and information. Increasing maturity provides additional experiences and rights and responsibilities, allowing personal choices to be expressed without restraint whenever possible, culminating in graduation to Competent Adulthood with full Freedom & Equality. During those school years parents may raise their children according to their values during non-school hours, and any indoctrination is acceptable, especially cultural values learned by immersion in home life, but the teaching techniques must fall within the limitations of a Rich society. Nothing prevents parents from teaching their children as they see fit, but a concurrent Rich public education is mandated.

When a child graduates as a Competent Adult pel will make pos own choices, knowing that pel is forever after free and able to change pos choices whenever desired. Pos choice may very well reflect the belief system of pos parents, and that choice is acceptable, the same as any other choice pel may make.

Attributes of a Rich government

Any government can implement Richness

Any existing government may enact legislation to create and maintain a Rich society by eliminating all of the existing laws that prevent Richness and enacting the new legislation that is required for Richness, but it’s more efficient to make a clean break and start fresh with only what is needed. For a monarchy or a tyranny the conversion to a Rich society is easy: just decree it. I admit this is unlikely because such a monomaniacal holder of absolute power will need to be astoundingly altruistic to relinquish such a position in order to make everyone Equal, including ponself, but it is a possibility.

A secular government isn’t actually a prerequisite for a Rich society, it is more of an inescapable result, even when starting with a theocracy. When Rich legislation is implemented and everyone is free to follow their religious faith but no laws are based on any religion, you end up with something identical to a secular government no matter what you continue to call it.

Converting to Richness has no issue with retaining centuries of previous history, even with a tradition of royalty and hierarchies of Masters, as long it is just for fun, since actual Mastership is not permitted in a Rich society, especially in its government. Perhaps simply relabeling the job of King or Queen or God’s Tyrant to that of a ‘public embodiment’ or ‘living symbol’ of the society, or the nation, would work. It could even remain hereditary, especially if the real work of administration is done by someone else, like a prime minister. It’s fun to maintain gaudy traditions as reminders of the good parts of the bad old days, accepting and acknowledging the history and continuity of your nation and culture. Otherwise there can be no lifetime appointments or elections to governmental office, because a lifetime of work is not the definition of Richness.

If an existing government is based on elected representatives then it cannot adopt Richness unless the majority of the population wants it, at which point the ‘tyranny of the majority’ holds sway and is able to force every else to become Rich, Free & Equal, and able to Get What They Want, whether they like it or not.

No leaders

Modifying an existing government into one that supports a Rich society is only the first step. No matter where things start from, or how it happens, as soon as a Rich society is instituted the historical roles and ways of performing top-level government jobs changes drastically, because all officials, at all levels, have the same job: maintain and enforce Freedom & Equality of the individual, not using the power and influence of the government to control its constituents. The government wields its iron hand to enforce the founding document which defines Richness, creating and maintaining the Rich society that we, the people, Want. That makes every official an accountable administrator and not a ‘leader’.

When you are Rich, free to do what you want, and to Get What You Want, why would you need a leader? What does Equality mean? Personally, to adapt a famous assertion, I don’t want no stinking leader. I am offended by anyone who proclaims themselves as a paragon or purveyor of leadership, hope, change, improvement, fundamentals, liberty, or anything that is not actual Richness. All I need (and Want) is a capable administrator who will help make me and my society Rich. I don’t need to hear “I am up to the challenge of [whatever]”, because that’s a basic requirement for the job. I expect them to be competent, well-trained and prepared, educated and knowledgeable, exceptionally skilled and possessing the personality for the job – just like everyone else doing their job, and for the same pay per hour on the job as anyone else.

I don’t want administrators to propose or impose their brand of ‘public policy’; their only policy is to implement Richness. I want my government to eliminate as much personal decision on their part as possible, and eliminate their need to pander to portions of their electorate so they can get re-elected. Of course administrators will have decisions to make, like choosing competing offers as different people propose various uses for land, designs for monuments, zonings, etc. An administrator will still have a committee do an evaluation so that when things go wrong the administrator can justify that, based on the information available at the time, pos decision was the correct one.

Despite such intended restrictions I am sure administrators will manage to gather power and factions around them, to enlarge their sphere of influence, to intrude their personal choices and preferences on decisions, to favor some people or groups over others, and any number of other ploys in their irritatingly persistent attempts to be some kind of a Master, somehow. They will engage in all of those kinds of things that requires, literally, our eternal vigilance.

Administrators may need to change at intervals, by election if desired, not so much as a new broom sweeping clean or implementing the newest radical improvement in procedures, but as new eyes auditing and evaluating the recent performance of an office and its continuing service. However, if an administrator keeps pos department’s structures and procedures transparent and understandable to the average pal, and the responsibilities of the office are being performed and satisfied legally and obviously, preferably beyond expected norms, then Richness accepts careers in government, even at the top levels. The only problem is historical, that the longer a person is in the same position the more they aspire to Mastership and require serious oversight and investigations for transparency, honesty, and competent performance. As noted earlier, such investigations can happen very often.

An administrator maintains the function and availability of their department as a utility or service provider for the society. New administrators may improve and optimize procedures, and they will finish ongoing projects begun by the previous administrator (which is not the same thing as the previous ‘administration’ normally referred to in today’s contentious governments), but there is very little ‘leadership’ needed to keep a functioning government department… functioning.

Foreign relations and foreign policy are no different since they are also ongoing relationships with known job requirements. There is no need for policy to change just because a new administrator is in office. Since the goal of a Rich society is to promote Richness for everyone, it should naturally extend to promoting it for everyone else in the world. A Rich society will constantly attempt to eliminate Masters and Subjects, and that should affect foreign policy to some extent. To prevent a Rich government from being hypocritical it might require non-support of dictators and tyrants, and of any who restrict information to their people, and of any who do not want their populace educated, etc. This would be knowingly, if indirectly and without force, attempting to meddle in the affairs of other sovereign political societies, but they remain free to accept or reject our conditions that would spread Richness.

It may also mean that humanitarian aid would not be provided without qualifications, perhaps requiring the recipients to start setting up a society that is able to supply such aid by themselves, to become Rich themselves. By asking for aid they are, in a sense, asking us to be their Master, so we get to command them to change their situation and make themselves Rich, and to free themselves from our despised Mastership of them. Perhaps aid will be offered along with other free resources to help educate their population about their situation and their options. If an offer of aid is refused because it also promotes Richness, then so be it, and their citizen’s suffering is tolerated and accepted, just as it is acceptable for people within a Rich society to refuse Richness and live accordingly.

Later, this will be extended to insist on dealing with people in other societies as if they were living in a Rich society, even if they are not, just to avoid being a Rich hypocritical jerk.

Government is rule keeper and umpire

An analogy for a Rich government is a regulating body for all of the sports that are played by its people. Either they come up with the sport, or the government suggests that people start one. A sport starts out with competitors gathering and playing in a largely unsupervised manner until conflicts arise, and when they spend too much time arguing about the rules, complaining about the playing field, how other players are behaving, etc. then the government is either consulted by, or imposes itself upon, the players and teams in its role of administration. After some discussion among the participants, chaired by the government, they agree on some rules, probably with some additions by the government like safety and environment, whereupon the government becomes the rule keeper for the sport and serves as umpire. The umpire has no stake in the game itself and is impartial, unless biased umpiring is identified.

The role of umpire is the key analogy, and is another reason why ‘leaders’ are deemed unnecessary for a Rich government. The government exists as the resource people utilize in order to insure Richness for themselves. The laws and rules are written or otherwise recorded and available for reference. Rulemaking, by definition and etymology, includes regulation and control, primarily to ensure quality and safety, to prohibit abuse and avoid accidents, to override Human Nature, to identify and penalize cheating and illegal activity, etc., which are familiar functions of most current governments. We are making, in the broadest sense, the actual rules we need  to become and stay Rich, which will be enumerated in a founding document and which government will use to umpire our Rich society.

A Rich government cannot be top-heavy and ‘big’ in terms of directing, controlling, and managing everything, because that is not its role. It must be strong and centralized, accountable for enforcing the rules, and for auditing the performance of the various sports played. The number of people in government jobs is expected to be reasonably large in terms of the percentage of the population simply because it is responsible for so much umpiring and enforcement. Much will be delegated to the States, but they are still part of the government and obliged to support Richness.

The government cannot be overthrown

The governing document will specify that it cannot be overridden by any means. No declaration by any person, nor any legislation, may override or usurp the authority vested in the people by the document, especially the fundamental concepts. It cannot be rescinded, dissolved, terminated, invalidated, or be deemed treasonous or blasphemous by mere declaration of anyone. No one who Wants to be Rich would even try.

A Rich government may be replaced by the due process of law described in the document, which will probably be the same method used to institute Richness, and possibly an improved option if one is devised.

Amendments or modifications to the governing document might be possible, but they will be very limited in scope, and they will be difficult to justify, because a society is either completely Rich, or it is not.

Economic system for Richness

Please prepare your mind again

Just as the earlier discussion of equal pay for an hour of work was an extension of the fundamental concepts of Richness, this section proceeds in the same manner and applies those root concepts to an economic system that supports Richness. This discussion identifies only the facilities and concepts needed for a Rich economy, and leaves until later the details of incorporating them with specific legislation.

Since the current economic system does not create a Rich society it is certain that a Rich approach to the economy will need to be considerably different. This discussion is not intended as an attack on what you are used to, or your lifestyle, or some economic theories that you cherish, or what you may think is ‘the way things should be no matter what’, but it is intended to have you realize that if anything is incompatible with Richness then it must be replaced with something that does provide and support Richness.

So again you may need to give yourself some intellectual distance from the discussion before continuing, some attempt to remain objective and dispassionate. As before, be prepared to just learn and understand what is being suggested, and why. There is no need for insult or immediate mental rebuttal, there’s plenty of time for that later, should you ever bother to give it a second thought. You do not need to agree with anything, you are not making any commitment, so you may very well roll your eyes and guffaw, shaking your head at the hopeless challenge to Human Nature that Richness requires.

If you get to where you cannot stand to read any more about the economics needed for Richness that follows, please jump to the final paragraph for this subject (‘Thanks again’) and read that before continuing with the rest of the book. Just remember these are the concepts that Part Two will be implementing and it will be assumed that you are familiar with them.

Let’s warm up with some easy consequences of equal pay for time on a job. Unions will probably disappear because Richness satisfies Labor’s ideal goal of Equality with management. For salespals, commissions are no longer an incentive (or reward) to do your their correctly, because money earned by everyone is the same, based on hours on the job. It will not be possible for administrators, directors, even owners, to vote themselves pay raises, or options, or bonuses, or profit points, or whatever. Returns on investments, and passive ‘earnings’ become both meaningless and impossible.

Equal pay leads to a variety of changes in employment practices, for example: job safety will remain of high importance, since people may simply refuse to work if they are not safe; unbearable bosses may be identified by high turnover of employees because people may easily quit and work elsewhere in a more hospitable environment; when non-productive employees are identified they may be fired rapidly and without qualms because they are rich and their next job will pay just as well; competitive ladder-climbing may become obsolete because promotion provides no economic advantage, only career preferences, and upper management should be able to identify incompetence and replace them with capable people, assuming managers become more astute than they are now; etc.

Accounting system

Enabling and supporting an economy is a primary purpose of a government. Typically and traditionally, the legislators make laws that create and financially favor a Rich elite, and the legislators are persuaded by the Rich elite to make laws that financially favor them. Such groups form symbiotic relationships so intertwined that, for practical purposes, there is no division between them. Businesses and the government ensure that those who currently gain and retain the most wealth from the society continue to do so. A side effect of a Rich society will be to sever such special relationships.

Richness realizes that an economy is mainly a matter of bookkeeping and accounting, and that makes an economy very flexible and easily changed because of the superficial choices in organizing, categorizing, measuring, and evaluating the ‘value’ of everything. Richness observes that a ‘normal’ accounting method (and thus an economy) is not an accurate reflection of reality because it is not required to use objective measurements of resources and capability to determine economic behavior.

We have all experienced the situation of numbers overriding reality: a society and its economic system have been running along prosperously for years or decades when, with little warning and in a matter of days or weeks, the economy becomes totally dysfunctional, the accounting system shows values that ‘indicate’ people have to be fired, production slowed or halted, people evicted from homes, businesses become unable to pay each other or otherwise stop functioning, invested money is devalued, life savings are erased, etc., and things remain in that condition until the bookkeeping numbers somehow change to begin a slow and painful ‘recovery’.

Please note that before, during, and after the ‘recession’ (or ‘downturn’ or ‘adjustment’ or whatever it is called) the physical reality, the abundance and capacity of the society, did not change: the same land was producing the same desired products or materials; the same people were available to do whatever work was needed; there was no sudden physical shortage of raw materials, or clothes, housing, food, or anything else; nothing real or tangible had changed. Everything real could have continued with the previous level of prosperity except that the bookkeeping had ‘indicated’ that it couldn’t. The reality of actual abundance was denied when the accounting system failed, and that reveals a faulty, unrealistic, and unacceptable economic system. Apparently the non-Rich society could not see, or predict, or prepare for, or care about its possible and probable failure to keep itself  provided with the goods and services it needed and wanted.

The problem is that legislation is in place to legally force everyone to behave and respond as if the economic model were true, even when it doesn’t reflect reality (that is, nothing substantial today is different from yesterday). A failed economic system is not easily ignored, but neither is it easy to modify or improve so that such failures won’t happen again. This is a major reason why it doesn’t much matter which political party is in power: the underlying inaccuracies of the economic model, and the laws that regulate it, are never addressed or changed significantly. Whatever is unjust and unfair about it remains unchanged, and whatever can go wrong again, will go wrong again. This is certainly one big reason why a different economic approach based on reality is necessary for a Rich society.

Economy always works

A primary qualification for an accounting and economic system supporting Richness is that it must always work, it will never prevent people from going to work to produce and distribute goods when there are raw materials, labor, and transportation available, and the Wants of people to be satisfied. The government will be ‘keeping score’ as it umpires the game, and the numbers gathered by the accounting will reveal if anything is wrong. If the accounting indicates a problem with physical resources being scarce, or the wrong numbers of people are in the wrong places, then the relevant components of the society are rearranged and modified to achieve the goals of Richness. If the accounting indicates a problem with money flow or the bookkeeping, but finds physical resources are plentiful and people are available to achieve the goals of a Rich society, then the accounting system itself will be modified so it matches the reality of ongoing Richness. (The discussion of implementation is in Part Two.)

Setbacks like natural disasters do not affect the economy except to temporarily put a lot of people to work in response, and to pull goods and materials from the reserves maintained for emergencies and direct them to where they are needed. The total wealth of the society will be diminished somewhat because destruction wastes the results of many hours of many peoples lives, and more hours will be spent repairing or re-building what was once already built and available to people. The amount of work wasted because of destruction is probably about the same as work wasted as a result of enterprises that fail, projects that get cancelled, presentations that don’t get accepted, accidents, all of those small wasted efforts that accumulate across society daily, incrementally, instead of a single big event in one location. Richness expects and prepares for natural disasters, as noted previously.

The economy works for everyone

Everyone in a Rich society works to create and maintain it, none of whom are “created equal”. People must be Rich despite different personality types, like those who take one cookie now instead of waiting for two cookies later, and those who wait and get two cookies later, and those who don’t like cookies and never take them. The Rich economy works for people who plan ahead and for those who are impulsive, for entrepreneurs and laborers, scientists and artists, researchers and dropouts, with everyone spending their income to Get What They Want. They are all Rich because they go to work and collect their pay, which is all that a person needs to do to participate in a Rich society and to fully enjoy its benefits, because that is all anyone can do, even if one is an egomaniacal entrepreneur who wants to create the biggest company ever known to palkind.

This kind of Equality as the source of a Rich and stable economy may be discouraging to some people, and one of them usually asks “why should I work to make the biggest company in the known world if I can’t make huge sums of money more than everyone else, and become some kind of Master over others as a reward?” (slightly paraphrased). If those are your only motivations then you will be frustrated and disappointed. As discussed earlier, exercising your skill and talent on something you really Want to accomplish does not justify additional rewards. So if you will not do your best work unless you can become a Master then you can coast along doing something easy and simple (for you) and your contribution to society and the economy will be valued just as much. Generally, a sense of competence and satisfaction may be experienced performing any job skillfully and effectively. With Equality in place, the real problem may be convincing a person to perform repetitious and boring tasks in a monotonous and noisy environment, or doing tough labor under dangerous conditions, for the same pay as a dandified professional sitting at a desk in an air-conditioned building.

Neither will a person bloated with skill, talent and more brainpower than pel knows what to do with, be penalized if pel decides to do as little as possible and just lives a happy, peaceful, pleasant life. Society does not oblige them to use their intellect and abilities for the good of society (as in “from each according to pos ability…”), any more than it permits exceptional rewards if pel does use them for some greater good to society.

So it doesn’t matter what you do for a living, you will be able to hold a job, contribute to society, be paid as well as anyone else, and thereby help the economy and society continually provide Richness for everyone.

Resources are free

Richness is based on the fact that natural resources cost nothing, it’s all free. Plants grow for free, and we can eat them for free, animals eat some of the free food and reproduce for free, and people can hunt, kill, and eat the animals for free. Drinking water falls from the sky and accumulates in rivers and lakes for free, in which grow fish and other foods for free, and the same goes for what we take from the oceans for free. The land, the actual ground under our feet, stores resources and raw materials, all free for the taking. The same is true for the ground we use to live on: actual land for ‘property’ is free.

Value for a resource can only be reflected in the hours of people’s lives needed to discover, extract or grow, process, and distribute the free stuff. With equal pay for an hour of work, the cost of something equates to a measure of actual human life needed to provide it. Such valuation will reveal just how much time it takes to provide many labor-intensive products, and it should create more appreciation for machinery that provides greater production from each person, and for the lowered costs that result.

Richness realizes there are limited amounts of some resources and it is possible for humans, superior destroyers that we are, to completely eliminate a valuable resource by using it up, or reducing the total amount of a resource by ruining or killing much of it. Richness will tend to prevent such wanton wastefulness in order to maintain Richness for succeeding generations.

Money retains value

Richness requires that money retains its value, where value is based solely on people’s time. An obvious indication that the accounting system is being done wrong is when money continually loses value and the cost of items constantly increases. For example, when I was young I saw an old grocery bill of my mother’s from when she was young, and I was amazed that bread cost five cents a loaf. In my youth it had risen to around fifty cents a loaf, and I imagined that there might be good reasons for it, reflecting reality. I guessed that bakers were making more money and enjoying more of an equitable standard of living than in the old days, and the same for the growers and distributors of the ingredients. But the cost of bread continued to rise, and continues to this day, despite labor saving machinery, efficient modern business methods, and economies of scale everywhere.

Another self-evident monetary danger is when small coins are dropped and people just leave them because they are practically worthless. Even children won’t pick them up because they don’t purchase anything anymore.

Another indicator, even worse, is seeing other countries measure their prices for everyday items in thousands of units of their currency, which suggests the accounting for their economy is also incorrect, and has probably been so for centuries. Such devaluing of the base monetary unit does not reflect the common sense reality that things which are done the same way now should cost the same as when they were done previously. Also, more money earned at work should equate to additional purchasing power, not less.

It is obvious the USA is currently on the same track of devaluation resulting from monetary manipulation, and Richness will halt those devaluations by having money retain its value, maintain its purchasing power, and attempt to increase its purchasing power.

Profit

Profit is, by definition, money received beyond all costs needed to create and sell something. Money received beyond actual value, politely called profit, is money obtained by the seller without effort or any provided value. It is also the definition of exorbitant, unfair, overcharging, overpaid, ripped off, gouged, etc. It is, in short, money for nothing. Profit is currently legal, and more than just tolerated in modern societies: the stated goal of most enterprises and personal effort is to maximize profit. Not necessarily provide a service or a product, but to find ways to accumulate as much unearned money as possible.

The concept of ‘charging what the market will bear’ describes squeezing the maximum possible profit from a customer, preferably without them having any alternative, just as any parasite wants to extract as much as possible from its host short of killing it. Profit is worse than merely parasitic, it is cheating, a description of thievery. Yet this type of ‘getting something for nothing’ is acceptable and admired when it is called profit, actually encouraged because it is basic to the economic system and the culture of attempting to become ‘richer than’ everyone else and thus become a Master. The best way to get more than your fair share is by overcharging to the level of ‘what the market will bear’.

Maximum profit is achieved when there are no real expenses and minimal time is required, when basically all money received is for doing almost nothing. Some of these techniques are legal, like finding the location of some free natural resource that has value for a product, or living on land which is found to have underground (free) resources which gives you the ‘right’ to receive payment for doing nothing. Also typical is winning a lottery, or receiving an inheritance.

Some ideas for maximum profit in business are not legal, usually because one party is involuntarily included in the transaction, like offering ‘protection’, or blackmail. Extortion is another example, where you are in the position of providing something and you refuse access to it unless you receive an illegal additional fee that is pure profit. The same advantage is obtained from being bribed, only initiated from the other side, in exchange for doing your job illegally and unfairly.

Profit is available when a loan is paid off. Since the overhead of repaying the loan is included in the price of what you sell, when the loan is repaid you can either (1) lower your prices to reflect the smaller overhead, or (2) continue selling at the same price and use the portion would have been spent on loan repayment for expansion and improvement –  which might be accomplished by obtaining a new loan, or by starting an account for such purposes. None of the monies in that account can be used for additional personal ‘compensation’ any more than it can be embezzled from a portion of a new loan.

The strangest business use of profits, though the most common and legal, is to give them to investors, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the product sold, where no effort or work is performed on their part, yet they are the recipient of the excess monies obtained by the business. If investors are treated as the source of a loan then their returns are the same as loan repayments. The problem comes after the ‘loan’ has been repaid, because investors continue to be paid – forever, actually – which remains as an eternal expense for the business, and which is eternal ‘profit’ for the investors.

When retaining profit is permitted it makes lying about the value of products and services both acceptable and legal, pretending a bloated price is a fair and honest computation of the actual value, and blaming the buyer for believing the lies (“caveat emptor”). Such an unfair trade devalues the purchasers time and money because pel pays more than the true value of what is purchased. This contribution to the constant devaluation of currency accelerates as more and more profits are generated everywhere across commerce.

Profit is incompatible with Freedom & Equality because it is extortion to pay more for something than its actual cost and it distorts the value of the human lives it took to create the thing. Richness, and Freedom & Equality, will legally prevent such practices in order to create honest valuation for products and services, and to maintain the value of money.

Government is the source and sink of money

The idea of monetary systems seem to obstinately adhere to an ancient system based on the individual accumulation of precious metals, jewels, or other valued natural resources (available for free in or on the earth) despite the fact that most modern money is generated by fiat. The key issue is ‘individual accumulation’, where a person can find or otherwise acquire something of value and become ‘rich’ just because pel possesses it. Simple possession has made thievery a viable profession for centuries, and has fueled quests to possess physical riches by pillaging neighboring kingdoms and newly discovered lands, and which can spark gold rushes even today.

Across history, by fair means or foul, a few families accumulated and controlled such huge amounts of money that they could make loans to governments (OK, they were tyrannical monarchs, but still the base of government) to finance wars and the like. When I learn of such history I get the sense that even governments, supposedly the basis of societies, are nothing but a customer to those who are really in power – those who have the gold and make the rules. I’m not sure that has changed even today, because I understand the USA is in debt to other countries – just how can that happen? What does that mean? Someone owns us? The mere concept seems to be absolutely incompatible with the idea of a sovereign society, let alone a nation. It is certainly impossible for a Rich society.

In a Rich economy the value of money will be determined by fiat, just as today, but the accounting system will be defined and operated to support Richness. As should be expected, the government is the source of money: defining it, physically creating it, distributing it, and umpiring its flow throughout the Rich society. The money cycle starts from that source, loaning or otherwise distributing it throughout society in order to create or maintain Richness. Money circulates forever among people as they create and sell and purchase from each other in a free and unrestricted (but not unregulated or un-umpired) economy.

At some point a portion of the total money in circulation may exceed the amount needed to maintain Richness, at which point the excess flows back to the source of money for later circulation. For example, personal income that is in excess of the number of hours worked by an individual during a fiscal year, or excess income acquired by an enterprise that is above and beyond their actual cost of doing business. Also, upon the death of each person, any money accumulated by them flows back to the source of money.

Sovereign economy

It seems to me that a Rich society, dedicated to creating Richness for the people of the society, must restrict the ownership of land and businesses and anything else solely for the people of that society. I see no way that a government can permit foreign ownership of anything. I see no way for the currency of a society to be stored or invested outside of the society, or for a citizen to own a business in another society, as if you lived there. Owning things across societies is different from trade between societies, which is encouraged.

Foreign banks that obtain and accept our currency for private accounts and then keep those finances secret from our government can only exist for criminal reasons, per the prior discussion of secrets. The criminal is the person depositing the money, and if discovered pel will be prosecuted for the appropriate crimes, not least for attempting to become a Master over others.

A Rich accounting system also affects policies for international trade, much like today. Imported goods must cost the same as if they were manufactured domestically. An importer is not permitted to pay for slave labor, even if that is all that they ‘charge’, and then sell those products in a Rich society. If the money paid for the hours of people’s lives doesn't actually make it to the workers, that is their problem (they need to create a Rich society for themselves) but the people in a Rich society do not behave as Masters to a foreign society of servants and slaves. It is illegal in our society to hold slaves for cheap labor, and the government will prohibit such hypocrisy when dealing with other nations. In effect the government will attempt to spread Richness by paying for hours of peoples lives at the same rate as paid here, per the requirements of Richness.

Similarly, and for the same reason of not being hypocritical, an economy cannot support or provide foreign aid to dictators, tyrants, murderers, etc. There are definitely strings attached to Richness when dealing with other non-Rich societies.

Thanks again

Thanks for reading as much of the above as you could handle, especially those who can’t imagine changing the current economic system in any way for any reason, even to make everyone Rich. I truly appreciate your effort, and for getting as far as you could before your irritation became unbearable. Please continue reading as if someone else will devise an economic approach to create Richness which you can accept and are willing to implement.

Measuring Richness.

Introduction

I began by claiming that Richness is not some ethereal ideal or philosophy, nor an unrealistic and imaginary society, nor an impractical and unworkable accounting system, and here is where the claim is made concrete. Richness has the advantage of being grounded in measurable physical attributes, either as minimums to be reached or exceeded, or as ratios to be continually shifted toward increasing Richness.

When the measurements show 100% then all that has been discussed (and will be discussed later) will have been implemented, and you will be Rich and living in a Rich society. Comparing current measurements to the goal makes it easy for anyone to audit society’s success or failure in achieving Richness. Even short periods of time between measurements will show either improvement toward, stagnation, or a retreat from the goals of Richness. Closer investigation may reveal some enemies of Richness who are impeding the transition.

We only need some simple math techniques that provide useful measurements and understandable numeric results. Here are what seem to be the primary measurements of Richness.

Measure one: Maximizing personal time

The goal of Richness is abundance, and we want Richness to provide an abundance of personal time and not an abundance of working for others. The choice may be intuitively obvious but there are reasons for the preference. Personal time means being in the state or condition of exercising your freedom with personal choices and preferences, and generally doing whatever you need to Get What You Want, all of which are definitions of Richness. Working means the state or condition of performing work required by someone else who pays you for your time, which is not the definition of Richness (despite being a requirement of a Rich society). Work may be personally enjoyable to perform, worthwhile for its own reasons, even satisfying because it helps people and makes or maintains Richness for everyone, but those are secondary benefits (if they exist) that help make work satisfying. Excess work is still contrary to the primary descriptor of maximum personal time being the goal of Richness.

 

So a goal of Richness is to increase personal time and minimize work time. We can evaluate that with a number that represents the ratio of personal time to work time.

 

T = Total hours in the time range under consideration, usually a multiple of a 24-hour day.

W = hours spent at Work during the time range, meaning the hours spent from when you leave your home for work to when you return home after work. Work includes almost all of the hours away from your home because you are doing something other than pursuing your own life and enjoying your own time.

P = Personal time remaining after work, which is just T – W. This is the time for play and personal projects and pleasures, as well as ever-present chores, errands, work around the house, sleeping, eating, etc.

 

The ratio we want to evaluate (and increase) is Personal time over time at Work, so literally and mathematically we put P ‘over’ (divided by) W:

 

Time Ratio = P / W  or  ( T – W ) / W

 

This ratio represents the number of hours of personal time you get for each hour worked on the job. The more play and the less work, the larger the quotient becomes, and the more it represents Richness. No upper limit is specified, only the goal of constantly increasing the ratio to its maximum.

 

Here are some sample ratios using a typical time period of one work week of seven days, which is 168 total hours. We are looking at ballpark figures to understand how the simple ratio is useful in describing the level of Richness achieved by a society, and ignoring things like travel time to and from work.

People working part-time, around 20 hours a week, have a P of 168 – 20 = 148 personal hours a week, creating a ratio of 148/20 = 7.4 hours of personal time for each hour on the job. Something in this range might be a nice ratio for everyone to achieve.

The current normal, full time, work week in the USA is 40 hours a week, so P = 168 – 40 = 128, creating a ratio of 128/40 = 3.2 hours of personal time for each hour on the job. This is only moderate and should be at the lower edge of an acceptable ratio, a starting point for improvement.

For people working two full-time jobs or with other reasons to work the equivalent 80 hours, they are struggling with 88/80 = 1.1 hours of personal time for each hour of work. This is very close to working like a slave, with only enough time off to rest and prepare to go to work again. No one should ever need to endure such a schedule except for emergency situations.

 

An alternate value is free time as the percentage of your life that is your own, and the higher the better: P / T (x 100). So the above examples would be 148/168= 88%, 128/168 = 76% and 88/168= 52%.

 

Using a week for the time period is only good for an example because some people will generally want to work more than average (for more purchasing power) and some will want to work less (for more personal time), in addition to a great many jobs that aren’t scheduled that way. For ‘regular’ jobs a time span of a year is better for the computations because it smoothes out the ‘peaks’ of normal hours for most periods during the year, with the ‘lulls’ of no work when taking regular vacations, to obtain a more accurate ratio. Ranges of many years will be common for these computations. For example, there are classes of people who are at their creative and productive primes earlier in their careers, and they need to utilize their energy with long hours and big projects during their youthful years, eventually reducing their work hours and output to less than normal (to compensate for maximum hours already accumulated) until they retire

The longest ratio that needs to be monitored encompasses all of everyone’s working life up to retirement, which would reveal the average number of hours being worked by an average person to create the abundance required by Richness. That lifetime ratio will vary greatly between people and it will not be used at retirement time to determine whether a person has ‘worked enough’ to qualify for retirement, or what kinds of benefits are available to pel. A Rich society will count anyone reaching retirement age, by any means, a personal ‘win’ for them, and therefore eligible for everything that retirement provides. Everyone who reaches retirement age will have done their best for what they believe is the good of society, even if that was (and is) isolating themselves from it, or striving for its downfall, perhaps trying to resurrect a non-Rich society. Richness demands that everyone be Rich, especially in retirement, whether they succeeded or failed in their personal career goals. There is more on this later.

Progress towards Richness is measured by keeping a history of this ratio. It increases over time as society becomes richer, until it levels out at the maximum sustainable value. Richness wants to maximize your personal time, which means that one of your professional goals is attempting to eliminate your job as being extraneous or obsolete, or to automate your job to minimize or eliminate human hours, or optimize your job for maximum efficiency (not forgetting pleasant working conditions) and thus minimum hours to perform. Successfully eliminating your job means that you will need to find another job (after a while), but you will have succeeded in making the total hours needed to sustain the current level of Richness less than before, and thus you will increase everyone’s free time by a tiny amount. Note that everyone working fewer hours does not exclude anyone from any benefits of Richness.

This means that when you hear news reports about the economy ‘needing to make jobs’, or extolling ‘job creators’, or citing the number of people out of work as a bad indicator, you should recognize that such statements reveal an accounting system that can never be Rich.

Lastly, does the concept of a paid vacation make sense in a Rich society? You are Rich, after all, and free to stop work (with no penalty) whenever you want, so the idea of getting paid while away from work on a scheduled break seems wrong, because you would be getting paid for doing nothing.

Measure two: Maximizing value

Value is determined much as it is today, using at least two factors: minimizing costs and maximizing longevity.

Cost is not just the purchase price of an item, it must include things like how well it satisfies (or exceeds) its intended use, things like its effectiveness and functionality. Cost includes any ongoing expenses to use the item, like power and maintenance and supply refills, and secondary costs like disposal of waste products or supply containers. When the item itself is no longer functional or repairable then the costs of dismantling, recycling, and preventing environmental pollution are included as part of the cost of the item. Fixed costs are amortized over the life of the item, so the longer an item is useful and reliable the lower are the costs per day, or per use, or per output, etc.

Minimizing or eliminating the expenses for repairs, and postponing the need to replace an item for as long possible, are basic measures of quality. It means the results of human effort last as long as possible, maximizing the hours of use before the item needs replacement, and thus increases Richness.

Value is simple to track, by choosing any item and plotting the value of sample items over time. Value should continually increase until the economies of scale, mass production, and quality become as efficient as possible while creating something as long-lasting as possible, and the value stabilizes for the item.

Despite the fact that improved quality increases the ratio of personal time to work time as desired by Richness, it is possible that a large portion of a Rich society will prefer to work more so they can buy lots of new things just for variety’s sake, even poorly made disposable goods, instead of retaining practical, high quality, and long lasting products. It will depend on What You Want To Get.

Measure three: Insuring Abundance

This describes how to measure and compute abundance for all resources, and we will identify the most significant factor that needs to be managed in order to make abundance, and Richness, possible. The discussion of how to enforce and guarantee abundance comes later.

A primary goal of Richness is the abundance of physical goods, called ‘resources’, which includes space for housing, food and water and sewage, health care, roads and transportation, parks and auditoriums, stores and amusement parks, basically everything. For simplicity’s sake it is assumed that resources exist or are created within the physical boundaries of the society.

 

A simple calculation is performed for each resource, as follows.

 

A = the Amount of the resource that defines abundance per person per year. The amount should be slightly short of excessively wasteful, not comfortable minimums, since Richness is about abundance. If there is disagreement about this amount then the choice should always favor the larger amount.

Q = The total Quantity of a resource normally available per year.

R = a portion of the normal quantity Q held in Reserve and stored so that it may be drawn upon to retain Richness during lean times, perhaps when a series of bad years reduce the quantity normally available. This portion may be a fixed amount or a percentage of the total quantity Q. It may vary yearly to consider the state of current reserves, or the amount of time needed to refill the reserves after needing to use them, etc.

D = a portion of the normal quantity stored for assistance and recovery after major Disasters, including disasters outside of your locale, and maybe outside of your society. Determined in a manner similar to R.

 

The amount of each resource available annually is the total Quantity available, minus the yearly amounts set aside for Reserve and Disaster storage. The difference is divided by the abundance Amount that a person uses in a year, to obtain the number of people the resource can support:

 

Number of people = ( Q – R – D ) / A

 

This calculation is made for each resource used by society, then those answers are sorted by their result, and the resource with the smallest number (of people it can support with abundance) determines the maximum size of the population for the society. This is the fundamental definition and measurement of abundance for a Rich society. This is the essential requirement to achieve abundance, and thus to achieve Richness. It is the primary factor that provides for ‘living [Richly] within your means’.

Measure four: Compliance evaluation

Like abundance, most aspects of Richness demand 100% implementation for everyone immediately, but attaining some goals will take time to achieve. Current progress toward each goal of Richness is measured by the percentage of people who have attained the goal. Percentages are easy to compute, and charting the percentage over time reveals the rate of progress and provides an approximate date for full implementation. We’ll use three goals of Richness, previously discussed, as examples of how the ‘percentage of completion’ might be computed.

First Come, First Served

This is the percentage of venues that provide First Come, First Served access. As noted in the initial discussion there may be situations where a close approximation is adequate and acceptable, where the intent and spirit of First Come, First Served is satisfied without strict single-queue access. Any exceptions to strict First Come, First Served must be based on situations that still apply to everyone, and not on who a person ‘is’ (some imagined importance) compared to others. When in doubt, consider First Come, First Served as not implemented for the venue.

Equal pay

Equal hourly pay gets no leeway of interpretation, only strict adherence is acceptable. It is the percentage of the population that is paid the legislated hourly wage, neither more nor less.

Get What You Want

The measurement of adherence and access to Getting What You Want may be subject to interpretation and may require a specific definition of what 100% implementation ‘means’ to make it measurable. A survey might be adequate, asking “are you able to get what you want” as well as whether you are currently successful or satisfied in obtaining it. There is a danger of defining what ‘should’ be adequate for a person and using that as the measure of compliance, which is not the same thing as people actually Getting What They Want. When in doubt, consider wants as not satisfied simply because there is doubt, because it is not obvious that the wants are truly available or obtainable.

Measure five: Composite measurements

When many aspects of Richness are in various degrees of progress it would be nice to obtain a composite number that represents the overall degree of Richness currently attained by society. We want a simple computation that avoids complex statistical methods despite their increased accuracy. Some justifiable approximation is all that is needed, something which reflects increased progress (or stagnation, or reversal) when re-computed at intervals.

The problem is that attaining Richness is not the linear progression that a simple percentage suggests. Partial Richness is pretend Richness, and anything less than full Richness counts as very little. Partial Richness degrades society when at 80% implementation almost as much as it does at 30%. Even when just a small portion of the population is denied some aspect of Richness it represents a total loss to them of an abundance accorded to others, which is an immense betrayal of every principle that Richness embodies. The population suffering the abridgment of their Richness may be small but the degree of unfairness, and inequality, and injustice, remains enormous.

A composite value must reflect the effect that when one aspect of Richness is only 50% implemented it is enough to make a society functionally not Rich, even if the majority of other aspects are at or close to 100%. The single failing segment draws the entire society down to the level of unrealized Richness, because the entire group is still denied some aspect of Richness.

For an example of a composite calculation we will use values of 90%, 50%, and 75% for any three aspects of Richness being considered. It doesn’t matter which aspect gets which amount, it doesn’t matter what the aspects are, or that we are using three of them instead of more. The composite value is achieved by multiplying the percentages of each aspect together. Using the example percentages above, 90% × 50% × 75% = 34% composite Richness, revealing a society just getting started, despite some relatively high percentages for parts of Richness. The more categories included in a single computation, the more important it is for each category to be at or near 100% implemented before society as a whole will be evaluated as Rich. That is just as expected, since Richness is basically an all or nothing proposition.

Summary

Measurements are used to guide the government in its role as umpire of the specific goals which define Richness, and it will use them as evidence to demand progress and accountability from the people as they create Richness for themselves.

Conclusion of Part One

This part has tried to convince you to Want To Be Rich, used that Want to derive the justifications and concepts underlying Richness, and described, perhaps too tersely, some basic goals that are needed by a Rich society. If you Want To Be Rich then you should Want everything that has been presented so far to be realized, one way or another.

We are now ready to consider how all of this may be applied in an actual society, using the conceptual to start building the practical. Additional new concepts will be fully discussed for implementation, there will be no more significant postponements to some ‘later discussions’, and those that were postponed will be completed. We will use the nuts and bolts of Richness to build an edifice for a Rich society.

Funding: injecting money into society

Introduction

The purpose of the source of money is to inject money throughout a society. The first method was by providing people with loans, just discussed. This is the second way.

Funding is the ongoing injection of money into society directly from the source of money to finance government mandates. Every entity supporting a mandate is supplied with the funds they request, because they are satisfying some goal of a Rich society, by definition. Funding comes directly from the source of money and does not require repayment, not even theoretically. The government is administrator and umpire of the entities who satisfy the mandates.

The following are some typical mandates of a Rich society. Some of the effects of abundant funding will be considered, and some examples of umpiring will be described.

Government

The government itself must be funded. All politicians and other public servants, from the ‘top’ on down, are subject to the same restrictions on wages, maximum work hours per year or per career, retirement age, etc., just the same as everyone else.

Funding the government could be done with existing systems, still authorized by congress as administrators, but their budgetary role will be largely a rubber stamp. Administrators review the success of current budgets and evaluate new requests for funding with an eye for reasonable expectations and success in satisfying their mandate, just as a business plan is reviewed for a loan. Funding for government departments will be abundant so they can perform their functions and services, Getting What They Want to satisfy their mandates.

Military

Nothing but the best: highest quality, maximum reliability, and state of the art, for equipment and personnel. Funding extends to state and local equivalents, the police and sheriffs and the like. Abundant funding should enable all agencies dedicated to peacekeeping and law enforcement to enlarge as much as needed to meet the goals of a Rich society.

Superior Might is required because only a Rich society is worth defending. Any non-Rich society or government has the goal of forcing its citizens to behave and/or believe only as their leaders, their Masters, want them to. Worse, Masters want everyone else in the world to become Subjects to their ideology, or they want to make everyone else their enemy if they refuse. Masters are usually willing to wage war (fought by their Subjects) because Might does make Right, and they want to become a Supreme Master. It is hoped that, once having lived in a Rich society, its advantages will make every citizen want to defend it, while providing an example of how good and Rich life on earth can be.

The requirement to fund the local levels of the military, like state and city services, is an admission that unacceptable behavior will persist inside of a Rich society, that some people will insist on doing whatever they want even when it compromises other people’s Freedom & Equality. The armed forces are needed to protect your Richness, your Freedom & Equality, from everyone who wants to be your Master, at home or abroad, directly or indirectly.

Courts and justice

So that justice is free and Equally available to everyone, all law enforcement, the courts, prison facilities, etc., are fully funded. This includes all lawyers (prosecutors, defendants, litigators, etc.) who are not already employed by some other entity. There should be no more injustices resulting from deep pocket companies overwhelming the resources of an average person, because whatever is needed by the average person to Equalize pos resources will be funded. Equalizing resources and other legal needs is not the same as their arguments being equally valid, it’s just that everyone will have the legal palpower to gather and muster whatever is needed to satisfy and support their claims, defenses, legal representation, etc. and create justice.

Education

All aspects of public education, mandatory for every child, is funded directly from the source of money. A Rich society declares in its founding document that “nothing is more important than educating a child to become a Competent Adult”. This is not just a catchphrase or a campaign promise, it is fully supported by Richness in ways never before imagined in history and impossible in any known accounting system. The problem for public education has always been funding, and a Rich society provides that financial support, starting from conception and ending at graduation. The goals and standards of that education are defined by the federal government, the majority of details are delegated to the states and other local governments, and the entire system is umpired by the federal government to ensure universal application and an adequately knowledgeable populace.

A primary concern of a Rich society is that a Responsible Adult with one or more children is able to enjoy a Rich life while raising her children. This means that the parent will have a job and that job must be compatible with the education schedule of pos children, because a parent must be personally available to pos child except when the child is in school or involved in related activities under the care of secondary Responsible Adults. Scheduling conflicts are eliminated most easily by having the parent take a job in some capacity that supports the education system, because such jobs will either be in sync with the school schedules, or will provide flexibility of work hours so the parent is available for pos child when needed. Many education jobs will not be on school grounds and includes things like manufacturing schoolbooks or laboratory equipment, driving buses and delivery trucks, warehouse and distribution operations, housing and support for extended field trips, etc. If a product is used by a school then parents should be holding the jobs that create it.

Schools may need to be enlarged to support the additional adult staff available to them, like plentiful teaching assistants, additional instructors for subjects like the arts and manual skills, regular sessions with professional counselors and therapists, etc. Many positions in education require specialized training or professional degrees, so a future parent should consider the likelihood of practicing pos trade or profession within the education system, because there is no more important application of pos skills. That makes it important for any potential parent to obtain her professional degrees or skills before having children. Raising a child to become a Competent Adult, including their education, really is a career.

Having an abundance of school employees also simplifies situations where external appointments conflict with normal school hours, like dentists and doctors, because adults will be available to provide dedicated transportation to and from the external provider. It is just as possible that such professionals are also parents who provide their services on school grounds as employees of, or contracted by, the school system, a simple extension of normal health care. Similarly, parents are available for paid supervision of after-hours activities for kids, including care for the children of parents whose schedules don’t match exactly, like school bus drivers.

In general I would guess that most parents and school employees will work part-time in order to have enough personal time to satisfy adult household obligations, like shopping and normal home maintenance while the children are at school. Since there will be an abundance of people available for all positions in the educational system there should be no need for anyone to endure onerous hours.

Richness considers children as having a job, which is to be in school, and they are paid (funded) for their time ‘at work’. This provides them with money for their personal clothes, food, toiletries, field trips, and even their share of some family fun. Children are not expected to save any of their income from being a student. Paying students for attending school is an implementation of Equality. If school attendance is not a paid job then the parent pays for the child’s expenses ponself and therefore cannot possess the same disposable income, have a similar work-to-play ratio, nor live as Richly, as a childless person working equivalent hours. Paying a student also removes any incentive for the child to drop out of school in order to work to make a living for pos household, which used to be needed when widespread poverty was an accepted element of a ‘free’ society with ‘equality of opportunity’.

A child’s pay for education begins at birth, where everything that happens is being learned by pel. A first mother-to-be is paid soon after known pregnancy to attend classes that refresh and extend what was learned when a teenager in school, with classes on gestation, care and nurture of herself and her fetus, adjusting life priorities, preparing her home (paid for as ‘homework’) to care for a newborn, etc. After birth a mother is paid for being the child’s teacher, which is any time pel is not sleeping. The child is paid for those same hours, as a student learning as fast as pel can. The mother attends ongoing classes on raising and educating a child at each stage of early development, learning techniques for disciplining, helping, and communicating with her child. Parents need to know the theory and techniques of effective parenting, and the resources available to both parent and child for problem situations. If a parent chooses not to raise pos child with love and encouragement then at least pel will understand what the educational professionals and experts are teaching in classrooms and counseling sessions, and why they are teaching it.

School grounds are funded abundantly and are available as a resource for after-school play and activities, which should be plentiful and frequent, because parents are available as paid staff. These include things like sports, arts, manual skills, technical experimentation, etc. There may be a danger (or advantage) of schools becoming a social center in addition to a learning center, perhaps even the hub for a sense of community, with parents and children often eating all meals there and only going home to clean up and sleep.

Kids need time on their own and places to play and explore, fairly wild and woodsy, with the likelihood of sustaining minor injuries, something in line with the concept of ‘slow parenting, or ‘free range children’, especially within cities. This kind of play and exploration, especially of nature, is considered educational and such locales will have funding to maintain and monitor them. Children who are able to read and follow directions or instructions, and who can answer questions coherently when an adult inquires about their situation, are free to go wherever they choose, and may safely walk or ride to and from school, or the local shopping area, or the library, or wherever, exploring urban environments in a similar, and similarly safe, ‘free range’ manner.

Health care

All health care is funded directly from the source of money. It provides, as being Rich suggests, only the best in science-based, verifiably effective treatments, procedures, and prophylactics. Everything described as health care is supported by the evidence generated from the most rigorous test protocols and analytic techniques. Eventually, even reliable recommendations for nutrition may become known, information that produces robust health based on extensive and definitive long term studies that are too expensive to perform in a non-Rich society.

Health care professionals are a good example of people paid by the source of money who are not government employees. The government has no control over the field of knowledge, nor of its associated enterprises, except for complaints lodged by customers, which is a separate issue. The government does have oversight and authority over medical practices as a responsibility of umpiring, including the education of practitioners and the accreditation of their schools, the establishment and adherence of best practices, standards of care, both identifying and prosecuting fraudulent medical practice, etc. Notice that the umpires do not do any of the above, they do not even manage them, but they make sure that someone qualified does perform and provide all of the above. Umpiring does not create the rules, the expert practitioners in the field do that.

The research, development, and testing of new remedies will be sped up because larger laboratories and huge definitive studies will be funded. No longer will lack of money inhibit the investigation, discovery, and validation of medical research. This means that current ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ techniques and treatments will be able to obtain the funding to demonstrate and verify the value of their remedies, using the same rigor and requirements, the same large scale studies and trials for safety and effectiveness, as other medical remedies. Once demonstrated and accepted as valid medicine they will take their justified place alongside other reliable medical resources.

Every remedy and procedure starts out with unverified claims of effectiveness, by default, and they are illegal to sell or utilize as medicine by healthcare professionals. Such unproven remedies are required to be described and labeled as something like “NOT known to be of any medicinal value” much like today, or “known to be harmful” like tobacco packaging. Once a potential remedy has been thoroughly studied (and all studies have the funds to be thorough and rigorous and definitive, no excuses) and it is shown to be useless, then it becomes known as such and remains illegal to sell or be used by medical professionals. Any healthcare professional prescribing such products is not practicing responsible medicine and will be prosecuted.

If a product has not had a study initiated within five years of Richness freely funding medical research, if no one has ‘put up’ an attempt to scientifically and definitively demonstrate its effectiveness, then the providers must ‘shut up’ and the product converts to the “KNOWN to be ineffective and of no medicinal value” category with appropriate bold labeling.

Unfortunately, because Richness allows and encourages people to Get What They Want, the most useless and even harmful remedies will remain available for the gullible or deluded (and oxymoronic) Competent Adult to purchase, as long as it is labeled correctly. Such products and procedures that are known to be medically worthless, or otherwise not demonstrated to be effective, may be obtained by a consumer who will act as a human, one-person, uncontrolled, unethical, self-administered, experimental subject. Competent Adults remain free to believe anyone who convinces them that they really know more than ‘science’ or ‘western medicine’, who claim to know how the body ‘actually’ works and how to prevent problems, or make repairs, or re-stabilize it, more than highly educated and trained practitioners of modern science-based medicine. A Competent Adult is free to make pos life as miserable as pel chooses, in any way pel chooses, but pel is always aware that proven effective treatments are available, justified by extensive evidence, because pel has the recorded certificates from school to prove that pel has been taught about it, and pel both aware of it and knows how to identify it.

A Rich society will, as a side effect of limiting income, alleviate some arguments against current medical practice like “doctors only prescribe pills and surgeries in order to make a huge income for themselves”. Maybe that will change to “they charge many hours for things that take very little time” and that will be investigated. Similarly, frauds will not be able to obtain the incomes which are currently possible from selling quackery (due to maximum annual income limits, discussed soon), although it will remain an easy, if disgusting, way to make a living, and will be subject to the same complaint of charging for many hours of work that is done in minutes.

Research and development

Just as research and development for medical knowledge is funded from the source of money, so are most other areas of research, from basic science to the development of major projects that result from those discoveries. A Rich accounting system accepts the fact that scientific research and investigation often generate nothing other than knowledge about reality, nothing is created for the average person to purchase, there is no expected payback, and in most cases there never will be. Nevertheless, the worth of such effort and knowledge is obvious to those who do the work, and to most of their pallow researchers, and sometimes to laypals, so Richness makes it easy for them to pursue their studies and Get What They Want.

Any qualified research is funded simply because the researcher has reason to believe that it is worthwhile. This is much like requests for grants today except that the process is basically a rubber stamp to provide researchers with the money they need to do their work thoroughly. What is desired, from either professionals or amateurs, are studies that extend the frontiers of human knowledge, or verify our current knowledge with two or three solid replication studies.

But funding is not an unconditional rubber stamp. Qualifications include demonstrating adequate current knowledge of the subject and its related fields, knowledge of prior research on the subject and the reasons they were limited or were not definitive, knowledge of the scientific method and its application, how to accurately and correctly collect and analyze data, common mistakes that render a study useless, etc. Such intellectual qualifications also prevent any ignorant or naive amateur from researching known impossibilities and popular but nonexistent fictions – things like perpetual motion, free energy, mind control or ESP, impossible medical cures, and other well-known but fictional fringes of research that continually recur because people imagine they exist and claim they are ‘ignored’ by science. If a definitive study does not yet exist then one may be funded if it is correctly designed, rigorously performed, and will determine either  that the subject is not real, or strongly and unequivocally provide evidence of a whole new sub-field of science to explore and discover.

Funded studies and projects are administered and umpired in the standard scientific manner, with published papers that enumerate their intent, explain and describe their rigorous methods and faultless procedures, analyze the data, and report their conclusive results. The only requirement is that any funded study (which is not classified) will be made public, easily available, and will be definitive, because that is what was funded. If any faults are found then the researcher(s) and their institution will be discouraged, and perhaps prevented, from receiving any other funding for any type of research, because their useless study demonstrates that they are unqualified. Research funding, and all of the time and effort expended, are wasted when no one can replicate its results.

Funding requires that a separate goal of every project includes publicizing the results of the research as news and continuing education for the average Competent Adult. Government assumes that people want to learn new and interesting things about the universe and our place in it, our planet, and ourselves. This may require a separate umpired department dedicated to generating the publicity since researchers are not science popularizes, nor media presenters, and few are vibrant personalities. Funding will include the time it takes for the project leaders and others to be interviewed by publicity people, to arrange photographs of the research in action and help with other visual explanatory material at the laypal’s level, verifying the accuracy of information to be released, etc.

Neither the source of money nor the government cares about the results of the research as such, because the government is not the authority of scientific accuracy, facts, or the validity of theories, but they are concerned with honesty and valid information. Thus, only verifiable science, derived from such research and development, may be used by the government when creating policies, or for umpiring related segments of business or society.

Repositories

Introduction

Funding is provided for all repositories of knowledge, not just the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress:

·         Repositories preserve examples of everything that people created or manufactured, from all walks of life, from everywhere, and from all times. They collect and preserve anything that anyone thinks is worthwhile, for whatever reason. Small collections are supported just as larger ones are.

·         Repositories preserve specimens or evidence of everything that lived or lives on the earth, from everywhere, and from all places and times.

·         Repositories preserve samples of the composition of earth and atmosphere and the ocean, including things that have fallen onto the earth from space, and things that have been gathered from off of the earth, from all places and times.

·         Repositories have no commercial value and are maintained primarily for history and reference and research, where the point of preserving the accumulated artifacts of centuries is to make it public, not sequestered in university catacombs or entombed in private collections.

There are a few requirements for funding. A small collector’s hoard must be of a quality, and with adequate documentation and provenance, that some other museum or institution would want it when the collector dies. It must be organized and indexed in some manner for retrieval and examination by others. Any repository must be available to the public, perhaps limited by requiring an appointment, or credentials. If access is limited, perhaps a curator will use some of pos funding to create detailed electronic representations of the items in pos collection and make them universally available.

Museums and Libraries

Maintaining repositories is important because these are the relics, the physical evidence from which history is determined or extrapolated, and from which fact and fable are distinguished. They hold the clues that let us track culture and trade, and to follow the spread and growth of knowledge and civilization. In a rough sense, museums hold the facts and evidence, while libraries contain the reports and conclusions from the investigations of those items throughout the centuries (to say nothing of other written works also stored there). Museums often contain one of a kind items, or copies of those singular items, just as each library contains, as much as possible, a copy of the most important works that have contributed to the accumulated knowledge of palkind. Since the scope and compass of our total knowledge is immense, many museums and libraries are devoted to specialized subjects, and often to a subset of a subject.

Museums and libraries might need to retain the important capability of non-powered access to their collections, repositories that do not require technology (like electricity) or equipment (like computers) to access, observe, or to read.

This is a distinction from funded ‘electronic repositories’ that are dependent on technology and equipment, like needing the widespread infrastructure and power requirements of the internet, or cell phone networks, etc. Electronic repositories have the advantage of a single location while remaining available to anyone in the world, with adequate redundancy and backups. Like other repositories, electronic ones are funded only when they have no commercial value, including no advertisements. They store facts, fields of study, even decisions and their justification, but rarely opinion. For example, it is doubtful that individual blogs will be funded for archiving, unless associated with an institution or a group effort with a common viewpoint intended to advance or popularize knowledge, or curated for cultural or historical significance to humanity.

If repositories include books, movies, music, or any other art or entertainment of dead creators, or other productions where everyone has been fully paid for their work, then they are also available for free and supported by funding. Available for free to the public means that when you access a repository your usage of the commercial infrastructure (if any) is also funded. If all you do with your comNode is access funded repositories, you pay for nothing to anyone for that access. Time or bandwidth spent on funded repositories may be reimbursed to web providers proportionally, pro-rated over total data transfer volume, per billing period, or some other scheme. Sub-second response time for any terrestrial user is mandated for funded repositories, and the fastest data transfer speed technically possible must be used.

Natural and man made ‘wonders’

These are noteworthy natural or man-made locales of beautiful or novel form, often of scientific importance, but are too big to put in a museum, so a ‘museum’ is defined around them. These are considered repositories in the same way as any other, and the fact that these may be tourist attractions that support a large commercial industry is secondary to the real purpose of funding them.

Natural wonders are usually rare, like the Grand Canyon, geysers in Yellowstone park, and huge waterfalls like Niagara. Such areas are funded and preserved in a natural state for everyone to visit and experience the awe and joy of nature. Some will consist of nothing but thousands of square miles of land mostly untouched by human modification that might support the last wild herds and predators on earth to live naturally, and the last complex jungle ecosystems to persist, all of which might otherwise be cut down and destroyed for large scale human habitation and farmland. Richness might reserve some additional large tracts of land to reestablish some original fauna, like herds of wild bison, or endangered species.

Man made structures are generally either astounding, like the Hopi cliff dwellings, or noteworthy for beauty and excess, like the remains of the once rich and powerful families now on display in their preserved mansions, and the old churches of organized religions, both of which were built, and filled, with decorative and fine art.

Worst-case repositories for future generations

A fun exercise is a special category of repository intended to help humanity recreate civilization in case something kills so many people that it crumbles from lack of palpower to maintain its supporting technology. Humanity could be reduced to clans of hunters and gatherers from a nuclear war, an epidemic disease, the Yellowstone super volcano erupting in full glory, or other natural or pal-made disasters. The exercise assumes that enough people will survive who, after some decades or centuries, will establish a minimum stable population size and a primitive society bordering on civilization, whereupon someone might stumble upon an opening to a repository with important information to help the survivors rebuild technology and civilization and create a better life for themselves as rapidly as possible. Attempts to create such repositories might be funded, with certain restrictions and requirements.

Dwellings, business, and infrastructure

If loans do not need to be repaid, as considered earlier, then injecting money into these segments of society becomes funding instead. It is a change of name only, the monies will still be distributed for the desired purposes from the source of money. This is the initial, one-time, seed money used to create an entity that becomes a self-sustaining part of the economy. It includes the funding for ongoing mandated services that continue to be provided by the infrastructure, like local water and sewage.

It makes sense that a government would administer these things the same as other sections of this topic because they are among the very basic definitions of Richness and a mostly free economy, and thus they should be defined and funded as responsibilities and mandates of a Rich society.

Let’s use this section to compare ‘private enterprise’ against ‘government bureaucracy’ being in charge of, and responsible for, large public projects, like roads, in a Rich society.

As far as I can tell it’s an accounting system choice, a labeling of columns for the distribution of responsibilities, because the end result is functionally identical either way. Let’s consider a road, something that is needed or wanted by the public and would add to the Richness of the society for one reason or another. Here are some options for how a road can be created and maintained. On one extreme it may be specified, designed, and constructed directly by government employees, then owned and maintained by the government afterward. On the other extreme it may be proposed by, and awarded to, a privately owned company who will specify, design, and construct the road, and who will own and maintain it afterward. Any combination of responsibilities is possible, for example: specified by the government, designed and built by a company, owned by the government, and maintained by a private company. Or any other combination.

In all cases the designers and engineers and everyone who builds the road are paid the same, the same work is done in the same way with the same quality of materials and procedures, including the construction, with every step adhering to established standards. This is because the ‘private’ segments are umpired by the government, and the ‘government segments’ are also umpired by the government. Even the levels of management and supervision will maintain almost identical counterparts and relationships between the two approaches, with identical jobs and responsibilities and rules to follow, and with identical results that meet the accepted engineering standards for ‘a road’.

Notice that the private ‘owners’ are required, just as the government would be, to be the stewards for the continued availability and quality of their contribution, and they remain legally liable for those conditions for the life of the road. They are not paid anything when the road is completed, except for occasional administrative requirements. Finally, realize that both the private companies and the government department will get their financing from the same place: a loan from the source of money, both for the initial project and ongoing repairs and maintenance afterward. However the overall project requirements are distributed, the project will progress in the same manner, so we can simply label the accounting columns accordingly for whoever does them.

Perhaps those aspects of projects that a business won’t take, like never-ending maintenance, will always be left for government departments to administer.

For public projects there is a requirement for a central depot of information, for regulations and building records and other history, that must be publicly and easily available for as long as any element of the project exists, or remains behind as rubble. Those records must be warehoused in a single location for a geographical area, with the record format and information standardized for the entire society, which almost certainly makes it a service funded and umpired by the government. It could be managed and maintained by private companies and umpired accordingly, but even as a mandate of the government those same private companies will be the ones hired by the government to satisfy the mandate, so it’s still just a labeling of the columns. The end result is the same: free public access to information, including financial records for auditing and liability should criminal negligence or fraud be discovered later. All aspects of a project remain transparent and forever available for scrutiny, no matter who did each segment of it.

Retirement

Retirement is funded directly from the source of money. Once a person reaches retirement age pel will quit working and be ‘rewarded’ for their years of effort as a Competent Adult by receiving an income close to the weekly average hours of the average working person. In a sense, the purpose and function of a retiree is to circulate money by spending their income as fast as possible, to become the ultimate consumer, living a life of leisure and adventure, or study and exploration, or whatever sounds like fun.

Retirement income continues as the ravages of age increase, and pel stops getting out much. When a retiree becomes incapable of taking care of ponself their retirement income is used to pay for someone else’s time to assist pel, and for pos other living expenses. As pel needs more and more assistance pos retirement income is not enough to pay for such personalized service. If pel is of sound mind, still a Competent Adult in a largely useless shell of a body, and pel refuses to self-terminate, then pel can move to an institution intended for pos situation. Pos entire retirement income will be used to pay for generic but adequate full-time assistance, which pel will be dissatisfied with, and will complain about, until pel dies.

Funding for economic burdens

Introduction

Previous fundings in this section contribute to the common Richness of everyone, in a general manner. Now we look at those subsets of the population who cannot function in a Rich society, who are nothing but a burden on society, where their funding benefits no one except themselves.

A sign of Richness might be the relatively high percentage of the population who do nothing except drain time and resources, yet are supported in a generally Rich manner, at least to the extent they can understand and appreciate it. Disabled, highly impaired and barely functional people often use much more of society’s resources than average, like recurring expensive medical procedures, and they also require many additional hours of personalized care just to be kept alive. The drain is not monetary, since they are funded, the drain is the dead-end waste of the caregiver’s time and effort in their service to a non-functioning person.

It might be argued that those who ‘receive’ but do not ‘contribute’ are Masters, gaining goods and services for no effort (not counting pain, suffering, or a personal eternity of uncomprehending confusion), and thus their caregivers become their Subjects. A Rich society can fund such permanent immobility, but thinking of such a person as being a Master with Subjects to wait on pel seems appropriate.

Incompetent people

Developmental failures, disabling accidents, old age degradation, and other problems cause people to become Incompetent. They are not able to care for themselves, require physical assistance or mental guardianship, are either child or adult, and they become subordinate to a Responsible Adult. It is similar to being disabled today. A Rich society provides them with an income, just like a retiree, to be spent on whoever and whatever they need, ‘retiring’ them from mainstream society.

The Responsible Adult remains with pos subordinate, by definition. The Incompetent will probably start out living at home, and pos income will pay for pos Responsible Adult’s time as caregiver, and other expenses. If a retirement income does not pay for the hours a Responsible Adult needs to feed, clothe, bathe, etc. pos subordinate on an individual basis, the Responsible Adult can place pos subordinate in an institution intended for incompetent people. Since the Responsible Adult is required to be the caregiver, pel will also live at the institution, probably becoming a member of the live-in staff. The communal nature of an institution means a Responsible Adult can consolidate and share pos time more efficiently, and minimize expenses. The retiree’s entire income will be used to pay for such generic but adequate assistance, which pel may not even notice.

Prisons and Criminals

The reasons for keeping criminals in prison are discussed later. Even though it might be considered a worthwhile function of justice, it can only be a drain of time and resources, yet it will be funded. A large population of prisoners is not a sign of Richness, it is evidence that some people still do not Want To Be Rich, that they insist on their ‘rights’ to be Masters, that they have attempted to make others their Subjects and have been caught and prosecuted for either their attempts or their temporary success. They will be removed from society because they are a known threat and danger to others, and they know better. Those who are less than average in some aspects that make them prey for human predators, will have their Richness defended and protected by society identifying the predators, the would-be Masters who act beyond the limits of Richness, and removing them from society. The goal is to provide the predators with a place to live where their skills and abilities can flourish and they can  Get What They Want.

Drug addicts.

For a small percentage of people, drugs become more important than anything else, so they may choose to register as legal addicts. A Rich society will pay them to keep themselves mostly isolated in a drugged stupor so they will not need to steal, or to work at a job in a dangerously impaired condition, or rent their body, or practice other undesirable methods to obtain money to feed their addiction. More is gained by accepting their choice and letting them Get What They Want, than letting them loose in society to cause problems, intentional or not.

Do not think of addiction as outwitting a Rich society and getting something for nothing. They are just another category of incapacitated people whose lives are subsidized. Their life is not to be envied, living away from most of reality in a miasma of subjective fantasy that disappears when the drug wears off and everyday life once again impedes and disappoints. Perhaps unexpectedly, addicts may be monitored for regular usage and resultant incapacity from the drugs, which might be administered by the provider, or a monitor, either occasionally or regularly. When coherent, and perhaps by notices on the packaging, they are reminded of the various options available for rehabilitation, where they will be welcomed and encouraged to join society, reality, and life in general, once again.

Natural disasters.

Richness is to be re-established as soon as possible after any kind of disaster. Emergency preparedness beforehand, and recovery afterward, is the responsibility of the government per its mandate to maintain Richness. The effort needed to recover from destruction, by natural disaster or otherwise, is achieved by shifting where resources go and what people do for awhile, it does not affect the accounting system. Money is provided as needed to repair, rebuild, return, or relocate.

What might not be rebuilt are homes destroyed or damaged for human-caused reasons, like homes built on eroding cliffs, or flimsy above-ground structures where tornadoes are known to strike. Such locations will require either permanent relocation of current residents and rezoning the site to prevent future building on it, or building a new disaster-proof structure if it doesn’t take much more time and effort than relocating to a safer location. Constantly rebuilding regularly recurring damage is a waste of resources and effort because it is avoidable.

Other funding

There are other mandates of government that are funded, and they will be noted when they are discussed. Some of the mandates in this section are discussed more fully later, which will reveal a more detailed enumeration of how the funding is used.

Now, we need to continue with other large aspects of the economy and accounting system

Setting the hourly wage

The government, as the source of money, sets the value of money, which is not the same as controlling the price of products that people purchase with such money.

One of the foundations for a Rich society is that each person’s time is worth the same as anyone else’s, a basic implementation of ‘no exceptions' Freedom & Equality. A secondary foundation is that natural resources are free, so the only value placed on them is the time it takes people to extract, grow, or otherwise acquire, process, and present products for sale. Thus the hourly rate determines the price of everything in terms of human hours needed to provide it, including indirect costs.

Here is one way to approach choosing the value for an hour of a person’s time, still calling the denominations dollars and cents. Choose a value where one cent buys something, perhaps a small toy or a piece of hard candy that a child would purchase. This means $6.00 per hour might be an adequate hourly rate, because that is 1 cent every 6 seconds, and hopefully 6 seconds is enough time for the equivalent of one person to manufacture many little somethings where the materials and other costs are well under 1 cent per item and thus may be sold for a penny each. If not, $3.00 per hour will provide 12 seconds to make enough of an item to sell each one for a penny, and maybe that will work.

If it turns out that it is impossible to manufacture and sell something for 1 cent then so be it. Such a limitation is not really dependent on the amount chosen for the hourly rate because human hours will be the determining cost of everything, so adjusting the hourly rate up or down will simply adjust everything else up or down in proportion, because the hours to create something remains the same. The only way to increase the purchasing power of any currency is to make many more items per hour per person by improving efficiency and productivity to reduce the per item cost.

So a possible effect of Richness may be that most things, even mass-produced goods, will cost more than they do now. If that happens then people will probably keep items much longer because they are truly valuable, in terms of the time it takes other people to make them. People will probably appreciate consumables more, and will protect and maintain their durables to make them last longer.

Income

Introduction

With the value of an hour’s work constant for everyone, different lifestyles are managed by variations in each person’s chosen ratio of ‘personal time to work time’. As always, maximum variations are encouraged and accepted, within the limitations of Richness. This section discusses some of those limits. Just as a rich society prevents physical Might from making ‘right’ by making it illegal for people to accumulate superior armament that can only be intended to make themselves Masters and other people their Subjects, so does a rich society prevent economic Might from making ‘right’ by making it illegal for people to accumulate superior wealth that can only be intended to make themselves Masters and other people their Subjects.

The goal and responsibility of a Rich government and its Rich accounting system is to prevent any legal or economic manipulations which create and support any kind of Master and Subject.

Overall average hours per year

When Richness is adopted there will have been a lot of prior computations and projections approximating the economic effects of converting to a Rich accounting system. One expected computation will be a study of the yearly hours of work needed to maintain a Rich society with the current population, adjusting for many jobs becoming obsolete and many new jobs becoming needed. The computation is to account for all work expected to be done for money, including the hosts of people who appear to do nothing obvious to maintain Richness and whose jobs only serve to make themselves happy, like scientists and entertainers.

Taking this total number of ‘hours per year to maintain Richness’ and dividing it by the number of Competent Adults below the retirement age (those who are available to work) provides an approximate average number of hours a person will work each year. This average is just a reference, some overall information about society and maybe about the economy. It is not a standard ‘hours per year’ that must be met by anyone, although the total hours needed to maintain the society must be worked by someone. This annual average might provide the number of hours that you are entitled to work. If you are working less than the overall average and want to work more, at least up to the average, and if there are no jobs because everyone in your area is already working at the average, then you may need to move to where work is available. If there are local people working above the average then there is good reason to require one or more of them to cut back and let you, an underworked person, put in some hours on a job. In that case, the person that still wants to work above the average hours may need to move to where the work is.

No eligibility for retirement

Many people will choose to work fewer hours than most other people, just as today, but there is an absolute minimum number of hours a Competent Adult must work to remain independent and self-sustaining. That minimum is just enough to cover food and water, simple sturdy clothes, maintenance of pos dwelling and ponself, frugal use of energy and other utilities, but little else. Such a minimum should satisfy a quiet bookish life, or a turbulent artistic one. Such people choose to spend less time on a paid job so they have more time to do what they find personally satisfying, much like today.

Such a minimum is enforced because you cannot choose to live the life of a beggar, or be homeless, or any other contradiction of the definition of Richness. If you do not want to live within the confines of an organized society then you may become a mountain pal or some kind of hunter-gatherer, or work on a plot of land and associated forest for self-sufficient farming, singly or as a sub-society, using whatever you want for the exchange of goods with others like yourself. If you commit to such isolated independence you do so by choice, so it is not so much a life of rebellion as it is the preference of an eccentric Rich person. The worst case is attempting to stay within civilized society but stubbornly refusing to participate at any level – but how? Living like a bum and begging? Nope, you will be demoted to an Incompetent Adult, unable to function as an Equal within a Rich society, and attempting to make others your Master. You might consider moving to a non-Rich society where Subjects (like you) are wanted. Traditional options like thievery and stealing are not good ideas!

Is there a need to require everyone to do more than such a personal minimum, so everyone ‘does their fair share’ of contributing to the society whose benefits they enjoy, and perhaps to ‘earn’ their retirement? No, their limited lifestyle and contribution are adequate if it lets them Get What They Want and provides them with the basic comforts and amenities required by Richness. A ‘comfortable minimum’ is a strange thing to visualize and strive for when you declare that you Want To Be Rich, but everyone is free to set such a low goal if that is What They Want To Get.

Some people will do much less work in the course of their lives than many others, but they are no more successful at outwitting the system than drug addicts, because one parameter of their life (working as little as possible) becomes more important than everything else Richness promotes and encourages. The accounting system works the same way no matter how people choose to live, with everyone pursuing their concept of Richness (within the limitations of Richness). When such people reach retirement age they will begin receiving a larger than usual income and I doubt they will know how to enjoy it, probably spending just as little as they always have.

In a society with a majority of slackers, the minority of people who are more imaginative, inquisitive, and Want to live a more vibrant, active, and interesting lifestyle are still free to do so. When people think of being Rich and living in a Rich society I hope the vast majority of them imagine a vigorous and satisfying life. In my experience, most people prefer to work hard, play hard, and relax hard (where ‘hard’ means diligently, or earnestly), and they want to maximize the ratio of play and relaxation (personal hours) to the hours at work. When more work also means more fun, people will balance their lives accordingly.

Maximum hours

Most people will not want to work the maximum hours physically possible for extended periods, nor should there ever be a need for it in a Rich society, except under dire and very unusual situations like emergencies, disaster recovery, or looming deadlines beyond anyone’s control. People are often willing to expend Herculean efforts and endure as much work as possible, with a minimum of rest and recuperation, to attain essential goals for whatever reason they choose. However, at no time are you to suffer any permanent physical or mental damage from your, or anyone else’s, sheer exhaustion or emotional depletion that impairs their ability to perform competently and safely. Remember: no matter how much energy you expend, no matter how much physical and mental strain you endure and suffer, you still make the same wage per hour at all times for your hours at work, so your extraordinary effort had better be worth it to you.

Such situations must be unusual. Except for natural disasters or other emergencies, management is responsible for identifying, preparing for, and avoiding such undesirable situations before they happen. If they are commonplace and you are routinely compensating for bad management, you and your dedication are being abused and exploited, you are being treated like a Subject, and you should consider leaving such jerks. If you do contribute to such an exceptional effort and additional time at work, your life needs to be rebalanced with equal personal time, perhaps with some additional time as a small reward for perseverance and commitment to achieving the desired goals. The common practice of compensatory time might persist, being paid for doing nothing for awhile, which is legal if you can convince people to let you get away with it.

There is another need for legally limiting absurdly long work weeks for extended periods of time. Richness needs to prevent people from claiming that their entire life, every waking and sleeping hour of every day of every year, contributes to their job and deserves the compensation they charge for those hours. Their claims might actually be true, especially for visionaries and artists who can obtain inspiration from dreams, or who use everyday experiences in their work, but as far as Richness is concerned some things are common in everyone’s life and such time cannot be claimed: eating and fueling your body, rest and refreshing both mind and body, doing chores and errands to maintain a healthy abode, taking time with family and friends to socialize and satisfy basic human needs, etc. Such times away from work are to be plentiful and leisurely, as befits a person living in a Rich society, and by definition you are Competent enough to balance the various aspects of your life and not sacrifice yourself to monomaniacal devotion to your job.

I suggest the maximum payable hours to work each year is the total of ten hours a day, seven days a week, for a maximum of forty-eight weeks a year. This maximum number of paid hours gives a total of work hours allowed per year, but the hours may be accumulated however desired. For example, athletes, or science researchers who work and live on the job in Antarctica, might accumulate such hours. Entertainers in long running shows, or disorganized upper managers, may work many hours a week every week and attain the maximum hours per year limit. If you can justify working hours beyond that maximum in one year then you must reduce your work time the following year (for example) so your two-year average fits within the maximum total hours for two years. Other time spans may be used instead, as appropriate. If you are really working such excessive hours, avail yourself to some counseling or other professional help to start living Richly, to start exploring and expressing and enjoying other aspects of life, and considering what it means to be a human.

Recording hours

All hours that a person works (or otherwise charges for income) are determined by documentation provided by the payer, not by what the individual has deposited into pos account in the course of the year. If no one admits to having paid you, and you haven’t kept your paycheck stub (or copy of your invoice) that records your income, then you have somehow obtained money without working for it and it is due to be returned to the source of money, probably annually. The total known income from those who actually paid you will be compared to the hours that you claim, in an attempt to identify cheaters, much as the IRS does today.

The reason for auditing is to verify the amount of money that should be deposited in your account in exchange for hours worked, to determine where the money you spend comes from, to verify that your annual minimums are attained, and that maximums are not exceeded. Like any audit, its only purpose is to verify correct and accurate bookkeeping practices. Any excess income beyond the hours of work that you claim will be returned to the source of money. Any income from hours claimed above the maximums, if justified, will be stored for later retrieval when work is less abundant. This auditing might be done by the banks because they are closest to the flow of money on a daily basis, so they could see potential problems and alert the person involved. If it is not good for banks to perform this function then it may be possible to convert the remains of the IRS to this task of umpiring and auditing.

Such an audit cannot eliminate cheating any more than it does today, but why would a Rich person bother, and why would another Rich person want to become an accomplice, instead of a whistle blower, to someone trying to be a Master? I suppose there might always be an alternate sub-economy, using cash or something like bitcoin, where all of the abuses of money are possible, like unlimited accumulation, speculation, inflation and recession, the likelihood of the basic unit changing in value, and schemes for investing or loaning or otherwise having ‘money work for you’. Cheating is always possible, if others collude. Richness attempts to make it not worth the effort, because everyone is already Rich. Nevertheless attempts at cheating are expected, and whatever the reason for cheating (and there is probably only one ultimate reason) a Rich society is determined to prevent it.

For those of you who shiver at the thought of a government authority inspecting your financial records, it will not be very different from what is done now. As always for a Rich society, the only reason for secrecy from auditors is to hide criminal or other dishonest activities which equate to somehow becoming a Master over your pallow citizens. The only reason that EVERYone’s income is audited is to prevent ANYone from cheating, in the same way that EVERYone’s actions may be recorded by security systems in order to detect ANYone treating someone else as their Subject.

Even though umpiring is a mandated responsibility of the government, you are not being audited by, nor need to hide from, the government. You are audited by, and need to hide from, your friends and neighbors who Want To Be Rich. They will not tolerate your cheating out of personal self-protection from, and insult by, you trying to make more for an hour of your life than they do. Cheating may be noticed and reported by anyone at any level of a large or small business, or by a volunteer of an altruistic organization. What is not relevant to umpires is how you earn your income, or how you spend it. Their only concern is that the money you did spend was obtained from hours you spent at work.

Everyone should ‘audit’ a bill before paying it. A customer can challenge being overcharged for actual time and services, just like today. For example, a doctor visit that takes five minutes for an easy diagnosis and prescription might be worth a fifteen or twenty minute charge for pos time, including the overhead of walking to the room, entering notes about the visit, and washing pos hands before and after. If the bill lists an hour of  “professional consultation and evaluation” for that same five minutes with the doctor, then a complaint is justified because you are discovering someone trying to get paid for doing nothing.

As a provider of goods and services, recall that you may charge as much as you want for your products and services, but your personal income is based on your hours on the job at the standard wage per hour, and it is the only money you are allowed to keep. Preparation hours for your services are considered to be requirements of work and can be padded as much as you can get away with, up to the maximum limits, for things like practice needed to maintain a professional degree of skill, and similar reasons.

Transportation as time on the job

One of the goals of Richness is to increase the ratio of free time to the hours spent at work. The time spent going to and from work could be interpreted as time away from your home and your personal life in exactly the same way as other time on the job, so transportation time could be included with your other hours at work. This is only slightly unreasonable because the time dressing for work, and changing clothes after work, could also be included. The two activities do have similarities, but dressing before going out is done whenever you leave the house for any reason and is not necessarily related to work. Similarly, leaving the house to go anywhere makes transportation common to all outside activities and such transportation is not necessarily related to work either.

The difference is that dressing is somewhat of a constant, without too many differences between people and between jobs, or no job, whereas transportation time can vary greatly. Thus, when the time it takes to get to and from work becomes longer than the average time it takes to go anywhere else around your normal local neighborhood, that excess transportation time is certainly for your work, and thus it does transform into time at work. Legislation might specify that the maximum time you can spend going to or from work is fifteen minutes and any additional transportation time is included as part of your work day, after which you are paid for spending time that is not ‘yours’. Total transportation time starts when you leave your home and ends when you clock-in or are otherwise considered officially on the job, and the reverse when you go home.

There are many variations on being paid for time that is not yours because it is required by the job, just as there are today for pilots or long-haul truckers. Portions of such legally mandated, or job required, ‘away from home’ time will count as paid hours on the job.

Royalties and residuals

These shouldn’t exist because they are the epitome of repeatedly making money for the same hours of work, an example of doing nothing now and getting paid as if you had put in some additional hours of work. If they are allowed then income above the yearly maximum might be spread out backward over time, to cover for years of training or preparation, and then forward for some similar reason. It will probably be difficult to justify.

Retirement

In a sense, retirement is your final job, but Richness considers it a reward. You can think of your working career as nothing more than creating or maintaining a Rich society that will support your retirement. By the time you retire, younger jobholders are productive enough to provide not only for themselves but also for you as a retiree, in addition to the other ‘overhead expenses’ of society, just as you did when you were working.

Retirement is awarded unconditionally at a certain age, simply for living long enough to become a beneficiary. Even if you contributed as little as you possibly could to Richness, or actively worked to overthrow Richness by convincing others to become Subjects, you will be rewarded with the same retirement as everyone else. It might seem as if retirees are making money for doing nothing, illegal for a Rich accounting system, but they have done things and retirement income is their reward for their effort. At the early stages of implementing a Rich society everyone should be reassured to see retirement fully supported immediately.

What is the age for retirement? The determining situation is that a certain average amount of work needs to be done each year (or other time range) to maintain a society. Once those total hours are known, determine how many hours of work is possible or available. Start with one hundred percent of Competent Adults working for ten hours a day, every day, and that total time should add up to more than those required hours. This means fewer people can work fewer hours and still satisfy the amount of work needed by the society. ‘Retirement’ is the adjustment where old people exit from the workforce and leave the younger (stronger, more energetic, etc.) people to work the total hours needed for the society. This creates the earliest retirement age, but that leaves all of the younger people working ten hours a day, every day (in this example), which is more than anyone Wants to work. To reduce each working person’s daily hours on the job requires more people to share the work, so the youngest retirees are ‘put back to work’ until the required total are reached, being worked by more people and making the retirement age a little older. Then a similar adjustment is made to provide for a ‘five days out of seven’ work week (in this example) which also makes the retirement age a little older. Continue making similar adjustment for other criteria, and a balance between annual hours of work and retirement age will be reached.

The general goal for Richness is to work as few total hours a year as possible, while retiring as soon as possible, but only theoretically. The number of hours at work is not the real issue, it is the enjoyment of life that results from those hours. The relationship is direct: minimal hours worked, minimal enjoyment of society; more hours, more enjoyment. That amount of ‘work that needs to be done each day’ is to satisfy the minimum Richness for everyone, and it might be reduced to two, perhaps three days a week. I think most people imagine, and Want, much more from Richness, because there are other things they Want To Get, like fancy comNodes, or vacations, or eating out in social situations, and they are willing to work more to obtain such enjoyments for themselves. It really is the difference between energetic vitality and austere gloom. Working more to Get What You Want is the small price to be paid, and the rewards are most of what modern civilization and culture has to offer.

What about those who complain about compulsory retirement, kicking and screaming about being forced to play instead of work? What about actors needed to portray retirees, or experts who want to continue their lifelong interests? What about your personal freedom to pursue and practice what you choose even though you are officially retired? Since Richness allows people to Get What They Want there are at least a couple of ways to satisfy this, and either can be exercised as desired. The first approach, much like today, reduces a person’s normal retirement pay by every hour pel is paid on a job. The second approach considers a retiree as a pre-paid employee and pel can simply volunteer pos time. Either way, the retiree’s pay is the same and pel spends as many hours as pel Wants pursuing pos desire to work.

Compulsory retirement is justified and reinforced by the knowledge that, in general, it is not good to have old people in the workforce. We have all seen old people trying to work as long as possible in their field no matter what – actors, businesspals, politicians, judges – where the spirit (or ego) is willing but the flesh and mind are weak, stuck in their old ways and resisting change, outmoded and unable to adapt, physically weaker, slower, and with decreasing stamina. I am sure they reminisce and believe they are still doing valuable work, and I am just as sure most people who interact with them would prefer them to just get out of the way. A clause in the founding document will prevent retirees from running for elective office, although they may be welcomed as volunteer help or advisors by the younger officeholders.

Anyone who experiences problems adjusting to retirement has access to mental health services and counseling which can help them solve the known challenges of transition and provide valuable techniques for enjoying retirement. It is important to know how to enjoy retirement because it is intended to last a long time.

Ownership

Eligibility

As should be expected, only Competent Adults, businesses, and similar entities (like the government), may legally own anything other than simple personal possessions.

Items and their owners

The status or condition of ownership exists for every item, that is, everything physical and tangible. For this discussion, anything that can be owned is called an item (instead of a ‘thing’ or ‘entity’), and is a generic term that may refer to a single item or a group of items.

Determining who owns items is not going to be much different than today: when you purchase or create an item some public record is generated that associates you as the owner of that item. A public record is something authoritative that you can show to other people, like a receipt, bill of sale, or a verifiable certificate of manufacture. Everything has a certificate of creation to start with, from a manufacturers serial number for a product placed into inventory, to a birth certificate, pedigree, or registration for prized animals.

Richness modifies the concept of ‘who owns what’ in a small by significant way: ownership is an attribute of the item, and the recorded history of all previous owners is a list within the data maintained with the item, so the last entry in the item’s history of successive owners identifies the current owner. This requires any item of even moderate value to have its provenance, its sequential history of owners (and any other relevant information), maintained and included in its public documentation. This concept applies to any items that might persist across lifetimes, where ownership will change but the item does not.

Most inanimate objects, like food and clothes, do not last long, rarely have more than one or two owners, are basically consumables, and need only cursory recordkeeping. Some larger and longer-lasting items are included in this category, like household appliances or tools. For these items a simple record, like keeping the bill of sale or receipt, is usually adequate for establishing ownership. Receipts and records for such items are often not retained because legal ownership is assumed simply by current possession, which is usually adequate and correct. An absence of such records and identifications is only a problem when reporting or retrieving stolen items. Generally, the history of ownership for every item should include the price paid by each owner.

Things that are more expensive and are easy to move around, like jewelry or automobiles, are often registered with the government and/or some authentication business so legal ownership can be established as needed. They store the original receipts or verified copies, along with other relevant documentation, keeping them both secure and publicly available. Government departments, businesses, and infrastructures will have the same information for large items they own stored in their own (publicly available) record-keeping systems. This means some kind of master cross-referenced list of every item and its attributes must be maintained for access by anyone, to make it easy to find the current owner of anything, and the reverse, a list of what is owned by each person or business. Modern computers and ubiquitous internet access make this a relatively straightforward project.

Each person will probably verify pos public information annually as a section in pos annual reporting of income, which will include a listing of every item of interest that each person owns, a simple annual inventory. That might seem strange, but recall that every institution and every person is subject to investigation at any time, that constant vigilance means looking for evidence of Masters in the making. Unexplained ownership of expensive items requires explanation because it suggests illegal activity. Any investigation of a person, or even an audit, will include an itemization of every item to be found in pos dwelling and other storage locations, to be compared with pos known list of owned items. Such investigations trying to discover irregularities are procedures that enforce Equality by verifying that personal and business practices are within the limitations of Richness.

When an item is destroyed the end of its ‘life’ will be documented as the final modification of its attributes, and the item’s entry will be retained for a few years just as other legal records are retained today.

Basic responsibility of ownership

Ownership is the condition of accepting control over, and responsibility for, an item. Owners are generally motivated to maintain the functionality of inanimate items for as long as possible. When an item’s usefulness ends it is usually discarded as trash, the expected end of its ‘life’, and if it has been registered its entry will get a final update. When an owner wants to dispose of anything adequately old or unusual pel must first determine if pos obsolete item is of value to collectors, or museums. If someone wants it then pel is obliged to donate it to pon. Either way the current owner’s responsibility ends.

When the owned item is a business, the responsibility to maintain its functionality is the same, usually described as ‘being successful’ or a ‘going concern’. It is assumed that any robust business, administered by a capable owner, working within the limitations of Richness, serves to enrich society, even though that may not be the owner’s personal motivation. For example, every business sells something to other people: when the product is sold the seller’s selfish goals are satisfied, and so is the customer’s selfish goal of a desired purchase. Both may ignore any ‘benefits to society’ that may accrue and they are of no concern to either party. As long as a business is able to generate such commerce, within the limitations of Richness, then the umpires should be happy, because the business helps people Get What They Want.

The government attempts to help every business succeed and fulfill it’s responsibilities by providing loans and advice from the loaning bank, by making education available, etc.

Limitations on business management

The business is the item with rights and obligations, and the owner is the administrator of those rights and obligations. No one else has those abilities, except when acting under the owner’s authority in the name of the business, which usually includes an entire hierarchy of management, possibly including a hired CEO. When the owner is not the CEO responsible for the day-to-day management of the business then the actual CEO might challenge why the owner gets paid. I hope any self-respecting person living in a Rich society will refuse to work for an organization where the owner insists on being paid for doing nothing just because pel is the owner, setting ponself up as a Master.

The owner and pos management hierarchy become personally responsible for the business goals and problems that are under their control – which is the essence of their jobs. This means that any resolution to problems that a company experiences attempts to reach up to the owner in one way or another, although an incompetent CEO or pos subordinates may be where most of the accountability lands. This is why so much paperwork is generated by a manager, to ‘cover pos ass’ as the saying goes, but it is actually documentation of pel doing pos job correctly and responsibly, of accurately summarizing and reporting the functions, operations, and problems of pos business responsibilities.

For example, safe working conditions are required for all jobs under all conditions, so when someone gets injured the question is where the unsafe condition was overlooked and not reported, got reported but not corrected, or where it got misrepresented by being reported as safe, ending up at the CEO’s desk as assurance and confirmation that safe working conditions are being maintained – absolutely lying to everyone above the level where it should have been reported and corrected. Everyone above that manager who was lied to cannot be held responsible, because they have the lying report(s) to justify their ignorance –  the documentation and assurance that there are no known or outstanding issues requiring action. The failing and prevaricating manager is at fault, and personally responsible, including criminal liability.

Nothing about this should seem unusual. The concept of a corporation as a business that legally absolves the owner from responsibility is not allowed since it supports an obvious non-Equality, allowing some people to behave criminally without fear of blame or punishment, or to make money for doing nothing, allowing them to live under a different set of rules than everyone else.

Today there are times when a business, or other item with rights and obligations, is considered a legal ‘person’ of record. If that kind of unnecessary construct is maintained then Richness will retain the word-play and insist that such a ‘person’ is subject to the same hourly rate of income as any other person, and also to the maximum allowed income per year as any other person. Neither may such an entity own another business, any more than one person can own another ‘person’.

Like today, a business or other item is the ‘owner of record’ of the various assets it uses, and is associated with the item as the current owner. Nothing about the enterprise changes when the founder, or the current owner, quits or retires or dies, because only the ownership of the business, as an item, is transferred to a new owner who thereby obtains the appropriate authority and takes over the administration of the item and its assets.

Limitations on business practices

The intention of ownership is to administer a business (item) which includes the ability to create, maintain, modify, improve, or change it however desired. Pos business Freedoms are limited only by the enforcement of Equality as mandated by Richness. Those limitations are in place to guarantee a Rich society, so they specify the owner’s and the business’s additional responsibilities to society at large, separate from its obvious values of satisfying the needs and desires of commerce. We’ll use examples to explain the motivation and justification for the major limitations, and observe their application for additional clarification.

Land and natural resources

Land, and its natural resources, are free. Land is usually zoned and parceled for various reasons and usages by local governments, with additional record keeping and umpiring by the federal government. The federal government occasionally overrides or usurps the preferences of subsidiary governments. For example, the federal government may keep natural wonders and a large amount of wilderness intact for use as recreation areas, and it might restrict the destruction of oxygen generating, or carbon sequestering, trees until their ecological function is replaced, assuming there is justifiable science on which to make such a decree.

When new lands were discovered by modern civilized societies, and after the indigenous people were conquered or exterminated or relocated, private citizens could claim as much of the undeveloped and freely available land as they needed. How each person used the land became the de facto zoning, like farms, ranches, mines, and manufacturing facilities. Towns grew from trading and transportation centers, like harbors or along the route of a railroad. Just like today, each defined area of land was allocated to an owner and reserved for pel to use.

For a Rich society, land is not purchased, per se, because it is free. Land is an ‘item’ or resource assigned to, and managed by, a business – which is itself an ‘item’ whose purpose is to obtain, produce, and sell something from the land. Since the business is responsible for the land and for everything derived from it, the owner of the business becomes the administrator of the land. Notice that the owner does not ‘possess’ the property or the resources from it, pel owns a business intended to obtain natural resources, or otherwise use the land, to create, maintain, or increase the Richness of society. In this respect a factory sitting on some land follows the same hierarchy of ownership and administration as a farm.

The business and the usage of land can change as the owner desires, although pel may need to consider some unwelcome input from neighbors, various business sectors, the local government, etc.

If an owner becomes irresponsible and fails to produce pos intended output from the land, or fails to maintain it properly, the umpires may remove the owner of the business and let someone else become the new owner, and thus the new administrator for exploiting the land. Criminal prosecution is possible for the owner of the failed business, depending on the circumstances under pos control, and the decisions pel made.

Some other method of handling the land and its resources can be used, but it must reflect the fact that neither land nor what comes from it have any inherent monetary value, only the hours that people spend working it can contribute to the price of what the business sells.

An owner does not have absolute authority to ‘do with pos property as pel pleases’ with either the land or the resources. The owner may not hold land or its resources for ransom, by ‘might’ of ownership, in the way historical regimes claimed ownership of land or waterways and extorted payment for others to cross ‘their’ land or to travel on ‘their’ river. An owner has no ‘right’ to sell the gathered, grown, processed, etc. products of the land or waters for ‘what the market will bear’. Ownership does not confer any rights of mere acquisition that allows pel to gouge others and accumulate profits, or favor some customers over others in exchange for political influence, or any other attempt to become a Master. An owner may NOT prevent the intended and expected exploitation of the land by doing nothing, and then selling access to the land to others so they can exploit it. An owner is not a toll taker or gatekeeper or other kind of extortionist.

All land and natural resources are umpired by the government. The owners of businesses that comprise economic sectors, in conjunction with related societal interests (like public health), create standards and regulations that are recorded with the umpiring division of government, which then enforces their standards and regulations among and upon them. Additional responsibilities of umpiring include the management and possible control of some resources to prevent shortages. Under the current accounting system, crops (for example) and profits can behave like predators and prey in nature, both alternating between shortages and excesses at regular intervals, which umpiring can stabilize. Monetary incentives are not a major consideration for farmers since they are paid the same for the hours spent on whatever crops they grow. If no one wants to produce required crops to provide constant availability then the umpires have the right to change ownership to someone who will grow what is needed, when it is needed, to maintain a Rich society.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure refers to the physical constructions, and the land on which they stand, which deliver goods and services used by, or available to, everyone in the society, usually mandated by the government. It includes things like roads, utilities, public schools, hospitals, and many others.

The concepts and restrictions for ownership of an infrastructure are a natural extension of those just enumerated for land and natural resources. All infrastructure requires some land but the services the land supports are human constructions, not natural and free. Nevertheless their relationship to society is the same as for natural resources. For example, fresh water is a natural resource and it collects in lakes and underground aquifers. The infrastructure for water includes the dams and artificial reservoirs, the processing plants, distribution pipelines, offices, etc. used to deliver clean and abundant water throughout the society. Infrastructure might be thought of as physically part of the resource (or service) being provided, because it is often directly (and physically) connected to a distant origin of the resource or service.

Like land, infrastructure is not actually purchased or possessed by the owners. The owner is the temporary administrator with responsibility for the continuing transfer and availability of a resource to everyone in the Rich society. The umpiring of land, natural resources, etc. related to infrastructure includes identifying incompetence or misuse of the resource, and the subsequent removal and replacement of the owner.

Dwellings

Whoever lives in a dwelling is the owner and is thus responsible for it during pos ownership. As above, neither the land nor the dwelling becomes the owner’s personal possession, pel becomes responsible for them. Housing might be thought of as infrastructure, a sector of the society providing availability of residences, with each parcel having different owners over time. All ownership and residence is temporary, from an overnight hotel room to a lifelong home. Only the elapsed time varies, but the responsibilities of ownership remain the same, maintaining everything throughout your stay in as good a condition as they were when you began using them.

Some people like to live as nomads and don’t like the sense of being tied down to one locale for long, so the legalities for changing homes will support that preference, where speed and convenience for them also benefits everyone else. A call or electronic notification should start proceedings, and next-day confirmations should verify that the true owner is initiating the move, the dwelling has been maintained, bills are paid, payment provisions are in place in case something is discovered that requires maintenance during a probationary time, etc. After notifying the authorities the ex-owner should be free to leave within seventy-two hours.

When an owner leaves a dwelling it may be placed in the rotation of resources reserved for emergencies. This period would provide an opportunity to bring parts of the structure up to current construction codes, or to refurbish it for use by a different subset of the population, etc.

At some point the dwelling becomes available for a new owner. Richness enforces no preference for who lives there next, not even for a relative, because everyone is already Rich in their own home. The next owner may be determined by any number of possibilities. Perhaps some kind of a waiting list, possibly sorted by age or other seniority, instead of first come first served after an announcement of availability. Perhaps random selection, like a drawing or lottery. Most probably it will be done just as it is today, where someone looks for a dwelling in a certain area, finds one, and takes ownership.

Other Businesses and their assets

Commercial businesses, large and small, are handled the same way as land exploitation or infrastructure businesses. For an artist, or a provider of professional services, a single person may be the owner and sole employee of the business, but everything else works the same way. They just own a small and compact enterprise, and it may start as a hobby or unofficial activity before needing to formalize as a business.

Government offices

A person holding a job in government is the current responsible ‘owner’ of that position and is held to the same restrictions as all of the above, providing the services of the office freely and equally to everyone.

Selling and reselling

There are limitations concerned with the original worth or value of an item, and the subsequent resale of such items. The main issue is that the price of an item which is later resold is limited to the original cost of the item, because it cannot increase in value over time. ‘Appreciation’ is a commonly accepted phenomenon in current accounting systems, but such a method of making money for doing nothing is contrary to Richness. Maintaining the original price is simply a strict implementation of ‘value’ being dependent on the hours of people’s lives spent working on, and creating, things. Even attempting to sell something for the original purchase price is unfair in a way, because the new buyer completely reimburses the reseller for pos use of it, making it free to the reseller for the time pel owned it, thereby getting value of some sort for nothing. There may be instances where the purchaser agrees to that kind of transaction.

Any further complexities are beyond any real concern of Richness and they will work themselves out on their own, in a mostly free economy based on, and limited by, the equal hourly value of people’s lives. For example, sales receipts will keep the price of the item separate from the expenses of the seller, which might include overhead costs for ponself, but nothing is allowed to affect the price of the item.

Rights and intellectual property

These probably won’t change much. Creative control of a name or icon or other intellectual property is managed by the owner who has authority over it. Pel is concerned with the control of the physical versions of something, like a recording is control over the physical sound waves derived from the item. This is a case where access may be blocked by the owner. Like the cost of everything else, the income from selling ‘rights’ of any sort is limited by the number of hours it takes to negotiate and file licensing agreements, and then the time to verify the quality of merchandise and other aspects of the agreements over time.

This also applies to patents for something real, that exists, but not to ideas or concepts that don’t exist. Patenting or securing the rights to something you expect someone else to invent or develop is not the same as doing the inventing or developing, and has no value and no claim to any actual item that may someday exist. Anyone can think of things, it is making it that creates Richness. Neither is being the first person to develop something worth any particular reward either, except perhaps to get your name associated with it. If it is somehow truly revolutionary or a giant step forward, fine, but the only additional income to be made is to spend more hours working with it. Licensing to others is possible for a limited time that approximates how long it would have been before someone else thought of it. If there are competing claims at the very beginning then it is obviously not a particularly clever idea but the sort of thing anyone familiar with the state of the art could conceive. Granting a single person exclusive use of something ‘ready to be discovered or created’ seems to be unnecessarily eliminating competition in an otherwise mostly free economy. No exceptional personal rewards are to be gained from such rights because everyone’s income is based on hours of work.

Retrieving excess money from circulation

As previously described, excess profits from a business are collected annually and returned to the source of money, or may be held by a bank for limited future business purposes. The equivalent for an individual is the annual collection of income in excess of what can be earned by working the maximum hours of work in a year, with a similar saving of excess hours for retrieval in a subsequent year. A similar collection is made at the end of a person’s life, when pos lifelong collection of unspent money is returned to the source of money.

When you die you have no control of anything or anyone from beyond the grave. There are no wills, trusts, foundations, endowments, inheritances, or the like because your ownership of anything and everything ceases immediately. The simplicity of changing the ownership of dwellings has already been described, and a similar transfer of ownership is applied to everything else that was owned by the deceased.

A Rich accounting system prevents giving gifts of money to anyone before death, especially relatives, in attempts to ‘pass on’ accumulated wealth as an inheritance. This is because everyone, including your immediate family and progeny, is already Rich on their own merits. Physical items left behind after death are of no interest to the government. The items have been paid for, any gifting or inheriting of them is only a change of ownership, nothing more than updating the item’s history of owners and documenting how and why the transfer was made. Afterward the item will be included on the recipient’s annual list of possessions, which might just put the recipient into the position of an antiques or novelty dealer, selling off gifted inventory for as long as it lasts, and adding the proceeds of any sales to pos annual income.

These surmises are not realistic because there is no expectation of anyone having any excess money at death. Almost everyone will need, or want, to spend all of their saved money and all of their ongoing retirement income on personal caretakers and assisted living services as they get older.

If you Want To Be Rich it is important to prevent others from attempts to accumulate excess money, or expensive items that are the equivalent of money, and pass it on to the next generation, effectively providing them with money for doing nothing. Preventing inheritance greatly inhibits, if not eliminates, such attempts to keep money ‘in the family’. Richness adds inheritance to the list of other ancient practices and obsolete traditions with the same goal, like marrying siblings and other close relatives, or killing off the eldest heir so the ‘next in line’ can inherit everything, etc.

Preventing the creation of Masters is a requirement of a Rich society because it is impossible to create a ‘level playing field’ with ‘equality of opportunity’ when some children are born ‘richer than’ others.

Scope of the economy

Autonomous accounting system

The rules for money and an accounting system are restricted to the society that implements them. Just as the government is restricted to an area, so the money used by a Rich society has no inherent value outside the physical boundaries of the society. This means there can be no foreign ownerships in either direction. The people of a Rich society cannot own businesses or property in another society, nor may anyone or anything in an external society own property or a business in a Rich society. This includes offshore bank accounts because the money for a society needs to stay within the boundaries of that society. Some other country may allow it, but it is illegal to take money out of circulation and decrease a society’s Richness.

Because a government and an accounting system are intended to create a Rich society, a nation’s natural resources must first support its own population before being allowed to export those resources. This restriction is contrary to current economics which can make it “individually profitable” to let one’s pallow citizens go hungry because food produced within the society can be sold for a larger profit to another society. The first requirement is for everyone to be Rich, by managing and insuring self-contained and self-supporting Richness, after which any excess may be traded.

Trade

Trade, by definition, is an equal exchange of goods, including the ‘goods’ of human hours. For a purchase by a Rich society from a non-Rich one, the asking price of the non-Rich seller might not be adequate to pay a Rich wage for the hours it takes people to create the product, especially if they are using child or slave labor, or paying normal workers absolutely minimal wages. For a buyer in a Rich society, paying such an asking price based on hourly wages that are less than the standard in the Rich society is both hypocritical and illegal, indirectly making those people our Subjects and betraying the concepts of a Rich society. For a buyer from a Rich society to determine a fair price, transparency of production methods is required, from people pulling free resources from nature to factory and management hours, etc. If such information is withheld then a knowledgeable price to pay may be based on what the product would cost to be created within the Rich society.

Once a fair price is determined, the Rich-society trader will pay the seller the Rich price, and the seller is expected to accept the price if it is more than what was asked. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that the money paid will actually be given to the people who put in the hours creating whatever was purchased. Those results of an otherwise fair trade cannot be enforced, or even suggested, without charges of “interfering with the internal policies of a foreign country”. The only hope is that the seller will be honest, or use pos money in a way that will help increase Richness for their society.

Sometimes sellers from a non-Rich society have a full or partial monopoly on a rare substance and are at liberty to gouge the buyer and charge an excess profit for otherwise free natural resources, or perhaps for secret skills and techniques that don’t actually require many hours to produce the item for sale. In that case the Rich society buyer finds ponself subject to the gouging of the seller and can only be happy to participate in a good old-fashioned greed-based transaction.

The bigger issue is that it’s nice to trade excess goods to people that need them, but it is not desirable to support a non-Rich society which forever dooms itself to Masters and Subjects, which fails to manage and equitably share its own resources among its own population, and which makes no attempt to become a Rich society unto itself. Perhaps the question is, ‘how will this activity (trading) help make everyone involved Rich?’ and if the answer is ‘it won’t’ then it is hard to justify without being hypocritical and supporting an economic system that perpetuates inequality and injustice.

Mandated concerns of a Rich government

Introduction

Most of the subjects and topics in this section have been introduced previously and discussed in general terms, and are known to be mandates of Richness. What follows are various elaborations and clarifications that may be explicitly included in the founding document of a Rich Society in order to avoid both interpretation and misinterpretation. Included are discussions of details that have only been suggested or implied, and some probable side effects that are expected after implementation. Thus, despite your interest in these, do not start reading here, or skip to here. Start from the beginning and learn what Richness is attempting, and why.

No subject that follows is considered exhaustively, any more then the rest of this book is comprehensive and definitive. These selected extensions should be both interesting and polarizing, because you may finally learn something that is required by a Rich society which you, personally, do not want to do. If that happens I hope you will pause and consider before letting your personal preferences obliterate all of my attempts to convince and persuade you of the benefits that Richness will provide to you, and to your society. Perhaps step back (again?!) and roll your eyes, and shake your head, and tolerantly just plow ahead, for the sake of discussion. You are not committing to anything, your reservations and revulsions are neither changed nor dismissed, I just ask you to keep reading and imagine the big picture, a Rich society with you being Rich, as the goal. If you don’t like what is suggested you might be able to come up with an improved alternative for achieving Richness that you and others will want to support.

Basic operations and self-maintenance

There are very few advantages to being a federal level of ‘politician’ in a Rich society, since most will be considered administrators and not ‘leaders’ and their job responsibilities are solely the implementation and enforcement of some aspect of Richness. Certain functions like diplomacy for international relations will persist, but those should be bound by the question ‘how will this policy (or whatever) help to make everyone, on both sides, Rich?’.

Perhaps government should have a department to encourage every other society to make itself Rich, primarily by providing ourselves as an example of what is to be gained and how to do it. Not for mere propaganda, maybe something more like an advertising or educational function, including indirectly communicating to those inside of non-Rich societies whose ‘leaders’ have the power to censor and prevent their people from knowing about Richness, or anything else they don’t want their Subjects to learn. Such suggestions might be risky because they will irritate entrenched Masters who will certainly refuse to change, and who are willing use military force on their own people to maintain the inequalities of their society.

The branches of a Rich government need to regulate and audit each other. Each branch and its mandates are defined and enumerated, including specific checks against the other branches that enforce compliance and maintain the intended balances between them. For example, at least one other branch of government must approve, and be able to rescind, a president’s whim to unilaterally start useless wars, personal retaliations, unjustified pre-emptive strikes, supporting and continuing any conflict in the name of “national honor” which cannot make everyone Rich, etc. The president should not be able to personally declare the start of a war (or whatever weasel-word euphemism is used) because, in pos role as commander-in-chief of the military, that power provides pel with a personal military force to use however pel wants. Anything resembling armed conflict must be based on something more relevant to Richness than the president’s personal motivations. The legal means for preventing or cancelling such abuses are the check or balance, up to and including indictment for breaches of responsibility and abuses of office.

Since the government is absolutely secular and the founding document explicitly states and embodies that concept, there is no official reference to god(s) in any government document, requirement for office, swearing in ceremony, pledge, motto, national anthem, etc. Despite this, any religion and its practice is allowed by a Rich society, within the limitations of Richness. Interestingly, if One True Religion is ever determined, citizens are not required to become members of that religion, and may actively ignore the pronouncements of the god(s) as revealed by its (or their) holy scripture, from ordained or inspired interpreters of the holy scripture, or from the deity or deities by direct communication. No specified aspect of Richness, or Freedom & Equality, may be changed, altered, or modified because of the dogma of the recognized, and popular, One True Religion.

A Rich government provides a peaceful process for changing the government to something non-Rich, just as one is available to change it to Richness. It will require something like an actual count (vs. just those who vote) of at least two-thirds of Competent Adults to want to not be Rich, who actually desire and expect to become Subjects – because, as all other accounting systems through history have demonstrated, eventually only ten percent or fewer citizens will own more than eighty percent of society’s wealth, so becoming a Subject is the most likely result for any given person. Such a change to a non-Rich society should be highly unlikely because Richness already allows people to live as if they are not Rich, and they are Free to do so. Nevertheless, a process will be available for those who insist on trying to convince their pallow citizens to adopt some other form of authority-based government and become a Subject to it.

A Rich government and the society it administers are stable. Citizens are secure in the knowledge that new administrators are incapable of major or minor changes to any structure, protocol, or mandates of the government which enact Richness, nor of any resultant public policy, because each person’s Freedom & Equality is guaranteed in the founding document and it cannot be abridged, per that same document. The average person has no need to concern ponself with who the new administrator is, or with what pos personal choices or beliefs are, only with what kind of a ‘front pal’ pel will make as the figurehead of the society, and as administrator of the Executive branch. The same inability of the legislative branch to make changes to Richness also makes their daily jobs of no consequence to the average person, assuming they remain within the limitations of Richness.

There is something basically unsound and inadequate about a founding document that allows a new person or party to take over the seat of government (the phrase itself suggests what is wrong) and initiate legislation that creates new restrictive policies or laws, or reverses restrictive ones back to prior freedoms, or reinstates the repressive ones again, back and forth, ad nauseam. There is something very wrong with a founding document that not just allows, but provides the structure and rules for changing the law, as often as desired, to be used as the embodiment of the will of the current leader or party, and forcing law-abiding citizens to become the Subjects of those current Masters. This is an example of Might (to change the law) making Right (by legalizing injustices and enforcing them) that is prevented by robust Richness.

The founding document may include a provision for amendments, which states that amendments will not diminish or contradict the foundational concepts of Richness, including abundance, Freedom & Equality, Get What You Want, nor their essential extensions.

Umpiring

This mandated function is basically the daily operation of a segment of law enforcement. It was previously discussed in relation to the majority of people living cooperatively in, and for, a Rich society, insuring that Masters cannot be created. Umpiring is done for people who choose to live poorly within Richness, and addicts, and other strict independents. Umpiring is also done for people pursuing an extreme non-Rich lifestyle outside of civilization, perhaps living in designated and reserved wilderness, or cleared farmland they or their predecessors have developed. The interaction with the government’s umpires are minimal but important, because the isolationists, survivalists, environmentalists, etc., are living as a choice of Rich people within a Rich society.

Contracts and certifications for these lifestyles are required, which include each person’s understanding that they remain free to return to the Rich society at any time. Territory for them is defined and limits are set for the number of others who share the area, if any, so everyone can live as desired. They must agree to occasional monitoring, inspection, and investigation by the umpires, and they are not allowed to kill such officials for ‘trespassing’ nor or otherwise prevent them from ‘interfering’. Typical information needed by the Rich society (in which they live as isolationists) includes: when a child is born so education can be arranged; when they die so someone else can use their area; and whether they are destroying the land or ecology contrary to their agreement.

Such agreements will look a lot like the basics of civilizations, previously noted, for things like safe sewage that doesn’t seep into other people’s water, stopping the flow of water (to other people) to make a lake, overhunting, overcutting of trees, or other adverse effects on their distant neighbor’s access to natural resources, etc. Failing to abide by the accepted conditions will draw attention from law enforcement. Despite their physical separation and isolation from mainstream Richness, such individualists are not unrestrained Masters of all they survey. Every person within any isolated mini-society must enjoy Freedom & Equality and must Get What They Want. Isolationists are just as responsible for the land they own, and for society as a whole, as much as everyone else because they are, in actuality, being protected from organized civilization by that society.

Free enterprise

All businesses are allowed

A Rich accounting system is very much an implementation of Get What You Want. The government allows an individual to pursue pos own desires and assumes that pos efforts will, if successful, contribute most effectively to increasing the Richness of society. The function of the government or its ‘economic policy’ is restricted to maintaining order and preventing unfair practices, requiring the participants to create rules and standards for themselves (including every basic requirement of Richness) and umpiring their activities.

All businesses are allowed. All are umpired and regulated as necessary to promote Richness, including safety. This means that businesses or services currently disallowed cannot be prevented in a Rich society, so let’s look at a couple of hot topics, just to make things clear. Drug usage is allowed, as is cultivation of marijuana or tobacco or any other plant for drug use, personally or commercially, just like any other crop. So-called ‘hard’ drugs are allowed, as are designer drugs, and whatever else people want to use that will cause (hopefully temporary) abnormal activity in, or minor damage to, their brains, nervous systems, and organs. Most recreational drugs will be produced in pharmaceutical quality labs in accurate dosages and distributed just like other drugs, although you can make your own if you want, like beer- and wine-making hobbyists. ‘Make your own’ does not exempt you from age and other consumption restrictions.

Recreational drug use must be a victimless indulgence, so it will be licensed and regulated and must be responsibly practiced, especially in a family situation, where ‘personal’ usage is limited and perhaps restricted. Such rules enforced within a person’s home are an extension of rules we have today where children are not allowed in bars and where people are protected from second-hand smoke, and child endangerment regulations are applied almost everywhere. Children are too young to always Get What They Want, so protection for a child is based more on Not Getting What They Don’t Want, including seeing their parent behaving erratically, being ignored because of the parent’s self-indulgence, and perhaps having the parent behave meanly and cruelly toward the child, causing anxiety and distrust of the parent. That kind of experience makes the child a victim of the activity, and is the reason for restrictions at home. Alternate times and places for such activities may be arranged by and for parents, just as for other personal aspects of their lives, to protect their children from being victims.

Prostitution and other sex businesses are allowed, umpired for safety, legal age, etc. Such businesses might die out since sex professionals can make just as much doing anything else, or they may continue as legitimate enterprises.

Charities and religions

The current concepts of “non-profit” and “tax-exempt” organizations lose their meaning in a Rich society. Charities should disappear since they are, by definition, compensating for the inadequacies of government to organize and provide what people need, and a Rich society is designed to satisfy the Wants of its constituents. Some charities might be repurposed or adapted. For example, Planned Parenthood might become a specialized subdivision of normal Health Care to provide contraception, pregnancy, childbirth information, and related services.

Religions are treated the same as any other business, each one owned by a clergypal and competing for people’s faith, gathering a flock, and being paid in donations or offerings for their services. Religions that don't have a paid clergy are like hobbyist groups or social organizations, gatherings of people with similar interests who pay dues to cover meeting expenses, and administration performed by volunteers.

Efficiency and quality

Efficiencies are a goal of Richness, as are economies of scale, mechanization, standardization, and mass production, especially using machines and robots. Each of these reduce the number of human hours it takes to create any given item, and thus increase the ratio of free time to work time.

Quality is a goal of Richness, because it translates to reliability and extended usage before needing to be replaced. Anything that makes an item last longer increases its value because it decreases its cost per usage. Given the hundreds of thousands of miles a modern automobile lasts there is no reason for less heavy duty appliances like laundry washers, or refrigerators, or vacuum cleaners, not to last for a hundred years or more. The value of long-lasting quality applies to almost every item where its functionality is specific and limited enough to be considered unchanging over time.

The same advantages of quality applies to simple things, like clothes hampers and wastebaskets and staplers: everything should be sturdy enough to last for lifetimes. Quality is almost the definition of what Rich people purchase and expect.

Standards

The idea of standards is to maximize the availability of products that are functionally identical, or products that interconnect with each other.

The government has an interest in preventing the waste of time over things like the “format wars” of BetaMax vs. VHS video cassettes, or HD DVD vs. Blu-ray discs, especially when the different approaches do almost exactly the same thing because they function almost identically, usually at the current state of the art. This is not a new idea. Various manufacturers, on their own, have volunteered to meet and attempt to choose a standard from competing specifications, and such attempts have often failed

Perhaps a Rich accounting system will require standards to be defined earlier in the development process. Perhaps the lack of personal riches as a reward for choosing one approach over another will let the most technically advanced and versatile option to be chosen on merit alone. Perhaps the lack of lucrative licensing rights, limited to the time it takes to write and sign the agreements, will promote similar choices. Even if the business with the winning option has a small head start because they are the first with the product, as others adopt the standard and build their versions there will probably be enough customers for everyone.

No consumer knows or cares about who the inventors of a technology were, what the fighting was about, or which company or consortium or association was the triumphant victor. The government can only encourage the early adoption of standards, it can’t stop egomaniac owners or inventors from fighting among themselves, attempting to corner a market by making proprietary products, including connecting cables! Sometimes the government can only watch, along with the rest of the population, as the alpha dogs fight, waiting for one to win and force their way of doing things on others in their market sector.

Military

Military forces have a long and established internal organization and government, an entrenched culture, and not much of that changes in a Rich society. Since the armed forces are the Might that makes a government ‘right’ the two are often the same thing, most evident when the leader of a country dresses in the uniform of the military leader. If that leader also wears a symbol of a religion, like a crown bestowed by a religious authority, it symbolizes pos ‘divine right’ to rule, and with the might of the military to enforce whatever pel wants, pel effectively wields the power of pos god(s).

Even without divine authority the goal of the military is to maintain the current government and economic system, and to defend them from external influences and internal rebellion, because “every country has the right to defend itself”. Richness does not blindly accept that assertion, which is always presented as a self-evident truth. Only a Rich country has the right to defend itself from change, because it is the only one which authorizes and enforces individual Freedom & Equality for everyone, and whose goal is to make everyone Rich. All other governments, including the one we have now, grants limited freedoms and rights, and perpetuates Masters over Subjects. So the prior assertion should become ‘every country’s government and economic system insists that it should be preserved and defended as it stands, no matter how many citizens are poor and miserable’.

Either assertion is a justifiable stance because no one likes to be told what to do against their will, so external force will always be resisted, even if the conquering government and economics are better for the people, even if defeat is inevitable because of the invader’s overwhelming force. Resistance is a natural response of sheer self-respect to the perceived insult of another country acting as a Master and trying to make your country Subject to it, and the military is the defending force that protects the current society.

The resistance to physical force generates a strong personal response in every self-respecting individual, one that Masters always induce in their Subjects when they need to retain the status quo. Masters apply the fear of ‘change by force’ against internal motivations and reasons for changes, usually with a phrase like “forcing it down our throats” or “oppressive regulations”. Masters expect their Subjects to resist the perceived ‘change by force’ and they will muster popular support for the Masters to prevent such changes, and keep themselves as Subjects within their mostly non-Rich society, right where the Masters want them.

Resistance to the idea of ‘change by force’ is so strong and instinctive that any such attempt by one nation against another automatically leads to war and armed conflict, ending with Might making Right. This is why change needs to be made through the hearts and minds of the people, from the bottom up, by politics and law. This is why, in a Rich society, the military is administered and directed under civilian control, where both the government and the military are secular. If a Rich society is attacked from without by someone who wants to be everyone’s supreme Master then, after legal declaration of war or other official authorization, the civilian commander-in-chief will administer a defense against the aggressor. The military and political goal of such a war is the same goal as during peace, to defend and maintain a Rich society because it is the only valid expression of a government of, by, and for the people.

A Rich society may not attack or invade other societies with armed might for any reason, including “protecting our interests”, which doesn’t mean much for a self-sufficient Rich society. The goal of Richness is to make everyone Rich, including the people we trade with, and that should keep relations peaceful. Unfortunately, the Masters of other governments may not want their servants, slaves, and their poor to improve their situation, so a Rich society is confined to watching as the Masters of other countries use their control of military might to enforce and perpetuate their existing unfair, unjust, and repressive government on their own Subjects.

In a Rich society the military is composed of citizens protecting Richness for themselves and their pallow citizens. Because the military is composed of citizens they retain their individual freedom to opt out of any military program they don’t personally support, possibly with a sideways move within the service. Richness wants patriots (for lack of a better word) to fight for a cause they believe in, not mercenaries employed as thugs, nor as conscripted slaves forced to do whatever they are told. Regular questionnaires should allow servicepals to indicate programs they object to and provide time for their repositioning or reassignment. However, once a citizen agrees to the needs of a military program and chooses to participate, then required discipline, hierarchy, and chains of command are engaged and enforced, until the next questionnaire that allows people to change their minds. Both the military and the individual need to take each other seriously.

Military capabilities and programs that are classified are exceptions to the prior discussions on the transparency of a Rich government. Such secrets are reviewed by the civilian administration, and if considered justified then it remains a secret from the public, and thus from the rest of the world, until later review changes its status. Technical secrets need maximum security so they are not lost or stolen to become available to any crazed dictator or clan leader trying to be the tyrant of a country, or to aid the Masters of any non-Rich society.

Population control

Review the formula and chart it

This section is mandated from the basic requirements of Richness, specifically the formula for ‘insuring Richness’ introduced in the ‘Measuring Richness’ section. That formula is based on the fact that we in the USA live on a planet, in a specific geographical area, with a finite size with finite natural resources. Every resource is limited, and some are more limited than others. Richness requires that the ‘smallest’ resource is available in abundance for everyone, and since there is no way to create more of the limiting resource then a Rich society must adjust and maintain the number of people that share the resource, per the formula. Thus the scarcest resource defines the maximum size of the population.

The progress of a society reaching toward the required population can be represented with a chart, with time going from left to right (for censuses that are performed at intervals), and population on the vertical axis. The computation for maximum population is determined, per the formula, and it is plotted over time as an unchanging horizontal line. It may rise slightly as additional sources of scarce resources become available and support a slightly higher population, or it may lower slightly as existing scarce resources are depleted and a lower population is required, but the maximum size of a Rich population that can be supported by a specific geographical area is practically a constant.

Then plot the actual total population of society on the chart, perhaps plotting the last twenty-two census results over time, or just start with today’s population from the most recent census, at the left. I would almost guarantee that today’s current population is well above the horizontal line of ‘supportable Rich population’ previously drawn. If that is true then it is the responsibility of a Rich society to make the ‘current population’ line descend as quickly as possible until it reaches the horizontal line. Such a dropping population line represents the determined effort of society to limit its population to the level at which everyone may live Richly.

Culture change

Our current culture does nothing to promote population control so it is up to us to establish a culture of Richness for ourselves and our children. Since population needs to remain at the ‘supportable Rich level’ charted earlier, and only females bear children, and every female has total responsibility and authority over her body (because each is Free & Equal and no one is her Master), then females of future and current and childbearing age – girls, adolescents, young adults, and mature women – are going to be the driving force of that Rich culture. Everything related to population and childbirth is entirely a female issue, reflecting both her biological function and how important her choices are to society. They are the primary audience for this segment, but others need to be aware of, and support, the culture they create.

As a female pondering the population chart you will probably observe the current population is above the upper level for Richness. You are confronted NOT with threatening poverty from overpopulation due to your choices, you are already immersed within that situation right now. You are already a Subject and victim of the prior generations of women who procreated excessively without any thought of how overpopulation prevents Richness. They have placed the onus on you, willing or not, and with that unwelcome burden comes the obligation and responsibility to compensate for their selfish littering. You and every other female must consider how to react and respond to this most personal requirement of a Rich society that confronts you. This is where you will either accept ‘doing what is needed’, incorporate it into the culture and help correct overpopulation, or you will reject your responsibility and attempt to make Richness impossible just so you can have more children.

Thus do females have a singular influence and importance in creating Richness. If females can create a culture for a Rich society which includes voluntary support of a Rich population size, then the strict and horrible enforcement of population control – with corrective action against transgressing females – will never be engaged. Humans are the only species able to voluntarily and consciously limit their childbearing, and richness requires that we do so. It would be a shame for females not to take voluntary advantage of that easily manageable (but slightly unnatural) capability, which is absolutely preferred over enforcement. It is expected that females of childbearing age Want To Be Rich just as much as everyone else and are thus both self-motivated and encouraged by others to endure their self-control over their biological imperative.

The culture change needs to be little more than incorporating the goals of richness into everyday life. The issue at hand is population control, but it is only an instance of recognizing and stopping any person who insists on doing whatever they want regardless of its effects on others around them. Since everyone’s Richness is dependent on females restricting their childbearing potential, the culture will include continual recognition of their contribution, and encourage others to regularly express appreciation for their voluntary compliance. Everyone’s reward for their personal sacrifice, and each woman’s gift to everyone else, is to satisfy the essential condition of Richness.

Therefore I expect a Rich culture to bloom and absolutely AVOID anything in the following discussions that even suggests the need for the unwilling enforcement of population size.

Maintaining population

Introduction

Population is maintained at the level determined by the equations for Richness. Maintenance is the easiest of population issues so we start with it. Here we introduce the probable legislation needed to maintain a stable population over time, but Richness is not dependent on any of these possible details. If you don’t like what follows then you are encouraged to come up with corrections, adjustments, or something entirely different that produces the same result.

License to have a child

Women must obtain a license to have a child. It is little more than registering her desire to get pregnant, or registering an accidental conception after the fact.

The number of licensed children a woman has birthed is maintained in a common repository so there is no need to search the records of every hospital for historical information. That repository is used to identify transgressors who are trying for more than two children. Every child obtaining medical services will be verified as legally existing by referencing the license repository. It contains as much biologically identifying information as possible, including blood, fingerprints, eyes, DNA information, etc. of both the mother and the child, and the father if possible. The License itself is included in the repository. If a woman successfully hides a birth and her child manages to enter a hospital then no record will be found, so licensing and record keeping will begin at that point, after the fact. It may also initiate an investigation by law enforcement.

Births are recorded as the completion of a license. Licenses need not have an expiration date, allowing continued efforts on the woman’s part by ignoring possible miscarriages, contraceptions, or anything else along the way to a final successful birth.

A license includes a signed statement acknowledging (or certifying, again) that she understands she is eligible for as much counseling, health education, health resources, etc., as either recommended or desired, starting at pregnancy and continuing until the child graduates to adulthood. The License will recommend using all of the resources available but it does not force her to use any, except those that are required to protect public health.

A license is not used for ‘qualifying’ a parent to have a child, but the government does offer qualifications to consider, recommends taking tests, and strongly suggests heeding the results, especially if certain qualifications are not met or known problems are discovered. The intent of the suggested qualifications is to avoid physical or mental deficiencies, including missing or deformed limbs or organs, life-restricting allergies or genetic illnesses, sub-normal mental or social abilities, or any known limitation to development that will prevent a self-sufficient, independent life within society. The intent is to increase the odds of a child growing into a Competent Adult.

A license includes a signed statement acknowledging that her legal status will become that of a Responsible Adult and that she understands and accepts that legal role and its authorities. This should be familiar since it was learned in school and a similar ‘I am aware of this’ certification was obtained at that time.

A license causes the collection of biological identification information for the potential mother to be included in the repository. The license is signed and witnessed for certification, and it also is entered into the repository.

If you don’t like the idea of requiring a license for childbirth then you will need to provide an alternate society-wide solution to accurately record and rapidly recover the number of children a woman has birthed, with accurate identification of both mother and child.

Contraception of a child is always available

Contraception is available in abundance, just like any other aspect of Richness, and a Rich culture expects it to be used since a full and varied sex life is also expected and intended, in abundance. Within such a society and culture only effective and convenient contraception can prevent pregnancy until a woman is fully prepared to conceive and to devote twenty-two years of her life to the development and education of her children. Contraception is the primary means of preventing pregnancy, has the fewest consequences, and is the easiest to use. A major intent of contraception is to prevent unwanted, and possibly unloved children from being born.

If a Responsible Adult decides she does not want to raise a child, at any time and for almost any reason, late termination (contraception) is available to her.

 If the mother is guilty of abuse or neglect of her child, or otherwise loses the status of Responsible Adult, she is prevented from obtaining another license to have a child, and the unwanted child is either late terminated or taken by some other Responsible Adult. Preventing such tragedies and waste of lives is why licensing qualifications for having a child should be followed and tests taken, and the resulting recommendations heeded.

Every competent female is allowed two children

The two children are ‘replacements’ for herself and one other person, ostensibly a biological father or other spouse. This does not mean that every woman must bear two children. A Rich culture accepts the fact that not all women are capable of having, or will choose to have children, just like today.

Women who do not bear children may choose to keep it that way and thus contribute to a desirable small reduction of the general population. Desirable to her, at least, and her decision is absolute. Her choice may not be overridden by government policies or anything else, so nothing and no one can authorize someone else to have such a woman’s ‘allowed but not redeemed’ children.

A woman’s two ‘replacement people’ do not have to be babies. She might choose to convert a birthright to an immigrant and allow an adult into the country instead, for which she may be paid by the immigrant for the one hour or so it takes to register her choice. She could even import a baby or a child to raise, instead of using a local surrogate to birth one for her.

Surrogates

A female who does not have children herself has complete say over who, how, and if, a surrogate may birth a child for her to raise as her own. For the surrogate it will probably be her third child and thus she is not eligible to keep it in any case, preventing certain custodial issues and changes of mind. Careful choices by both women are important, as always. Any method to impregnate the surrogate is allowed, selected by the primary woman. The primary woman is the Responsible Adult of the developing fetus and the newborn because it is one of her allowed children, and continues after she receives actual possession of the child.

Licensed Third babies

Some females might let another woman to birth and raise a third child, by transferring her ‘authorization to have a child’ to that other woman. The primary woman is never expected to be, and relinquishes any legal authority to be, the Responsible Adult of the other woman’s third child.

The primary woman has total control over who to award ‘her’ child to, including the choice of sperm donor. She may personally select them from among friends and acquaintances. She could obtain a complete list of women desirous of a third child, ignoring suggestions from anyone, and select one randomly, including a random sperm donor. She might get eligible parents to actually compete in contests and tests – physical, intellectual, beauty, whatever – perhaps in an attempt to simulate evolutionary success in the current environment, with the winner being awarded the child. Or perhaps, since this issue only applies to a third child, ignore the parents and just have the kids compete, assuming you can get them to want another sibling to divert their parents attention away from themselves. She might just let the government do all of the work and let it choose the mother and sperm donor for her. And so on, however she wants.

In the unusual and unexpected case of a primary female requesting the government to find a mother and/or sperm donor for such a baby, the government will create an initial list by using its “Criteria for choosing parents for a third baby” to select from the volunteers, then apply any additional requirements or restrictions specified by the primary woman, then make a random selection from that list of eligible volunteers. The discussion of criteria is available online at www.YMWTBR.com (initialism of the title) in the Appendices.

Unlicensed first or second pregnancy and/or birth

We have just described some of the anticipated cultural changes and some of the resources that help Competent Women voluntarily maintain a constant population. One problem is that many women will not want to ‘conform’ and will exercise their freedom by ‘rebelling’ against the culture, so now we consider those Competent Women who either ignore or reject the generally accepted attitudes, goals, and practices of a Rich culture and a Rich society. As should be expected there are actually no prohibitions against how or when a Competent Woman bears her first two children, there is only the requirement that the child be ‘counted’ as the offspring of the mother. There are no legislated attempts to enforce her conformity (or punishment) to any other cultural or personal standard, and any choice that she makes is simply an exercise of her Freedom & Equality.

For example, a Competent Woman that is irresponsible enough to become pregnant ‘accidently’ is almost certainly not ready to become a parent, but the mere fact that she has put herself into such a situation does not demote her to an Incompetent and does not place her under the supervision of a Responsible Adult. In such situations the easiest response is simply to begin the licensing process as soon as possible.

A worse example is an Incompetent female child, not yet graduated and thus not legally Competent, who becomes pregnant and foolishly chooses to truncate her personal development, social experiences, and the carefree enjoyment of her youth and young adulthood in order to become an underage parent dedicated to the growth and development of her (unlicensed) child. Unfortunately for her, she is still a legal subordinate of her Responsible Adult and that choice is not yet hers to make – probably because a mindless biological process is not equated with a personal choice, and is not accepted as a conscious, mature decision. If her Responsible Adult agrees and does not (legally!) force an abortion, and she crams and passes the required certifications for Competent Adulthood, then the pregnant girl may have the child, and her legal status will change to that of a Responsible Adult for her child.

A girl in such an unfortunate situation would certainly be evidence that a Rich culture has not emerged, that education has failed to convince her to learn, that she is irresponsible, and that she exemplifies a sad triumph of immature human nature overpowering a female adolescent’s ability to make good choices for herself or for society. If she births such an early child she will lose an irretrievable opportunity because it causes her life to completely skip fifteen to twenty years of personal experiences and learning that are best obtained and enjoyed during the youthful prime of her life. These are years where she first gets to set out on her own and become an equal within adult society, during which she will finish her physical and mental growth, and her body and mind will stabilize and she will develop into her own person. Sometime in her early thirties she will have learned enough about herself and others to consider settling down to have her children, devoting her life, and imparting her life knowledge, to them.

Illegal children: unlicensed third child

So what happens when a woman breaks the law and the solution is not so easily remedied? The enforcement of such laws are pretty obvious and horrendous, and avoiding those consequences is why you youngsters need to develop commitment to, and responsibility for, Richness as a major component of your culture. If the idea of a legal limitation of two children per female seems distasteful, even worse is to imagine enforcing the law when women ignore or defy a stable population and the Richness it affords. Enforcement must be done, and we discuss it now.

Richness is aware of human nature – which “cannot be changed” but which is regulated and limited by law – and expects at least one female to behave like a selfish brat who will not accept her personal limitation of two children in exchange for the benefits of a Rich society. She will challenge the legal authority of that legislation with her own sense of entitlement, she will get pregnant with a third child without a license, illegally, and she will dare someone to enforce the law, hoping that the invalid ‘miracle of pregnancy’, or the imagined ‘sanctity of birth’, will override the logic, reason, intent, and justification of a Rich society as a whole, for everyone. If her challenge, distasteful and revolting as she has made it by what she has done, is not resisted and successfully defended, then she wins and the goals of a Rich society are easily defeated.

But who will confront the self-important and self-glorified mother and babe in order to right the wrong and block the road to a poverty-based society? The challenge will almost certainly include the question “who will play god?” in disposing of the extraneous and illegal child. The initial answer is that the mother has already entitled herself to ‘play god’ by having an illegal child and threatening everyone else in society with the undesirable consequences of her casual disregard of the law. Not only has she played god, she has set herself up as Master over all other women, and over society as a whole, by usurping authority over them. She has decided for herself that she gets to have a third child while every other woman is restricted to two (with a few legal third children as previously described).

There are a couple of alternative solutions to her challenge before the obvious one is discussed.

Perhaps the woman and her young children will opt for an all-expenses-paid banishment to some other society that values children more than it values parents who obey civil legal restrictions. There are plenty of destinations: the ones where pictures are taken of children starving or malnourished, or deformed from inadequate pre- or post-natal health care, or living in huts and squalor. Any of them should welcome and revere a fecund woman who produces children because that ability is obviously more important to their society than any other consideration.

Perhaps it would be possible to let the child survive by her soliciting for another woman who has not had two children and get her to donate one of her ‘allowed’ children to the lawbreaker – a reversal of the process previously described for a legal third child, where the donor solicited for good parents to have a child. This kind of solicitation tends to punish those women who want a third child and who obey the law, hoping to be selected for a third child by legal and fair processes. Instead, the dissident takes priority for herself and directly accesses donors because she already has the child and solicits for someone to legalize her action. It seems backwards, and is certainly unfair, but some women may step up and donate, unconcerned with supporting the offspring of a criminal, in a home that nurtures criminal behavior.

The scam cannot last very long. Similar women will see the success and many illegal third children will be soliciting for a donor, but at some point the final foolish subsidizing donor will be reached. The next woman who illegally births a third child will not find a donor and will, again, confront society with her dare to enforce the law and correct the situation with the most obvious solution: the forced late termination of the child. If such correction of criminal behavior is seen as ‘murder’ then charge the woman with the murder since she knew of the consequences of her action and went ahead to both cruelly and perversely create a child doomed to early death. What else can you call getting pregnant illegally, knowing that the baby will just have to be killed? That label may seem harsh and unnecessary, and I imagine she will suffer enough about losing her child without it, but put the blame for the tragedy where it belongs: on the free choice of a Responsible (and Competent) Adult with the ability to ruin both her life and the life of her subordinate child.

I suppose she could have done it to have an excuse to choose one of her first two children for late termination instead, because she didn’t have the courage to voluntarily and Responsibly do that, but it is an option for her as long as she ends up with her legal limit of two.

So we come back to forced late termination in pursuit of justice, and to the challenge of “who will play god”, or “who has the right to play god” and the answer is: the same people who play that role now. It starts with the populace adopting and implementing Richness (or any other government) which includes legislation that defines activities deemed unacceptable and anti-social, those limitations to human nature that are decreed necessary for the safety of society as a whole. It continues with the officials empowered by the government to determine transgressions and to enforce the law, which is determined by that government’s implementation of justice. Enforcement includes corrective action and possibly punishments, either of which might include death. Nothing new or different is needed, nor suggested, for a Rich society.

In a Rich society childbirth laws are known to every female since middle school, at least. All women have the same restrictions applied to them, Equally. It may be important that enforcement is done by their pallow females who abide by the same conditions and restrictions. If there is a better way to handle such criminals, or an alternate way of enforcing the population size to supportable levels for abundance and Richness, that would be great: I look forward to learning about that improved solution.

No immigration

Maintaining a Rich population size is not limited to restricting the birthrate within the existing society. The other main increase to population size, and one with a long tradition of encouragement in the USA, is immigration. The offer of almost unlimited immigration is only possible when there are vast tracts of available land for them to live on, and enough resources to support a Rich society after they settle. As soon as the formulas for Richness reveal that the maximum Rich population size is reached then immigration is an offer that must be rescinded.

Immigrants have not been needed for decades. We haven’t needed a source of pioneers to tame the wilderness or settle new territory stolen from the original occupants. There is no need for an external supply of husbands or wives, or entertainers, or anything. Within a society of millions (millions!) of people, any kind of person for any possible job is available. Neither is a source of cheap labor needed because cheap labor is not allowed by Richness.

To maintain a stable population, for each external person immigrating and adding to the population, one less baby may be born to a resident female, not including those women who choose not to have any, or to just have one. Even those women donating their children to others will probably prefer some other resident woman to have a rare third child instead of letting some (single, childless, not pregnant, and not allowed to have a child) grown-up immigrate, but they might.

Exchanges of people are possible, technically an immigration and an expatriation that balance out, but pure immigration will be hard to justify. A single and rare high-profile political asylum might be possible, but not a blanket offer to refugees. Basically, the borders are closed. Hopefully, over time, every society will become Rich and provide little motivation for people to move elsewhere. Perhaps not having the option of escape to a Rich society will motivate the citizens of other countries to establish Richness in their own homeland.

Reducing population rapidly

Review of the population chart

The population graph we previously visualized showed a constant ‘supportable Rich population’ line horizontally, and our current population was assumed to be positioned above it. The graph means that a goal of a Rich society is to slope the ‘current population’ line down to the target ‘supportable Rich population’ line as quickly as possible. This section considers how to accomplish that, and it will make the previous section on maintaining the population size seem genteel and unremarkable by comparison. Prepare yourself for some brash and unapologetic options for rapidly reducing the population size, because population management is the one and only factor that will guarantee an abundance of natural and other resources for everyone, and it is a factor completely under our control as a society of Competent Adults.

As always, none of what follows is required by Richness, only the result that the population is reduced to the required level. I present the best solution I can imagine, but I will be delighted if someone devises a better one.

An obvious method of rapidly reducing the population is to sacrifice random people until the target population is reached, but I think that is repulsively unfair and savagely cruel. The same goes for any other kind of legislated limited liquidation of some people to reduce population. Looking online at other groups promoting ways to reduce population, often worldwide, there seems to be plenty of well intentioned and practical ideas presented, but they try to work within existing societies that do not support Freedom & Equality, let alone Richness or a Rich accounting system, and those deficiencies almost certainly doom every one of them, as far as my pessimism can prognosticate.

So here is the best solution I can imagine, and I present it as if people will actually take it seriously, a fantasy of my optimism. I call it the “gap” approach, which is to stop issuing licenses for new children and we wait for the population size to decrease naturally to the level for Richness. This reduces the total population by allowing old people to slowly die off at their own rate, and on the graph we will see the current population line gradually slope downward toward the desired level. How long will it take? Without knowing the actual population size for Richness, or even caring what the precise number is, we can understand how to determine how long it will take, do a sample exercise to get a general idea of how the solution will work, and then discuss the pros and cons of such a program.

The approach depends on waiting for the old to die off, so we need to find the ‘boundary age’: everyone who is that age and younger equals the desired population size for Richness. Census records should make the computation easy to do. The boundary age specifies, approximately, that everyone older needs to die before new babies can be born. When the last old person in that group dies the population will have reached the desired size, since new births have been suspended. Only after all those older people have died and the actual population is the Rich population size, will the deaths of other old people begin to leave room for new children (to replace them), and licenses for children can resume as fast as old people die.

Childbirth will resume with every eligible woman getting only one child, slowly expanding to additional women as more and more old people die off. Eventually a few women will be allowed a second child, slowly spreading until the population is maintainable as previously described.

The boundary age and the gap

For an example, let’s say that seventy years old is the boundary age at which the maximum population for a Rich society is satisfied – that is, the stable population size is met by the number of people seventy and under. If the average expected lifespan is eighty years of age then the slope on the graph will take about ten years to descend from our current population size to the line for a Rich population size. If the average life expectancy is older, or the boundary age is younger, then the slope will take longer to reach the required population size.

An effect of this approach to population reduction is to have an age gap within the population for as many years as it takes to reach the Rich population size. Per the example, when childbirth resumes there will be an age gap with no children under the age of ten. Five years after births resume there will be no five to fifteen year olds, and that gap in ages will advance each year through the age distribution of the society. The edges of the gap will be distinct, and the gap itself should be cleanly devoid of children. If there is an attempt for a small number of children sprinkled throughout the gap it will be difficult for them to find peers for playmates and schoolmates, and later for age-appropriate adult relationships.

The advantage of this approach is that the target population size would be reached as soon as naturally possible. Any more gradual approach just delays Richness, which is contrary to Wanting to be Rich now. Any faster approach to reduce the population will require some sort of legislated limited liquidation of some people, and devising an acceptable protocol for that is problematic, so an age gap looks fairly reasonable by comparison. Another option is to limit women to one child, instead of waiting so long. That approach may work quickly enough in societies where the average lifespan is short, where nature performs the limited liquidation of people, but not in a Rich society. For a Rich society, it will take longer to attain full Richness, but the long delay may be more acceptable than a forced age gap from a ban on childbearing.

Would such a gap be detrimental to society? Nothing that I can imagine suggests so. Such a gap may be unprecedented in history, but nothing else. Surprisingly, there may be some benefits. The gap allows time to build larger schools and modernize them per the specifications for Richness. It allows time to plan and build for stable ongoing populations of children living in family neighborhoods zoned for growing families. The gap might be used to eliminate STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) transmission from older generations to younger people because it will create too large of a gap for age-appropriate sexual commingling. The gap should be used as an excuse to remain sexually separate by age for this very reason – probably another futile goal but worth a try, especially if the new Rich culture fully understands and supports it.

I imagine a huge cultural difference will emerge, the largest generation gap in history, figuratively and literally.

Increase the death rate of oldsters

The biggest downside of suspending childbirth is the burden assumed by women whose childbearing years coincide with the years it takes to reduce the population. Their life planning will be completely modified (that is, completely ruined) because they must postpone their biological imperatives, even though it is probably no worse than the plight of other women in history who lived (and live today) in the middle of wars and epidemics and abject poverty.

Such women might be motivated to speed up the death rate of old people who are above the boundary age. They might petition or cajole or shame their grandparents to remove themselves as soon as possible, but I bet the oldsters will be stubborn and prefer to doggedly endure being practically bedridden with increasing physical and emotional suffering, instead of applying for self-termination in comfort and dignity for the sake of their granddaughters. Unfortunately and most likely, all of the anxious women, and society as a whole, will just have to be patient and prepare for the time when childbirths can resume.

Cultural Motivation

Considering any kind of determined effort to reduce the population seems very unsatisfactory, and about as futile as changing the weather. Unlike the weather, everybody can do something about population size, but it must be everybody, WE, who do it.

Can enough people Want To Be Rich badly enough to do what needs to be done to achieve it? Is it realistic to hope for a groundswell of almost universal determination to become Rich, to almost instantly inspire a culture that motivates females to voluntarily suspend having children for a few years, as members of a team effort for the victory of a Rich society? Is it possible to have a society-wide Want that is popular enough to use Might against those who transgress against the desired ‘right’, including those who get themselves illegally pregnant? A society disciplined enough to enforce compliance by the use of forced termination in defense against those who would thwart the progress toward the population required by Richness? Is it possible that the vast majority of people can understand, or accept, that the suspension of childbearing applies Equally to every female and is not, and can not be, any kind of selective elimination or eradication of any subgroup of society?

I certainly hope so. I am trying, to the best of my ability, to convince and motivate you, and every other You, to really, truly, intensely, fiercely, Want To Be Rich. Everything else follows from that, because the future depends on you.

Stop Immigration

The reasons for closing the borders were discussed in the previous section on population maintenance, and the policy should be implemented immediately. This is an easy first step to get things moving in the right direction despite its having very little effect in sheer numbers of people.

To correct for previous illegal immigration it is reasonable to deport illegal immigrants, including their children, even if the children might be citizens simply because they were born here. Just because they are citizens doesn’t mean they can’t move away. We will assume that the illegal immigrants Want To Be Rich so we should deport them with some translated copies of this book (or something similar, better suited to their country), and some training in political activity and public relations, and perhaps some additional access to resources supplied by us, so they can start working to make their own country Rich. Or, less likely, have their country petition to become another state in the USA. If they succeed in creating a Rich society of their own then they should be happy to remain there and enjoy it.

If they are unfortunate enough to return to a country where people do not Want To Be Rich, then their life’s work will be to educate and convince their neighbors to Want To Be Rich. It would be nice if the USA could be the shining example of how people who Want To Be Rich can create a government, an economy, and a society whose purpose is to create and maintain Richness.

Summary

Population control is included within the founding document as a necessary requirement for Richness, which is illegal to subvert. Without population control a society will breed itself into poverty. For whatever reason, there will almost certainly be females who want to have more children than the available resources can support Richly, and childbearing will be an immediate and continuing point of attack. If there is nothing to prevent them from causing overpopulation they will succeed in sabotaging a Rich society.

Speech and expression

Management of free speech

‘Speech’ is a generalized term that includes all communications, expressions, and presentations of any sort, including symbolic actions, silence, and non-action, on any subject. It expresses a concept and not merely the act of talking. Our normal ‘freedoms’ of speech are retained in a Rich society, with some improvements, clarifications, and restrictions. Any and every idea and opinion may be presented, with only a few adjustments for civility.

One major limitation to unrestricted free speech is an appropriate venue for presentations. The concept of speaking ‘in public’ does not mean you may say anything you want, anywhere, at any time, at any location, in any way. Any random location where people congregate is not a ‘public’ venue for the exercise of your freedom of speech. For example, you are not allowed to walk down the street and insult people, or yell your hatred of them in their face, individually or as a member of a group, depriving them of their peace and quiet – which is the default condition of Richness. You are free to hold a reasonably private conversation or discussion with people, among and between yourselves while not disturbing others, and say whatever you want. Other people close by may overhear some repulsive snippets of opinion that are not appreciated, but they can either ask you to lower your voices, ignore you, or confront you about it, in public, because you are in a public place and you did communicate to them, possibly accidently. Please be discrete because whoever may hear you is Rich, and when you disturb their peacefulness they have no reason to let your obnoxious and insulting opinions go unrebutted.

You are allowed to express obnoxious and insulting opinions, and more, publicly, within an auditorium (which includes things like blogs and YouTube channels, these days) where your event has been freely publicized (itself an aspect of free speech) so that people know a little of what to expect (including incivility and transgressions of normal public courtesies), and where the audience attends voluntarily. This is what is meant by “public speech” or being able to speak “in public” or “peaceably to assemble”. Within such civil confines a speaker is allowed to espouse any position or opinion, on any subject, in almost any way they choose.

A public presentation in an auditorium is no different from making a message, or other content, available at a completely public venue like a community fair or other event with access to random people, including children. At those locales a booth is set up to distribute printed material (or other physical media) that contains objectionable content normally restricted to controlled venues. Access to the media is restricted by a booth or table that also serves as an advertisement, with information about the content of the media, described using civil speech, innuendo, and metaphor if needed, and including warnings of the content being uncivil and hateful. Voluntary acceptance of such media, wherein anything may be presented in any way, is the same as attending a live presentation, exposing yourself to the same content and possibly needing to pay for it.

A speaker’s right to communicate is guaranteed and will be enforced, and it will be done without consideration of content, within the limitations of Richness. Those limitations exclude: suicide as an expression of commitment or belief; human sacrifice as an expression of anything; and probably no animal sacrifice either, depending on health regulations or other limitations. Such restrictions also apply to street presentations, making things like self-immolation and suicide bombings illegal and exempt from the protections of speech and expression.

There is an additional aspect of free speech for a Rich society: you are at liberty to listen to whatever you choose, wherever and whenever you choose, within the limitations of Richness. This might be termed ‘freedom to listen’, the right to hear what a speaker has to say, and it is guaranteed to everyone. Abridging this ability is censorship, a Master preventing the spread of information and ideas to, or among, pos Subjects. I am sure you can think of some instances of ‘freedom to listen’ being denied in non-Rich societies today.

This aspect of speech includes two variations. Firstly, the “freedom to not listen” as in: immediately forgetting what you are hearing because it is repulsive, not worthy of serious consideration, immediately refutable, and deserves no further attention from anyone who learned what was taught during pos Rich education. Secondly, the ‘freedom to not need to listen’, which means that a Competent Adult has no obligation to listen to something involuntarily, not only as a choice but neither to be exposed to it unwillingly, in effect to be protected from it. To repeat a prior example, when walking down the street no one is allowed to insult you, or yell their hatred of you, or of people like you. Civilly worded advertisements for obnoxious presentations may be observed, or heard in passing, but nothing more.

Children are an important exception to being ‘free from needing to listen’ because education, by definition, unconditionally exposes students to everything that is known whether they like it or not. Only after graduation is each Competent Adult free to become selective according to pos personal choices. Any additional education attended by a Competent Adult is another school, and its priority to teach takes precedence over the Competent Adult’s freedom to not listen, at least while on campus for any reason. Higher education strongly suggests that students postpone exercising their intellectual isolation in general, including off campus, until after attaining their final degree – but preferably never.

When attending a presentation full of hatred and incivility, like one previously considered, audience members do not relinquish their basic rights. If the speaker wants to eliminate everyone who is [enter any attribute of a person] and you are one of them, and the speaker singles you out as an example of what to hate, you are still guaranteed to be physically safe, so you are free to yawn, roll your eyes, smile, and completely ignore, or laugh at, the speaker. The point is that the speaker gets to ‘say’ whatever pel wants, however pel wants, to an audience that is willing to listen, but no one in the audience is obliged to take the speaker seriously in any way, and everyone is free to leave at any time.

People who disagree with a speaker are not allowed to disrupt or otherwise prevent the speaker’s exercise of  pos free speech and expression, or the right of an audience to listen. If you are in attendance and you disagree, and you have heard enough, then you are free to walk away, but you must allow the presenter to continue unimpeded, you may not try to interrupt or shout pel down and deny the speaker pos right to communicate. Everyone in a Rich society is able to stand up and declare “I will not be silenced” with the certainty that Freedom & Equality both defends and enforces that assertion.

Conversely, no one is obliged to listen. As you walk out in repulsed disagreement you will remember that you are free to publicly offer counter arguments and information that promote your views at a different time, perhaps at the same venue. You may exercise your own freedom of speech, and do so without fear of repression or interruption during your presentation. You, too, will not be silenced.

Just as a public speaker is protected from dissent and interruption while expressing pos position, the same protections against interruption are extended to private events that take place outdoors semi-publicly, usually at locations designated for such special purposes. Occasions like weddings, funerals, parades, marches, protests, etc., are considered to be an expression of the participants, which means no objection, interruption, intrusion, or distraction may be seen, heard, or felt by any of the participants either before, during, or after their event. No dissent or interruption is allowed within a comfortably large physical area surrounding the venue, and during a comfortably large amount of time before and after the event, both similar to the analogy (and its reasons) for requiring six feet between someone who swings a fist, and a nose.

Certain exceptions may be granted by the holders of a public event, perhaps in the spirit of discussion and dialogue, possibly within a defined area well away from the main presentation area, and with rules for engagement specified by the holders of the event. If people with opposing opinions want to confront or challenge each other’s ideas face to face then a debate or similar formal event may be staged, almost certainly governed by some rules for presenting positions and objecting to them in an organized manner.

Freedom of expression has other limitations. For example, no valid expression includes the destruction or damage of other people or their property, including that of government agencies. It is freedom of speech and expression, NOT freedom of physical interaction with the real world, so physical destruction and personal injury, and their incitement, are illegal. Expressions may only call for and promote legal change, a metaphorical destruction which is able to change reality. Such expression is only effective when done in a Rich society, or in other societies where processes for legal change exist, and are practical to attempt, like the USA.

Status of common free speech and expression

Normal freedom of speech and expression allows anyone to speak their mind and have their say, from a rant on a soapbox in the park, to a rant on nationwide media. All such presenters admit to no accuracy or validity for what they express, to no methodology that will lead them to the truth, and to no conclusion supported by verifiable evidence. Using the distinctions identified by Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, both “lying” (knowing the truth but concealing it from others with deceptions, including partial truths) and “bullshitting” (not knowing the truth and not caring, so truth may occasionally and accidently be stated) are both allowed, accepted, and assumed as the foundation of normal free speech in a Rich society. Just as today, truth will be neither required, encouraged, desired, nor recognizable.

Every failure of human reasoning is on display: misrepresentation of what are usually considered facts; stubborn refusal to correct mistakes, or ignoring corrections that have been previously explained to them; absolute certainty of their personal yet unjustified opinion; inability to understand or accept the overwhelming evidence acquired by other people, many of whom have spent their professional lives accumulating, organizing, and verifying reliable facts and computations; and many others.

Because of this tolerance for lying during normal speech and expression, the expected and default status of any communication is that of unreliable and unsupported opinion, and is therefore considered nothing but entertainment, no matter how much the speaker may insist on pos personal reliability and/or ‘the truth’ of pos message. Specifically, normal free speech and expression is always fiction. As such, it will always present itself as worthwhile opinion, or secret truth, or warnings, or honest complaint, or calls to action, or whatever, but it is never anything but fictional entertainment.

This is not necessarily bad. Fiction remains valuable, a known and accepted quality of entertainment. Satire, parody, sarcasm, irreverence, ridicule, scorn, etc. employ exaggeration, outlandish situations, manipulative rhetoric and logical fallacies, and are acceptable in a Rich society just as they are today. Any truth or fact that is used to initiate an entertainment, or that may be found within it, does not qualify the entire content as being reliable and trustworthy.

It might be nice to prevent children from being exposed to such overwhelming amounts of falsehoods before they have learned the skills and obtained the experience that allows them to evaluate whether a charismatic personality, or clever rhetoric, or a commercial, is true or probably a lie, but such avoidance of the real world might be false protection. The best way for people, including children, to listen to normal speech is to assume that whatever anyone says in public has absolutely no weight or validity, and is no more worth taking seriously than any other fictional entertainment.

Some entertainments are bizarre, some can make you cry, some can make you laugh. If a child becomes frightened or repulsed by crazy ideas, then allowing the crazies to have their rants has served its purpose. Parents will need to explain to the upset child why the scary ideas are false, why the initial assumptions and supporting opinions of hate speech and bigotry, conspiracies, and threats (like eternal punishments after death) are always lies or bullshit, assuming it has not yet been covered in school. A Rich education will provide growing children with the intellectual tools and methodologies for evaluating claims and discerning truth for themselves, and this is vitally important as a personal dike against the sea of deceptive fictions.

Since we identify normal public speech as fiction, we may fairly infer that there are sinister reasons for their falsehoods. Except for entertainment, there is no reason for a person to lie or bullshit except to defraud, to make another person behave or believe in accordance with the falsehood and thereby make the listener a Subject to that lie. The standard example is yelling ‘This building is on fire’ in a theatre when there is no fire, and dangerous lies need to be prevented. Perhaps the generalized limit might be: it is illegal to lie about people’s immediate physical safety, or for someone’s need for medical help, or for their protection by police. The subject matter converts such ‘speech’ into valid announcements, alarms, and calls for emergency services, which must always be true. Conversely, if  warnings are not expressed when needed, a silent person is criminally negligent.

While the monetary advantage for promoting various deceptions is limited in a Rich society, charismatic and convincing psychopaths will continue their attempts to control and manipulate you, to have you follow some creed for which they are the prime interpreter or supplier of ‘truth’. They will continue to use the normal forums, unreliable and fictional as they are, and exercise their freedoms of speech and expression to expound their messages, and you should be wary. In the name of free speech it is not a crime to lie, to run a scam, to ask for donations to a false cause, to take advantage of people’s trust and good will for personal gain, to misrepresent what is possible and probable, etc. You will be a fool if you fall for any of it, and Richness provides a Rich education as protection from such exercises and abuses of freedom of speech.

I had imagined that a Rich society would have an interest in promoting truth and suppressing lies in public discourse, perhaps by making it illegal to lie and thereby prevent charlatans, fools, haters, bigots, etc. from spreading misinformation. I had imagined that statements could be legally challenged for veracity, and when determined to be a lie or otherwise false, the statement or argument would be disallowed to be used by anyone in the future, sort of enforcing a ‘freedom from being lied to’ concept. I had imagined that freedom of speech would begin at the same place as truth and knowledge and veracity.

Unfortunately that imagined result turned out to be the same as when the government doesn’t care. I think the same people will spew the same lies, still couching it in terms of their personal fictional opinion, which would still be allowed. So either way, falsehoods and opinions begin with the typical identifiers of fiction: “once upon a time…” and it’s variations “I think…” or “I believe…” or “[some authority] tells us that…” and the like.

Certainly not all free speech is lies, there will be some well-intentioned suggestions and ideas to be found within the cacophony of ‘anything goes’ communications. For example, the idea that You Must Want To Be Rich is well-intentioned, and the goals of Richness should seem desirable and convincing on their own merits, even if they are nothing more than my personal ideas and opinions, and hopefully becoming yours. New ideas and concepts always begin as fictional, and mainly opinion, eternally lumped among the free speech and expressions of the false and worthless, and there is nothing to be done about that except to recognize it for what it is.

The only communications to be taken as fact would be from those who earn a reputation for truth, and a Rich society can make that possible by what is described in the next section

Certified communication

It is unrealistic to require every citizen, meaning you, to expend time and effort to identify and extract the true and reliable information from among everything that is said in public, yet that is what is expected. I suppose it is an extension of ‘caveat emptor’ (buyer beware) but it is an impossible and unfair burden because all information is considered unreliable entertainment, lies, or bullshit, which you are somehow obliged to verify. Here is a typical example: all news sources report opinions, especially from politicians, as ‘true information’ because ‘that IS what someone said’. To learn if what that person said is actually true then you must do the research.

A Rich society wants to remedy this barrage of useless information with a means of identifying information which its citizens are able to trust. One way to accomplish this is for a source of information to simply declare that their information is verifiable and reliable, and to accept umpiring of their content. Every presentation need only state something like “I/We certify and promise to provide reliable and verifiable information” with a reference to the full text of the agreement, much of which is described next. The statement and the details mean they are accountable, probably by umpiring, and it creates a legal contract with whoever listens to them.

Other sources of information that are traditionally reliable are included as possible users of this concept, like encyclopedias and museums. Every source of information should be able to self-certify and provide reliable and verifiable information, if that is their goal.

Information presented by such a certified reliable source must be literally true at face value from a plain reading, listening, or viewing by an average person: no half-truths; no omissions; no quote mining; no anecdotes; no doctored data; no misleading or deceptive charts or statistics; no false balance; no data that is literally accurate but not actually representative of the subject being conveyed; etc. Certified information applies the concept of full disclosure of the subject at hand, where all relevant information is included and explained, even if summarized or condensed. Certification acknowledges that there is only one accurate version of information, that which is supported by verifiable evidence. Rules and standards for facts, reliability, verifiability, etc. are defined so information can be objectively evaluated as certifiably accurate. This means the ‘other side’ of an issue, or an unsupported and unjustified ‘alternative’ explanation, or a politician’s lies, are either ignored or are shown to be false.

Such self-certification allows umpires to take complaints about some presented information from other certified sources, whereupon the umpire determines the validity of the alleged inaccuracy. If the source failed their commission then a retraction must be supplied, because they broke their promise and failed to deliver on their contract. Certified sources are allowed to correct their errors. Lies are distinguished from honest mistakes, which should be rare, resulting only from residual ignorance despite a determined effort to learn all of the facts and correctly communicate them. Any such misinformation is easily remedied by presenting the truth in an obvious and well-publicized correction, hopefully with a full disclosure of how the misinformation was accepted as true, and their in-house remedy to prevent a reoccurrence.

If the umpires determine that the challenged information is accurate then the fact that the challenge was made, and who made it, and perhaps why they made it, becomes newsworthy and the challenger either issues a retraction or loses pos right to be a certified source because they failed to deliver on their contract.

Verification might be incorporated into certified information. Perhaps a video presentation could display a banner referencing the details of confirmations along with related facts that support the primary presentation, as a continuous validation of the information. There is no reason to wait for a complaint to be filed to establish constant conformance with their contract and promise.

Any announcement of self-certification applies to the entire remainder of the presentation, up until a blatant ‘end of certified information’ notice is presented and the shift to freedom of speech is obvious. The banner mentioned above might become a constant label stating that non-certified information is now being presented.

The above is probably not enough to prevent loopholes and possible court challenges. Almost certainly, some source of falsehoods will display the statement and insist that using it is included within, or protected by, pos expression of free speech, with or without reference to the contract. Thus there must be legal authority for the concept and its use, the same as should exist (but doesn’t) for other qualified and exclusive designators like doctor or engineer, so the concept of certified sources of information will be declared in the founding document. It will include the minimal standardized contract, and will provide umpires with a solid legal basis for their evaluation of complaints. Most importantly, it will make the identification of reliable and verifiable information a basic ‘right’ of a Rich society.

Sources of certified information are funded directly from the source of money, for the same reasons that education and science are funded, because they benefit everyone and thereby support a Rich quality of life. Please note that certification and umpiring do not provide the government with any control of communications or information. In the name of free speech the government neither suppresses lies nor promotes truth, and umpires, just like everyone and everything else, are subject to investigation.

Verifying certification

One of the more challenging aspects of providing certified information is verifying that a person they interview is providing reliable and verifiable information. The ability to identify lies and bullshit and opinions is a requirement for a source of certified information.

Here is a typical problem: the cesspool of ‘freedom of speech’ allows impossible and discredited subjects to be taught by self-authorized institutions. They provide students with a few years of immersion in unreliable and unverifiable studies, confer self-invented degrees with post-nominal letters (like BA and PhD) that are easily mistaken for actual awards from academically accredited facilities, and (of course) award a diploma to verify completion of the institute’s course of study. Then the graduate practitioners of their fictitious field of study may create a governing professional authority (with themselves as administrators since they are the only ones qualified to create admission requirements, standards of practice, etc.) which they and other practitioners can join, cite their membership in a prestigious professional organization, and thus appear as a qualified expert in their phony field. With such a professional organization in place the school gains credibility by providing education for an accredited field of study.

These are the same types of institutions, organizations, and relationships used in honest education for valid subjects, so there is nothing particularly wrong with the structures, and that is why they are difficult to identify as fraudulent. The underlying problem is that the field of study and its practice are founded on false premises, bad evidence, and nothing resembling academic or intellectual rigor, meaning it is unreliable and unverifiable at its core. Nevertheless, they may choose to self-certify.

So a responsibility of  every other provider of certified information is to determine, and thus verify, whether other self-certified sources of information are charlatans or not, by discovering and accusing them of presenting false information, and the subsequent adjudication by umpiring. Such a challenge must be based on the underlying subject matter or field of study. The challenge might be about what a practitioner stated, but it must be an example of a principle of the practitioner’s field of study, meaning every other practitioner and relevant educational institution would, and must, make the same statement. Consequently, challenging a single representative should allow the umpire to expose the entire field of study as unreliable and unverifiable, and reduce it to fictional entertainment and a possible danger to others.

Such a legal evaluation will not stop anything the frauds do or say, per freedom of speech, and everything continues on just a before, except none of them may claim to provide certified information. Thus they are eliminated from serious discussion, and other certified sources do not need to determine their falsehoods again, they can cite the action that evaluated and determined their status as purveyors of falsehoods.

Valid certified sources of information will have no problem defending and repulsing such challenges.

Certified sources of information should regularly remind citizens that certain fields of study and practice are fictional, especially when reporting deaths or other tragedies resulting from people having been fooled by them.

Interestingly, when a person with an accredited academic degree, or professional license, for a valid subject speaks in public, pel is not required to tell the truth regarding pos field of expertise. A degree or similar award is not an implied certificate of reliable and verifiable information when speaking publicly: only a person who self-certifies is obliged to provide valid information. Such uncertified public lying or bullshitting about pos field of expertise does not affect pos professional competence otherwise, so it might not get pel fired. People willing to lie in public under authority of their awards might be in demand by many entertainment producers.

If someone does publicly self-certify about their field of expertise and provides valid information about it, then pel must plainly disassociate ponself from pos self-credentialed authority whenever pel contributes pos opinions on any other subject. Pel might explain pos agreement with some stance because pel recognizes that some research has certain validity because the collection of data was done by other degreed professionals in their fields who are known to produce reliable results; that pel understands the related scientific or professional processes used and agrees that they indicate an accurate and rigorous analysis; and that pel concludes it is reasonable to accept their information as true, and suggests it should be reasonable for you to accept it as well, for the same reasons. But it is still just pos opinions on some subject and pel might not have any more expertise than the average person. This means that a certified source of information may not trust that all of the information obtained from an expert is valid just because it came from a ‘certified source’ when only their opinions are used. This distinction, among others, is enumerated in the full contract for certified information.

So ‘buyer beware’ and ‘listener be fooled’ are not changed in a Rich society. The only thing that protects you from such charlatans is a Rich education and noticing their lack of a promise to provide accurate and verifiable information, their lack of certification. Without such a (legally binding) declaration you must always assume that the contents are lies and bullshit, probably for entertainment, but possibly to manipulate you and to make you a Subject of their falsehoods.

Government offices and funded entities

The government itself is required to be a certified source of information, by definition, as stated in the founding document of a Rich society. This does not mean it is obliged to answer every inquiry, but official information from any spokespal of the government must be reliable and verifiable. This also means the government must accept only certifiably reliable and verifiable information when making policies, like scientific facts, evidence, and conclusions.

The inherent requirement for certified communication extends to every government employee, including everyone in the military, and to every entity that is funded by the government. The only exception would be ‘no response’ to questions that might lead to disclosure of classified information related to issues of national security. Naturally, if a person is not qualified or authorized to speak as a certified source of official and accurate information, pel will say so, and say no more.

When the government itself claims to be a certified source of information, who can challenge them? One answer is: any citizen who discovers misconduct, deception, or other activity contrary to the stated responsibilities of a government office, or to the goals of a Rich society. Pel needs to publicly expose the alleged problem, possibly withholding any incriminating evidence until absolutely needed by the courts. The popular term is ‘whistleblower’ and they perform as a self-appointed, and legally authorized, ‘citizen umpire at large’. Hopefully pos allegation will attract the attention of the real umpires whose responsibility is to investigate and correct infractions within the government, like a division of internal affairs. If they prove to be untrustworthy (or part of the conspiracy!) then the whistleblower may choose to reveal pos evidence publicly on pos own.

Certain government information and practices will remain classified for national security and are exempt from publication until declassified, but even then regular citizen investigations must be allowed, perhaps especially by the conspiracists from the lunatic fringe. Citizen investigators must meet appropriate qualifications, like acquiring a security clearance that prevents them from publicizing whatever they learn; the ability to understand what they are shown, including related scientific and technical knowledge; realistic general knowledge of current events, including international and domestic political situations; and the ability to use and apply logic and reason. The restrictions of the security clearance, which prevent reporting what is learned, might seem to make the exercise useless, but the citizen investigator will report that the barrier to what is classified, and the classified information behind the barrier, is known to pon, and that pel understands why the government wants the information to remain secret, from its point of view. The investigator may report that the secret activity should remain classified, or pel may report that pel disagrees with some of the things being classified, or that pel discovered some illegal activity, but pel is not allowed to reveal anything specific, as agreed.

Perhaps every citizen investigator will testify to a closed session of the relevant congressional oversight committee, just in case pel discovered something that wasn’t already known, like actual illegal activity contrary to the goals of Richness that is operating under the cloak of secrecy. If the investigator’s findings continue to be ignored, pel may then publicize that pel has observed some fundamental concept of a Rich society being violated, but no details may be given without due process. Such an allegation must be taken seriously because, classified or not, exceptions and violations of the goals of Richness can not possibly help to make everyone Rich.

I imagine someone can devise a more thorough or improved protocol for interested and qualified average people to delve into the recesses of secrecy and report that classified information and activities should remain so, or provide an informed opinion on why they shouldn’t. There is no reason that different investigative methods can’t be used, concurrently, each with the goal of either validating the government’s conformance to certified public communications within the valid bounds of secrecy, or reporting that secrecy is covering illegal government activities.

All of the above applies to any organization and entity funded by the government.

Business and finance

Freedom of speech for business will have two contrasting sides. Financially, the government requires honesty and accurate reporting in money matters, primarily so they can discover attempts to accumulate money by people who want to be Masters. Full disclosure and transparency are required, and there are auditing services to verify that financial responsibilities are satisfied. This ‘money’ side includes written contracts, business plans, agreements, etc. that are notarized or examined by lawyers, signed, recorded,  and are subject to legal oversight and accountability. Much like today.

The other side of business is advertising and selling to customers, for which there is no standard contract and no responsibility, because it takes full advantage of the liberties allowed by free speech. In a Rich society, like today, the generalized assertion of a business may be: “Buyer beware! We will try to screw you, including lying about what we are selling, lying about how long it will last, lying about our services, lying about how much it will actually cost you, and bragging about how much profit we are making by charging much more than any possible expenses of selling the product”.

Honest business could use self-certification as a contract with customers, including being responsible for honest advertising. For example: as I write this, rates are advertised for a hotel room but it may not be obtained for that price because of unmentioned, or hidden in the ‘fine print’, required ‘fees’ or ‘charges’ or other expenses that unconditionally increase the actual price, contrary to the original offering. Such tricks and deceptions might persist in a Rich society, but not from certified businesses.

Some businesses will never be able to certify themselves: entertainments, since value to the customer is based on individual taste and personal reactions, and sometimes the best intentions and attempts to satisfy the customer can fail; all religions, except for the One True Religion; practitioners of impossible abilities, and promoters of impossible products; etc.

Summary

The world used to be simple enough that a person, or an institution, could acquire a reputation for honesty and accuracy, but not anymore. The concept of ‘certified communications’ is a way to obtain such an accountable reputation. Perhaps you can devise a better way to identify sources that provide reliable and verifiable information.

Health care

Physical health

Richness mandates that the best health care possible is available to everyone, including an abundance of hospitals, filled with an abundant number of private beds, staffed with an abundance of quality professionals, having at their disposal the best equipment and abundant stockpiles of supplies. It demands that patient care uses the best science-based treatments and protocols which are demonstrably safe and effective. All procedures are available at all hospitals, unless some are provided as specialized sub-services, perhaps population control centers or voluntary termination locations, and they will be just as convenient and abundant as hospitals.

Health care is fully covered throughout life for services that support good health, most of which are obvious but are nevertheless specified in the founding document of a Rich society. Everything that provides good vision is included, meaning as many glasses as desired (including ‘designer’ frames), and/or contact lenses, LASIK or other procedures, etc. Dental care includes cosmetic orthodontia at any age, crowns and other cosmetic choices as needed or desired, always using the most modern and longest lasting and least troublesome solutions to problems. Hearing aids of every kind are available as needed, as are prosthetics or other machinery for limbs and organs lost by accident or other reasons.

Preventative vaccinations are to be nearly universal since they are supported by verifiable scientific data and tests. Special purpose and ‘on demand’ immunizations and remedies are provided for overseas travel and related issues like motion or altitude sickness. As mentioned previously, contraception and all procedures related to population control are abundantly available, as is care and information needed to help a woman give birth to, and raise, a healthy child.

Health care includes cosmetic improvements or personal preferences in support of Getting What You Want, the same reason orthodontia is provided. For example, procedures related to gender correction and normalization are included, as are (re)constructive options like breast implants to compensate for a genetic oversight, or a personal desire to obtain a more average appearance, or similar.

Surgical and other procedures are excluded when they are not done in support of  health and well-being. Decorative or artistic options like tattoos, piercings, face lifts, hair coloring, tanning, and body enhancements whose only goal is to provide an artistic or idealized appearance. When the reason for a body modification is personal satisfaction, professional preference, social rebellion, artistic expression, or just for fun, the concept of health care is not a concern and the procedure is excluded. If there is any question about whether a surgical or other choice is, or is not, health care then the decision will err in favor of covering it and allowing a person to Get What Pel Wants. For those who want to pay for optional procedures then being Rich comes into play for them as well, because those choices should be available and affordable.

Just like today, most medical protocols and procedures for a Competent Adult are voluntary and may be refused. There are situations where Richness may consider some refusals of treatments, especially preventative protocols, to be the same as endangering society at large, just like smoking in public does. If the public danger is justified and compliance is deemed necessary then those Competent Adults who refuse to participate may be isolated from the main population that wants to promote and practice verifiably healthy lifestyles. Similarly, those who want to live free of the feared ‘poisons, toxins, and chemicals so irresponsibly allowed by science’ may also choose to isolate themselves in a distant location. All benefits of a Rich society remain available to the people living in any such group, they are just other choices that Competent Adults make so they can live as they desire.

A Rich society requires communications about products and procedures that affect public health to be certified true and verifiable, justified with science-based demonstrable evidence, as required by any entity that is funded from the source of money. Statements from every legal health worker and institution are required to be certified true and valid. Violations will result in continuing education and re-testing to demonstrate they understand how the science that underpins medicine works, and how it is applied in practice.

Unfortunately, just as in the case of normal irresponsible ‘free speech’ being allowed, charlatans will still be able to advertise and sell ineffective products with uncertified claims, and to practice useless or harmful procedures that are not safe and effective. In order for quacks to avoid prosecution when practicing without a license, or without adequate medical knowledge or training, or selling products and procedures without safe, effective, and verifiable results from a rigorous set of medical trials, the quack need only obtain a signed waiver from their Competent Adult patient. The waiver is an admission by the patient that pel (1) understands that the remedy and/or procedure has either no verifiable evidence to support it, and/or understands that there are verifiable studies which provide evidence that it does not work, with citations included in the waiver; and (2) that it is being voluntarily sought in defiance of science-based medicine and despite its probable or known worthlessness. At least such frauds and quacks, charging for many hours of work and overhead for non-existent research and useless cheap medicines, have the same limitations on yearly income as everyone else and can’t get richer than anyone else as a result of their preying on the desperate and distraught with their useless cures.

Health care strongly promotes personal responsibility for maintaining good health and preventing disease, because keeping yourself healthy maximizes the efficiency of health care services. Society-wide health care is empowered to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, and protect everyone from exposure to dangerous substances in public places. Public places includes work environments on private property, because the employees (or volunteers) still live within the bounds of a Rich society, and employee safety is among the previously mentioned responsibilities of the owner.

Health care is not concerned with restricting any personal choices that endanger only yourself and leaves the nonparticipants around you unscathed. You are free to take drugs, or engage in risky stunts or sports (both done in dedicated areas), or anything else that damages only you and other willing participants. Health care will be there to repair your body and nurse both it and your mind back to as much health as can be achieved after such activities take their toll, either from accidents or from normal physical degradation resulting from regular enthusiastic participation.

Mental health

The lifelong availability of mental health services provides everyone with the emotional and psychological equivalents of physical health care. These include resources for encouraging and enabling happiness and satisfaction in life, along with teaching the skills and providing the knowledge needed for personal development and empowerment. The intent is for everyone to strengthen their psyche with regular attendance, to live a challenging, fun, and fulfilling life, and to live happily ever after.

Not everyone will benefit from or succeed at this. Those few afflicted with some unusual mental problem will obtain as much specialized therapy and treatments as needed as they attempt to manage themselves. This minority of people will be closely monitored because mental instability is a primary cause of danger to others. This group suffers from one of the ‘worst case’ situations that result from everyone not being created equal, and from no fault of their own. Simply living in a Rich society, by itself, mitigates but does not eliminate many people’s unthinking and uncontrollable reactions to some social stimuli which they interpret as personally threatening or insulting. A Rich society will attempt to identify and neutralize those responses before they cause behavior contrary to Freedom & Equality, thereby increasing the safety of society in general.

Just in case you think this sounds like ‘thought police’ let me remind you of what Richness allows. A Competent Adult is free to be as crazy, unbalanced, paranoid, deluded, confused, etc. as pel wants. After professional analysis and therapy, and neurological diagnosis and any corrective procedures, there is no requirement for pel to discern between reality and imagination, nor to recognize that pos personal subjective experience conflicts with demonstrable external reality. Everyone is free to suffer from their uncorrectable mental delusions, phobias, syndromes, etc. because they have graduated from high school as Competent Adults and are functioning members of society. Nothing is required except to live within the limitations of a Rich society.

Those limits include not being a known, or probable, threat to others. As noted earlier for concerned schoolmates, and now including adult friends and neighbors: when you notice a person’s struggle, or occasional inability, to live within the limits of richness, you may nominate the person for evaluation. The nominee must submit to professional evaluations and tests that determine pos danger to others. Such results will tend to err on the side of safety for others. If pel is appraised to be a likely danger to others (because psychology is a science and not simply a calming and reassuring therapy, and neuroscience is maturing rapidly to help with such analysis), then pel may be institutionalized until pel improves.

If pel is unable to regain a status of ‘safe to release into society’ after extended effort then pos status will be changed to Incompetent Adult, pel will be assigned to pos original Responsible Adult as pos subordinate, and both will probably be permanently sequestered within an institution so the Incompetent Adult can live as Richly as possible, just like everyone else. The intent of this approach is safety for society at large, instead of waiting for pos status to become ‘criminal’ or ‘murderer’.

Voluntary self-termination

Freedom & Equality insists upon, by definition, a Competent Adult’s personal control of, and decisions about, pos own body, health, and life, including voluntary self-termination. An application to the Death Panel  includes a psychological evaluation but specifically excludes the definition of someone who wants to self-terminate as being Incompetent.

Medical knowledge provides techniques for rapid and painless termination, even the likelihood of a pleasant experience. Helping people die is usually the opposite of what most healthcare professionals want to do, and including it in ‘end of life protocols’ may be unacceptable to them. If so, then the actual application of the technique might be provided by a service, perhaps a mortuary.

Education

Disclaimer

The considerations about education which follow are well-intentioned but primarily inspirational, since I am just an interested observer concerned with Wanting To Be Rich. I am not a professional educator, nor do I have any association with educational systems. What follows should provoke discussion among actual educators to consider ways of implementing the goals presented here, because I believe they are essential requirements of a Rich education. As elsewhere in this book, if you can find better goals, or better ways to satisfy the desired goals, you are encouraged to do so.

Introduction

“Nothing is more important than educating a child to become a Competent Adult.” The phrase does not mean that education is most important, it means that it shares absolute top priority with the other primary mandates of a Rich government. The reason for its status is because education is a major contributor to the culture of a Rich society, just as it is for any free society. This primary declaration of a Rich society intends to create healthy, empowered, capable adults who are able to Get What They Want, by providing each child with a supportive environment for an excellent education. A tremendous amount of time and effort is dedicated to the education of growing children, those Potential Competent Adults.

Education and its goals should be immune to misinterpretation, perhaps typified by the YouTube video “A Prison By Any Other Name” by Josie Outlaw. Such evaluations are a little misguided or paranoid or conspirational, categorizing public schools as “...incarcerating all the children in authoritarian indoctrination camps” with nefarious mind and behavior control to “…train them to be submissive and obedient, and easily controlled by those in power.” Such general criticisms are fair and should be addressed in a Rich society, and it should be easy to demonstrate how they are not true. Certainly normal classroom order and polite behavior should not be demonized as suppressing creativity, stifling personal expression, or denying freedom of speech and action.

Education’s emphasis on Freedom & Equality should negate most of such arguments. The organizational framework required to expose children to the total knowledge of palkind, the components and scope of modern society, and the full range of possibilities freely available to them as Competent Adults, is completely different from a totalitarian regime training them to submit to authority. Education includes identifying indoctrination and providing  tools for countering it, which is useful to every child and adult. School may be a restricted and relatively controlled environment but the adult authority figures are trained and knowledgeable and qualified to be both heeded and trusted, because what they teach is reliable and verifiable, with the stated intent of teaching a child how to think for ponself.

Here is the problem the education system is intended to solve: how to recreate for each student the experience of discovering every major philosophical, legal, scientific, economic, artistic, etc. event in history which shaped the modern world, thereby allowing each child to experience it directly and learn from it. It might be possible, except that childhood has a time limit, so a summary is often presented to a class of students so that enough lessons are presented with adequate depth in a reasonable amount of time: from kindergarten to grade twelve. The students will have to accept that the condensed information presented is from qualified and knowledgeable research and experts, and is therefore valid and true, usually because everything is demonstrable, and is demonstrated or referenced in class. Lessons are presented with the understanding that the foundational evidence could be researched and verified by the students if the time was available, and the information presented is the most current and justifiable conclusion from people who have spent the time and have done such research.

In addition to acquiring as much of the accumulated knowledge of palkind as possible, children will assimilate and learn from their personal life every day. Times of soaking up information are different from times spent to explore, experiment, create, and play on their own. These latter times include the option to ignore some suggested activity and do something that is more interesting or enjoyable to them. Whenever a child expresses interest in some thing or activity then pel is free, and encouraged, to gravitate toward that current interest, and free to change pos interests at any time, just as pel can do throughout pos life.

Lastly, education in a Rich society tends to bring parents and families into schools, instead of confining kids to glorified babysitting services because the parent is required to be somewhere else in order to make a living. A Rich society encourages school grounds and facilities to become much like community centers and resources for social events, perhaps with parks and woodsy areas adjacent or nearby.

It is true that schools indoctrinate children in preparation for their expected role in society. An authoritarian society might indeed have schools like prisons that make the students accept arbitrary authority, assuming they even have schools. It is easier to keep people ignorant and poor to make them powerless, in every meaning of the word, so that simple coercion by physical might can maintain authority. In contrast, a Rich society educates every child in school to be Free & Equal, to accept no one as a Master, and to learn how to Get What Pel Wants, within the limitations of a Rich society. Education continues throughout life in varying degrees, and Richness ensures that all levels of education are available to anyone at any time in their life.

A Rich educational system should be engrossing and fascinating to students. Adults display tremendous skill in creating entertainments but it seems that they are not able to show how the real world, and the experiences to be had therein, are endlessly amazing and enjoyable. Many elements of real life are not valued in popular media or the current culture, and neither are those elements strongly emphasized in school. Things like evaluation, discrimination, and discerning truth from falsehood; analysis, discussion, accepting arguments that are convincing and logical, and adjusting your concept of the world accordingly; problem solving, verification of information, and the differences and relationships between facts, hypotheses, and theories.

Popular entertainment regularly breaks the laws of physics, as if life can be thought of as fun and exciting only if it is possible to escape reality, including irresponsible behavior, or with insults and contempt as the basis of personal interactions. Escapism is fun in many ways, but it is as meaningless in reality as the subjective experiences and deliriums of the addict. The goal of education is learning to deal with reality while enjoying the experiences of escapism, and knowing where and when the boundaries lie.

Public school

Public school is the gold standard for a Rich education, but since everyone is not created equal, students will learn varying amounts depending on their abilities or interests. For example, a student might absorb only a minimum amount of knowledge from classrooms and outside experiences, just enough to satisfy the requirements for Competent Adulthood, and graduate as a basic general purpose person, unskilled and uninterested in anything, yet completely ready and able to hold a job and participate in society. Another example is a student who learns an average amount of knowledge but takes an early interest in a subject and specializes in it throughout school, like a fine art, or a science, or the manipulation and working of a material, and they will find work that uses their skills and allows them to learn and do even more. The third example is what seems to be the current ‘ideal’ of education: a student that enjoys more intellectual subjects and considers school as preparation for advanced education at a college.

Students will separate into any number of specialized but fluid educational paths, either because they want to, or as suggested by the authorized Responsible Adults who teach them, or as the preference of their parent. Every path will educate the children as much as they are willing and able to comprehend,  which should make both them and their teachers happy.

Parents with a ‘home school’ preference for schooling, who constantly remind their child “you don’t have to learn anything they teach you, just do what you want” should be satisfied with their child obtaining only the legal minimum of knowledge, while meandering aimlessly amid a wealth of knowledge. Public school attempts to compensate for attempted ignorance with copious after-school time and resources for each student to pursue whatever interests pel, with guidance and supervision and expertise from school staff. This time can be used for plenty of ‘free range’ movement throughout their larger environment. A goal of Richness is to have a safe society for anyone to travel in, including children, anytime and anywhere, age appropriately.

Note that the most rigorous, involving, intense, intellectual, and detailed versions of every subject is available to any student who is interested in that level of study, but it is never required. Students are encouraged to do their best and learn as much as possible, but as long as they know just enough to graduate into Competent Adulthood then a Rich society considers them successfully educated.

Public school is an institution of certified information, where children learn the techniques and skills for identifying, exposing, and correcting lies, falsehoods, scams, etc. This includes the skills and confidence needed for them to challenge and question authority when appropriate, and to distinguish between that situation and the more usual one, where accepting the information provided by a certified source is both appropriate and in their best interest.

Public education is secular, like government. There is plenty of extracurricular time available for parents to direct their children’s experiences and thoughts along the parent’s chosen tunnels of culture and tradition and whatever, restricted only by the limitations of Richness. At those times away from public school, children are not protected from being told falsehoods and are vulnerable to any misinterpretations and distortions which are taught by people who should be honest and verifiably correct.

Private schools

The purpose of private schools is to avoid educational oversight and supervision, so they can limit what a child is taught about some subjects, substitute unjustified and inaccurate assertions in their place, and practice elitism with their self-appointed authority to select or reject students at will. Private schools are theoretically illegal because a Rich society does not allow any child to be deprived of a full education, so for these and other reasons they are not funded from the source of money.

Private schools are usually religion based which sabotages much of the purpose of education, by advocating arguments from a religious or other authority, and by teaching that their particular authority’s edicts and way of thinking supersedes and overrides all other available information. Eliminating exposure to competing information, ideas, or criticisms is intended to deter a child from challenging whoever is, or whoever represents and interprets, the voice of authority. This is the very “indoctrination” that “…train[s] them to be submissive and obedient, and easily controlled by those in power” which was feared by the example in the introduction: the suppression and prevention of dissent and questioning of the specific authority being taught.

Hey, kids! Here is a warning sign: if you come from a family, clan, neighborhood, or attend a private school or extracurricular class where everyone believes the same political or religious authority as you are being taught, then you are being isolated from variety, blinded to certain information and facts, and trained in a limited subset of knowledge, and possibly being told lies – actual falsehoods – that are presented as absolutely correct and inviolate. If you find yourself in such a situation then you need to question your situation and consider attending a Rich public school!

If a parent wants to pay for some kind of private school then pel may do so. However, all schools, public or private, are required to teach the same subjects using the same facts, and to provide the same information in order to take the same tests. Students do not have to pass all tests, but must certify exposure to and awareness of the full range of subjects, as noted in prior sections. All schools must be accredited or certified, which means they spend approximately the same amount of time to cover the same information for the same subjects, and all possible elective subjects must be made available. Private schools must have at least the same ratio of certified Responsible Adults to children as public schools, and offer similar physical facilities for classes in the sciences, shops, exploration and experimentation, etc.

Home-school

Home schooling suffers from the same basic problems as private schools, only more so. It also has the additional danger of severely limiting social interaction with other children, resulting in various developmental and social impediments and disorders, most quite benign. If it is difficult enough for private schools to satisfy the requirements for a Rich education, it is almost impossible for strict home schooling to do so. It is the problem of education in any isolated area where the adults have voluntarily relocated, or where they sequester themselves in a small community, or within a single dwelling within a city: they don’t like what a Rich society has to offer, including a full education for their children. Despite any adult animosity toward a Rich society, their children are guaranteed to get as good an education as anyone else in a Rich society, whether their parent likes it or not, for reasons previously discussed.

Home schooling can supply some of the educational requirements in rural or other isolated locales, and it is possible only because of the internet. Because Richness mandates maximum interactive internet bandwidth for isolated areas to begin with, home schooling classes can be almost as dynamic and social as real life, allowing real-time video participation including interruptions, questions, group discussions, looking around the classroom while the teacher is talking, etc. If it is shown that children learn some subjects just as well from pre-recorded classes as they do from live teachers, then such lessons can be used for home school classes, as well as for public schools.

Just as in populous areas, the job of the parent in an isolated locale will probably be within the school system, taking the time needed to supervise the education of pos child. It is assumed that any Competent Adult is able to perform the required tasks for pos child’s education, after being trained to do so.

Children in isolated areas will have the very best educational resources available, in abundance, including adequate time for socializing with other children. Children may be sent to something like a school village with homes for the child and pos parent (or secondary Responsible Adult) to live in, and to attend preschools and normal schools for limited periods. Full staffing of such villages and schools will probably come from the cities to augment what the remote area is unable to supply on its own. For science classes, and other subjects where dedicated space and specialized equipment is necessary, time spent at such schools is probably better than supplying kits of class materials to be used at home.

Actually, it might be just as easy to send them to an urban school for those limited periods, since the facilities already exist. It would also serve to give the children a little exposure to the larger outside world. The curriculum could be slightly different, perhaps limited to those subjects requiring the specialized facilities, in order to minimize time away from home.

General concepts of a Rich education

Teach how to think, not what to think

Whatever is taught is the result of research, investigation, analysis, and conclusions performed by thousands of competent people across the preceding centuries. It is verifiable and can be justified with evidence. Education reviews the original questions that drove their inquiries, examines the evidence they had available at the time, performs the same analysis they made, and applies the same thinking processes they used in their attempt to answer the questions. It includes subsequent criticism and notices how the original thinking processes led to mistakes, and how additional new evidence and improved thinking justified corrections. This repetitive process that provides increasing confidence and accuracy, supported with evidence from all fields of study, is shown to provide justifiable certainly that the current information being taught is verifiably correct, consistent, factual, and reliable – and is thus an excellent way for students to think.

Whatever is taught is also described with a reliability factor, or confidence index, or a scale of absolute truth, which never reaches unity or 100%. It is regularly noted that current knowledge is the absolute best available, but when additional evidence is obtained, or improved thinking techniques clarify or correlate the evidence better, then our conclusions will be adjusted accordingly, and our confidence index will increase a little more. It is important to have a way to change your mind and increase your reliability factor, and to expand or modify your understanding, to include as many true things as possible.

Because both society and knowledge are secular, school has NO limitations on what a child is taught about what is known, although all subjects are taught at an age appropriate time. Neither are there any restrictions on questioning any proposition. Public school is probably the only place where a student is encouraged to inquire about, and possibly question, the beliefs of anyone on the planet, including information provided by any authority.

Everyone gets a full education

Because Richness guarantees each child a full education, attendance at a public school becomes a requirement.

As previously noted, nothing is more important than educating a child to become a Competent Adult, despite the fact that everyone is not created equal. There is no “one size fits all” approach to teaching, although students with similar capabilities or interests will be grouped together as much as possible. Different levels of the same subject will vary mostly in depth and detail of the material, and thus the speed and volume of material presented will vary. I imagine there will be something like three levels of teaching offered: the absolute minimum for graduation and Competent Adulthood; a solid overview for the educated and informed citizen; and a thorough introduction in preparation for more serious study. Since there is no need for a student to keep up with anyone else, some students may choose to be in the more academic and thorough class but not work at it, while others who appear smart and inquisitive may choose to coast in the ‘minimum requirements’ class – which still needs to remain challenging and interesting for students.

Such grouping of students, as well-intentioned, largely self-selected, and as flexible as possible, is confined to the classroom only. Outside of the classroom students are encouraged to intermingle with everyone else regularly, if not extensively, to socialize and work together occasionally, possibly to share skills and help each other out. Variety is good, and seeing it around you, and being among it, makes life interesting and entertaining.

Students are exposed to all subjects and must satisfy at least the minimum knowledge requirements for it. That minimum may be mere awareness that the subject exists as a field of knowledge; there is evidence to justify its findings; there are experts or specialists who know everything there is to know about it; and the student knows where information about it may be found later, if desired – possibly no more detailed a response than “do an internet search”. Some students will have absolutely no curiosity about other places on the earth, the earth itself, or any aspect of the universe, which is fine because none of it is required for living in a Rich society. This includes those who are youthfully delusional, believing they are going to be a movie or music or sports star and they don’t need an education for that. Unfortunately for them, Richness does not let them refuse an education any more

than an adult can prevent them from attending.

Some students will be prodigies, expressing and enjoying some specialized subject like music or math, and they will be provided many hours a day in a supportive environment to learn, practice, and develop. Something like 4 or more hours each day in an appropriate learning and practicing and experimenting environment. Public schools will be able to satisfy such exceptional needs. If a student needs to remain at home for ideal development then that can be accommodated, because their additional exposure to the rest of human knowledge really doesn’t need to be extensive, and they will easily obtain the minimal exposures acceptable for graduation.

It might be nice for each class to end with “If anyone asks what you learned in school today, you can say [whatever was taught]”. Of course, if asked, the child may say “We were taught [whatever] but I didn’t want to learn it”.

“Was it interesting?”.

“Yeah, I suppose, but I don’t care”.

All of which is OK, especially the last exchange acknowledging that it was taught in an interesting manner.

Students learn they are welcome to return to education whenever they want.

Incidentally, I see no reason for homework, except voluntary exercises for the students in the most rigorous classes. Partly this is because both parents and students may chose to not return home until after a full day of classes and extra-curricular activities and dinner at school, so no real after-school time is available. Free time away from school is expected to be used for leisure reading, some entertainment, a little maintenance around the house, family activities, unstructured socializing, hobbies, etc.

Self esteem, confidence, empowerment

A goal of education is to prevent seclusion or isolation in children, and in the adults they become, by providing social instruction, tools, and techniques to defend and protect themselves against that danger, including confidence, self-reliance, and a sense of Equality. Such prevention is a logical extension of both Freedom & Equality and Get What You Want, and includes the identification of ridicule, bigotry, harassment, bullying, rudeness, intolerance, and other demeaning behavior that exceeds the limitations of Richness. It doesn’t matter if the offender is another student or an adult. The resources for students include legal action against the offender, and as much therapy as needed for both the offender and the victim.

For many students, simply attending school may be the cause of stress and unhappiness because their parents dislike their child getting a full education, and that may affect their behavior toward their child. Maintaining self confidence and self esteem for a child in such an uncomfortable situation will probably begin with pos therapy sessions, which are included in the normal school schedule. Almost certainly the parents will soon be included for their own therapy so they may accept the situation required by Richness, and be reminded that their child is available after class for indoctrination, including attempts to disparage, nullify or reverse what their child has been taught in school.

Exposure and exploration

The goal of education is to prepare students for adulthood with the basic knowledge and experience needed to enter into society, and to broaden a student’s outlook on life by expanding pos knowledge of how pel works, how things in pos environment work, how a Rich society works, how other societies in the world work, how the earth works, how the universe works, and how the student’s life fits into all of it.

There are a great many introductory and ‘basics of’ classes that take only a portion of a semester. These provide the intended exposure and are never considered again, except as they may be applied by the student in real life. Other subjects are revisited at intervals throughout schooling, as ongoing explorations that offer increased information and new experiences. Older students get to do different things just because they are bigger, stronger, more knowledgeable, and more responsible than when they were younger.

Learning about the variety of work required to maintain a Rich society should increase a student’s appreciation and understanding of what other adults do, and may possibly help a student to consider many types of work after graduation.

Curriculum highlights

Introduction

This section is basically an implementation of ‘Children can be trained’ (the third Lesson of Life from Part One), and of everything else about education that has been presented. What follows is my consideration of the general scope of education that needs to be provided in a Rich society. No experts or professionals were consulted, it is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, and certainly nothing is authoritative, but despite such disclaimers an education similar to this is essential for the creation, and long-term success, of a Rich society.

Curriculum subjects and their details are well-intentioned but may be just as offensive or unrealistic to you as other subjects we’ve covered, so I suppose you have just been warned – again. I may have included too many details about class content, but I felt obliged to retain them because they are examples of the kinds of information and experiences that comprise a Rich education, and because they are so different from many current goals of education. Most of this, or something like it, will appear in the founding documents, which will plainly specify the educational goals of a Rich society.

Professional educators, and those adults who become professional educators during the school years of their children, will help create and manage the details of implementation, based on satisfying the mandated intents that are suggested here, and umpired by the government.

For educators, it is hoped that this overview will stimulate many ideas for different and exciting styles of education to keep things interesting, entertaining, and relevant for students at all times. You might need to pause a moment before continuing, just to consider the idea of abundance of any kind available for education, let alone much of what is about to be suggested.

Nursery and Preschool

Extensive classes and training are taken during pregnancy, and a first mother-to-be is paid for going to such a school which provides enough income to ready her home and supply her body with what it needs. She may continue to work as long as she chooses, but she must attend the classes.

After birth, a mother is paid enough, from the source of money, for her job of feeding, caring, clothing, etc. her infant and herself until the child enters kindergarten, because the majority of the hours of her life are dedicated to the child. These are the pre-toilet training and pre-speaking years, the formative years which require almost constant care and supervision, and the ‘curriculum’ is nurturing and encouragement. A mother may dedicate her life to the child and do everything on her own, if she chooses, but I would guess that something like nurseries and day care facilities will be created by, and staffed by, the mothers of the children who use them, allowing the mothers to rotate in a flexible part-time schedule, sort of like a co-op. Changing the diapers of friend’s and neighbor’s children is offset by getting out of the house, socializing with other adults, and having some free time for yourself.

After nursery years come kindergarten, the beginning of public education. Most mothers begin working for the schools, relatively close to her child and in sync with her child’s school schedule. The ‘curriculum’ for these years is mostly known and agreed upon.

After preschool comes the twelve-year journey of exposure to, and awareness of, the accumulated knowledge of palkind, partially described in the remainder of this section.

Civics

Education about a Rich society starts with its basis, on You Wanting To Be Rich, then the associated definitions, concepts, and facilities which a Rich society uses as its foundation. Then the actual implementations of those requirements are described and explained and studied, much like this book, only better.

Students learn that they have full access to legal support and representation as soon as they set foot in school. They learn of their protections that were in place during the prior years of their life, even though they seemed to be just a normal attribute of the culture and ‘how to behave’. They learn what the rules of society are, why they are there, and how to proceed when they are broken, especially when broken upon themselves.

In later years they will understand their increasing personal responsibilities and rights as they grow up, how to exercise them appropriately, and their goal of graduating as a Competent Adult. They are taught how their ability to Get What They Want increases similarly over time, and how to use those abilities.

Students are taught the authority structure, branches, departments, and mandates of the umpiring government, including how to keep itself honest, transparent, and serving the goals of Richness. Emphases will be on references and resources for students, and how to access similar information after graduation, since no one is expected to memorize all government departments and their purviews.

Since the physical infrastructure of a society is umpired by the government it is included within civics. Here are some of the subjects covered. Natural resource usages, like water management, growing food, mining raw materials, and how each is distributed. Waste and sewage treatment and management, including recycling. Shelter creation and maintenance, and ownership of dwellings. Land usage, and its ownership. The monetary accounting system, how it is used and how to use it. Power generation and usage, and why it must be sustainable, renewable, and clean. The educational system, what to expect, advanced education available either at college or on the job, including returning to school at any level at any time. The national and local park systems, which will probably be used extensively by the education system – extended field trips galore! Libraries and museums, the repositories of accumulated knowledge and the evidence that supports it.

And so on: transportation, health, the government’s mandate to plan for a Rich future, etc.

Religion

Religion is often a valued human practice, and it will be a regular subject at least through middle school. It is almost like the study of politics, ever-present in human society and hugely variable, but a separate and identifiable entity and activity. Education about religion starts in grammar school, since religion is often a personal identifier at the same level as national heritage, racial heritage, and personal culture.

Each religion, dead or alive, is presented as if it were true, and will have the following described and studied: its history, key tenets and dogmas; its creation stories, natural phenomena stories, and explanations of how the world works; what the religion expects its ultimate role on the earth to be, and the best way for you to live your life; its disaster and survival stories; miracles, and the story of the founder’s life, death, and what happened to pel (or them) after death; its current leader(s) and clerical hierarchy; the relationship of the religion to the governments where it is practiced; the major holidays of the religion and their celebration, its rites and traditions; its pantheon of major deities, and any minor or secondary pantheons, like saints, prophets, oracles, and demigods; how daily or other regular worship is practiced; how any examples or teachings from the founder(s) are emulated or imitated or ignored by other religions and governments; what scholars, historians, critics, and apostates have to say about the religion; how the religion is similar to, or varies from, preceding religions of the area where it developed, especially if it is a descendent or divergent sect, schism, or other offshoot from a parent religion, and how the new leaders claim(ed) their superior authority.

Additional emphasis is given to those ancient pantheons of deities and their stories that have been referenced and cited in literature and other media for millennia, long after they devolved into legends and myths, from many countries and cultures.

Also presented at intervals, because they apply to all religions, are the criticisms and arguments from agnostics and atheists.

Studies include exposure to people currently alive who are divinities, actual living gods; those people who are recently ‘deceased’ but who are still worshiped as a god; exposure to people to whom the god(s) currently talk directly, and who then relay that information to the rest of us; those who channel god(s) or other beings, speaking or writing as they are controlled by them; those who are able to interpret or decipher incomprehensible communications into a known language; and religions based on space aliens and their teachings.

Also included are people subject to mind control from voices in their head, including the voice of god, and those who submit and act on behalf of their god by performing some action on Earth that their god is impotent to achieve by itself.

Studying religions should help a student to understand the validity of the religion that pel eventually chooses, and will help to protect and defend pos soul, chi, essence, chakras, spirit, higher self, monad, aura, etc. from false gods, demons, occult forces, demagogues, charismatics, aliens, subjective voices, sin, eternal damnation, reincarnation, wasted prayer and worship, martyrdom, pantheism, and atheism.

Reading and writing and talking

Reading and listening skills should be adequate by graduation as a Competent Adult. Since it is much more difficult to use a language than to just understand it, speaking (conversation, not oration) and writing skills need to be exercised and improved throughout school. If nothing else, a student should be able to answer “What are you learning in school?” and “What do you want to become?” and “What do you think about [something]?” questions adequately, even if not personally motivated to do so. Speaking clearly and communicating well, including appropriate self-expression, helps develop self esteem and confidence in social situations, so adequate practice and skill improvement are important.

Correct language use will always be important, especially distinctions between similar meanings, because very few words are an exact synonym for another word. Correct usage includes detecting spelling errors, especially for homophones. This is important when using idioms, despite incorrect usage being ‘close enough’ or ‘interestingly similar’ to the intended meaning, because it shows that you don’t understand what the idiom means and are using it blindly – or else you are making a clumsy and un-funny pun.

A student needs to write manually and legibly enough for someone else to read, possibly just print and not cursive, as a basic skill. Otherwise pel can rely on keyboards or speech-to-text, and on display screens and printers for reading, reasonably expecting technology to persist and be available in a Rich society in the future.

Math

The minimum amount of math competence is simple arithmetic, allowing you to verify that you are paid correctly for the hours you worked, confirm your dwelling is sized correctly for Richness, balance your checkbook, etc. After learning what the four basic functions do, and knowing when and how to apply them, then calculators can be used to crunch the numbers, just as they will in real life.

Exposure to algebra is important so you can understand how numbers may be manipulated to compute answers that are otherwise impossible to figure out, even if you can’t do it. A student should know the rudimentary manipulation of equations, at least enough to understand how Richness is measured and how those equations and formulas are applied to create policies in society. Generally, a student or an adult may depend on others to ‘do the math’ and simply accept the results of the advanced computations that are used by experts in almost every field of study.

The basics of trigonometry can probably be included in algebra, and demonstrated, so the techniques are recognized when mathematical solutions are discussed or explained, but they are not required to be understood.

Exposure to geometry is important, learning how a few basics can build complexity. You get to apply, in a way, many of those basic shapes that were learned at the beginning of school. It may be possible to include geometry when shapes are learned, making the construction and attributes of basic shapes an inherent part of recognizing them.

For the average student, any other classes in math concentrate on understanding (not doing) statistics, or whatever it is called that allows the average person to recognize when numbers are being cooked, when data is being misrepresented, and when it is used for accurate and truthful analysis. These will be revisited over many years with the goal of discerning that a chart is misrepresenting the data, or the conclusion conflicts with the charted data. The goal is for the student, and adults, to recognize what is a valid basis for knowledge, or for an opinion based on it, and to avoid being fooled by liars.

Logic and reason

Discourse

Differences of opinion are allowed, it is the essence of free speech and the search for what is true, but opinion does not override evidence and reason as the bases for a conclusion. The cultivation and practice of intellectual honesty, intellectual integrity, and rigorously applied logic, with others and with yourself, is an ongoing exercise throughout school. It includes how to politely ask questions about someone’s opinion, and how to state or rebut an opinion fairly and respectfully. How to converse and exchange ideas, and to consider and evaluate them, without attacking the person. How not to be insulted when presented with information that you disagree with, or which demonstrates your opinion is wrong. Lastly, if concerned that your opinion may need adjustment, how to continue reevaluating and modifying it until it matches what is true.

Rhetoric and early manipulation

These will be studied every year until graduation. A student will be able to identify the majority of rhetorical ‘figures of speech’ and determine correct or incorrect usage, independent of whether the usage is to clarify truth or justify a lie. Recognition is the goal, which is not the same as a student having the ability to use it ponself, or to recall what each technique is named. By graduation a student will have been exposed to every logical fallacy and rhetorical manipulation known to both honest communicators and deceiving charlatans, and will have very little excuse for succumbing to scammers during adult life. The goal is protection from manipulation, and from becoming a sucker.

Rhetoric is inherent in the study of anything that uses words, spoken or written, with or without accompanying action. Lessons on interpersonal communication is age appropriate and starts almost immediately upon entering school, explaining and offering responses to ‘dares’ and taunts, to attempts at humiliation for being different, to racism and bigotry and bullying from other students. Also described and explained are inappropriate (and illegal) words and behavior from adults, and the verbal tricks they use to threaten or otherwise manipulate a child, perhaps to “keep our little secret” or “not make your mommy unhappy”. These skills will be used throughout adult life, for as long as other people want to become your Master.

Similarly, children must identify the value or danger of believing information from their peers, or from slightly older kids. It is true that other kids have experiences to share, which is good, and that older kids know more than younger kids and can be helpful, which is also good, but none of them are authorities to be heeded. This is early exposure to the category of false claims where someone “has [secret information] that [the experts or teachers] don’t want you to know”. The fact is that students will be taught those ‘secrets’ in the classroom, along with the reasons why they are false or true, as the case may be, but probably not right now.

Early awareness of interpersonal manipulation includes identifying conspiracy thinking, fear mongering, charisma, aggressive friendliness, and self-declared “I am an authority and I am telling the truth”. Such people and ideas are identified and explained as unreliable and possibly dangerous. Again, by graduation a student will have learned how every known scam, hustle, racket, cult, and confidence game works, and will be able to recognize them.

All of this is to protect students and future Competent Adults from becoming a victim of people who really, really want to lie to you, to fool you, to manipulate you, to have you trust them for false reasons so you will become a Subject to their ideas, and probably to them, and certainly to your detriment.

Magic

Students will learn the rudiments of magic and deception, especially to realize that you can be fooled, that you can fool yourself, and to beware of being a member of a group of people being fooled together – not by magic tricks, but by deception presented as if it were real.

Think for yourself

Learning ‘how to think’ is the beginning of learning how to ‘think for yourself’. Unfortunately for the expected  meaning and application of ‘think for yourself’, every significant subject has been determined to have only one correct conclusion that is verifiably true, and a complete and honest evaluation by many determined people has them coming to the same verifiable result. So the phrase ‘think for yourself’ does NOT mean “I will believe whatever imaginary thing I want, and live accordingly”, although you are free to do so. Instead, it means that you should exercise your method or system of learning to organize, correlate, compare, and evaluate evidence, and to make reasoned and logical conclusions that are supported by that evidence. It strongly suggests that everyone capable of ‘thinking for ponself’ will come to the same basic conclusion as others. This is not the rote response of indoctrination, it is the ability to determine what is true and what is false, and choose the true based on evidence and reason. There is no way that anyone who has learned to think for ponself will be fooled into accepting something as being real without any evidence, or contrary to the evidence, or that something imagined, dreamed, or experienced in a state of altered consciousness is more ‘true’ than the daily evidence of waking reality.

Does ‘thinking for yourself’ make your personal assertion that “I Want To Be Rich” baseless and imaginary and unjustified? No, because it is a fact, actual evidence as stated by you, that Richness is your desire, and thus your goal. Not only that, it is ‘thinking for yourself’ because, as noted near the beginning of this book, no one of authority or influence in today’s society wants you to be Rich. More importantly, it is a justifiable stance because wanting Richness includes everyone else, so it is an instance of “the greatest good for the greatest number”, and certainly “it is best for me because Richness protects me from being a Subject”. Everyone else who wants to be Rich will, generally, go through similar reasoning as they ‘think for ponself’ and will agree that Richness is a good idea. (I hope.)

Those who state “I want to be a Master over almost everyone else, and richer than almost everyone else” are similarly justified as it being their true desire, and it is best for them since “it’s good to be king” (per Mel Brooks), but it is not best for other people, so everyone else who ‘thinks for ponself’ will disrespectfully disagree and identify pos assertion as a lousy idea that is worth contradicting and preventing.

Science

The scientific method extends into almost every realm of human knowledge and experience, and there are only twelve years to present students with this essential usage of factual evidence, experimentation, logic, and reason. The foundations of science need to be repeated and reviewed often, and include the following.

What the scientific methods are, and how they work. Why the results produced by others using it should be given more validity and priority for an opinion than personal experience, or the unchallenged testimonies or assertions of others. How science replaces the tendency toward mysterious and magical explanations with the wonder and awe of complex, beautiful, and astounding reality. Why researchers need to eliminate their personal or other biases and not fool themselves. The value and use of precautions to obtain accurate and honest data and analysis, like isolating variables, accounting for placebo and noise effects, and double blinded tests. The requirement for intellectual honesty by drawing conclusions based on all of the evidence obtained.

Why Science, especially scientific ‘consensus’, is not a ‘status quo’ in the sense that ‘its purpose is to actively keep what is currently known unchanged’ or ‘to blindly prevent any new ideas from being investigated or presented’. Why science does ignore cynics and denialist cranks, but more importantly, how minority hypotheses and theories that are backed with evidence and logic do ‘upset’ the previous best knowledge by providing new and consistent evidence, improved hypothesis, and successful tests of predictions that compels acceptance. Then the situation repeats! The new improved knowledge soon becomes the new consensus and any minority idea has a more difficult time of overthrowing it because science has progressed closer to the truth.

What ‘false balance’ is. Students should know enough about reality to know when a minority opinion is an unlikely choice, perhaps an unjustified opinion from an unqualified denier, perhaps a qualified expert who campaigns to spread disinformation and false doubt. A student or average adult should be able to tell when an expert in a field stops using the evidence and conclusions of science and starts disagreeing by using unsupported assertions and opinions, and thus crosses over to dishonesty and unreliability.

Describe the role of skepticism done by laypals, who take the same kind of approach to gathering and evaluating evidence to establish the truth about reality. Scientific papers are not always needed to determine what is real, but a scientific method must be used. Explain how neither trained scientists nor experienced and knowledgeable laypals have found verifiable evidence of the paranormal or the supernatural (as two examples among many), including the results of rigorous investigations that have been done that were and are negative. Why it is a waste of time for scientists to bother with re-investigating something that is so improbable as to approach impossibility. Why such claims do not threaten the ‘status quo’. Review the history of the James Randi Educational Foundation's Million Dollar Challenge.

Describe why publication, repeatability, and predictability demonstrate that the conclusions of science are correct, and thus become our reliable and verifiable definition of reality. Describe how science responds to research or studies that appear to conflict, and when repeatability or predictability seem to fail.

Explain how physics, and science in general, has the secondary effect of preventing anything and everything from being possible. By graduation, students should know every category of impossible or implausible claim ever imagined, from flying horses to antigravity hoverboards, and will know what their proponents need to provide before such things can be taken seriously, to say nothing of concluding they actually exist. They will know the extents of reality and understand that super-smart people have already created, or imagined, everything that can be done within it, and many things that cannot be done, like faster than light travel. Similarly, even average-smart people have already considered, analyzed, and discarded ideas that obviously can’t work or are impractical, like free energy, large amounts of water from desert air, and jet packs for daily use.

Students are made aware that we live within a certain environmental range where everything that can be seen and touched is a chemical. It is important to be aware of how everything combines, changes state, generates or absorbs energy, and to be familiar with the normal properties and interactions of everyday natural and manufactured substances.

Students should notice the value of constantly recording data on every aspect of nature, including keeping records on things that are unchanging from year to year. Only that kind of meticulous accumulated data can be plotted over large amounts of time to demonstrate that things either do remain constant, or that slow changes occur. Then comes the interesting part, to explain why there were, or were not, any changes.

Students should notice the value of investigating and learning things that seem to be ridiculous and pointless, often across decades and even centuries. Things like measuring (and keeping) records of daily atmospheric temperature, pressure, and precipitation over as much as the earth as possible, for centuries, seems pointless. Who else but boring scientists would measure the amounts and types of emissions from combustion, or how much methane a cow emits every day? Any such ‘improbable research’ worthy of an Ig Nobel prize should be seen as valuable because it adds details to our knowledge. Even if the average student couldn’t care less, they need to know that such research is done by many people, which should broaden their view of human activity, inquiry, and fun. They need to know the immense variety of documented information is what supports established facts and theories.

Students should do as many of the key discoveries in as many sciences as possible! Everything from inferring a round earth and then measuring its size, to extracting various metals from ore and approximating how much wood/energy is used for a given weight of raw metal, to studying DNA.

Exposure to all of the subjects of science provides awareness of the range and depth of human knowledge. Familiarity with each subject should provide a reassuring comfort that scientists are not out to enslave or kill vast portions of the population and/or take over the world, by themselves or as members of an international secret organization. Unless, of course, there is adequate evidence to support that hypotheses.

As a student studies all of the above, pos knowledge should protect and defend pel from: ghosts and spirits; charms and hexes and spells; medical quackery that cannot possibly work; mental telepathy for mind control and mind reading; unjustified predictions about the end of the world; psychic abilities or ESP; dowsing; bigfoot, lake monsters, and other cryptids; witches, devils, and magic abilities; UFOs and alien abduction; pseudo-science scams asking for research money; wasting time and effort to ‘re-invent the wheel’ or pursue known impossibilities; and many others.

Your Body and mind

Introduction

It is good when students understand how the things they learn in school can affect themselves personally, and it doesn’t get any more personal than the subjects in this section. Currently, some students are legally prevented from learning some of this information. An education in a Rich society requires that every student is exposed to all of it, with no exceptions. Students are free to reject as much if it as they like, as they may with any attempt to teach and educate, but only after they have learned about it. No student is allowed to remain ignorant of any school subject, for any reason. For example, a Competent Adult may choose to refuse modern medicine for ponself when pel knows enough to make an informed decision, but pos choice should not be out of fear or distrust of the information and evidence that is applied by health care professions.

Your body

Learning about your body builds upon organic chemistry and biology classes, and connects to many other studies and portions of other sciences, like mechanics, so a student will discover how they apply to ponself. This subject is revisited at various times, age appropriately, possibly for only a portion of a semester.

Perhaps the biggest problem is for students to see themselves as an organic machine which, when injured or sick, is treated objectively and without emotional involvement by trained ‘organic mechanics’. Despite the care and concern that motivates medical professionals to enter the field, and which they try to express when they consult with you, when it comes time to work on your body you are considered as nothing more than the complicated arrangement of bones and organs and meat and nerves that you are. It is often frightening to realize that you are at their mercy and you are obliged to trust them to have your best interests in mind as they cut, scrape, stretch, twist, inject, insert, restrain, and otherwise intrude on the normal privacy and inviolability of your body to modify how it operates, or make repairs, or remove foreign bodies and organisms that are damaging you.

A secondary problem for students is to understand that subjective pain is not visible or obvious. This means that sometimes a doctor will push and prod your body in certain ways attempting to determine, by your gasps and writhing and screams, where the pain is located, its possible cause, and any immediate danger to you. You will need to remember that your misery and suffering are probably not life threatening, that your body can survive tremendous amounts and varieties of agony, and that there may be delays in obtaining treatment if others around you are in danger of death or other conditions requiring immediate attention and resources, leaving you in discomfort and (sometimes great) pain until its your turn. Unfortunately, the more familiar you are with the different kinds and intensities of pain there are, and your ability to recognize and describe the pain you are experiencing, and where it originates, the more help you will be to your caregivers.

It is important to have regular checkups and tests when you are healthy, to obtain and be aware of your normal baseline condition of no pain anywhere, adequate physical strength and stamina, mental acuity, interest and curiosity, unobstructed breathing, etc. so that you do not hesitate to recognize when something has changed, because anything except normal means something is wrong. You will learn that ‘normal’ includes minor ‘wrongness’ such as temporarily suffering mild symptoms of pain and malaise, as when getting a cramp or successfully ‘fighting off’ an illness for a week or two, but you must also recognize when you are not normal, including abnormal illness. If you do not see signs of recovering as expected, or of a plateau of misery when responding to a virus, then you must admit your situation and address your condition appropriately. There is no need to ‘power through’ your infliction and possibly worsen your condition just because you think you should be able to. You are always in a struggle with organisms that we share with our world, and sometimes it is a fight to the death, at which times you will need all the help that modern medicine provides

Students must learn about the history of medicine and how anything resembling modern medicine is less than two hundred years old, and why widespread science-based health care is even more recent. Hopefully they will appreciate how lucky they are to be living at this time, instead of enduring the quackery, faulty concepts and treatments, and early deaths suffered by the vast majority of people until now. Also, despite the ignorance of past centuries, students should appreciate the dedication of past doctors and nurses to do their best with what they had, and to continually try to find effective remedies and improve their procedures.

Students will learn how the process of discovering and isolating active ingredients has progressed. Especially important to know is the sequence of understanding how a treatment works based on science and compelling verifiable evidence, and the many tests to determine its efficacy, safety, side effects, dosage, etc., including ethical clinical trials, placebo controlled studies, and everything else that is required before it may be verified as safe and effective, and then is allowed to be released into the world for prescription or practice. The many steps for such research and development are important to know, as well as how long each step takes, so that every published or publicized study can be identified as fitting into the proper step of the sequence, and not be fooled into thinking that an initial finding that looks promising will be available for use in a year or so, or that it will solve everything.

Students must learn why and how vaccinations work; how to recognize and treat allergies, both mild and severe; the difference between viral, bacterial, and other infections, and how they are treated differently; understanding when you are contagious and the requirement to quarantine yourself during that time; and how much of medicine just makes it easier for you to endure misery while you wait for your body to heal itself.

Students need early information about dental hygiene, braces and cosmetic orthodontia. Preparation for their first trip to the dentist includes experience in hearing terrible ‘amplified’ sounds inside of their head and to understand  that the sounds are not actual pain, and their jaw and neck may be stressed but it is not the same as actual dental pain.

Students will be exposed to the major categories of ineffective cures, including faith healing. They should understand how both basic analysis and rigorous studies reveal such practices to be failures because they have been found to not work, and thus students may be protected from the claims and practices of quacks.

Your mind

Somewhere close to the beginning of this book it was noted that everyone is not created equal, and it is important to realize that most of the identifiable characteristics of people are mental attributes, including behavior based on how they think. Much is understood about how the mind works and much can be done to help you compensate if you were born with one or more attributes that create a problem for you. Strangely, such mental extremes are not to be taken ‘personally’ despite their being a component of your personality. If you are overwhelmed by an extreme characteristic and you cannot observe that you have a problem, then others will certainly observe your situation and direct you to professional help. You will need to trust their judgment and recommendations as being in your best interests.

None of this is anything to be ashamed about because everyone else has similar characteristics, theirs just fall somewhere within a range that does not cause them unhappiness or other major problems very often. The key issue is recognizing when your mind betrays you and becomes a psychological or psychiatric impairment that spoils your fun and dampens your joys, such as fear, depression, or social isolation. Similar mental impairments may also result from damaging social interactions and other abusive experiences which are obviously upsetting when they occur, but also subconsciously reshape your personality and behavior.

Students will learn the history of identifying mental aberrations and failed attempts to understand their causes, except in obvious cases such as injuries to the head. Recent therapies for mental problems will be covered, along with understanding why they are classified as a health issue. The history, discoveries, and current research in neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience will be described.

Students will experience every scientific test of mental functioning and quirkiness, every visual, aural and other sensory trick and novelty that reveals aspects of how the mind works, including the creation, processing, and reliability of memory.

Students will be exposed to the dangers of cognitive self-reinforcing mental blindness, where nothing is believed except their personal interpretation of limited examples that support their blindness, including ‘banana picked’ examples. [‘Banana picking’ is a combination of the ‘banana argument’ and ‘cherry picking’, where the picker is so ignorant that pel chooses instances counter to pos argument.] Students will learn to recognize such failures of logic and reason, especially a person’s unjustified but overwhelming certainty that pos self-evaluation is valid, despite evidence to the contrary, and learn how such false certainty is the first curve that might drive pon into a mental vicious circle.

Students will learn the basis and basics of psychology and talk therapy, enabling them to act effectively as a lay psychotherapist during normal conversations with friends who are stressed and need support, and to help them to solve their problem for themselves. Students will learn to identify when a friend can’t solve pos problems for ponself and will encourage pel to obtain professional help, which is readily available and free, as is all of health care in a Rich society.

Every student needs to understand how pos own mind works, and what normal happiness and enjoyment are like for ponself, just as pel needs to know what being physically healthy is like. This is so pel will be able to recognize when things are not normal for ponself, accept it as being unusual, but not unnatural, because such conditions are known and studied and professional help is available. Information about how our mind works is important for a student’s own self-protection – more literally than usual – against pos own self.

Interactions and conversation

Most of a student’s life during school years is based on the acquisition of knowledge and experiences via organized activities, whether in school or on field trips. After graduation, as a Competent Adult, most of life is based on interactions with other people in both work and social situations. Real life finds graduates living among throngs of individuals with only their own personal motivations driving their actions, where everyone just goes about their attempts to Get What They Want, behaves within the limitations of Richness, and generally ignores almost everyone else, sharing public spaces peacefully, and occasionally connecting with friends.

A Rich education prepares students for ‘real life’ with instruction on conversation and communications between two or more people, which increases in complexity throughout school and in preparation for adulthood. The concepts, theories, and basic techniques of initiating, maintaining, and ending communications are described, analyzed, and practiced. Situations include interactions with parents and siblings, teachers and schoolmates, employees and employers, and romantic interactions with sexual partners from first contact to final farewell.

Included are adjustments to communications that are needed when dealing with people visiting from different local cultures, and with people from foreign countries, and the requirement to be even more aware and practiced when you prepare to visit a foreign country.

The study of communication at work includes recognizing, and protecting yourself from, the attempts of people to manipulate you into confusion and misdirected work, because some people just like to make trouble for others. Some are drama freaks, reveling in chaos of their own making, usually avoidable or just false, and dragging others into it, with themselves as the Master over their false complexities and conflicts. Some people will try to thwart your plans and cause trouble for you just because they can, using the principles of intrigue and betrayal, or more crudely by misuse of their authority. Defenses and counter strategies against such attempts are taught throughout school.

Social Self-Defense

There are also closer, one on one, or group on one, personal interactions that may become unpleasant, then unwanted, and then dangerous, which are explained from almost the very beginning of school. Richness attempts to eliminate such confrontations by legally making them beyond acceptable social limitations, but predators are persistent and will almost certainly find a way to bother someone. I think of this category of interaction as Social Self-Defense, which includes being the target of hate speech or other verbal abuse, or of related hostile expressions like taunting tones of voice and threatening or demeaning inflection patterns (called “tunes” by Suzette Haden Elgin) which are independent of the chosen innocuous words. Verbal attacks are often accompanied with demeaning facial expressions, confrontational body language, or insulting gestures of disdain and dislike.

Students are exposed to, and must be able to recognize, all of the verbal and physical communication tricks used by their peers, older kids, and even adults, beginning in kindergarten. Students must be able to recognize when they are being verbally or emotionally attacked. It is an exercise in knowing the limits of acceptable behavior from others, including by authority figures, and knowing how to neutralize such situations. Much of the ultimate defense against such an action occurs after the attacker has withdrawn, by the victim knowing how to report such abuses and to bring the weight of law enforcement and the justice system to bear upon the offenders. Students will observe the authorities respond to such an attack by ensuring protection and redress for an individual (or a group) by enforcing Freedom & Equality.

Students will be taught about how and why implied bonding between peers is a false and unjustified relationship, for example, not snitching on ‘friends’ and keeping their secrets for them so they may transgress, not get caught, and avoid justice. If you do not speak up just because they will withhold their ‘esteem’ of you as a ‘friend’, or exclude you from being ‘one of them’, then they are using you for a sucker and a fool. They imply a false ‘us’ against ‘them’ story, behaving as if someone who is your age or only a little older can be trusted to act with your best interests in mind, whereas Responsible Adults demonstrate their concern daily by introducing you to everything there is to know, and insisting on the practice of Richness by and for everyone. The worst case of ‘keeping our secret between us’ is when an adult asks it of a child, because it usually means that what is being hidden is criminal activity. The same goes for anyone threatening a child with direct or indirect harm to someone the child loves, and keeping that threat a secret. Children must be instructed to report such demands, or at least relate them when they talk with their therapist, because such a person has violated acceptable Rich behavior.

Education should instill a healthy distrust of every stranger’s motives as soon as they talk (or write) about anything other than friendly conversation or information, because it is almost certainly the beginning of a scam, sales pitch, phishing attempt, an offer too good to be true, proselytizing, hate, etc. Suspicion and doubt of someone you don’t know should be a basic defense against charlatans, salespeople, charismatics, politicians, advertisers, and other attempts to manipulate you, or to get something from you. Immediate termination of their obnoxious interaction will be practiced. Their pressing behavior will probably make you be rude, but that is both acceptable for such jerks, and essential for your safety.

Students will be warned of sliding down the slippery slope that leads to constant fear of anyone of any authority, or in any official capacity, because that slope leads to paranoia and distrust of every thing and every person, which makes you ‘less an Equal’ to everyone else, in almost every possible way. Such trepidation is not healthy because cults and sects and manipulators will promise security and protection from your fears, and thereby make you their Subject, which is the very thing that healthy distrust is intended to prevent.

Principles and practice of intrigue

The meaning of intrigue used here is not the benign ‘eliciting interest and curiosity’ but rather the insidious ‘deceitful secret planning of something illicit or detrimental, and its execution and/or exposure, to create some desired damage’. The basics of intrigue are taught almost immediately when starting school because such awareness is needed at that time, as previously described. Additional instruction continues at intervals until graduation, because the techniques become increasingly more devious and dangerous throughout life, escalating to their peak well after graduation.

Intrigue covers a wide range of manipulations. Typical applications are blackmail and extortion, scapegoating and frame-ups, character assassination and smear campaigns, propaganda and spin, deception and betrayal, cover-ups and whitewashing, innuendo and disinformation, spies and moles. It probably includes politics, as opposed to actual governmental administration.

Intrigue requires the (hopefully temporary) override and failure of your skepticism, knowledge of science, trust of certified sources of information, etc. so you will ignore, or not recognize, everything you have been taught about logical fallacies, misinterpretations, spin, emotional appeals, false accusations, and unverified lies in general. Victims must accept as true: disinformation; alternate possibilities based on lies or cherry picked anomalies; claims based on ignorance; illogical or impossible ‘alternative’ explanations; accusations without supporting evidence; etc. When enough victims believe unjustified lies they may become a recognizable group of cultists, conspiracists, deniers, cranks, cynics, or other category of gullibility that rejects the verifiable evidence that is available and chooses to believe the lies instead.

Students will be exposed to, learn, and practice every known technique and method of intrigue, with the goal of recognition and possible protection. Included are how to plan and implement an intrigue from the outside, what is needed to make it successful, how it looks to the intriguers on the inside, and how it appears to the victims. A purveyor of intrigue attempts to discredit every other source of information except ponself, so much effort will be spent by pon to block or pervert the truth, and get the desired lies accepted by the victim(s). From a few covert infiltrators, to broadcasting to as many people as can be managed, the intent is to create false and detrimental opinions, and unjustified conclusions, in you, the listener and victim. Once you believe lies the trap is set, and you can be controlled accordingly. Exercises will make it plain that you can protect yourself from intrigue only by verifying all claims. Those claims that cannot be verified serve to identify the lies, and whoever fed you the lies is revealed as the intriguer who is manipulating you, which will probably be someone you have come to trust.

Another danger of accepting unverified information is the slippery slope that leads to paranoia and the impression that everything and everyone is being controlled by one or more secret and wide-ranging conspiracies. Without real evidence and verification your mind can be directed to accept such conclusions quite easily.

Everyone in a Rich society should be protected from threats of blackmail based on exposure of pos private life, due to Freedom & Equality, Get What You Want, and the rules governing privacy. Blackmail will forever remain a danger for hypocrites, for those who publicly demonize some kind of activity in their official public declarations but who practice it in their own life.

Students need to know the potentially dangerous consequences of participating in intrigue. Often the only way the top level perpetrator can guarantee that pos secrets and deceptions are not exposed is to eliminate those who know the damning (true) information – pos ulterior motive, the scam, pos wanting to be a Master, whatever – and pel might practice the old dictum “three can keep a secret if two of them are dead”. Such action against a loyal associate (like you) is not so much a betrayal as it is a reasonable precaution against being exposed.

Principles and practice of violence

Richness is intended to eliminate almost every reason for criminal activity to exist because everyone can Get What They Want without needing to use physical force. That attempt will probably fail because many people will insist on trying to become Masters no matter what. Since a Competent Adult cannot legally accumulate excessive amounts of money in a Rich society, the would-be Masters will need to collude with foreign cohorts, commit crimes, store their money in some other country, and then move there at a later date to live as a Master who is richer than most of the citizens of that country.

Students need to understand how criminal activities work because they will still exist in every other non-Rich society, and perhaps forever as a subculture of people who just can’t stand being Free & Equal with others, especially those they see as ‘beneath’ themselves. Students will learn how thugs, mafias, gangs, terrorists, and organized crime in general, manage to  successfully apply physical coercion over peace loving neighbors and avoid getting caught. How they force people to pay them money because of their willingness to inflict violence against their victim, pos property, or an innocent third party. How citizens in a Rich society remain vulnerable to such tactics. How such organizations are structured, including the chain of command, flow of money, recruitment, business practices, etc. How, like any other tyranny, the organization is a series of precautions taken by the top boss to protect only ponself and pos interests.

A description of the people who staff such organizations will be examined, noting their willingness to become one of the Subjects of the top boss, satisfied to perform whatever is asked or ordered by pel just so long as they get to use force and be a Master over their assigned victim or perceived enemy. These are people who are willing to spend days or weeks following their victim and learning everything they can in preparation for an ambush, just like hunters and predators everywhere.

On a smaller and personal scale, students will learn to recognize and avoid situations where they will find themselves isolated from civilized society and available to become a prisoner of people who are willing to force them to be their absolute Subjects or slaves, even if only for a few horrible, traumatic, frustrating, helpless hours or days, with worse scenarios being both horrifying and common. Students should appreciate the importance of keeping in electronic communication with society, keeping others informed of your intentions and expected locations and estimated time and place of return. No one should care where you go or what you do (per Freedom & Equality, and Get What You Want) except for fear of becoming a prisoner. If you do become a prisoner you must remember what you were taught about means of escape in class, and to trust other Competent Adults to respond if you are able to ask one for help.

Precautions in social interaction might change with culture and technology. Everyone might routinely use their personal comNodes on new acquaintances to obtain identifying information about them, like filming them while speaking their name, and obtaining fingerprints or obtaining other personal identifiers, which immediately transmits such ID information to the cloud, and/or to other devices within range, for storage and retrieval if necessary. It will be part of the fun of sharing their personal adventure with their friends on social media. It would be best if security cameras throughout public places, including places of business, were of high enough quality, and numerous enough, to be of additional help for investigations of ambush abductions.

Lastly will be information about justice after being a victim of such a crime, understanding the evidence needed to identify and convict, and the value of  the evidence available from the stored electronic communications mentioned above.

Physical health

Richness promotes a society of graceful, strong, and physically healthy people, so Physical Education (PE) is required throughout school, including advanced education. PE is a practical and personal application of what is learned in biology classes, and including PE in the curriculum is intended to establish exercise as preventative medicine that is to be performed throughout life. It is also about learning to control your body and making it do whatever you want, despite breathing hard and sweating and trying to think all at the same time.

Ideally everybody tries every physical activity a little. The goal of a normal introduction to various sports and activities is to establish a personal best for a beginner, learning from mistakes, understanding the challenges and effort required, and trying to improve. Scores may be kept but they should be meaningless except as a fun challenge or comparison because they are not the actual goal of participation.

When participating in a competitive sport during PE, sportsmanship is taught, especially the value of losers acknowledging the winners. Doing so is appropriate since it does not diminish the abilities and skills (or fun) of the losers, and makes winning a little more rewarding. If PE sparks a desire for additional participation there is lots of after school time to participate in school sports and get good enough to be on a team. Early specialization is encouraged in any field, including physical activities, and concentrated preparation is available for a possible career in sports, entertainment, emergency services, etc.

The following is a rough listing of what is to be included when exposing students to the wide range of physical activities. I’m sorry if I go a little overboard here, but neither is this listing is anything near comprehensive.

Resistance training is almost universal, starting with using your own body weight. Increasing physical strength and flexibility throughout school is expected because every student’s body and mind is continuously growing. After graduation the goal will be maintenance within a society that is built upon labor-saving devices.

Running sports: soccer, lacrosse, rugby, track, etc. Self propelled events and skills: bicycle, skateboard, ski, skate, rowboat, etc. Water skills: swim, sail, snorkel, perhaps surfing where possible. Snow skills: ski, snowboard, ice skating, etc. Extended field trips will be needed for such seasonal and location dependent activities that require many days or weeks of learning and practicing. Such activities will be revisited across years, seasonally.

Notice that sports do not include mechanized activities, like water skiing, motor boating, jet skis, snowmobiles, etc. which are basically just rides. Probably not included are activities that are as much sightseeing as exercise, like hiking, mountain climbing, caving, etc. Neither are activities that require extensive training just for sightseeing, like scuba diving. For activities that are not included, students can look forward to doing them after graduation, along with many other experiences.

Students should be able to throw things at a person and hit them, or get the thrown object within arm’s length so the other person can catch it with their hands or gloves. This includes things like Frisbees that need unusual throwing and catching techniques, and which include a lot of running around.

Students should be able to hit things with a stick or racket while running around, or skating, or similar. Games as static as baseball and cricket and bowling are probably reserved for after-school offerings. For example, the only thing to learn from baseball is the difficulty of hitting a fast moving ball, and evaluating the trajectory of a high falling object in order to catch it, both of which should be learned and practiced, but not much else. Static games have their own skills but are not really enough of a stress to the body to count as physical exertion and exercise.

Training for combative sports might be included, but only the exercises and training for things like martial arts, boxing, and wrestling, because there is no necessity to actually fight competitively. The things to learn are the advantages of increased size and strength, and quickness. Simple demonstrations might be adequate, to have first-hand experience with a truly powerful opponent but without spending too much time on the futility of being physically overmatched. This is mainly a practical application of biology and physics, there is no need to learn about how pain can disable nor the degree to which pain can be ignored and endured just to continue competing despite physical damage.

One overlooked category of physical effort is what I think of as workplace exercise, the sort of things done around farms and ranches and construction sites, not so much in factories anymore. Digging holes in the earth using shovels and hoes without hurting yourself, lifting and moving boxes from place to place without injury, carrying unwieldy objects with help from others, eventually carrying heavy backpacks across rough terrain during military education.

Aerobic ‘dancing’ over the course of at least one semester as practice in making your body do whatever you want it to do while pushing yourself to your maximum continuous effort, an ideal application of ‘you working the program, because the program cannot work you’. The same for yoga and other group exercises.

Flexibility training will be a serious goal of all physical activity, not just a cool-down afterthought.

Exposure to circus skills is desired, like basic juggling, walking and balancing on a solid beam, acrobatics and parkour, trapeze, trampoline, etc. These provide an initial exposure to possible involvement in related after-school activities like gymnastics or cheerleading.

Tryouts for after school activities, including sports, are to be extended over a short time before demanding commitment. This is to provide the neophyte time to determine pos aptitude or enjoyment, and be free to try something else instead.

Showers and personal care areas will be available adjacent to locker rooms. Everyone should be confident enough to be comfortable with communal shower areas, remembering what was taught previously and accepting the variation of physical characteristics due to people not being created the same, and being different ages. Any attempts at shame or humiliation should be reported and will be dealt with just like any other betrayal of privacy or secrecy, and just like any other bullying. Prior sessions in Social Self-Defense will have provided some effective retorts and comebacks to help maintain self respect and confidence. The same shower arrangements are provided for both of the primary genders, with perhaps an optional co-ed area for those who are truly confident and comfortable about their bodies and social interactions.

Self-knowledge

Introduction

This subject area is totally about you, the young student, providing important information concerning the fact that your body and mind are continually changing during the years you are in school, in ways which you have absolutely no choice, and despite how much you might dislike them! Since you will occasionally find yourself a slave to your developing body and mind it is important to expect and understand those changes, to recognize their effects when they occur, and to have adequate strategies for coping with, and adjusting to, your growing self. It includes almost everything about you, including your physical shape and characteristics, your mind and emotions, how and what you learn, and your changes in behavior and emotional growth.

As some milestones of growing up occur it might be suggested that quiet but fun celebrations with your friends or family are in order. These might include the obvious physical manifestations of the stages of puberty, and perhaps the first hormone induced, uncontrollable, raging, emotional outburst of frustration and anger – after you have calmed down, of course, and are able to recognize it for what it was. Such events, celebrated or not, should be acknowledged by you as new aspects of yourself, of milestones on your continuing journey to understand and to manage yourself, as an opportunity to (sort of) enjoy the experiences, to learn from them, to adapt and improve yourself in any way that you can, and to live happily despite everything.

How we think

Such adolescent development and experiences demonstrate how much of our thinking processes are below our awareness, automatic and unconscious, but we can be made aware of how they work. Education is concerned with understanding the behavior of the mind and providing techniques to partially manage it, with practice. The mind seems intent on maximizing its confidence in the reality it experiences, so the more restricted a person’s environment is, the more the confidence is reinforced, correctly so, but it is valid only within that restricted environment. A person’s generalized conclusions might be universally true, but a person who has never been exposed to other experiences can never know that. Education is a danger to rote belief based on mere authority and limited experience.

Your mind accepts the possibility of unusual associations without any conscious problem, temporarily trusting what information is given to you until you learn differently. When you take some time to think about it (the sooner the better) then you will evaluate how likely it is to be true, and will think of ways to test it and determine its truth. Many such tests are very easy, and you probably already know that simply wishing on stars, or birthday candles, or coins into fountains, is so unreliable as to certainly be false – wishful thinking, as they say. Fun and hopeful, of course, but with no actual expectation of results. That ongoing ‘keeping track’ of wish fulfillment is our mind’s normal impetus to learn what is true and real, because it is important to consciously and analytically determine what is true about the world, and about ourselves.

Emotional manipulation

The ability of anyone to become emotionally involved in the situations of others is normal for humans, as when laughing or crying or being scared while watching movies or reading books. You are being manipulated by entertainments and stories, but for fun. The three parts of induced manipulation are presented, along with their general experience by the audience: the description of a bad situation and empathy for the people involved, understanding them and maybe liking them; then escalating problems, challenges, and maximum emotional turmoil for those people as they struggle with it, empathizing with their effort and misery; then resolution of the conflict, hopefully with a victory or other success, generating relief and return to normalcy, for both the characters and the audience, as life goes on.

The same basic sequence of emotional manipulation will be experienced directly by you, the student, just as charlatans will use it on you in real life, and not just as an entertainment, because they want you to be Subject to the idea they are selling, or to themselves. (I could stop here, but I continue with more detail, to make sure you know what I am talking about.)

First they engage your involvement by describing some threat against you or your way of life, and set you up as a victim of evil forces that are causing actual or potential problems.

Secondly they confront you with their fears and sense of danger from the threat, arousing your instinctive emotions because they behave like insane freaks. They talk or shout in strange and bizarre cadences, inflections, and obnoxious tones of voice. They flail about with outlandish gestures, or appear rock solid and authoritative and threateningly strict. They overwhelm you with strongly charged words and images, all intended to upset you and stimulate your instinctive sympathetic and empathetic responses: of danger and fear, or awe and insignificance, or embarrassment and shame; or other uncomfortable emotional sensations.

Lastly they dispel the very thing they created and soothe you with whatever they want you to think of as the solution, or rouse you to action for the cause that will triumph, and with them as the messenger of either. Your relief and joy as you return to normalcy can be so profound that you might believe [whatever you were told] is the source of your relief.

You will learn to notice what caused your dismay and confused state of mind in the first place, and to realize that just stopping the stimulus of the second section would allow you to automatically restore your personal calm and sense of security normally, without their help. Such experiences are just like entertainment in general, only you are more directly involved and may be successfully fooled into thinking that the experience, and what they are selling, are connected and true.

You will be educated about your emotional responses and gain self-knowledge by age-appropriate experiences, like listening to crazy people as they browbeat you, attempt to transform you, save you, threaten you, demonstrate delusions and mob mentality by behaving insanely and getting you to participate, etc. This will make you familiar with common techniques of manipulating your emotions and associating your emotion with their ideas to convince you of things that are probably not true. You will be exposed to every known trick of emotional manipulation, like extended staring and unblinking direct eye contact; unjustified wide-eyed grinning; smirking self-satisfaction and the appearance of having secret knowledge; unusual gesturing; an attitude of superiority and speaking as if you are expected to do what they say or ask; etc. Additional exposure to similar but more enjoyable strangeness includes: school organized attendance at raves and concerts with loud and probably bizarre music, at strange locales, surrounded by people behaving weirdly and dressed in fantastic outfits and preposterous makeup, including you; trips to amusement parks, and especially riding on thrill rides, to notice (and enjoy) the physical and emotional changes they induce in you; and trips to outdoor survival experiences or similar, placing you in isolated and potentially dangerous situations, providing exercises in consciously overriding instinctive fears in order to enjoy the thrills and sights.

Such exercises in emotional induction are not intended to prevent or reduce your instinctive and unconscious reactions, but to experience and understand how your reactions and emotions need to be evaluated, and not be fooled into unjustified and false beliefs just because you had a strong emotional experience. It is also important to know how to override or mitigate your animal-based responses to such induced experiences and to ignore any associated fantasy suggested by a charlatan because, in extreme cases, such manipulation by charismatic sociopaths can lead others, hopefully not you, to their death.

Altered states of consciousness

Preparing students for the challenges of adulthood includes education about every known altered state of consciousness, experiencing as many of them as possible, and preparing them for any post-graduation experimentation that interests them. Students will experience every non-chemical technique of altering consciousness, like ritualistic dance and chanting, meditation, mob mentality, brainwashing and indoctrination techniques, being thrown around by machines and other sensory overload, sensory deprivation experiences, etc. All such experiences are described as simple human reactions to the unusual stimuli provided, and separated from any false association with mysticism, spirituality, or other supernatural forces, energies, or entities. Any experiences that overwhelm a student’s mind and body are considered altered states, including unpleasant experiences like exertion to their physical and mental limits during PE classes and after-school activities. Students need to notice how the resulting aches and pains prevent normal action and thought; they should notice the effect of medicinal drugs that alter their response to, and recovery from, their subjective agonies. A review of the mechanisms by which medicinal and sports enhancing drugs affect the mind and body might serve as the introduction to recreational drugs.

The only reason most recreational drugs are considered undesirable is because they work by damaging the mind, slightly and temporarily, and regular use eventually damages the body. Only those recreational drugs that are physically safe, with temporary effects (possibly similar to medicinal drugs) will be used for school experiences. Students know that they will be educated about recreational drugs, and that they will be able to experience some of them, as normal preparation for Competent Adulthood. This should diminish the false allure of ‘forbidden’ experiences, or a sense of ‘rebellion’ (both difficult when everything is legal), or an unjustified and artificial sense of being ‘cool’ or ‘bad’ as a substitute for valid self-esteem, self-worth, self-reliance, and competence. No student should approach altered states with a hope of defining or describing ponself positively because of it, or to compensate for self-identified failures or limitations of any kind. Any such student would represent a failure of the educational system and of the mental health therapies that augment personality development throughout the school years, and throughout Competent Adulthood.

Recreational drug use will probably be deferred to the last year of school. Adolescents are already saturated with hormones and other natural but complex chemical compounds, many of which cause impulsiveness, errors of judgment, and inability to even consider the probable long-term effects of their actions. It is probably better to have these erratic internal chemical reactions diminish and stabilize as much a possible before introducing new chemicals from external sources into their bodies. However: if the drugs are truly harmless to growing minds and bodies then having some chemically induced experiences prior to adolescence might provide a valuable example of what is to come, how it happens, and prepare them to recognize the cause of their naturally (and chemically) induced personality changes, and to help put those changes into perspective.

Experiences of altered consciousness are an exercise in perception, learning how the mind can be affected at the deepest levels, and considering what meaning and value such subjective experiences provide, especially when compared to normalcy and verifiable reality. The student may be confronted with experiences that make them reevaluate their sense of consciousness and awareness, perhaps even their sense of self, of what ‘I’ really is. Because of this the student needs to have a solid sense of how pos mind and body works before having an experience that may drastically demonstrate how easily their subjective reality can be warped, and to prevent adverse affects from the temporary distortions. Pel needs to be prepared to experience the difference between their normal self, and the chemically induced modifications to that self. Drugs will affect the student, with very limited conscious control of the experience on their part, so education and proper preparation are essential to prevent reactions that make some people psychotic or suicidal, or avoid opening their mind so much and so fast that it takes a long time to recover emotionally – days or weeks, as opposed to the hours it takes for the body to metabolize and excrete the drug.

Normal drug experiences should be fun and fascinating and personally educational. They might be done during field trips to the wilderness, with unusual gathering places, a lot of nature to look at and live within, a little ceremony, some during the day, some at night, etc. Indoor experiences should be heavy on sensations, especially a careful selection of music and room decorations – lots of visual art so students are surrounded by beauty when their eyes are open. Education about proper setting, preparation beforehand of appropriate food, places to rest and recuperate, including time on the following day before returning to normal activities, instills good habits for adulthood. There will be many hours of discussion afterward. Experiences will be shared, the personal meaning of new experiences will be considered and evaluated. But personal revelation and simple enjoyment must be tempered with the fact that they were in a drug induced and vulnerable semi-stupor, the very opposite of the vigilant and aware state of mind that allowed our ancestors to survive in a hostile world, and to develop organized societies and civilizations, and they remain useless to help meet the challenges of the external real world.

Students are informed that additional experimentation should be delayed until their brain has matured and is fully developed, at around twenty-five years of age or so, due to the dangers of developmental mutation, stunting, and other damage as it finishes growing its final 12%. Students are reassured that they will have plenty of time (decades!) to get wasted and to damage their brains and bodies post-maturity, after they have as good a body and mind as possible to start with.

Education and advice cannot prevent some student’s propensity for indulgence and probable addiction, which tends to abort their development and freeze their life in a vibrant but totally subjective fantasy. Education and information is provided on how, and how fast, addiction generally occurs for each drug, including medicinal ones; how rapidly damages to body and mind occur; resources for support and therapy; jobs that are available for addicts so they may be a productive member of society; and the option of taking the legal status of ‘addict’ where work is not required, only staying at home and keeping out of danger to society, and out of the way. It hardly makes life on the earth worth living if you end up ignoring everything outside of you and existing primarily within a mental experience that is sustained only by the introduction of unusual chemicals into your body.

Anyone who manages to circumvent this educational process by illegally providing Potential Competent Adults with any kind of drug is behaving beyond the limitations of a Rich society.

Sex education

Unlike recreational drugs which are voluntarily introduced into a student’s body and which provide temporary alterations of perception and subjective experience, hormonal and other biological chemical changes that develop during adolescence are involuntary, internal, possibly unwanted, and cause changes to young minds and bodies that are life-altering and permanent. The most influential change is probably the emergence of the libido and its ultimate expression as sexual activity. Like the rest of education, the subjects of sex and relationships provide information and exercises with the goal of preparing the student for life after graduation.

Sex education needs to be introduced just before the youngest possibility for immature and instinctive childish couplings, but participating in such experiences is strongly discouraged until after puberty and the student’s new internal chemical environment has been experienced and understood, and accepted. Precocious sexuality is called premature for a reason. Hopefully everyone will be having fun with the changes puberty brings, adjusting to the changes, learning how their peers are also changing, seeing everyone eventually become attracted to one or more genders, and seeing how relating to everyone is taking on new dimensions and complexities and enjoyments.

Students are trusted to proceed slowly with puberty not only because they have so much to adapt to, but because their prior education has made them aware and confident enough, and informed enough, to resist false peer pressures, dares, and other manipulations that Social Self-Defense techniques have previously covered. They also have good reason to believe, importantly, that their teachers have given, and continue to provide, reliable information and helpful advice.

Students are reassured that, once their minds and bodies have actually matured (instead of just maturing), then sex education will include access to resources for, and encouragement of, the healthy exercise of their libido. Just as with drugs, sex education should diminish the false allure of ‘forbidden’ experiences, or a sense of ‘rebellion’, as previously enumerated.

Sex education matures along with the students, presenting the theoretical complexities of intimate relationships and sexual attraction: the distinctions between friendship and infatuation and love; between enjoyable sexual experimentation and not actually wanting to spend time with your partner afterward; between wanting to repeat joyous experiences but not commit to partnership, even temporarily; and other contributing attributes that interrelate and interact in different ways in different people, and which need to be understood in every relationship. This is because students need to consider beforehand how to avoid the extremes of infatuated bonding and exclusivity on one side, and unconcerned promiscuity on the other, although neither are prohibited, of course. Something more in the middle is considered to be generally preferable, including enjoyment of shared time and experiences, of first experiences with new physical sensations and mental associations, and knowing that “I’ve never felt like this before” is about you and not your partner, and the expectation that those new, unusual, and pleasurable sensations will happen again and may be enhanced. Students should expect a certain amount of continued intimacy with their partners as normal, but any continuing ‘serious’ commitment to a relationship needs to be deferred until after graduation.

When students are old enough to find themselves attracted to another student and to consider sharing physical intimacy and sex, both sex education and health services will add the practical to the theoretical, with the school providing events and venues that allow socialization, intimacy, and optional sexual experiences in pleasant surroundings. In keeping with what has been taught, such experiences are presented and promoted as normal and should avoid any need to hide their activity. Those who utilize such options also exercise the rules of privacy and security previously explained and known to all students and adults in a Rich society, and legal action may be taken if those rules are violated.

It is expected that students at the age for sexual experimentation will have the confidence and good judgment to choose supportive partners and thereby create a worthwhile experience for themselves. They will have lived in a Rich society long enough to treat others as equals and not succumb to common pitfalls that spoil relationships. Unfortunately the huge variety of people and the extremes of their personality attributes will occasionally thwart that ideal, so specific instructions and strategies in Social Self-Defense are provided with the intent of deflecting, defusing, avoiding, resisting, and otherwise resolving unwanted and distressing situations that may occur before, during, and after sexual relations.

Just like experiences with altered consciousness, sexual experience is strongly suggested but always voluntary. Any student desiring sex but failing to understand and experience it is a failing of the educational system and the associated mental health professionals. After sex education is concluded a student remains free to choose pos own degree of participation and activity, including abstinence.

Summary

Traditional academic subjects are still required for students, and the more they assimilate, the better. Just as important is how they understand, interpret, and conclude a valid and reliable reality around themselves, that they acquire the knowledge and skills to successfully navigate within it, and can recognize and avoid the dangerous pitfalls and traps set for them by hordes of would-be Masters. Similarly, self-knowledge is essential, so describing and exercising some key sources of both joy and misery, of confusion and curiosity, that occur throughout life are requirements of a Rich education. This section might have included the influence and effect of popular music in a student’s personal development, to round out the trilogy of sex, drugs, and [music kids listen to].

Physical careers

Introduction

This category of education is concerned with a student using pos physical ability to produce a desired tangible, if ephemeral, result, as opposed to scholarly or academic studies that depend primarily on the mind and written works, like history, research, philosophy, etc. It also excludes the inspirational designs, conceptual frameworks, artistic intents, etc. that are created by others which are then brought into existence by the professionals discussed here.

The intent of this aspect of education is to interest and attract a few students to a specialized physical profession as a possible career. Most of these are presented early, almost as soon as the student is physically and mentally capable, because early practice and shaping of skills is important for those who are interested in one of them. Any students choosing a physical career will have most of their after-school hours until graduation committed to practice and specialized training, just as it will continue throughout their adult life.

Theatre

Students will be exposed to the overriding general concepts of all performing arts: storytelling and drama, attracting attention, and effectively delivering a message or inducing a personal experience. This covers many aspects of show business performance, from public speaking to acting, from comedians to politicians, anything where the whole package of body and speech provides information and entertainment.

Dance

Students will learn modern and historical country and ballroom dances, including practicing for and attending school organized fancy balls, perhaps dressed historically. Everyone should be able to join in the Virginia Reel at an event. It includes learning traditional folk and national dances you may encounter, and participate in, at weddings or festivals. Dances that were and are the focus of social gatherings, like square, circle, longways country, line dancing, and group dances from other cultures, will be learned and probably used for social gatherings in school. Students are expected to dance often throughout their adult life.

Music

Students are required to learn the basics of at least three musical instruments (percussion, single note, and chord) and read music well enough to practice. Every student will learn how to sing, including posture, breath control, diction, as well as being on pitch. Music practice should be kind of social, done with classmates when possible. There are no requirements for performance outside of class, especially for those who are not interested, but everyone should be able to join in a drum circle anytime in their life.

Sports

Each student participates in PE, as already discussed. Sports are included here as a division of show business because it is a performance for an audience, often with an enthusiastic fan base, and as a possible career choice that requires just as much dedication and practice as the others.

Bedrock jobs

Introduction

Just like the physical careers discussed above, which create in real life the designs, inspirations, and intents of others, so do bedrock jobs create and build in real life the ideas and goals of others. As a category of the workforce on an organization chart, bedrock jobs begin under the lowest level of management and continue down to the bottom of the chart.

Justification for learning such things in school

Bedrock jobs are foundational for any society, they are practically the definition of a society. No large structures, no agriculture or livestock, no wood or metal products, etc., are possible without them, and in a Rich society equal pay for an hour’s work recognizes their importance. Despite the work being done in support of major business categories like farming, ranching, construction, manufacturing, infrastructure maintenance, retail sales, etc. it is often performed behind the scenes and is largely invisible despite the fact that the work is essential and ubiquitous.

Students who remain uncommitted and uninterested in any specific career choice will obtain valuable exposure and basic familiarity with a variety of jobs they may hold at various times in their adult life. Educators realize that most students will hold these kinds of jobs and will prepare them appropriately.

Professions

Sometimes called a trade, this is skilled and often specialized manipulation of physical material, manually or with machines. Education provides exposure and basics, but just as academic or engineering careers require additional education, students who want to become a professional will also need additional training and experience, usually on the job as a beginner or apprentice. Schools will provide as much technical and specialized book-learning on the subject as possible, probably in after-school training and practice, just like other career possibilities discussed above. This will provide the knowledge and skill development needed to pass certification and licensing tests.

Unskilled labor and helpers

At the ‘bottom’ of bedrock jobs are the unskilled or semi-skilled variety, the jobs that your typical Competent Adult can hold immediately after graduation. The work can be learned on the job, starting with simple tasks, then learning more complex and varied tasks as experience is gained. If a career path is available then it may be possible to advance towards accepting added responsibilities, depending on a person’s aptitudes and desires. These jobs allow a person to contribute to the Rich society in which pel lives while retaining enough time and energy after work to live an enjoyable life, and otherwise Get What Pel Wants.

Basic skills to be learned in school

After graduation an average Competent Adult should be a general purpose human, able to adapt to any job at hand, learn what needs to be done, and do it well. This means that education, for most students, will be practice in learning and understanding things – anything and everything – well enough to follow the instructions for the tasks assigned to them, to both understand and appreciate the task’s place in the larger process being accomplished, and to ask questions to clarify any uncertainty about how and what they are to accomplish. Education also provides a Competent Adult with good physical control of their bodies and enough mental discipline and concentration to satisfy the goals of any work they do. It also instills habits expected by any employer, like putting things back where they came from or returning them where they belong, maintaining the overall organization of tools and supplies for the workflow that is in use, working safely, and keeping their work areas clean.

Safety will be emphasized in every class, both personal safety and helping to prevent accidents around you.

Students will learn the basic materials and processes that are used to make everything, meaning introductory classes and shop work in woods, metals, ceramics, glasses, plastics, resins, textiles, etc. They will learn to identify a variety of each material and the strength, hardness, brittleness, etc. of each, and their typical uses and applications. They will learn how to cut and shape the varieties of each material using hand tools, hand-held power tools, bench tools, stand-alone floor tools, and powered machinery. They will learn how to connect each material to itself and to other materials, with fasteners, welds, glues, etc., and practice doing them.

Students learn the basics of construction on the earth: picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows; mechanized earth moving and compacting, including practice using small skip loaders and other equipment; site preparation for water and other liquids and gases; drainage and sewage; preparation for electrical and other cabled utilities; foundations; walls, floors and roofs, etc., in concrete, steel, wood, etc.

Understanding the disposal of waste and leftover supplies, including recycling. Field trips to junkyards, dumps, landfills, and recycling centers will be taken.

Assembly using hand tools like screwdrivers and wrenches. Learning how much pressure is loose, snug, appropriately tight, too tight, and destroyed. How threaded items can strip either the threads of a screw, or the wood and metal they are inserted into, with the force generated by hand tools, thus learning the relative weakness and strength of materials. For home maintenance, the basic hand tools to own that do almost everything needed around the house for assembly and repair. A job that needs specialized tools is often an indicator that a professional is needed – or an excuse to enlarge your tool kit and gain new knowledge and experience.

Understanding self-contained power sources like engines and batteries, and the portable generation of electricity and its transmission. This includes considerations for, and preparation of, emergency power for the home.

Offices are also shops, so students will learn basic skills used in office environments: data entry, storing and retrieving information from file cabinets and business databases, effective reporting to management, and handling exceptions to normal transactions with customer service. Typing ability should not become obsolete because even 100% accurate speech to text for dictation is noisy, and typing is quiet and private. At some point keyboards should have a new layout optimized for thumbs and two-finger typing, even at work. Terminology and basic proficiency is taught for standard office tools like word processors, grammar and spellcheckers, and page layout programs. Sending documents to printers should be a normal function of using a comNode, unless copies are distributed electronically to everyone else’s comNode. Reading and maintaining spreadsheets will be learned, possibly in math classes. Distinctions are noted between personal computers used at home and the same machine when used at work, and maintaining separation between the two when using your comNode for both.

Distribution methods are also taught and practiced: transportation of bulk food and goods across the country by train, trucking, rivers, etc.; local transfers to and from staging and distribution areas; warehousing and stocking; loading and unloading trucks, etc. This will include training and practice with powered light equipment like pallet trucks and forklifts and large trucks.

Many categories of work are location dependent but will still be taught because of their importance to society. These major segments of society are so deep in the background as to be taken for granted and even ignored, yet are the bedrock work of any society. Agriculture for food and textiles, ranching and animal husbandry, mining and smelting, logging and wood processing, etc., and the conversion of all such raw materials to food, clothes, building supplies, etc.

And much more, fitting as many as possible into only twelve years of school.

Summary

Most students will hold these kinds of bedrock jobs, and education prepares students for them as much as it does for students who will pursue academic careers after graduation. Since jobs that do real work are always in the background, despite offices and factories full of such people, it is difficult for teachers to point out such work as a possible career. Similarly, no single school subject is intended to prepare a student for such work because there is so much variety, as reflected in the subjects just described, and usually people can only work at whatever jobs are available where they live. This means than an educator, when teaching about any major business category or other segment of society, must consciously draw attention to the various teams of bedrock people doing the work that provide the services or products being presented. Educators must emphasize the importance of such bedrock work because they are educating most of their students to do that kind of work, including those who obtain a higher education.

Owners and administrators

This is intended to interest and attract a few students to one of the specialized professions of administration as a possible career, including government and big businesses. Students are exposed to the work and responsibilities of owners and administrators, including accountability, reporting, legalities, planning, scheduling, budgeting, delegation, relationship to management directly above and below you, etc. If it is possible to practice being an owner or an administrator, perhaps for communication and delegation and organization skills, then exercises will be done. Otherwise interested students might participate in related after-school activities, like student government, model international organizations, school businesses, etc., for supervised practice.

Another intent of this segment is to inform students that they, perhaps working in a bedrock job, can start, or become, their own business at any time, whenever they want. Business is to be presented as commonplace and nothing special, often a side effect of what may have been a hobby or a creative urge, and is often begun as a part-time but serious activity. Since starting a small business may be something that is done later in life, students will learn how to get more details at that time – possibly nothing more than an internet search within their state or local government.

Educators will identify owners and administrators at the same time, and for the same reason, that bedrock jobs are identified.

Practical life skills

Introduction

It is a job of education to teach skills for daily living, strategies that are useful both at home and for independent living after graduation. Concepts are reinforced by seeing them applied and practiced throughout school, and being encouraged to apply them at home to gain some real life experience. These skills are applicable to any lifestyle, but after graduation a Competent Adult is not required to practice any of them and is free to treat pos dwelling as a modern version of a cave or dungeon or junkyard. Nevertheless, some life skills are standard, almost universal, so students will learn and practice them because they will be expected in work environments throughout adulthood. Teachers should point out their use when describing any enterprise.

Cleaning

The goal is to consider home as a refuge of neatness, pleasantness, beauty, and comfort. It should be easy to find things, with plenty of walking space for easy access to storage and supplies.

Students will learn the purpose and importance of wastebaskets as temporary storage for trash, until collected into large bins that get put out for regular pickup, including recycling considerations and options. How trash is handled in rural areas, and whether any techniques are applicable to urban life. How to do laundry manually and with a washing machine, when and how to line dry or use a dryer. How to iron clothes. Manual techniques for washing dishes and how to use a dishwasher. Sweeping compared to vacuuming compared to mopping. Since your entire dwelling gets used and thus gets dirty, learning how to clean and preserve wood cabinets, furniture, and floors, and surfaces made of stone, etc. Deciding what is best to do a little at a time regularly and making a habit of doing it, compared to what can be put off and done as a chore taking hours, and perhaps grouped into chores done monthly, quarterly, or annually. Many of these practices will be seen at school.

Students are reminded that these disciplines apply to the responsibilities of ownership of your dwelling after graduation. If you live in squalor and thereby damage your dwelling and leave it unrepaired, before you move you will need to repair that damage and clean everything to make it ready for the next owner, restoring it to the same condition it was in when you took ownership.

Organization

This subject is begun immediately upon entering school, requiring that things are put back where they belong at the end of every class, including keeping track of personal possessions. Hopefully a student will switch from doing it because it is a rule, to understanding why the rule is there and doing it because it keeps things organized and makes life easier.

Students will learn that the key to stopping clutter is the rule that there must be a place for everything and everything is kept in its place. If you can’t satisfy that maxim in a Rich dwelling then you have too much stuff, and there will be lessons on how to determine what you actually use or need, how to realize that unused stuff is almost always the same as unwanted stuff, and what to do with it. General strategies for neatness are enumerated, like nothing on the floor but furniture and waste receptacles, and nothing on the furniture but specific things you want to be there.

The primary strategy for maintaining an abundance of consumables in your home will be taught, which includes having ‘warehouse’ areas, probably in the garage or a pantry, so when the last item is removed and put into active service it triggers an entry on your shopping list, because that is the time to replenish the item so you never run out. This strategy will be pointed out as a feature of every enterprise, including school. Additional procedures are taught for emergency supplies, circulating them through the storage area at regular intervals and restocking with fresh items to insure that emergency supplies are always safe to consume or use.

Strategies are offered for organizing and maintaining the information stored in the fire and water resistant safe which is a feature of Rich dwellings.

Organization is a likely bridge to business and management practices and skills. Students will be exposed to major aspects of different kinds of enterprises with the goal of understanding why their work is organized as it is, and how people working there need to maintain, improve, or oversee, their organized processes.

Maintenance

How to keep the outside of your dwelling looking nice, and to make minor repairs to the internal infrastructure. Students will learn and practice common home maintenance tasks using the basic hand tools that everyone should have. For example, understanding and preventing circuit breaker trips; concepts of plumbing and drainage, and what you can repair or replace; precautions and procedures for gas appliances; surface preparation and painting; pruning and watering plants, and weeding; setting up and making diagrams of wired and wireless systems, like speakers; and keeping them in the safe, or on computer backups in the safe.

For everything that needs to be done, choosing between doing it yourself or hiring someone to do it. You are Rich enough to hire home repairs, but making and maintaining your own nest is satisfying. How to find and call professionals for major repairs or improvements, including initiating complaints about their faulty work, overcharging, asking for or giving recommendations for reliable services, etc.

Food and eating

Students will understand nutrition, how food is metabolized by their body, and what makes them fat and what doesn’t, based on science. Strategies are provided for grocery shopping, especially for fresh produce, and how to plan ahead for meals. How to cook for yourself, to prepare meals for guests, and to host a party.

How to eat with your hands, chopsticks, utensils, and at full formal place settings, including protocols, manners, and managing accidents. How to handle difficult foods, like fish that still have bones in it, or is inside of shells, and carving meat off of a carcass at holidays. How to eat something that doesn’t look like food, or is really strange, and trying at least a bite of everything as part of a life full of interesting experiences. Exercises for being comfortable and properly behaved in unusual social eating situations, cultures, and traditions, with practice at school and then at restaurants.

Social aspects of eating and drinking in various cultures, like when and how to compliment the chef or host, bar protocols for drinks, and correctly computing your portion of a shared bill when dining in a group.

Shopping

Staying Rich requires that you get good value for your money for items, because Richness doesn’t mean you have money to burn, just plenty to help Get What You Want. Techniques are provided to verify and evaluate quality and longevity of products, assuming there will always be people trying to cheat you by doing as little as possible but making it look good, and charging as if it were as good as it appears. Bedrock shop classes will help to estimate the actual time and materials involved in providing something. Included will be instructions on how to lodge complaints to umpires when non-Rich lack of quality is identified, especially when contrary to advertised claims.

Finance

Upon entering school each student is paid for pos job of being a student. For the early years a student’s Responsible Adult will manage pos income, which is intended to cover all of the student’s expenses, including pos share of household expenses, with no compensation to the Responsible Adult. This means that a student will have a checking account (for auto-deposit of pay) and a credit card (for purchases) before the student knows how to use it, administered by the Responsible Adult. Neither of these accounts can disburse cash, thereby retaining records of expenditures for later examination. When students learn to add and subtract, and to read and comprehend basic financial concepts, each student will use pos personal situation to examine the total financial history of how pos Responsible Adult handled pos finances (including possible misappropriation), and begin the transition to managing some of pos income for ponself.

As students get older they will begin budgeting for their student lifestyle, planning and saving for required educational expenses, like transportation, lodging, food, and the expenses of extended field trips. There should be some money left for them to budget and allocate for daily expenses, for entertainment, and possibly some costs of after-school activities. Budgeting during school years is subject to the approval and oversight of their Responsible Adult, because students are not totally autonomous until after graduation.

As soon as possible students will participate in submitting their annual audit because such reporting is needed for their current situation of holding a regular job as a student, and because the majority of students will hold some kind of job within society after they graduate. They will be reminded that there are alternate ways to live in a Rich society, some of them largely outside of organized society and its financial institutions, which might reduce or eliminate the annul audit. Participating in the audit as a student is not a commitment to a specific lifestyle after graduation.

Students will practice some optional reporting techniques they might need, in case they become an athlete or do other work that can only be done when you are younger and needs to be performed at a higher number of annual hours at work than normal. The most probable technique is by setting aside a portion of your youthful high number of hours and deferring ‘payment’ of those hours until later in life when you are working much fewer hours, and thus maintain a lifetime total of hours worked that is close to the average.

Travel

Since a student’s education includes international travel pel will learn how to obtain a passport, visas, and immunizations, as well as where to check for current political restrictions and warnings, and how to learn relevant foreign culture and laws so they behave appropriately.

Related subjects are covered, like techniques for packing and other preparations, dangers and guidelines for food and drink, awareness of local eating schedules, preparing for unusual bathroom facilities and situations, keeping your limited amount of travel clothes clean, learning a minimum of the local language for simple communication, etc. Students should graduate as an experienced and cosmopolitan citizen of the world in addition to being a Competent Adult in a Rich society.

Computer skills

Every student will own a personal comNode from an early age, so every student will have a basic fluency with its operations. Unfortunately, until computers and networks become reliable and secure, some training may be in order for the students when they begin living their own life after graduation, like firewalls and virus protectors, good habits like strong passwords and regular backups, usage and non-usage of their comNode during emergencies, etc.

Using transportation

As soon as students are able to read and understand their local geography they will learn how to use the safe, comfortable, and reliable public transportation required by a Rich society, and it should be good enough for the majority of students to use for their local personal needs without needing their Responsible Adult as an escort or chauffeur. Students will be taught responsible behavior for travel.

If individual controllable vehicles are still in use, like automobiles, thorough training and practice will be provided so a student can use them correctly and safely when they are old enough to do so. It will be similar to training for flying an aircraft, with a minimum number of hours of practice with an instructor on closed courses or in vehicle simulators, including many hours in varied and difficult situations, including bad weather. Enough time must be spent for perception, interpretation, and reflexes to develop, especially for dangerous and defensive responses, just as for any skill.

Having and educating a child

This is where students learn of the considerations for population control that were discussed previously. They will learn about obtaining a license for a child and other legalities related to having and rearing a child. They will learn the reasons to defer having a child until at least a decade after graduation, and probably longer, and the availability of all types of contraception, including late termination.

A major point is that additional parental education will be needed and provided before a child is born, and for many years afterward, including ongoing specialized information on different kinds of child care and communication skills throughout a child’s development. The subject will provide an overview of child rearing, thorough enough so that later, as an adult preparing for a child and taking classes, the new details will fit into and build upon the general information learned in school.

Summary

Education is a practical endeavor because nothing is more important than educating a child to become a Competent Adult. Unlike characterizing it as ‘indoctrination’ that trains students to be ‘submissive and obedient’, this section exemplifies the expanse of society and the many choices available to contribute to society’s common goal of abundance for everyone, and the importance of every person and every job they do. If working toward a common goal and sharing in its Rich results is still seen as submission instead of satisfaction, then students are reminded that, after graduation, they will be free to isolate themselves from such organized endeavors, and from society in general, and live however they choose on land administered by the larger Rich society.

Exposure to nature

Education includes exposure to, and experiences in, nature and the great outdoors. This will be more of an adventure for city folks where nature is almost a foreign country. Students that live closer to nature will reverse the situation and obtain similar exposure and experiences in the city, but much of this will apply to them as well.

Before beginning, let me explain why the following is neither excessive nor frivolous, and why it needs to be included in the curriculum for a Rich education. Consider our current society that condones Masters, those people who are so very much richer than almost everyone else in our society. Then consider their families and imagine the kinds of vacations those kids take, how many they take, and the things those kids get to experience on those vacations, and you have the basis for what follows as being needed for a Rich education.

Activities are at introductory and beginner levels, perhaps intermediate for the last two years before graduation if a student can demonstrate adequate skill. Many things are not included and are deferred to adulthood, typically the operation of high powered motorized vehicles, and advanced challenges that require the maximum of a person’s strength, skill, concentration, training, and discipline, none of which reach their peak until years after graduation.

In a Rich society much of nature is preserved and protected from being exploited for its resources, reserved as a combination of animal sanctuary and for tourist sightseeing, with access roads and trails available for visitors. Students will make trips to National parks, reserves, natural wonders, glaciers, etc., and try to identify animals, bugs, fish, both edible and deadly plants, as well as geology, fossils, clouds, stars, satellites, etc. The ocean is treated as a separate wilderness and natural resource, with trips along beaches and tide pools, whale watching trips, fishing from boats, etc. Deserts are visited and studied because of their unique ecosystems and size, and their potential as locations for renewable and clean electricity from solar energy.

Nature is also used as a playground for recreation, so activities that are not included as normal physical education are experienced here: field trips to beaches and lakes to learn how to sail a boat, handle a powerboat, water ski, certification for scuba and dive trips; mountains to hike and traverse on horses; caving and climbing; rivers for rafting and kayaking; etc. Recreation includes learning animal-based transportation, how to hook up horses and pack animals, then unhook them and feed and clean them. Fire making and camp cooking for extended trips into the wilderness when carrying your own provisions, and cleaning up afterward.

Nature is also a resource for an individual, so instruction covers subsistence living off the land as a hunter-farmer or mountain pal. Students will learn about fishing, trapping, and low-tech hunting options like spears and slings, and perhaps archery; how to gut and butcher animals, build a fire, and cook them; proper knife sharpening and use; skinning a hide and tanning it; preserving meat from large animals that cannot be consumed shortly after killing them; harvesting seasonal berries and roots and other edible plants, and preserving them; clean water sources and sewage considerations, etc. Also presented is information on how many square miles it takes to support a single person in this way, and thus how many people the current surviving wilderness can support for subsistence lifestyles, and how many permanent allocations of land are available for such a lifestyle. If there is land left over then it might be used for recreational hunting. Students will learn how to apply for and obtain a plot of wilderness land for such lifestyles, if available.

Multiple trips per year are expected, probably for about a week. Students will learn planning for travel, travelling, then putting stuff away on their return home. Some locales justify remaining for two weeks or more and may double as a family outing or vacation because there will be lots of unstructured free time for independent exploration and activities, as a family or as groups of students.

Schools that are near curriculum-based outdoor destinations will use their local school resources and staff to maintain campgrounds or lodges on school-managed grounds for such student trips, possibly kept separate from normal vacationers. Destination administrators might reduce their workload by providing on-line training and having the teachers that accompany the students perform the administrative and upkeep activities, including being the guides and providing the required educational experiences and information.

Whenever students are out in nature they should always look for cryptids and UFOs and be prepared to obtain clear and steady photographic evidence of them, document the location and conditions of the sightings, and gather as much uncontaminated physical evidence as they can for later analysis. Students should also look for pollution, destruction of habitats, and other damage to nature, especially in wilderness areas that are supposed to be protected. Perhaps trash can be documented and collected for later analysis in the hopes of prosecuting the polluter for breaking the law.

Disaster response

This subject discusses preparing for organized responses to natural disasters, based on situations that are expected, at some unknown time, to become dangerous and deadly to local humans. For example, people who live near a geologic fault, an active volcano, below sea level right next to the ocean, tornado and hurricane paths, etc. Those of you who seem to be safe from such terrestrial threats need to remember that a meteoroid can explode or impact anywhere without warning. If you are safe in an undamaged area then you will be instrumental in supplying disaster relief. Most existing disaster recovery organizations and administrations will probably persist into a Rich society, and some will become much better funded.

Students will visit disaster response centers and learn how they are prepared to communicate between themselves to determine and evaluate the extent of damage, and how they obtain help from elsewhere, or provide help, as needed. Students will learn the procedures and protocols that their school will use in emergencies, and how they will remain at school until they can be returned home safely, mainly keeping out of the way while the professionals and trained adults are helping with recovery. An inventory of emergency supplies and procedures at home will be an annual exercise. Students will also learn what to do when they become isolated from home or school or work, perhaps in transit or shopping, and what to do and how to behave in those kinds of emergency situations.

Disaster response extends to worst case conditions where the destruction is so great that it threatens to destroy civilization and technological society. Not the rare mega-disaster itself that directly destroys a large section of a continent, but the aftermath which indirectly damages many other people on the earth by destroying crops and causing starvation while leaving physical structures, including infrastructure, mostly intact. The same result would be caused by the spread of an infectious deadly disease, so even if farmland is available there may not enough people left to grow, harvest, and distribute it. These are situations where cities may become a mostly abandoned wasteland of concrete and asphalt, and arable land becomes groups of armed bands of semi-savages roaming across the countryside, hunting and gathering and stealing from others.

What a horrible scenario, the very thing Richness wants to prevent. A large meteor hit will be unavoidable if nothing is constructed in time to deflect it; a worldwide deadly epidemic should be avoidable if people stop moving around the globe, or quarantine themselves, when they are instructed to do so by health officials; otherwise such disasters will wreak havoc unimpeded and emergency recovery will react as best as they can. This subject is not quite science fiction because such huge disasters are very possible, so discussing measures for prevention, as well as effective large scale responses, is worth doing and knowing.

The study of a true post-apocalyptic disaster will probably center around those survivors who want to preserve a technological civilization by attempting to claim and hold one or more areas where enough of the infrastructure can be maintained by the surviving population, establishing a small ‘realm’ to consolidate everything that can be salvaged and large enough to start growing food and maybe keep animals. Hopefully the areas attempting to retain civilization will choose Richness as the basis for their efforts. Their domain also needs to be defensible against those who immediately revert to personal survival via ‘might makes right’ and become marauders, because there will be a lot of guns available, and the areas attempting to restore civilization may become just another society for them to conquer and rule, instead of joining.

Political and organizational skills will remain essential during such times, and students will learn the basics, including organizational hierarchy. Diplomacy also remains important and will be learned, including protocols for meeting other scavengers from another group. How much to disclose? Describe Richness as the basis of your society, and assume others are lying if they say theirs is also? How to establish relations without trying to kill each other, how to start trading, and (less likely) get the leaders to combine resources and administration and do what is best for everyone. Will different groups already be in electronic communication because solar panels will be plentiful and still useful, despite an atmosphere that blocks much of the sunlight?

Not to be overlooked is preserving documentation on how the infrastructure works, and defending libraries and museums. Any surviving semi-civilization does not want books of knowledge used to make fires for cooking.

History

This is a traditional academic subject that is valuable to know, but its emphasis shifts a little for a Rich education. Most history can be characterized as a constant parade of rulers amassing as much wealth and military power as possible by Might because they simply want, or are ‘destined’, or are ‘ordained by some god’, to be the ultimate Master over as many people as they can manage. From a student’s point of view there is very little to distinguish one ruler or society from another across the centuries and across the globe except as examples of non-Rich societies. Meaningful punctuations of progressive political concepts will be noted, as will prolonged stagnation by those societies whose culture was hampered by religious or political leadership that suppressed scientific progress, cultural change, and learning in general.

If nothing else those ancient societies may serve as bad examples, and even the best are examples of how Richness can be halted or betrayed despite some good starts. Students should know the overall sweep and story of human societies and cultures so they can understand, generally, how things got to be the way they are now, and can learn the different things governments and societies have tried and have either discarded, retained, or modified.

History must not be discounted per the specious saying ‘history is written by the winners’ because the adage is only true for the worst books written by the conquerors, which themselves may provide examples and evidence of propaganda and cover-ups. Those who escaped before or during the conflict, and neighboring nations keeping a close eye on a potential enemy or ally, may also have written accounts with information that helps to deduce a more balanced conclusion.

History should be treated as an investigation of clues and evidence accumulated over time, and should be presented as the solving of many mysteries based on all of the evidence, including identifying propaganda and idealized history written by victors. History class should recount the adventures and discoveries of documents and art and artifacts and structures while answering the obvious questions: Who wrote it down or made the artifact, and who used it? Who saved such things, the books and artifacts, for so many thousands of years? How much do we believe has been interpreted correctly, and why? Students should be aware of the amount of evidence and the level of detail that is known about ancient and old societies, and thus the evidence for what we conclude from them. There is no need to remember those details of discovery, just the validity of the process and the reasonableness of the conclusions.

Students will go to many museums because they accumulate and store the evidence of history (among other things for other reasons) and see a segment of the available evidence first hand. Since trips to any single museum holding an important original artifact is rare or impossible, most exposure to original sources will probably be done by viewing virtual exhibits or high resolution images made by the owning museum, or perhaps in an excellent documentary that presents the discovery of the evidence, and the history derived from it, in a proper academic and non-sensational manner. A Rich education includes at least one extended field trip to overseas countries, and one of the reasons for those travels is visiting museums, extant structures, and ruins to directly experience some evidence of ancient civilizations.

History is interesting and it is scary to imagine how people lived in those times, without running water and plumbing, or soap, or toothpaste and brush, and tedious labor for ten or twelve hours a day for kids of the student’s age (unless you were one of the few who were rich), and with fire as the only illumination, and horses as the fastest mode of transportation, etc.

Preserving historic cultural and ethnic traditions

If a student is a member of a native or foreign ethnic group, or voluntarily identifies with one, a Rich education supports the preservation and study of all of them. This broad subject allows students to learn more details about their national history and heritage, if desired.

For some students this subject might be used to search for relatives using genealogy resources, or to construct or fill in a family tree. Others might learn the traditional stories, festivals and celebrations, dances and songs well enough to perform them, perhaps wearing traditional clothes. A student should learn how the current foreign culture has developed from a history of its own, possibly rooted in much more ancient practices and ways of life. A detailed history of a student’s heritage and country(s) of origin will include economic, religious, and political influences, how the existing (surviving) influences were originally introduced into the country(s) and how they became the current dominant culture. The previously mentioned field and nature trips, or overseas trips, may make it possible to connect with old traditions and history. It should be a lot of interesting fun.

Military awareness

Every student receives a year of education about the military and its role in society, hopefully gaining an appreciation for its function and for those who serve in it. The goal is to understand this huge organization as the embodiment of Might that may be used to physically and forcefully defend Richness as the desired ‘right’, after Richness exists, because the Might that institutes Richness is a victory at the ballot box. Military awareness will probably be taught during the last year of school, emphasizing how the armed forces is composed of your pallow citizens, your friends and neighbors who also Want To Be Rich. Their job is with an organization empowered to protect our Rich society from those who want to be Masters over us, especially if those aggressors insist that only such force will stop their efforts to subjugate us.

Students will learn about the different branches of the military, their historical and current purposes and responsibilities; their history and their primary traditions and lore; their hierarchy of ranks and the rules for saluting; rules for wearing uniforms; behavior and forms of address when in uniform on base and among civilians; and how civilians address active military and off-duty pals. The local versions of defense and enforcement forces are included and involved, like the police, sheriffs, national guard, coast guard, etc. Students will perform exercises in strict military behavior and discipline, like saluting and forms of address and official interactions, including following orders (that is, instructions) just as similar exercises and practices have been performed throughout school in ‘civilian’ classes. The intent is to understand what such formality represents, why it is needed, what it means when they see it in action, and to appreciate the personal commitment it represents.

Students will learn everything about living and working in the military, careers within the military, civilian support of the military, and possibly relate them to their personal career goals. Similarly, the military will use the classes as an opportunity to identify people who might be interested in the honor, pride, and satisfaction of a career in national or local security and defense.

Students will learn the basics of handling weapons, including shooting and cleaning a handgun and rifle. Military rules of engagement will be explained, since they exist for almost every application of force, and understand their scope, application, purpose, chains of authority and command, responsibilities, etc. The subject of firearms training will be extended beyond any military concern to the legalities and responsibilities of civilian ownership and legal use of weaponry, including usage by civilians who are ex-military. This training will be tempered by knowing the detrimental psychological effects on an average person who kills other people. Lastly, and worst, are those situations when the military has been used inside our own borders, against our pallow citizens, so explanations on the usage and limitations of ‘martial law’ are provided, including the requirement, if any, for civilians to follow orders from military personnel.

There will probably be a long field trip to a military training facility so students can obtain a more immersive experience and learn to take the military seriously. A taste of boot camp might be included, emphasizing why the military needs people with the personal discipline to force their body to do what needs to be done, with enough strength to do it, whenever and wherever needed, with full physical effort and mental concentration and determination. It is actually nothing a student hasn’t done a little of previously, like cramming for a test or playing a sport, it is just the daily emphasis on physicality, and the unquestioning performance of orders, that might make the experience unusual and a little difficult.

Dropping out

School subjects should highlight their personal importance and value to the student, and should be varied and extensive enough to keep students interested until graduation. Despite such effort, many students will think of school as indoctrination because they are always being “told what to do” instead of being able to do whatever they want at all times, and are unable to understand that the reason for the constant instructions is for them to obtain many experiences, and attain the ability to think logically, reasonably, and independently.

If a student wants to quit school and pos Responsible Adult agrees, then the student can be processed out of school, stop being paid, and head out into society, truncating their childhood and hampering their young adulthood, but they won’t care because they will think they know enough. The student only needs to cram and take the tests for pos final certificates of knowledge of society and the law, and then pel is off on pos own – possibly with a certificate of dropping out.

Such a dropout may return and attend one or more missed classes without cost, perhaps to continue driver education. There might be an upper age limit for this ability to re-attend public school, but I think it should be available for life, instead of creating a K-12 for adults. The rationale might be: society will supply, and pay the student for, K-12 years of schooling no matter when in their life they attend.

Advanced education

Lastly, we consider students who want to work at more intellectual, technical, or academic kinds of jobs and need to obtain additional formal education. Note that the motivation to work at such jobs is not to make more money, because that is the same per hour no matter what job you have. Notice also that most other skills and professions will be learned on the job, sort of like an in-house apprenticeship, which is a common and practical way of advancing to more complex, skilled, and specialized work.

In addition to academic studies, advanced education for other careers is included because it may take some time for a new, general purpose Competent Adult to prefer a certain field of work. After some real-life experience pel may become interested in one segment of that work, expend some effort to become good at it, consider making a career of it, and realize that additional and specialized advanced classroom education is required, and now desired. This is obtained by in-home classes, by part- or full-time attendance at an institution, and possibly by accredited classes provided by the employer.

Advanced education is available at any time, as much as you want, and you are paid because it is your job. If you attend full-time the pay will probably just cover living expenses and keep you alive while you attend classes, do research, write papers, attend seminars, etc. The primary requirement to remain in an advanced education program, whose goal is attaining expertise and mastery, is to obtain at least a minimum level of retained knowledge of the subject, possibly 70% of a subject’s history of primary researchers and their discoveries of foundational concepts, and 90% of modern refined concepts and their correct application. Some fields will require closer to 100% accuracy and rigor, or other indicators of capability that indicate the student has obtained the required level of knowledge and skills.

Anyone may audit advanced education classes for free but without being paid, including taking tests and having a record of them maintained. This allows people to continue learning about subjects that interest them throughout life without the stress of grading, and provides a record of exposure and interest should those ever prove useful. This is almost a possibility today, via accredited classes online.

After gaining an advanced degree and passing any licensing and certification exams, many professions require annual continuing education classes in order to remain aware of current discoveries and modern practices. Professionals are paid for those classes as well, preventing the need for the expense of such education to be passed on to their clients or customers.

Summary

This topic has discussed how a primary declaration of Richness, “nothing is more important than educating a child to become a Competent Adult”, might be implemented in a Rich society. Life for kids, via education, should be so full, varied, interesting, and active that there is not much time or reason for ennui and apathy. Students will be learning what is known about themselves (and others) as humans, how effective human interactions work, exposure to all human knowledge, while continually gaining skills and experience with all of it.

I hope educators find ways to make growing up, and spending time at school, much more fun than it has never been, except for a small minority of kids born into wealthy families, or those few born with unusual combinations of attributes that made them exceptional. A Rich society contributes to that effort by providing an abundance of basic needs, including physical and mental health services, and an accounting system that makes it possible. Education should be as adaptable to every student as possible, because none of them are created equal, providing each of them with a foundation of interpersonal skills, emotional support, and social techniques to build upon as they continue learning and living after graduation, as Competent Adults in a Rich society.

Humaniform the earth

Introduction

A Rich society requires a healthy planetary environment to be maintained forever because the earth is the very source of material abundance, let alone the cradle and abode of human existence. Thus the government is mandated, actually written in the founding document, to umpire anything that affects the environment and to ensure that it continues to support human life Richly.

We know that the earth and the universe in which we live is often anti-life: floods and droughts, hurricanes and fires, volcano eruptions, large meteorite impacts that kill everything in their vicinity, etc. We are also in a constant competition for continued existence with almost every other life form on the planet, from deadly viruses and other germs, to poisonous or venomous insects, plants, and fish, to every vegetarian animal that wants to eat our crops, and to carnivores who want to eat us for a meal. Just as bad is our deadly competition with others of our own species, easily able to kill each other in war and keep the survivors as slaves.

Despite such challenges we humans, as a species, exist at the top of the food chain and we populate the entire surface of the earth in a manner unprecedented in the history of the planet. Unfortunately our overwhelming superiority as an exploring, organized, technological, conquering, and rapacious single species tends to obscure the downside: our success has blinded us from noticing that the planetary environment is not immune to the detrimental and often deadly secondary effects of our exploitations of nature and of our technologies. We need to understand how our planet can support human life Richly and forever, so the primary mandate is to ‘humaniform’ the earth to support us. I derive the term from the concept of terraforming, which is meaningless because we are already on terra, so this term emphasizes the true concern and intent of the effort wherever it is done.

The specific laws to achieve those mandates will be based on the sciences that measure various values of everything happening on the planet and keep records, and from the specialists and experts who understand those sciences and how they affect the sustainability of the planet.

Here are quick discussions about some of the mandates specified in the founding document that are required for sustainable human habitation on the planet, and are thus a concern of a Rich society.

Reproducers

Natural resources that reproduce, like plants and animals, are renewable and must be maintained to constantly provide as many full-grown or otherwise mature individuals as their environment can support. This means everything those species need to live, reproduce, and grow to maximum sizes must also be maintained. Values that define maintainability may be modified at times, and umpiring based on science will enforce the current value that policies specify. Values might be expressed as requiring a minimum percentage of harvested individuals to be full or maximum size, or harvested tonnage to never exceed some measure that indicates and ensures renewability and maintainability, including growth to full size.

Depletables

Non-living natural resources extracted from the earth, like granite and copper and oil, exist in a fixed amount on and in the earth, and none of them must be depleted. Depletion means destroying a resource when it is used, or using it in a way that makes it impossible or impractical to recover and recycle. It is known that today’s technological societies selfishly use more than their share of resources, including scarce ones, and are completely aware they are not leaving enough of some of them for their own great-grandchildren to use. It is also known that they have fouled the earth in many ways, and continue to do so, and are leaving their pollutions and ecological messes for generations of their offspring to clean up.

As the first society to adopt Richness we will assume that, at some point, everyone else on earth will Want To Be Rich. This means we will adjust the formulas for computing our abundance by using the amount of resources available worldwide in the formulas for Richness, perhaps computing everyone’s share as a percentage of Richly livable area on the earth. That way, when additional societies and nations choose to become Rich then an equitable distribution of scarce resources will be available for them as well, and will have no effect on the population size or abundance of older Rich societies because the future has been anticipated.

Conversation policies will be based on the fact that the amount of resources on the earth is finite, that resources will not be depleted or destroyed, and some resources (if not all of them) will certainly require recycling over the megayears to come. Basically, only renewable or recyclable resources can be used a the basis for a Rich Society.

Recycled resources

These are non-living resources that appear renewable because they are recycled by nature, but actually exist in a fixed amount on the planet, which means they are shared by everyone on the earth. The primary example is water, including seawater. Most important to humans is fresh water which is purified as it evaporates from the ocean and other sources, becomes slightly contaminated by whatever is in the atmosphere as it condenses, and then falls as rain or snow. Any mandate will specify that the amount of fresh water a society can use annually is the amount that falls from the sky during that period, and it should use less so there are rivers and lakes wherever possible, and to re-establish some of them that used to exist before local supplies were depleted. The mandate should also specify absolutely no polluting of river or lake water at any time, nor of the oceans.

The air we breathe is also recycled, through the respiration and digestion of living things, in a complex planet-wide interaction that includes the oceans and occasionally volcanic eruptions. Each of these contribute to the composition of the atmosphere, and any noticeable changes in that composition can cause many secondary changes in everything the atmosphere touches. Any change to the atmosphere caused from one location is a worldwide change of every environment because it is a resource that has no boundary.

The mandate might be to re-establish and maintain the chemical composition of the atmosphere to what it was around 1700 CE, or some other year prior to the industrial revolution, where the human population of the earth was small enough that the amount of pollutants they put in the atmosphere would never change the chemical composition of the atmosphere significantly. Policies will emphasize not polluting the atmosphere at any time, starting immediately.

Reserve the remaining depletables for special uses

A certain amount of non-renewable fuel might be reserved and allowed for large construction projects, or harvesting, because of the huge labor and time saving advantages of powered machinery. Manufactured combustible fuels might be allowed for those few instances, despite the pollution, but it is just as likely that remote mobile power from renewable sources will be developed and made available in abundance, just as for any other aspect of a Rich society.

If non-renewable resources are used to power spacecraft to deflect meteors and comets away from the earth, enough should be reserved to power such craft for many thousands of years, which might provide enough time to create a new propellant. Non-renewable resources might be reserved by the government for specific usage, like the military to defend a Rich society against every other form of non-Rich government that thinks it should become the ruler over everyone. Unfortunately such usage would only slow the attrition of limited resources, and not solve the problem. The only true long-term solution might be world peace, with every society becoming Rich, and that goal would begin with us, with you Wanting To Be Rich.

Summary

The general mandate is that using natural resources must be safe and advantageous for humans, and must allow humans to live Richly on the earth for as long as the planet lasts. The only time that earth’s limited resources may be used to depletion is when the sun is close to dying, and every resource would be used to create spacefaring ships so that some people can relocate to another planet in some other stellar system, or just remain on the ship forever as an intragalactic ark. Until then, we should Want to live Richly on the Earth.

Punishment for crime

Introduction

A Rich society intends to eliminate the motivations for crime, summarized as one person acting as a Master and forcing someone else to do as pel commands or suffer the consequences that are decreed by the Master. Preventing crime is the best approach. It should be possible and effective in a Rich society because, ideally, only sane people are allowed to reach adulthood, and only Competent Adults are allowed to roam freely in the society. Education will have provided Competent Adults with adequate psychological tools, and Richness insures abundant professional mental and emotional help throughout their lives, so that adulthood finds everyone well adjusted and knowing how to Get What They Want by living Richly in a Rich society.

 Law enforcement should be augmented with the average person’s desire to blow a whistle on the activities of would-be Masters when they see them, refusing to be complicit with them or to keep their secrets for them. Also augmenting law enforcement is Richness making justice free, because the court system is funded from the source of money, including lawyers not already employed or retained. Masters initiating false or frivolous legal actions become impractical, no longer having ‘deep pockets’ to bankrupt their ‘shallow pocket’ victims with lengthy legal procedures and expenses. Transparency and full disclosure, per lack of secrecy and the protections of privacy, should make business conflicts and white collar crimes discoverable.

Thus a Rich society and its culture has the side effect of eliminating crime by preventing any need for it, which means that nothing of what follows should ever need to be exercised. Nothing that follows is recommended, or desired, or required by Richness; it is only a consideration of what might be needed for those who do not want to be Free & Equal and who attempt to become a Master of some sort or other. Since it is probably difficult to imagine any society without crime, here is a description of how a Rich society might handle criminals, assuming prevention does not work.

At the beginning of this book I suggested the urge to personal Richness is a basic human drive; that every person being Free & Equal is the only political and economic condition that prevents some people from becoming Masters over others; and that preventing anyone from becoming a Master is what allows Richness to be implemented. I proposed then, and I assert now, that Equality is the intuitive foundation for fairness; that Equality is the essential aspect of Richness which insists that no one may be your Master and you may not be a Master over anyone else; that any abridgement of Equality is the basic definition of crime; and that the discovery, investigation, and correction of crime is the purpose of justice.

For those Competent Adults who prefer to live in an unrestricted society where ‘might makes right’, where it is acceptable to become a Master over others if one can manage it, and where inhumane manipulation of others, including death, is an accepted possibility of everyday life and business, then a Rich society will provide a large area for such people to live within so they can Get What They Want without having to commit crimes in a Rich society. This is similar to other groups of like-minded people, having a place to live as they choose, like mountain men or religious cults. Unlike other groups, their area will be completely isolated and separated from the encompassing society, except for a means of sending new people to live there, and for  those who are eligible and have changed their mind about how they want to live, an opportunity to return to a Rich society.

The ability for a criminal personality to live within the kind of society pel Wants, separate from a repressive and law-abiding society and government, has the side effect of being a form of crime prevention for a Rich society – by allowing them to remove themselves from it. I call such an area “Crimeland”. It is conceptually similar to fictional versions of the same name or the same function, but it is neither related to, or directly derived from, any of them.

What is crime?

Any crime is a failure of prevention, where neither education nor therapy were able to modify some combination of personality attributes that developed into unacceptable behavior. It is also a failure of the perpetrator’s Responsible Adult, Secondary Responsible Adults, mental health professionals, and pos peers for either not recognizing tendencies of behavioral aberration when pel was younger, or refusing to take steps to have such an apparently dangerous, selfish, recalcitrant, incorrigible, and uncaring child removed from society with when pel was young, with minimum impact. That list of danger signs should also include people who are engaging, charismatic, and narcissistic, because an effective criminal is someone who is manipulative enough to become a Competent Adult and still see ponself as a Master over others. Successfully ‘passing’ as a normal person reinforces pos self-evaluation because other people are fooled.

Crime is also a failure of deterrence, the attempt to discourage people from behaving like Masters by instilling the fear of penalties in them. Both students and Competent Adults understand how the justice system works, where someone behaving like a Master and abusing someone else’s Freedom & Equality is the basis of crime. Such knowledge should be the deterrent, along with knowing how to Get What You Want legally, and that combination leaves no justification for committing any crime. Thus punishments are simply examples of the known system working, the exercise of justice demonstrating that penalties for crime are not just a scary story, and they should serve as an effective deterrent for most people.

Culpability for a crime must be certain. The idea that someone might be unjustly convicted should go away soon after Richness is implemented. The whole intent of omnipresent security cameras, personal comNodes, modern forensics, and well funded law enforcement is to obtain enough evidence for a conviction that is not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but absolutely certain. The acceptance of constant and pervasive security cameras are accepted within a society whose citizenry is overwhelmingly determined to insure physical safety for everyone, and is willing to help law enforcement and the justice departments to identify and remove criminally dangerous people from their midst. People who knowingly attempt to mislead law enforcement will be indicted as accomplices and will be recorded as such and may be prosecuted, because their attempts at diversion or blocking information demonstrates their acceptance and support of some people’s Mastery over others.

There are no excuses for criminal activity even when a person “has no control over it”. Such inability to behave within the limitations of a Rich society means that such people are not Competent and are not allowed to live within it. They are to be identified and institutionalized before graduation and live Richly within their capacities, including Crimeland as a worst-case destination institution. A civilized society, at least a Rich one, does not knowingly send danger and crime into society.

Each Competent Adult is responsible for having regular medical and psychological care, which includes looking for changes in pon that are known to cause aberrant, and thus criminal, behavior. If those professionals overlook or misdiagnose a condition then they are guilty of incompetence to practice, and possibly slightly complicit, but the perpetrator is still the self-appointed Master over others despite everything pel ever learned about Freedom & Equality and the limitations on behavior imposed by a Rich society.

For example, crimes of passion are no exception to prosecution, they only describe the overriding motivation that caused a person to behave as a Master with absolute control over another person. Similarly, accidents that cause injury are crimes because the person who caused the situation acted with selfishness or unconcern toward other people around ponself, as if pel was the Master to whom others must submit. Accidents are illegal because they are preventable, in the same way that other crimes are preventable.

If a crime is committed then every known method for preventing crime instituted by a Rich society is incomplete or inadequate, but that does not mean crime is the fault of a Rich society. It just means there are individuals who persist in their self-appointed right to be a Master over other people in certain situations, or over certain people in all situations, and they were clever and self-disciplined enough to live undetected and unsuspected until they were able to act out their disgusting desires for Mastership.

Justification for prosecution

Richness provides Crimeland as a way for a people to live a criminal lifestyle and let them Get What They Want, where ‘might makes right’ personalities can live as they choose. Despite this concession to impolite behavior it is almost certain that no one will want to live there because of the danger of becoming a Subject, or a casualty, of a smarter, stronger, sneakier criminal. If pel just wants to be a willing Subject to a godfather, boss, kingpin, or similar then Crimeland might be a desirable destination. But it is assumed that  a criminal’s essential desire is to be a predator, to ambush the weak and unsuspecting, to betray trust with treachery, to guarantee ponself as Master by the use of surprise and overwhelming force when civil discussion is expected, and then to get away safely and undetected.

So when a crime is committed within a Rich society the criminal has chosen not to live in Crimeland, which can only mean that pel consciously and deliberately intended, planned, and succeeded in hiding within society in order to commit crimes within it and upon it, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or a fifth columnist, or a one-person clandestine sleeper cell. Pos criminal action means that pel was living in a Rich society but living by the rules of Crimeland.

Penalties in a Rich society

Introduction

The justification for prosecution and punishment is basically the same for a Rich society as it is for Crimeland. It is for being a threat to some boss or to the boss’s organization, or for betrayal, disloyalty, or disobedience of the rules, which boils down to simple failure to behave as instructed for the good of the boss and pos organization. Substitute ‘the law’ for ‘the boss’ and certain similarities apply, broadly speaking.

In Crimeland a transgressor is assumed to be killed, the almost universal application of ‘justice’ by those who live by ‘might makes right’. It gets the offender out of the way and may open up room for advancement. If the offense is fixable then the Crimeland boss might give pel a second chance and put pel under close supervision until satisfied that pel is to be trusted again.

Second chance

Why should a criminal ever be returned to a Rich society? Why give them a second chance, even if the offence is repairable? If twelve years of schooling and counseling and then living in a Rich society was not enough to convince and motivate Rich behavior in them, if a lifetime of continuing regular medical and psychological evaluations was not enough to detect and stabilize their tendency toward criminal behavior, how and why can society expect any other rehabilitation to work? It’s not as if pel had any real complaint about Richness. Pel did not rebel against society and attempt to change it, because dissention is totally allowed in a free society, up to and including convincing everyone else to change the government as pel thinks is best, and doing it peacefully. Pel could have simply escaped from society because everyone is free to isolate ponself and live however they choose, with minor restrictions. Instead pel remained within society, committed a crime and thereby demonstrated pos true desire, to sneak around until pel had a chance to behave as a Master over someone else and force pos will on them.

In a sense, and only in a fully Rich society, penalties are a matter of ‘one strike and you’re out’, because only one crime is possible, and everyone knows it. There is only one small borderline exception that might apply, and it would be due to the fact that people will continue to have personal problems even after a Rich society has been implemented. There might be a few unhappy, dissatisfied, and frustrated people despite everything that a Rich society makes available, so it is possible that minor crimes may be committed by total amateurs, those trying to be happy and satisfied, but failing. Such offenders might be allowed a second chance after lots of counseling and therapy, but not a third.

For a second chance the offender loses pos status as a Competent Adult and becomes subservient to pos original Responsible Adult who manages all aspects of pos life, including life and death decisions. If the crime is correctable or if restitution is satisfied, the Responsible Adult will continue pos supervision long after any recompense. The idea is for the criminal to live with a major reduction to the Freedom & Equality pel consciously repudiated. I have no idea when an offender could be trusted to be autonomous again, but a Rich society must be as certain as possible that pel will never commit another crime, because dangerous people are not sent into society in order to be Masters over others. In Crimeland and in Richness, a person guilty of a second conviction will never return to society.

Guinea pigs

If the crime allows for the punishments that follow, scientists may request criminals for their research, perhaps to test methods for identifying criminal tendencies, perhaps as experimental subjects for behavior modification or mind reprogramming, perhaps as subjects for human trials to test medical treatments and therapies, etc. Any criminal that meets the desired criteria for a scientific study that needs a human guinea pig, and is released by pos instruments of justice, may be assigned as needed whether willing to participate or not. Hopefully, in a small way and quite indirectly, the criminal may do some good for a rich society anyway, possibly adding insult to their injuries.

Punishment

The quandary with recompense and restitution is that the injured victim, or survivors of a dead victim, are already Rich, they already have free healthcare and automatically get the best possible treatments, and the same applies for recovery from psychological damage or trauma. There is nothing material that a court can force the perpetrator to give to victims or survivors that they don’t already have available. That is why even minor crimes include the loss of many personal freedoms and require supervision under a Responsible Adult, because crime is not about physical things, it is about overriding Freedom & Equality with one kind of force or another and thereby becoming a Master over someone in one way or another. Since a criminal believes pel should be allowed to behave as a Master toward others, that is how justice will behave toward pon.

This means that a quick death for a criminal may be adequate for Crimeland, simply eliminating pel from society, but is inadequate for anything resembling justice. A criminal does not get to be evil and wreak mayhem and personal damage and leave in pos wake the injured (or dead) victim and pos grieving relatives who will suffer emotional anguish for years, while pel is peacefully convicted and then put to a quiet, painless, and quick death. The results of such crimes are life-changing for the victim as well as for pos surviving relatives and friends, so punishment should be life-changing for the self-appointed Master, and the first requirement is that the criminal lives.

The goal of punishment is to help the survivors return to living a Rich life again, free of nightmares and the constant anger and frustration of wanting the criminal to suffer as much as they do, everyday. Punishment might be implemented by allowing the survivors to vent their ongoing pain onto the criminal directly, however they choose to do so, for as long as they choose to do so. Personally inflicting physical punishment should help them improve their condition by transferring their anger and anguish and hatred of the criminal directly onto pel, and help reduce their hostility a little, at least temporarily.

As the survivors inflict pain equivalent to what they endure daily as a result of the crime, they need to be sure not to remove so many pieces of the criminal’s body that there is not enough left to punish effectively, and to stop just short of making pel go insane. Neither do they want to stop too soon, to avoid recurring regrets later on, such as realizing that their anguish did not go away completely and that they really wish the criminal scumbag was still available so that pel could suffer some more, just as they are suffering. Having the perpetrator suffer the equivalent of what the survivors suffer should provide closure for them and help them heal physically and mentally from the consequences of the crime, and allow them to resume a full and Rich life, always slightly tainted by the losses incurred by the crime.

When all of the survivors are able to accept their situation, when they heal psychologically and don’t want to behave inhumanely any more, and perhaps even forgive the criminal, and/or themselves as the hand of punishment, then there is no longer any reason to keep the criminal available for them.

Once the criminal has been released from the punishment from pos victims and survivors, pel enters the last stage of punishment which is also selected by the survivors. They may send pel to Crimeland where pel will almost certainly have a difficult life until pel dies, or they may choose to permanently remove pel from society. The survivors might choose the satisfying option of terminating the criminal themselves, with weapons and participants of their choosing.

Crimeland as imprisonment

This option would come after any other penalties meted out, ultimately allowing (that is, forcing) criminals to finally Get What They Want by living in an area dedicated to their ideal, and chosen, way of life. Why send criminals where they should have been previously, and actually want to be now, as revealed by their criminal actions? Because the reality of Crimeland will have nothing to do with how criminals actually want to live. Whether Crimeland is an uninhabited island paradise with water and natural resources, animals and plants to eat, or an abandoned city with surrounding farmland and natural resources, I think that it will be inhospitable to the first people sent to live there, and worse for anyone else that arrives afterward.

Unless chemists and metallurgists and woodworkers want to live in Crimeland then the only weapons will be what they bring in their luggage or make themselves with the knives and axes and other tools they may be allowed to carry with them. Unless farmers and ranchers commit crimes, obtaining food will soon become a constant struggle. Other civilized skills that will probably be missing are doctors and dentists, and anyone with knowledge to maintain the infrastructure. The first criminals sent there will probably create a feudal tyranny with an ultimate boss/Master, and later arrivals will almost certainly become serfs or slaves immediately, forced to provide goods for the Masters.

I think the reality of Crimeland would be that criminals will do their best to escape back to civilization so they can become ambush predators again, because they require the benefits of civilization while preying on those who maintain it, a perfect example of a citizen biting the hand that feeds it. Adequate precautions will be taken to thwart any attempts to escape and return to society.

Problems that persist

Introduction

Despite everything that has preceded, Richness is not a panacea for human ills, nor is Richness a utopia. It empowers anyone to be Free & Equal with everyone else, it assures medical and mental care, and a safe society, and encourages much more that should be associated with being Rich, like general happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. Unfortunately there are many undesirable things that will not change after Richness is implemented and some of them are considered here. They are what Hamlet lamented about: “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune… a sea of troubles… and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” that will continue to assail people despite being Rich in a Rich society.

Personal disappointment

Dreams

Unsatisfied dreams are typical sources of personal failure that result in lifelong disappointment and frustration. Dreams begin early when enjoyment of, and inspiration from, some activity or event creates a desire to do that same thing yourself, possibly as a career. You dedicate yourself to learning everything you can, and practicing what you learn for years, then the reality of things beyond your control manage to spoil every hope, because you don’t grow big enough, or strong enough, or lack some other physical or mental ability that prevents you from attaining your desired goal. Such ruined dreams do not affect any other advantages of Richness, and eventually you will adjust to the realities of your life, but lost dreams and their disappointments can become nagging regrets that diminish your enjoyment of life. Unlike the dream of being Rich, which is possible, some dreams are thwarted by personal limitations despite all of the inspirational motivations you hear and see everywhere around you.

Romance

Similar to lost dreams are offers of love and affection that are not returned by the person you desire. Someone declining your offer creates the same degree of disappointment and distress whether their reasons are frivolously arbitrary or whether they seem to be truly repulsed by your behavior, attitudes, personality, or appearance. Any unexpected refusal of affection may cause long lasting emotional anguish.

Ideally your tendered offer is accepted and everything is great, at least temporarily. You may manage to get along well over time and develop a close and rewarding relationship. Unfortunately, sooner or later, one person may change more than anticipated and will want to take pos life in an unexpected direction that is not supported by pos partner, and will need to dissolve the relationship. The person who was happy in the relationship usually suffers the betrayal of trust, loyalty, and love, of time and effort lost, and a future that evaporates. The person that was unhappy and left for pos own good reasons is not unscathed either, burdened with some of the same complaints and regrets.

At least a Rich society has an abundance of resources to help people recover from traumatic breakups as quickly as they are able, including resources to become socially active again in their new circumstances, if they can face doing so. Hopefully, as the saying goes, time will heal all wounds.

Career

If you are a professional or career person then your work takes on some of the aspects of a long-term relationship, with similar traumas when unwanted changes occur. For example: after a restructuring you find that your position of long-held responsibility has been removed, even though you are good at it; or you find yourself stuck in a field that is rapidly fading in importance, and your lifetime of knowledge and expertise is becoming obsolete; or your job has been taken over by a machine, which is good in a Rich society, but the change is not good for you personally. Experiences like these can create a sense of personal emptiness, a loss of self-worth and self-esteem, and an insulting awareness of management’s disdain for your knowledge, skills, and years of dedicated effort. There may be a component of personal hurt that is not completely eased just by getting a new job for the same pay.

Loved ones

Worst is the death of loved ones: parents, children, siblings, spouses, close friends, and influential or supportive teachers and mentors that changed the course of your life. Mere Richness can never mitigate the personal sorrow felt after the loss of such close relationships, nor can it fill the emptiness or sense of isolation after such emotional traumas.

Accidents

There will continue to be life-altering accidents that can maim, cripple, or remove any number of body parts, sensory capacities, and mental abilities. Such damage can abort your ability to achieve some, or all, of your goals and desires, and make daily living a painful chore. These are caused by nothing more than bad luck resulting from simple but disastrous errors of judgment, random criminal neglect or intent, or simply events beyond your control, including natural disasters. These damages are different from solely emotional losses because a part of your physical self is also lost, so the barriers to normality and happiness are high and are a daily hurdle to be faced every time you try to do almost anything.

Health

New diseases will continue to develop and spread, so the occasional epidemic outbreak of a virulent, paralyzing, and possibly deadly illness is possible. The long-term detrimental effects will be similar to accidents and the death of loved ones.

Old age and it’s creeping incapacities will affect you personally, where you are so much less than you used to be, everything is more difficult, and there is almost no time remaining in life to find anything rewarding or satisfying about being alive. Major causes of death for the aged will endure, like cancers, organ failures, senilities, any number of delicate balances of internal chemistry that become unbalanced, uncorrectable, and slowly fatal. The inescapable causes of death by old age, and the miseries to be experienced during the months or years until that final release, will continue to occur and be endured, Rich or not. At least Richness allows voluntary self termination for those who prefer to end their daily physical and mental suffering.

Emotional abuse

Despite education in Social Self-Defense there will still be opportunities for some people to make others succumb to their desires by preying emotionally on them, especially close family members. Imprinted and instinctive life-long relationships are especially vulnerable to abuse.

For example, a child may be slowly but persistently pressured into working for pos parent’s business, groomed to continue as head of the enterprise, and pel will be strongly manipulated in the same way that every child is made to adopt and accept persistent and long-term teaching and training from a parent. Rebellion against any such expectations requires the child’s willingness to live with the resultant emotional abuse the family and other authority figures may express, including things like being shunned or ‘disowned’ by them.

Another example is a Responsible Adult with a child who restricts or prevents any contact with the child’s grandparent, and uses that denial of access to bribe support from, or knowingly inflict unhappiness on, the grandparent. The grandparent knows pel is being emotionally abused or rejected and will suffer many levels of ongoing miseries.

Such situations are usually entirely legal for one person to impose on another, and can only be endured, and possibly mitigated, with adequate therapy.

Inability to be happy

We live in a relatively free society now, and that means you are free to completely destroy your body and mind, to completely waste your singular experience of life  in this country at this time, on this planet, in this galaxy, in this universe. Freedom & Equality includes the choice to be completely unhappy and dissatisfied while living in a fully Rich society, if that is what someone really Wants. Despite this entire book trying to convince everyone to Want To Be Rich and describing how Richness provides maximum free time and an abundance of the material necessities of life, including the best possible education, physical and mental health care, drugs and entertainments, some people may still wallow through society as if carrying a burden, living despondent lives with no ability, or desire, to improve their completely forlorn situation.

Such an existence can only be a description or example of someone who is not Rich an any real sense and cannot experience the benefits of a Rich society, including satisfying friendships, interesting hobbies or activities, or the simple enjoyment of being alive. In a sense, such a person is almost a danger to ponself and is at least a disabled invalid. Professionals may make the determination for institutionalization, or prescribe beneficial and possibly therapeutic treatments, and attempt to help pel make pos life as pleasant and as Rich as possible.

Normal and Competent Adults will certainly experience many borderline conditions of debilitating sadness, ennui, helplessness, etc. in the normal course of their lives, but they are lucky enough to benefit from professional care, able to understand and learn how to correct their abnormal condition, and soon resume exercising their Freedom & Equality to Get What They Want.

Eternal vigilance

Introduction

Just as it applies today in our modern republics and representative democracies, eternal vigilance will be needed to prevent damage to any Rich society after it has been enacted. The specific goals of each front attacking Richness may be different but each of them declare “It is not enough that I am free to live according to my beliefs, you also must live according to my beliefs. I truly believe that I should be your Master, so let me help to release you from the tyranny that disguises itself as Freedom & Equality and lead you to a better… etc.”

Anarchy

The reduction of ‘government’ to ‘might makes right’. Whether they are mountain men, individualists, cults, or survivalists, they want everyone to practice the simple laws of the jungle. Those anarchists whose ideals assume that people will work cooperatively for their own mutual good are easy prey for the ones who believe, and practice, that superior might does make right, and their willingness to use such force will demonstrate that they deserve to be Masters over the defeated, who had been the willingly cooperative anarchists.

Anarchy (perhaps a misapprehension of a valid philosophical ideal) always appeals to those who ‘don’t like being told what to do’ yet they always manage to become organized enough to cause trouble by disrespecting other peoples property and rights and garnering some publicity. For some people the lure of unrestrained liberty will always be strong, even in a Rich society where Freedom & Equality encourages abundance and the maximum variety of almost everything.

Persistent Masters who need Subjects

Many people will try to convince you that they are better than you, and that you should do what they say, because doing what they want will always be best, including as the foundation for a better society, instead of the limitations that are imposed by Richness. On smaller scales, such self-appointed leaders will always make themselves known to many levels of an organization and will forever need to be restrained so actual administrators can do their job, ignored by those whom they want to lead, and possibly removed by their superiors because they recognize mini-Masters as a deterrent to, or a diversion from, the desired goal.

Ancient religious and cultural practices

It is the responsibility of the followers of almost every religion, ancient and modern, to convert everyone in the world to their beliefs and thereby create a worldwide culture based on their religion, preferably a theocracy as prophesied or revealed by their scriptures. That makes each religion an organization dedicated to the overthrow of every kind of society, including Rich ones, until they manage to rule the earth. Religious leaders and their followers are dead serious about their all-consuming sense of righteousness and the intensity of their convictions because, given the chance, they have been known to attack and wage large scale wars against everyone who doesn’t agree with them. For fanatics with smaller congregations, the murder of random people (who neither know or care about their world-controlling dogmas) is, to their thinking, a victorious attack on a government or society. Somehow they are certain that wanton and random deaths will convince everyone else to accept their teachings, and agree that their practice of ambushing and murdering anyone, are laudable steps toward worldwide acceptance of them as Masters.

Religious people would seem to have their hearts in the right place by trying to improve the world, but their brains are inside a fort of dogma intended  to prevent outside ideas from entering. Meanwhile secular governments, laws, cultures, knowledge, and willingness to communicate have progressed far beyond every religion’s doctrines, restrictions, threats, and inaccurate concepts of what life, the universe, and everything is about. Their single minded dedication to the shortcomings of their tenets categorizes every religion as an organization requiring eternal vigilance.

Traitors of Richness

A traitor or betrayer of Richness refers to people in an already Rich society who support either foreign rulers who want to eradicate rebels and their causes, or rebels who want to violently overthrow the current rulers and create a new non-Rich government with themselves as the rulers. In effect, such traitors assert that the majority of people in those foreign societies would, if asked, declare that they do not Want To Be Rich; they are not interested in helping anyone convert to a Rich society by peaceful means; and they don’t care that nothing will change for the general population.

Other traitors of Richness are those who forever refuse to accept some other people as worthy of civility or respect, rejecting their Freedom & Equality because they are the focus of historical tribal, racial, or national hatreds. For example: “your people attacked us three hundred years ago and I’m never going to forget it, and I will never forgive you for that”. Any such hatred that still festers is perpetuated by family training and cultural tradition for hate’s own sake, against people who are long dead and gone, and which have no true significance for anyone living today in a Rich, or any other, society. Beware of people (and their teachings) which blame and abuse whoever they see around them as being the incarnation of their long-dead ancient enemies.

Politics

Malfeasance and other abuses of office require constant vigilance by coworkers and citizens during the normal performance of their jobs within government offices. Typical illegal and subversive activities include spending any amount of an office’s budget and resources on personal activities and items, and personally deciding on the disposition of an office’s budget while claiming pos decisions are based on impartial competitions or neutral selection processes, thereby concealing kickbacks and taking bribes.

Another abuse of influence is a politically powerful person whose child has committed a crime, or pel has committed one ponself, and uses pos personal relationships with law enforcement officials, and pos status as an upstanding and (otherwise) law-abiding citizen, to avoid or divert the due process of law and thereby avoid prosecution and other repercussions for the offense. Such activity is the very definition of abuse of office, or of reputation, in order to be a Master.

Some political abuse is ideological, using an office to impose their personal beliefs onto public policy. Recent examples are the attempts by Boards of Education in various states to legislate standards which impose specific religious beliefs into science classes, and to successfully(!) modify American History textbooks to exclude information and facts they dislike, and modifying others with their personal (and false or misleading) preferences. Similar attempts will constantly recur within a Rich society from officials who ‘fill in the blank’ with “If only everyone would believe what I believe” which corrupts and perverts the powers and responsibilities of their offices.

Intrigue

Intrigues will persist in a Rich society, but many of the traditional traps and extortions that once destroyed reputations and careers, or provided leverage for political manipulation, are much less effective because what was then illegal or culturally taboo is accepted as nothing more than personal traits or choices which have no adverse influence on other competencies, because they fall into the category of Getting What You Want. Such loss of influence just means that the intrigues will be more complex and possibly more difficult to evade or escape.

On a personal scale, secrets can exist to some degree in any close or intimate relationship where one partner expects, and thus demands, a type of limited ownership of their partner which places restrictions on, and requires exclusivity of, many emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and activities of the partner. If the restricted partner wants to breach some of those rules secretly then they may become a target for intrigue.

Richness should eliminate any need for a person to live their life under the pall of hypocrisy. Every person should exercise pos Freedom & Equality and Get What Pel Wants honestly and candidly, because no one else is in a position to prevent it, within the limitations of Richness. If that means exiting from an otherwise good relationship, it is a sacrifice that will be worth it in the long run, especially in terms of self-respect and pride and ultimate satisfaction in living as you choose.

Others

A charismatic sociopath can become a Master only when people in a Rich society ignore their education, accept the premise that they should not be Free & Equal, subjugate themselves to such a person and become self-appointed soldiers and workers fighting against Richness in the name of whatever enslaving cause their Master espouses. Such enemies of Freedom & Equality will probably occur forever and attempt to hamper or destroy Richness with all their might. It will be up to those of us who Want To Be Rich to stop them by constantly and vigilantly insisting on our, and everyone’s, Freedom & Equality.

Normalcy that persists

We have discussed the major changes needed to create and maintain a Rich society, and many may seem revolutionary, revolting, or at least upsetting to our current society, but only in the sense that things must change to make something different. Throughout that discussion it is likely that something basic got overlooked: that everyday life will continue mostly unchanged in a Rich society. The first day after the enactment of Richness will be almost identical to the day before.

Not even the accounting system will see a huge turnover of operations, nor would any major problems be expected, any more than occurred for Y2K (the conversion of computer programs to correctly compute dates after the start of Year 2000 [2 Kiloyears]). Like the Y2K implementations that occurred overnight on January first, each change to Richness will be a known goal on a known date and every company and government department will be prepared, with everything in place and ready to go, if not already in use, on activation day. Just as Y2K was an almost invisible success and the first work day of the new millennium was the same as the last day of the old one, with only a few embarrassing oversights that were quickly corrected, so will each step of Richness be implemented with proper preparation for known results.

Here is another analogy: conversion to Richness should be no worse than moving to a different country and adapting to its culture and conventions, living a different but otherwise normal and pleasant life in your new society.

For example, the day the value of the dollar changes will be edgy, but everyone will know what their bank and other balances should be after the conversion, so at some point during the day everyone will check their account balances and see them adjusted to the new valuation. Similarly, when the standard pay for an hour’s work is implemented for everyone, the changes to payroll programs are trivial, and everyone will be keeping track manually for awhile just to make sure it works correctly for themselves. The transition for everyone not needing to make payments on their dwellings will also be routine, because all of the recordkeeping programs and apps, and the new databases consolidating property and ownership records, will have been created previously, filled and maintained in parallel with existing functionality, and possibly already in use. After each implementation of some portion of Richness everyone will verify expected information and functionality, and before long the changes will become the new normal.

Those kinds of changes are structural, and organizational. The important normalcy that continues includes: working on whatever needs to be done, usually to earn a living or satisfy a goal in life; eating food that keeps you healthy, either cooking it yourself or going to a restaurant, preferably with friends and/or family; energetic exercise of some sort three or more times a week; cleaning and other routine chores around the house; working on a home improvement project or making a repair; reviewing your financial status; eating again; running errands; having some fun or enjoying some entertainment, and socializing; getting adequate and quality sleep; and everything else that describes how people live, and will continue to live, day after day, only within a Rich society.

Normalcy includes our constant effort to find and experience personal meaning and satisfaction in life, probably by relating to other people in competition and cooperation, playing and working, celebration and commiseration, frustration and success. Normalcy means continually maximizing what you find good and enjoyable in life, while simultaneously minimizing the unpleasant and onerous experiences, very similar to increasing the play-to-work ratio of Richness.

Each incremental step toward Richness will be a little uncertain but fun, because nothing of daily life will be affected – only the implementations may be confusing for awhile if they are not done correctly, and obviously they will create extra work for the people who did the conversion incorrectly. Everyone else will continue with life, adjusting as needed, and experiencing the satisfaction of taking another step closer to being Rich in a Rich society.

Conclusion of Part Two

Now you know

This concludes the presentation and discussion of Richness. You understand how ‘filling in the blank’ with “If only everyone would Want To Be Rich” leads to the foundational concepts of what Richness is, the changes we need to enact a Rich society, the reasons for those changes, and some suggestions of what a Rich life would be like. I hope you like what you read because I, too, Want To Be Rich and live in a Rich society.

One last bit of business, and then either ‘farewell’ or ‘what next?’

My Royalty

This book is available for free because nothing should prevent you from learning about Richness, including not needing to purchase this book. Nevertheless, as the author, I would like to be paid for my effort to inform and motivate you, so I hereby request a royalty payment (or purchase of intellectual content, or license fee, or donation) from you. It really is just a request, and obviously your payment is optional, so maybe you can imagine me making a strong and convincing argument that spurs you to action, instead of a mere suggestion. Even if you read this book second-hand you are still the recipient of the information, and if you value it then please respond accordingly.

This request is only valid for a limited time. IF you have not already paid this via some purchase (for which I received my royalty, like a Kindle e-book), AND it is before midnight of Dec. 31, 2022, AND you live in the USA, AND the website is still active, THEN please pay my royalty of six dollars (or more!) as follows:

·         By credit card at www.YMWTBR.com (initialism of the title).

·         Mail paper money, and checks or Money Orders  payable  to Frean D Quill, to:

Frean D Quill

4733 Torrance Bl. # 669

Torrance, CA  90503

 

Do not expect a reply. If you provide a self addressed stamped envelope you will receive a standard printed ‘thank you’ note, perhaps as a postcard, or perhaps one of the ‘business’ cards I place under people’s windshield wipers in parking lots.

The royalty you send me, and any other donations or income I receive, will be used to pay for the web site and for the general promotion of Richness, including publicity for the book, wages, services, equipment, space, or whatever is needed, just like an expensive hobby or a small business.

Do You Want To Be Rich?

If you have decided you do not Want To Be Rich, then ‘thanks for reading’! I truly appreciate your effort and determination to have made it here to the end, and to learn and understand enough so you know why you don’t like the idea. I’m sorry Richness is not for you, but I hope the concepts remain thought provoking. Perhaps you will help devise something even better for the USA, or something else that everyone will use to ‘fill in the blank’. Once again, thanks for reading!

If you like the ideas presented herein and you Want To Be Rich then please continue to Part Three.