RE: Ranking Your Position in the US Economy
Hi @adriangee, I see free competitive enrichment as just as important a liberty as the right to elementary means for survival - a philosophy that implies the necessary existence of a basic universal income, to put it briefly. To achieve this, we need, inter alia, a currency with a stable value relative to production of those elementary means. Without that we cannot resolve this conundrum of being a capitalist and a commie at the same time. But even without achieving a fair and equitable distribution of basic means, a currency like that can at the very least serve to secure the purchasing power of pensions. And I am working on a SmartCoin with that critical property. Should you be interested, there is an introduction to that on my blog. Thanks for the perspective underscored by your post! Regards.
Thanks for the post @clicketyclick. I don't believe in a socialist government but the income disparity is quite jarring.
Neither do I @adriangee.
Having been there, however, I know that in a theoretically free market society there is a poverty level below which all a person's energy and creativity is spent on survival and elevation beyond that becomes virtually impossible.
This is a serious flaw that breeds crime and enslavement. In a rich caveman environment everyone has equal access to resources and a fair distribution of opportunity to apply their talent to elevate their quality of life from rock bottom up. In modern urbanized society this is most certainly not the case.
Human-powered bureaucracies are doomed to fail by corruption sooner rather than later and tend to get bloated through laziness and other subtle forms of theft. So I agree, that is not the answer.
A decentralized mechanism that automatically distributes the minimum amount of power of purchase equivalent to the free means of survival available to every caveman is the answer.
This will provide a buffer from which all but the sickly can recover, earning an increase to their own quality of life by adding to that of others.
What I am working on is a decentralized currency with a value related to the cost of producing basic necessities that can be seen, on the one hand, as a first step in that direction, but that can also serve as functionally reliable means of trade in general.