The crises that disgrace western democracies are not meant to be solved. They are embedded into the structure of the capitalist order. So political rhetoric about addressing problems like low wages and unaffordable homes is futile. Why? Because we have been collectively indoctrinated (the safe technical term is “socialised”) into a state of ignorance about the root cause. The architects of what evolved into a culture of greed intended this outcome. Their virus has been eating away at the fabric of humanity for the best part of five centuries, mutating into deeper strangleholds on the lives of everyone.
The existential crises of the 21st century are about to converge in an explosion that could destroy civilisation. There is one way only to survive that looming event. We must neutralise the virus that was embedded in society by the original lords of the land.
The ancient and classical civilisations were all terminated for the same reasons that are pushing modern societies towards the abyss. But there is one difference. We now have the knowledge with which to erect defensive barriers. That knowledge is based on a new theory of human evolution. Humanity evolved on the basis of an evolutionary blueprint which I describe in my book #WeAreRent.
Armed with that knowledge, we can expose the puzzles that have eroded trust in western democracies. The major puzzle concerns the way in which sovereign governments repeatedly fail in their efforts to erase the crises that blight the lives of people over whom they have a duty of care.
Policy-makers need to understand that their remedial strategies are not proportionate to the scale and nature of problems that include corrosive inequalities, mortal levels of carbon emissions and pathologies such as racism. These are symptoms – the collateral damage that is purposefully inflicted by the flaw that was embedded within the foundations of society.
Naming the virus
The tax regime is the operating mechanism that causes the socially significant crises. Taxes dislocate people’s lives in a thousand-and-one unseen ways. In #WeAreRent I demonstrate that this was an intentional outcome, as designed by the landed aristocrats of old.
The nobility appropriated people’s traditional rights of access to the commons. The objective of the land grab: hold people to ransom. The working population was allowed back on the land, on condition that they directed the rent into the pockets of the nobility. So the net income of society – the flow of energy on which our ancestors had constructed humanity itself – was turned against people and their communities.
If the existential crises of the 21st century are to be effectively challenged, people need to mandate the rebalancing of the way their nation’s income is distributed.
- Incomes that are earned – wages and the profits from value-adding enterprises – must be tax free (some exceptions: the “sin taxes”).
- In place of taxes, the rents that we all help to create in partnership with nature and society must be pooled in the public purse.
That realignment needs to be implemented on a revenue-neutral basis, and sensitively performed under controlled transitional arrangements. Among the people who work for their living, there need be no losers. There is sufficient Rent to fund the services that people need. The outcome would be enhanced trust in a governance based on justice.
#WeAreRent provides the narrative that empowers everyone to support that reform.
The moral challenge
Immediate action is needed, because millions of people continue to be deprived of their human rights. We are all co-opted into contributing to this tragic state of affairs.
As we go about our daily business we unwittingly add to the social, economic and environmental traumas endured by others – and by ourselves. We do not will these outcomes. We have been schooled into not understanding how this happens. It happens because the rules are rigged against all of us, and enforced through taxation.
Whether it is outbidding others to buy a house, or limiting our circle of friends to “people like us”, and in many other forms of behaviour that appear normal, we contribute to the discriminations that prejudice the lives of other people.
The architects of that process made sure that the original victims, and then their offspring through the generations, would forget the original misdeeds. That knowledge is recovered in #WeAreRent, Book 1.
The evolutionary blueprint empowers each of us – in ways that we may choose – to kick-start afresh the human project. But for our actions to be effective, we need the knowledge of how humanity evolved, and how the existential crises of the 21st century are now threatening the existence of civilisation.
Understanding the bias in tax policies, and the alternative way to fund our shared services, leads to the enlightenment that is needed to motivate the remedial action.