Equal Satisfaction
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Description of System
What is Equal Satisfaction in a nutshell?
Equal Satisfaction is a political/economic system in which each person (with a few rare exceptions) has their wants satisfied to an equal extent. A satisfaction level is chosen that no individual in society is allowed to go above. Also, the state guarantees that no-one’s satisfaction goes below that level (unless they choose this, under no coercion).
What exactly do you mean by satisfaction level?
We all have wants. A person’s satisfaction level is the percentage of their wants that are satisfied at a given time (with more major wants counting for more percentage points than lesser ones). Not included in our wants are things we don't have an emotional desire for but would choose because of, say, a sense of moral duty.
Does having something I don’t want affect my satisfaction level?
Yes, it does. However I think it’s easier to translate everything into positive wants. So if I have, say, a disease that I don’t want, we could say instead that I have a want/desire to be rid of the disease that is going unsatisfied.
So how does the state regulate people's satisfaction levels?
This is organized by a state agency called Satisfaction Regulation. Each person has to fill in a form every 6 months. The form asks what the person does with ziz (i'm using genderless pronouns that start with "z" here) time and also how satisfied zee is with the different aspects of ziz life, and overall. The Satisfaction Regulation people will analyze the information from this and previous forms, and any other relevant information it possesses to make a best guess at how satisfied the person is. If they find that the person’s satisfaction level has drifted above the standard level which is set for the whole society, then they will make the person worse-off. The most common way to do this is to reduce their pay rate. Anyone unhappy with Satisfaction Regulation’s decisions about them can appeal and their case will be judged by a jury. Satisfaction Review may interview people, such as romantic partners, housemates, work colleagues etc. to try to verify a person’s account of their life. If Satisfaction Regulation think they are being mislead by a whole group of people they also have the power to use surveillance and surprise inspections on a workplace to see if the workers are really doing the hours they say they are.
Why is this better than our current society?
If this system works it will give everyone a satisfactory and dignified life. Many of the cruelties of our current lives will be eliminated - poverty, unemployment, marginalisation, politicians, bosses, the stress of facing success or failure, and most of the restrictions on our freedom that we face in the workplace and in our studies. Instead, workers and students will be largely trusted to make the major decisions for themselves. Also we will have truly democratic society rather than the partly democratic, partly elitist society that we currently live in. This means that humanity’s future won’t be decided by its most competitive people, selected by the cutthroat systems of politics or business - people focused on their own special interests e.g. sell the next barrel of oil or stay in power for the next four years. And the average person will see ziz fellow human as less of a competitor too, leading to saner decisions overall, i believe.
So how does society work without leaders or experts?
Major decisions in most workplaces will be made by referendum of workers, while day-to-day choices will be made by frequently rotated management teams. So there will be no permanent managers. Experts will still exist, but those in sought-after fields will be forced to work in teams that are open to less skilled people, all sharing the “glory”. In such teams, facilitators will make sure that the more informed view is carried out. Also, roles that carry high responsibility will often be divided, e.g. there might be “aeroplane operators” steering planes under the orders of “flight facilitators”, advised by “flight expert teams”, the last of these groups being those that know most about planes. As for politicians, in terms of proposing and voting to approve new laws they can be replaced by large juries of ordinary people. Such juries can also replace politicians in their executive roles. For more information about this, click on the Jury Rule Website tab above.
With Equal Satisfaction guaranteed, why would anyone work?
To answer this question i should first explain in slightly more detail what the state provides to each person. Under Equal Satisfaction some items in shops such as basic clothing, toilet paper, drinking cups, and so on, will not be paid for with money, but can be taken on a "reasonable use" basis. Included in these basic services would be 3 meals a day, consumed in a communal canteen. Accommodation for a person living in average quality property, without a spare bedroom, would be provided rent-free (those living in above average quality accommodation would pay a bit, and those in below-average would get paid a little bit - see Housing System tab for more details). In addition to basic services most people would receive a small income of on average, say, £40 a week, from the state to spend on a few luxuries. If a person seems to have a particularly unpleasant personal life then that payment will be greater. If however their personal life seems unusually pleasant, they will not receive any money from the state, just the basic services, and those with the most pleasant personal lives of all would have, additionally, to do a few hours unpaid work per week, or move to lower-quality accommodation. Each person would have the right not to work, and to live under the conditions just described. So under Equal Satisfaction one may "get away with" living a basic existence, doing as little as possible. However, i believe most people will prefer to do a full or part-time job, as this will give them a lot more money and the chance to do something significant. I would also point out that with roles defined by the workers themselves rather than dictated by bosses, work will be much more fulfilling than in our present society. If the system is working correctly, either not working or working should leave an individual in an equal state of satisfaction, but a sense of moral duty will, i think, swing most people towards working.
Maybe people would work, but what would make them work efficiently?
It’s true that pay under this system is compensation for the dissatisfaction of work. This means that unproductive work will be rewarded as long as it is unpleasant. A person might therefore lie on a bed of nails on a daily basis as their job, and get paid the same as, say, a street sweeper. However, the Satisfaction Regulation department will assume the bed of nails worker’s reason for choosing their line of "work" is that they find lying on a bed of nails for a given period of time less dissatisfying than the average person does. This person will therefore be given a lower pay-rate for lying on a bed-of-nails than the average person would. If Satisfaction Regulation get it right, the person won’t have a reason to choose the bed of nails job, as the street sweeping will be no more painful than it when pay is taken into account. My hope is, again, that the system makes both options equally appealing from a self-interest point of view, but that a sense of public duty will lead most people to do the more useful thing for society.
What if the measurement of satisfaction isn't accurate enough, and people just pick a job that Satisfaction Regulation think they hate, which they really like, in order to get more money, rather than a job which benefits society?
If someone chooses to work in an inefficient way, for example running a database using cards in filing cabinets instead of on a computer, then Satisfaction Regulation will assume they are doing that because they find using such a filing system more pleasant than using a computer. Their pay for using the cards will therefore be lower than if they used a computer. On the other hand, if a person works efficiently as, say, a toilet cleaner, which they happen to enjoy, but they have the potential to be a great teacher, which they find a chore, then they might stick with the less beneficial toilet job if Satisfaction Regulation have no idea that they have the potential to teach. So in this latter case society might indeed lose out. Market systems or state hierarchies create large incentives for individuals to do jobs that are deemed more beneficial to society. Equal Satisfaction, in contrast, tries to make the incentives balance, so the individual’s self interest doesn’t sway them to one job or the other. As i have said, I hope that in most cases people will follow the option most beneficial to society, but the incentive is admittedly weaker than in a market or hierarchical state system. Also Equal Satisfaction will often get the balance wrong, messing up incentives even more badly, as in the toilet cleaner example. So an Equal Satisfaction society will probably be less productive than our present one, but have all the advantages i have described when answering "Why is this better than our current society?" above.
At the beginning you said that everyone is equal apart from a few exceptions. Who are the exceptions?
There are four groups who won't be living on the standard satisfaction level. Firstly anyone who chooses to live on a lower level of satisfaction may do so, as long as this is under no coercion. Secondly, there are some people with such bad mental or physical health, that it would bankrupt the whole world to try to normalize their satisfaction level. For this reason there’ll be an upper limit put on the amount of resources that can be used on one person. Only a small fraction of the population at any given time should be at this limit however. Thirdly, there will be a rule which says that a person’s satisfaction level can only be reduced if that satisfaction can be “transferred” to someone else. If, for example, a very disabled person is having a blissful time watching TV they wouldn’t have this time curtailed, as reducing one person's viewing doesn't free up viewing for someone else to have (unlike income or pleasant tasks at work, both of which can be transferred to someone else). Lastly, gambling will be allowed and those that win big will be allowed to be above the standard satisfaction level up to a 10 year limit.
Will society have money and shops as our present system does?
Yes, people would be paid an hourly rate for their work and spend the money in shops as they currently do. However, this money would be issued by the state and would disappear when spent. Shops would set the prices, probably usually at the “clearing price” (the level at which goods leave the shelves at the same rate as the shelves are refilled).
So why are shops/shopkeepers doing what they do if they don’t get money from customers?
This goes back to the above question about why anyone works. If people can't get extra satisfaction from not working or doing useless work then they'll probably do productive things like running a shop. A shop would obviously not be run in a profit-oriented way, but towards meeting community needs or whatever aims those who work there have in mind.
Will there be private companies and private property or is everything owned by the state?
Everything will be owned by the state - including all work and dwelling places. The only things not owned by the state will be the money in each person’s bank account and objects they own, for example a person’s clothes, personal computer, books or whatever. A person’s private wealth will be limited however - each individual’s money and physical property may only have a combined worth of, say, £30,000.
So with the state owning everything and no private companies, who decides what raw material goes to what producer, and which finished product goes to which shop?
Economic activity is divided into 10 departments, each governed by a Command Jury, consisting of 2,000 ordinary citizens (see the Jury Rule tab above for more details about this). The whole process that starts with the extraction of raw materials and ends with the arrival of the finished product to the shops to be sold is governed by the Production Department. Workplaces within this department are organised as egalitarian co-operatives. The big decisions of a given co-operative are made by a vote of all its workers. Such decisions will rarely be overridden by the department’s Command Jury, though the jury has the right to do so. Normally the co-op that manufactures a particular item will choose for itself to whom it distributes its produce. If Lawmaking Juries (who write the law, again see the Jury Rule tab for more information) don’t like the distribution of some particular product or raw material they can write laws to steer this distribution the way they want (I imagine this will happen more often in the case of some crucial resource than with a particular product). Alternatively, Lawmaking Juries can set up an Open Committee in charge of its distribution. Open Committees are, as the name suggests, a body that any citizen has the right to join. The only restrictions to joining would be that these bodies mustn't have a disproportionate number of certain types of people. For example they would be balanced in terms of right and left-wingers, religious and non-religious, and so on. Otherwise, extremists might dominate.
Isn’t this Utopianism, a distraction from more achievable goals?
I agree that a radical system like this may be a long-shot and may also have unforeseen drawbacks. However, thinking about possibilities such as this system might at least inspire ideas or provoke thought. Also trying it out somewhere might be worth the effort as we can abandon the experiment at relatively little cost after a few years if things go badly, but if things work well it can be rolled out everywhere, benefiting billions of people.
So what about famous people - would they be allowed under Equal Satisfaction?
Clearly the lives of the famous are way preferable over that of the average person. So fame under Equal Satisfaction would be effectively banned. People would still be able to write, perform, do sport and all the other things that people get famous for in our current society. But their audience number would have to be capped in, say, the thousands. If, say, a vlogger started getting popular, and began to get more than 1,000 views per video, then ziz most recent subscribers would automatically be charged, say, £1 a month to watch ziz videos. If the vlogger continued to get more popular the charge would be extended to less recent and then all subscribers, and then the charge will be increased so that the vlogger's popularity would remain at around 1,000 views per video. Something similar would happen with other art-forms such as prose writing, music and so on. Anonymous contributors might be allowed more viewers for their works, like, say, 100,000 views per book, video etc. Unlimited views might be allowed for works created by groups in which each member's contribution is kept very small, as well as anonymous. Cartoons, masked wrestling and wikipedia are how mass-entertainment might look in an Equal Satisfaction world.
Would people who have committed crimes be treated as equals too?
Yes, guilty people are not really punished as such, only contained. They do not lose the right to equal satisfaction. They will just have restrictions put on their lives, which will be highly dependent on what they have been found guilty of. A violent person might be kept in a secure place, albeit in relative luxury to compensate for the dissatisfaction of the restriction. Any restriction, and the compensation in preference terms that goes with it might be requested by an innocent person, to make sure that no-one commits a crime on purpose, if for example life in a secure luxurious place appeals to them. Unlike in our society the accused are found guilty on balance of evidence rather than reasonable doubt, as we don’t have to be so absolutely sure of ourselves when we aren’t inflicting a harsh punishment on anyone.
You mentioned earlier that citizens would be guaranteed free cups and toilet paper. What else would be free exactly?
Each citizen will have access to all the standard state-provided free services that we have in a country like the UK, such as road, footpath and cycle path networks, refuse and recycling collection, drains, infestation and wild animal control, police, fire brigade, health and social care, health and safety inspections, coast guards, beaches, parks, galleries, museums, places of historical interest and libraries. In addition to these, citizens will be given free access to the following: (apologies for what you might regard as unnecessary detail in this answer - a utopian like me finds this sort of stuff hard to resist!) a rent-free home of average quality in one's area, 3 meals a day to be eaten at a local state canteen, a cleaner to one’s home once a week, a haircut every 3 months, weeding/grass cutting of garden once a year, legal representation and advice, use of a launderette, regular internet time (at a library), regular classes or activities (for children and adults), unlimited travel on public transport (with the exception of heavily overcrowded routes), career help, banking services, dental care, mental health care, home maintenance and repair (including painting), heating, hot and cold water, electricity, a basic mobile phone and free official calls, light bulbs, curtains, net curtains, a bed, a wardrobe (including some shelves for socks and underwear), a comfy chair, an adjustable one-person coffee/writing table, 2 sets of bed-sheets, 8 sets of underwear, 8 pairs of socks or tights, 8 thin tops/t-shirts/shirts, 4 jumpers/cardigans/fleece tops, 4 skirts/leggings/trousers, one pair of shoes, a winter coat, a spring/autumn coat, medication, spectacles, contraceptives, soap, flannels, towels, toilet paper, a toilet brush and holder, a toothbrush, toothpaste, sanitary products, plasters, a nail scissors, hair cutting scissors, razors, shaving foam, a tweezers, shampoo, deodorant, a bathroom mirror, a hairdryer, a hairbrush/comb, a mug, washing-up liquid, a dustpan and brush (long handled), a bin, bin bags, a laundry bag, 4 reusable shopping bags, and a large handbag (for documents and valuables).
Jury Rule Overview and Number Crunching Jury rule is a political system proposed to replace our current representative democracy. It lets juries of ordinary people perform all the tasks of government, such as proposing and passing (or rejecting) new laws and handling day-to-day decisions. All citizens (except those that refuse to) will sit on such a Ruling Jury for a 6 month period at a random point in their adult lives. Employers will be required to allow workers 6 months leave for this purpose and the state will pay citizens for their time. |
Let us imagine a state containing around a million people. This will give us a population of 800,000 people who are aged 15 or over, who are eligible to be called to serve on a Ruling Jury. My system works best with a nation this size or larger.
Every 9 days a new group of 1,000 randomly chosen citizens start their 6 month stint as a ruling jury. For their lawmaking work they form a 1,000-person body, but for their work making major day-to-day decisions of the state each 1,000 jurors team up with another 1,000 who started 3 months previously, to make a 2,000-person jury. The 1,000 person bodies are called Lawmaking Juries and the 2,000 person bodies are called Command Juries.
At any given time there will be 20,000 jurors sitting, given the one million person state just mentioned. This means when they form the 2,000 person Command Juries there are 10 such juries in the state.
Command Juries
Each of the 10 command juries is assigned a different department to command. These 10 departments might be as follows (listed with departments that have fewest workers first):
1- FACILITATION: allocating tasks between the other departments.
2- FOREIGN AFFAIRS: including military.
3- LAW: including lawmaking, justice system, satisfaction regulation and supreme court.
4- CLERICAL: including admin, prices, income, rents and banking.
5- TRANSPORT: including roads, public transport, distribution and storage.
6- INFO: including education, training, media, art, entertainment and software.
7- PRODUCTION: including manufacturing, agriculture, utilities and resource allocation.
8- CARE: including child care, health, fitness, police and fire brigade.
9- SPACES: including construction, maintenance, cleaning, parks, wilderness and land allocation.
10- RETAIL: including shops, restaurants and hotels.
In each department the jurors will have particular powers prescribed by law, enabling them to make day-to-day decisions when they need to be made. An example of such powers might be, say, that the Production Department Jury can command water to be transferred to food production when it is scarce.
Lawmaking Juries
Lawmaking Juries (1,000 people) make new laws in a 3 stage process. The stages are as follows
- Proposing new laws/changes to the law
- Rating these proposals, to whittle them down
- Voting for or against the most promising proposals, to approve them into law or otherwise.
Here are these stages, described in more detail-
1. Proposing laws/Changes to the law
At the end of their 6 month stint each juror is permitted to submit a proposed change to the state's laws relating to their department. Jurors are allowed to form their own groups, do their own research and call experts during their time. If, at the end of the 6 months, a given juror doesn’t wish to submit a proposal of their own they may “second” a proposal of a fellow juror. A proposal may have any number of seconders.
2. Rating these proposals, to whittle them down
During their time, Jurors are also allowed to rate and comment on any proposal from their department that has been submitted by a jury in the previous 4 years. Proposals that had more seconders will appear higher in the lists of previous proposals that they see. This rating produces a highest rated proposal for each department, via the Majority Judgement voting system. In accordance with this system, jurors freely grade each proposal in one of several named ranks, from "excellent" to "bad", and the proposal with the highest median grade from all the proposals of a particular department in the previous 4 years is deemed the highest rated proposal. If more than one proposal (as is very likely) has the same median grade, a tiebreaker is used which sees the "closest to median" grade. This is described in more detail under the Majority Judgement entry of Wikipedia.
3. Voting for or against the most promising proposals, to approve them into law or otherwise.
Lastly, jurors at the beginning of their 6 months are given the highest rated proposal in their department at that point in time to vote on. At the end of their stint they may submit a simple yes or no to the proposal. If the number of yes votes exceeds the number of no votes then the proposal is approved into law. Again, for this, jurors are permitted to form their own groups, do their own research and call experts during their time.
Nested States
As i said at the beginning, the Jury Rule system can work for a state of a million people or more. What i would recommend would be a world of states of a million people within a world state, both being governed by Jury Rule. Under this arrangement, each adult would be called up twice in their lifetime, each at a random time. One time they would serve on a Ruling Jury of the world state, the other a Ruling Jury of their “local” state. The laws of the world state would override those of the local state where they conflict.
Transition to Equal Satisfaction
Here is a proposal for how a rich country like the UK could move to Equal Satisfaction in a 10 year transition process.
At the beginning of this 10 year period representative government will be replaced by the Jury Rule system (see Jury Rule Website tab above). There will be referendums at 3 months, 2 years and at the end of the transition, which will give the public the option of going back to representative government.
Also at the beginning of the transition the state will forcibly purchase all shares, property, land, private pensions and other investments of private individuals at market rate. Each person’s wealth over £30,000 will be frozen. “Wealth” here includes the value of personal possessions. Notes and coins will be abolished and all money, frozen or otherwise, will be held in a state bank account.
The person with the greatest amount of frozen wealth will have money released to spend for the whole 10 year transition period, while those who have almost no frozen wealth will have wealth released to them for only the first 7 years. Those with intermediate amounts of wealth will be evenly distributed between these 7 and 10 year points. This staggering of the last payment point is done to avoid the potential chaos of millions of people having to change their lifestyles at the same point in time.
Each person will have their wealth unfrozen at an even rate throughout their given period. So, for example, a person who has £80,000 of frozen wealth to spend over 8 years will have £10,000 unfrozen each year. Unfortunately for the person, they will not receive all of the £10,000 to spend, as society cannot afford this. A set proportion of all money that is being unfrozen will be zapped out of existence by the state. This “zapping rate” will be adjusted from year to year in order to keep consumption of goods and the inequality of it at similar levels during the transition as they were before. This is to keep society stable during the transition and to let the rich enjoy a few last years of their lifestyle.
From 6 months into the transition period all essential services and goods will be distributed free of charge to everybody, on a reasonable use basis, as described under the Description of System tab above.
At the one year point most taxes will be abolished and replaced with a single tax on firms’ revenues from the public. This tax will follow a formula: Firms who are a) Egalitarian in pay and power b) Positively discriminate in favour of worse-off groups in terms of race, gender, age etc. and c) Produce low net pollution, will be taxed at a lower rate. This formula will be gradually ranked up over time, so at the 6 year point virtuous firms in terms of these 3 measures will be paying hardly any tax, while harmful firms will be taxed nearly 100% of their revenues from the public.
During the period from 2 years to 6 years after the beginning of the transition, children and people who had less than £30,000 at the beginning of transition will, in a random order, go over to full Equal Satisfaction.
Then during the last 4 years of the transition, firms and state departments along with all their employees will, industry by industry, go over to Equal Satisfaction in everything except wealth. At the 10 year point full Equal Satisfaction will have been reached by everyone.
Housing System
Under Equal Satisfaction, the housing system would be as follows:
The state will own all dwelling places in the country.
The Country will be divided into Housing Districts, each of about 30,000 properties. Each District will have a District Value. Any adult moving home to a District of higher value than the one they are leaving must pay the difference in District Values of the two places, or if they are moving to a District of lower value, they will be paid the difference. Money being saved towards a District move or received from such a move will be kept in a special bank account. Money in these special accounts cannot be transferred to other accounts or spent on anything other than making District-moving payments. Money in such accounts will not count towards the £30,000 wealth cap that applies to everyone living under Equal Satisfaction.
District Values are set such that the number of residents to number of bedrooms ratio is kept the same in each District.
Each person or couple will officially be a tenant of a bedroom rather than a property. Bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, gardens etc. will be shared by the tenants of the bedrooms of that property. A person or couple may also rent one or more other bedrooms of the property in which they live, as spare rooms.
When a bedroom is vacated, or a spare room is given up by those who are renting it, the state will advertise it to the public. The state will set two prices for the room, one will be its price as an occupied bedroom, the other its price as a spare room. Both prices will be expressed as an amount of money per week.
The state will set room prices according to the three following rules:
1- There should be no involuntarily homeless people
2- When a room is vacated, and advertised to the public, the expected time until another tenant accepts the offer should be the same for all vacancies.
3- The average rent for an occupied room in each district must equal zero (this means that half the rent, by amount, in the district and country, will be negative, i.e. paid from the state to the tenant).
People who share a bedroom will be given a financial bonus for doing so. This bonus will be equal to the cheapest room (meaning the room that the state pays its occupant most for) within an hour’s journey of the shared bedroom. If three people share a room, their bonus will be double this amount. If four people share a room their bonus will be triple this amount, and so on.
Under Equal Satisfaction, children will be paid for any dissatisfying activities such as working, work training or attending classes. As with adults, these activities will be optional and some children will prefer to just live on basic state services. So children will differ in the quality of room they can afford to live in. Households will therefore have to pick properties with bedroom prices to match the incomes of their members, including the children.
If the tenants of a property wish to build an extension or make some other major improvement to their home then the plans will be assessed by the state. If the changes are judged to be likely to improve the value of the property then the state will meet all or part of the building costs. To calculate how much the state will contribute, it will first estimate the increase in rental value of the property. It will then pay the cost of the cheapest renovation that would yield this rental increase (whether this is the actual planned renovation or not). If, however, the changes are judged likely to reduce the value of the property then the tenants making the changes will have to meet the full building costs. Additionally, they will have to pay a fee to the state equal to the cost of the cheapest renovation that would restore the value of the property to the level it was at before the work was done. When the work is complete the rent will be adjusted up or down to the new rental value of the property.
This Housing System As Part Of Our Present Society
As well as working as part of an Equal Satisfaction society, the housing system just described could work alongside our current free market/hierarchical state system. To work in our present system it would require the following tweaks:
1) Instead of paying money to move to higher value Housing Districts and to rent better quality rooms within one’s District, citizens would be required to pay with Labour Points. There would be two ways to earn these Labour Points. The first way would be for a citizen to devote some of their working hours to this scheme. For every hour devoted to it, one Labour Point would be earned, but one’s pay for those hours would go to the state. The other way to earn Labour Points would be to work those hours directly for the state, as the state would offer Labour Point-earning work to any citizen who wants it. Labour Points would only be allowed to be spent on a person's rent or on moving to a higher value Housing District. People over retirement age would be allowed to pay money from their pensions instead of labour points. Those who are too disabled or sick to work would be allowed to move any Housing District in the country without making a Labour Point payment.
2) The state would try to equalise location values across all regions of the country, by a) imposing taxes on high income parts of the country while subsidising low income parts, until income per head in all parts become equal, and b) by moving prestigious institutions such as the parliament and national museums to regions of low location value.
3) Children in our present society are not in a position to earn money, so any rooms rented for them would have to be paid for with Labour Points by, or earn Labour Points for, their parents/guardians.
The Transition To This Housing System
If society moves to this system, without going over to Equal Satisfaction, all residential properties would be forcibly purchased by the state. To pay for this, the state would levy a huge, one-off wealth tax. So if, say, the wealth held in residential properties accounts for a third of people’s wealth overall, the wealth tax would take a third of people’s non-property wealth, and use it to pay home-owners for their properties at two-thirds of market rate.
Home owners who are still paying off their mortgages would receive the two-thirds of their property value. If this is not enough to pay off the debt to their mortgage lender then the lender would be required to forgive the remainder of the debt. If, on the other hand, this sum is more than enough to pay off the debt, then the home-owner would be able to keep the remainder of it.
Tenants who are renting to private landlords would be allowed to remain living in their properties as tenants of the state. Landlords would receive the two-thirds of the value of their properties. Any mortgages they have would have to be paid off as just described.
Ownership or shares in companies in the property or mortgage business would not be subject to this wealth tax, as they would see their value reduced by a third anyway. The state would assist in winding up these industries in an orderly and fair way.
A Gradual Transition To This Housing System
I admit the instant transition just described seems politically inconceivable. However, a gradual approach is possible, taking say, 10 to 15 years. At the beginning of this process the Districts just described would be set up, District-moving payments would be taken, as would positive and negative rents, spare room rents and room-sharing bonuses. However, to start off with these payments would be set at a very low level. Over time they would be increased. This would cause house-prices to fall. Each year, home owners would be partly compensated for this loss through payments that would be funded by a wealth tax. So, if for example, in one particular year, the prices of residential properties fall by 4%, and say this represents 1% of wealth overall, then non-property wealth will be taxed at 1% and this will be paid to the property owners, which will compensate them for most of their loss, leaving losses in property and non-property equal in percentage terms. This means that there wouldn’t be a mad dash to sell property during the transition.
As state payments are brought up, property prices would decrease to such a low level that a mass forced purchase of properties, coming at the end of this transition period, would not seem so drastic. Or maybe society would decide not to go all the way down this road and instead keep property prices at a level which would give us a hybrid of our my proposed housing system and our current one.
Education System
This could work as part of an Equal Satisfaction society or in our current society.
Kids will be assigned a small team of social worker-type people called a State Helpers who meet each child individually once a month to discuss their well-being and activity choices. Each child will keep the same team of State Helpers throughout their youth.
There will be no compulsory activities; all will be chosen by the child. There will be no set number of activities that a given child participates in each week. Some activities might run for 30 hours a week, others might be one 6-hour day a week, or one weekly morning or afternoon session. Activities might consist of a job, like assisting in a shop, a traditional school-type course such as Mathematics, a club, like, say, gardening, or pure fun like playing in the park or on a computer. Children will be paid for unpleasant activities, in proportion to how unpleasant they are. So assisting in a shop would pay a full wage, a maths lesson might pay a bit less, a gardening club might pay a tiny amount and fun stuff would pay nothing. All pay will come from the state. Children may choose as few or many hours of activity per week, up to a maximum of 30 hours. Children aged 10 years and under may only take time off if an appropriate adult such as a parent is willing and able to look after them during these hours.
Each activity will have an Activity Leader or Activity Leader Group to supervise and organise the activity. Being an Activity Leader doesn’t require a formal qualification, just a criminal check. Children are allowed to be activity leaders and adults are allowed to be activity participants.
Each activity session involving children will be attended by an additional person called a Safety Supervisor. Safety Supervisors are adults who have completed a one week course and a criminal check. They are assigned to activities at random and hand over to colleagues at random points in activity sessions. Safety Supervisors are not told the time that their colleague will take over a shift. Safety Supervisors will also accompany children aged 10 and under if travelling from one activity site to another. This is all to minimise the chance of accidents and child abuse.
Any Activity Leader who makes claims which are controversial factually, ethically or politically will be required to devote comparable amounts of time to the criticism of these views, or allow another person to do so.
Activity Leader, Safety Supervisor and State Helper are all paid positions.
When activities are oversubscribed, children and adults who wish to attend will generally be given equal priority.