Art of Agreement

Senna Jawa

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The Art of Agreement​

There is one and only one commandment:

Do not impose on others

The implications are: don't kill, don't use violence, don't enslave anybody. And you yourself should not be imposed upon, and in particular--defend yourself against being killed, against violence, against attempts to be enslaved.

But the commandment has also a much more subtle and general meaning. It is concerned with every aspect of the human world--of individuals and of the societies. This is what the Art of Agreement is about.

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Those who do not impose are the most peaceful people, by the very commandment. And only when others are imposing on them then... then what do you want?!

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One may dwell on the non-imposition principle but this commandment is not a topic for an intellectual discussion. After all your dwelling you accept this commandment or you violate it. This is not an intellectual question, this is about the ethics. If you do impose (against the commandment) then you are not ethical. There can be no excuse.

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The principle is ethical but it is the only approach which carries the promise of a happy and prosperous society, and even of a much more intelligent society.

These days we have the resources to let everybody live under comfortable material conditions, meaning food, clothes, shelter, education, and health support. All this is almost impossible due to CHAOS, but there is a chance. An essential (necessary) part of the CHAOS are flukes (fluctuations). It is possible, while unlikely, to have beautiful fluctuations. One should live for great flukes.

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One of the principles of the Art of Agreement is the incremental progress. To have it in several local places/dimensions is already a nice fluke, and when certain threshold is achieved it may achieve a larger fluke of higher quality, and additional stability can be gained from it.

The road to a larger successes is hard, nearly impossible, but already every progress is fun to enjoy it. The Art of Agreement is the most practical approach, and this is the only approach which can make the humans happy. All this is really a tautology.
 
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Marriage, law, government.

People often accept false alternative. For instance:
  1. We allow same-sex marriages
  2. We do not allow same-sex marriages.
The time and money are wasted on voting etc. on such a false alternative. We even saw US presidential candidates discussing this issue without having a clue about the right solution (at least they never mentioned the right solution). Their presidential debates (the part devoted to the same-sex marriage) wasted a bit the society's resources

There is also equally harmful law against bigamy/polygamy. This violations of the commandment have adverse implications for the whole society too.

According to the Art of Agreement, marriage is a purely private affair. Law should not have word marriage. For law and government the notion of marriage should be transparent, i.e. non-existent. If two guys or two lesbians want to call themselves married--let them! Just like any other group of people. If 3 men and two women want to call themselves a 5-member marriage, let them do it. It's nobody's business. There should be laws which p[rotect children. But leave adults alone.

As it is today, the law against polygamy create artificially criminalists. Furthermore, people who are persecuted by law are extra vulnerable. Due to the underground situation some of them are indeed abused by others, and it happens because these people are not protected by law. Illegal prostitution is ina similar predicament. Prostitutes may be powerless against the pimps because prostitutes are not protected by law. It's not always like this but often enough.

We see that because of wrong laws people suffer. On the top of it the society pays for persecuting people. Society pays lawyers, police, etc.

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More freedom calls for more education and responsibility. Many folks have no idea what marriage means financially to them. There ismariage law but not many bother to learn about the marriage law until there is trouble (which makes lawyers happy and rich). Already in the high school students should learn about possible standard contracts between people who form a stable relation. It doesn't even matter that it's going to be sexual relation. People should be mature enough to adopt one of the standard agreement, or they can modify it any way they want to. Someone in the past objected that making a contract is not romantic. It's a total misunderstanding. Living in ignorance is infinitely less romantic. People should know what should be the standard solutions in the situation when one partner is working, and the other one is studying. They should understand what to expect when the student finished their school and is getting finally a well paying job. And what if that ex-student says goodbye to the partner?

This are some of the many questions addressed by the Art of Agreement.

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Government takes advantage of the marriage institution, it back and forth plays with the tax law. This is sick and wasteful! Removing marriage from law and government would help this too. However, the solution is the easy tax (sometimes I call it also painless tax), which is another AofA story.

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Just in case, if you missed the answer to the same-sex marriage alternative, the answer was that there should be no problem at all. Let them do whatever they want. The law and government and the presidential candidates should not be concerned about the alternative, i.e. they should not be concerned about the very notion of marriage--it's none of their business. But they love to waste the society's resources so much! People should be educated in the Art of Agreement, so that they will not be fooled so easily. But it means to adopt the non-imposition commandment. Otherwise forget it.
 
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National debt. Banks.

I'll write about the major related issues of MONEY, and its connection to the tax system and to organization of industry/business, including the stock market, later. The related issues are also savings, insurance, etc. By necessity, the following note is only partial, we have to start somewhere.

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Government not anybody should not be able to borrow money from another country or from any bank. It should be more than illegal--it should be IMPOSSIBLE, period. There should not exist any instrument which would allow to make any governmental loans except from their own individual willing citizens.

If a government borrows from their own citizen, and X is willing to do so, it's the X's business. Even this should be analyzed, so there woiuld be some sensible constrains.

But borrowing from another country or from a foreign bank is an imposition against all concerned citizens. Government imposes things on the citizens. This should not have place. It affects ALL citizens, including those who are AGAINST that borrowing.

And any sensible person should be against. When huge money are borrowed than a large portion gets stolen, and the whole country gets corrupted. Indeed, here is my saying:

The easiest money is money.

Wherever big money is present, whenever it flows in astronomic chunks, then the astronomic abuses happen. If there is any democracy then people should vote against existence of any possibility of national borrowing from other countries and banks.

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Now about banks, still a more fundamental issue. Banks should have severely limited field of doing business. The present abstract high scale banking operations should be absolutely illegal. Banks should only be an intermediary between people or between people and businesses or between businesses. They should be just a glorified shoe box where you keep things like money/checks/jewelry/... for the owners, and otherwise do nothing. And for this they would earn some (perhaps modest) money. Banks should not do any operations, none. Thinks get deposited in banks and released from the bank. End of story.

Banks earnings: Actually, what banks earn should be a result of agreements. There could be different kind of standard templates for agreements. Some banks may make an agreement on each occasion of a transaction (when they accept some money), It will be more practical to have standard agreements on most of the occasions, and to negotiate only in atypical cases. Remeber, everything should be agreed upon, nothing imposed.

I need to say some more things. And anyway, the Art of Agreement is an open discussion for the entire society.

REMARK: In this note I use term money quite amateurishly so-to-speak. In this note this is not important to dwell on it. On later occasions I will define "money" according to the situation.
 
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3 cornerstones

The three cornerstones of of a happy and prosperous society should be:

  • Art of Agreement
  • Education
  • Charity

EDUCATION - should be done by volunteers and business. Governments do a terrible job, and should stay out of education completely. This time this postulate is realistic (well, relatively). For instance, EdRooms would make the bureaucratic education disappear within a couple of years. (EdRoom is an autonomic subtopic; it needs a separate chapter; it is a system an essential part of which is due to the computer technology; in this post I will not address EdRoom anymore).

To base the education on volunteers and business would mean that

the tremendous intellectual potential of the whole society
would be released for the sake of education (mainly children but not only). The independent education would thrive on competition. People would write educational modules. There would be a booming computer business devoted to a support of creation of educational materials. Thus it'd be easy to implement educational modules. The best modules would win, would become standard (for awhile, until better modules would not take over). And the computer (software and hardware) innovations would be wide spread. Also, the fundamental meritorious progress would take place. The effect on humans would be enormous, there would be a much nicer society, where the knowledge would be appreciated and respected instead of BS like who knows whom, like demagogy, etc. There would be innovations which would not only push the education to an incomparably higher level, but also other aspects of communication, technology, science.

This means, when the time comes, an ultimate difficult decision of letting the governmental compulsory education go. It perhaps made sense historically but today it doesn't work. It should be replace by ordinary pressure of society on parents to educate their children. A great majority of parents want to educate children anyway. Other parents should be helped, and when necessary should be shamed into educating children. Some cases may be depressing but goivernmental attempts are not that efficient at all anyway, they waste children's potential en mass. In general, there will be a lot of learning just by the way too, even without meaning it, when the attitude to education and learning and knowledge would change.

CHARITY - by definition is non-imposed. When charity is forced or done under pressure from outside then it is a robbery, not charity. Such pseudo-charity is wasteful and corrupted anyway. When more people will do their own thing, when more people will be in charge of their affairs--the more responsible they will be and more given to charity. They will not look toward government to solve problems, they will do it themselves. It's enough that even a small fraction of people do it, and the world already will be a better place to live.

Consider the situation when you have a small school created by a bunch of families. It costs money and effort. People should be able to accept a few kids from their or neighboring neighborhoods free or almost free. If there is a private school run by a business then both the parents and the business should accept some kids from the neighborhoods around the school. This makes a lot of sense to everybody for the simple reason that you should rather have those kids at school then roaming the neighborhood doing nothing good. Also, every educated kid is an asset to all of us!

We see that a lot of charity would be induced almost by necessity. Granted that people are responsible. The existing system is in this respect simply awful.
 
The top ten ranked education systems in the world are all heavily regulated state systems.

Charity is about putting sticking plasters over social and economic wounds. Philanthropists tend to spend their wealth trying to solve problems they spent their life creating. Deep seated social and economic problems can only be solved through politics.

Both liberal capitalism and communism are forms of enslavement. That being said, free societies, like the free market are mythical nonsense. Western capitalist democracy are not democracies, they are consensuses. When one group assumes too much power and are too exploitative of another group, the consensus tends to breakdown, which now appears to be happening through the corrupt behaviour of the financial world and political classes, where high finance has bought and paid for the political class.

The fairest and most productive societies, with high productivity and less social and economic problems were post war social democracies. Unfortunately they created the affluent mass middle classes who greedily turned to liberal economics in the 80s, the same economic s that is now consuming them.
 
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