True liberty: If man desires liberty, he/she must ensure that this freedom brings about improvements in equality and charity. If not, then the liberty he/she desires is not going to make any improvements in terms of socio-economic conditions.
I call this "false liberty" because it is not bringing society to become more charitable. Sure, it will guarantee people more rights then before but it does not aim to tackle inequality or raise the charity level in society, hence the society's economic levels are the same before the change.
One thing that man must understand is that liberty cannot bring man into improving society's economic conditions alone. Ideas of equality and charity must be included into the process if the society desires to reduce inequality and improve class tensions.
Before I move on to acceptable inequality, I will like to link economic conditions with equality. Unfortunately, the world is still stuck in an environment where economic indicators are still the main indicator of economic growth. The problem is: Whose economic growth are we calculating? The rich or the poor? These indicators(except for those referring to literacy rates, employment rates etc.) are mainly an indicator of foreign investment into a nation, and who are the people who invest? The answer is the rich who own businesses. The problem is that the working poor and middle classes get little or no gain from economic growth because their wages are always tied to the employer, not the country. Hence, the living conditions of the poor are much poorer than the living conditions of the rich. That is the reason why when indicators indicate positive economic growth for a nation, there can be anger in the nation due to the poor envying the rich's lifestyles, while their own living conditions have seen little or no improvement.
So, now we move on to acceptable inequality. We should ask ourselves: Has anyone in the world solved inequality? Even the Communists had some inequality although their inequality was dramatically lower than those in other countries. Hence, there will always be some inequality in all societies. However, if you consider the points I mentioned above, you will realise that there are tensions between classes due to different lifestyles and envy. Hence, a good indication of a nation's equality would be "acceptable inequality"
"Acceptable inequality"- A state of inequality where the poor can afford the lifestyles of the richest people in the world
So what we notice is that we are now trying to make improvements to society more practical, instead of trying to solve inequality(which no one has accomplished as of yet), we are trying to allow the poor access to what the rich have in their lifestyles. Would you be less angry now given that you have the opportunity to live like the rich, even for just one day? I suppose most of you reading this should be happier.
The problem is the difficulty in finding a practical solution to achieve such means. That is when I bring the concept of charity into the picture, but at a whole new level. In my vision of charity, the rich not only voluntarily or are forced gives to the poor, but the rich also shares his/her lifestyle with the poor. This would make allowing the poor to achieve experiencing the rich's lifestyles must easier. To do this, I suggest nations implement laws whereby the tax of the rich are decreased from the 50% standards in the European Union to a tax rate much more affordable , but tax elements such as "Electricity and water for the poor tax" are included in all these taxes to pay for the poor's electricity and water bills. In addition, the rich, when buying property, can be asked to pay a portion of the money to subsidise the costs of purchasing homes for the poor. Further tax reductions can be given for charitable rich people who have considerable contributions in building public facilities such as hospitals. At eating outlets where the rich frequent, the governments can allow subsidisation of food costs to make it much more affordable to the poor. The rich can also agree to lend out their expensive cars to poor people for affordable prices so that the poor can at least get a chance to drive expensive cars(the rich gain monetarily too!).
Note: I am a busy student with no time to read or reply to your comments. Please do not criticise anyone in your comments as this blog is meant to be constructive. If I have unintentionally criticised anyone or any organisations, please accept my sincere apologies. This article is not meant to increase tensions between classes and if this negative consequence result from this, I also would like to express my sincere apologies.
For more details on appropiate behaviour and conditions of my blog, please see the blog titled Kenneth blogs blog rules.
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Saturday, 5 April 2014
Charity is the way to go
In my last post on Markovnikov's application to economics, I shared
on how charity is a effective solution to reduce inequality between the
rich and the poor. In this post, I will explain how charity can be
effectively used as a redistribution method for workers' welfare.
Redistribution method
To make charity a effective redistribution method, the following criteria must be observed:
1) The needs of the workers must be adequately addressed
- The 4 basic needs of many workers are: food, transport, healthcares and homes
Most workers are worried that with inflation, the above 3 necessities will be beyond their reach.
Hence, in order to effectively tackle these 4 problems, charities dealing with workers' welfare must be subdivided into these 4 groups.
Food division
-Raise funds for the purchase of free food for workers in the lower and middle income groups(Where workers with lower income get priority)
-Funds can also be given to food producers, especially fast food and local food producers, to subsidise the cost of food
Transport division
-Funds raised should aim to purchase fuel vouchers to reduce long-term cost of fuel
-Cars can be loaned at a cheap rate for workers to use on a monthly or yearly basis with the charities paying for fuel costs. This reduces the burden of the worker for fuel costs.
-Charities can work with public transport companies to reduce costs through subsidisation of public transport fares
Healthcare division
-Charities can operate free or highly subsidised medical treatment centres where medical professionals can volunteer to provide these healthcare services.
-Rich donors should actively fund the construction and operation of more public hospitals to ensure affordable healthcare for workers
Homes division
-Suggestion: The "Rich sponsor the poor" approach: The rich donors can subsidise workers' home ownership prices to reduce net housing costs for workers. They can take an alternative approach by funding the workers' electricity and water bills to reduce the economic burden of workers.
2)There must be adequate number of rich donors and volunteers
For charities to raise enough funds to benefit communities of workers, there must be enough donors and volunteers who are willing to sustain these operations. Here are some suggestions for increasing number of donors and volunteers.
1)Publicity
Through social media, conventional media like TV and radio stations and other means of communication, charities can promote their activities and encourage volunteerism and to raise funds.
2)By holding mass donation drives(Commonly done but necessary)
3)By approaching foreign donors
How will these benefit workers?
1)Reduce economic burden through subsidisation of costs
2)Build more trust between workers and rich people-> Increase in friendship and less conflict
3)Gives social security to workers->Progressive improvement in standard of living
4)Reduced government burden on providing social security for workers, more funds devoted to improving standard of living on other aspects of workers' lives.
Note: As I am a busy student, I have no time to read or comment on your comments. Please do not criticise anyone in your comments as this blog is meant to be constructive. If I have unintentionally criticised anyone in this post please accept my sincere apologies. Thank you for reading this post and have a good day ahead.
Redistribution method
To make charity a effective redistribution method, the following criteria must be observed:
1) The needs of the workers must be adequately addressed
- The 4 basic needs of many workers are: food, transport, healthcares and homes
Most workers are worried that with inflation, the above 3 necessities will be beyond their reach.
Hence, in order to effectively tackle these 4 problems, charities dealing with workers' welfare must be subdivided into these 4 groups.
Food division
-Raise funds for the purchase of free food for workers in the lower and middle income groups(Where workers with lower income get priority)
-Funds can also be given to food producers, especially fast food and local food producers, to subsidise the cost of food
Transport division
-Funds raised should aim to purchase fuel vouchers to reduce long-term cost of fuel
-Cars can be loaned at a cheap rate for workers to use on a monthly or yearly basis with the charities paying for fuel costs. This reduces the burden of the worker for fuel costs.
-Charities can work with public transport companies to reduce costs through subsidisation of public transport fares
Healthcare division
-Charities can operate free or highly subsidised medical treatment centres where medical professionals can volunteer to provide these healthcare services.
-Rich donors should actively fund the construction and operation of more public hospitals to ensure affordable healthcare for workers
Homes division
-Suggestion: The "Rich sponsor the poor" approach: The rich donors can subsidise workers' home ownership prices to reduce net housing costs for workers. They can take an alternative approach by funding the workers' electricity and water bills to reduce the economic burden of workers.
2)There must be adequate number of rich donors and volunteers
For charities to raise enough funds to benefit communities of workers, there must be enough donors and volunteers who are willing to sustain these operations. Here are some suggestions for increasing number of donors and volunteers.
1)Publicity
Through social media, conventional media like TV and radio stations and other means of communication, charities can promote their activities and encourage volunteerism and to raise funds.
2)By holding mass donation drives(Commonly done but necessary)
3)By approaching foreign donors
How will these benefit workers?
1)Reduce economic burden through subsidisation of costs
2)Build more trust between workers and rich people-> Increase in friendship and less conflict
3)Gives social security to workers->Progressive improvement in standard of living
4)Reduced government burden on providing social security for workers, more funds devoted to improving standard of living on other aspects of workers' lives.
Note: As I am a busy student, I have no time to read or comment on your comments. Please do not criticise anyone in your comments as this blog is meant to be constructive. If I have unintentionally criticised anyone in this post please accept my sincere apologies. Thank you for reading this post and have a good day ahead.
Markovnikov's rule and its possible applications to social economics
Note: I am not an economics student, but I noticed a relation(even if
it is not very clear) between Markovnikov's rule (In chemistry) and
several real world economic scenarios. The content in this post will not
be very scientific, as I do not list figures and most of the
definitions are simplified so that it is easy to understand. The purpose
of this post is to notify and highlight a possible relationship between
Markovnikov's principles and real world economic scenarios, hence it
should not be taken scientifically at this point. Only if people decide
to take my observation one step further then it will be elevated to a
scientific level, but this is entirely up to you.
The most common way to remember Markovnikov's rule: The rich gets more, the poor gets less.
From this simplified understanding of the application of Markovnikov's rule, we can establish a direct link between this and the rising inequality in countries, a serious issue worldwide. So, why am I using this term instead of merely stating the obvious:The rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer?
The key idea is that there is a strange, but rarely explored link between science concepts and economics. Many of these science concepts clearly show that nature tries to oppose instability or inequality in the system, and these methods are discovered by scientists through experimentation and data analysis. In the real world, economics have similar problems but most of the time, people use different methods, of varying degrees of effectiveness, to try to solve the problems. Should it be time for us to relook our scientific concepts and apply the methods nature uses to restore balance in the system to solve inequality?
(Before looking at the next paragraph, may I request that you discard all negative stereotypes of the different economic classes and look at the scenario objectively. This will ensure that the scenario below will not incite any hatred towards other classes)
Now, let us consider a particular scenario. Imagine that a new deal/opportunity emerges and various groups of people from a country, let us call it country A, tries to benefit from it. A consists of businessmen, workers and farmers, where the businessmen are generally richer than the workers and the farmers(not implying communism here, let us stick to A being a capitalist country). Now, the deal is highly lucrative but who will benefit more from it? If we take a look at real world scenarios, we find that for most of the time, the businessmen would gain more, while the poorer people will gain less. Why is this so? Businessmen from A would not only be able to seize better opportunities due to their high capital, but they have the expertise and highly paid experts to analyse the situation and produce the best outcome by using the most profitable method. On the other hand, the poorer people have less analysis of the situation and are hence unable to derive much from this new opportunity. Even if some of them have the knowledge, but they lack the capital. So, from this scenario, we see the richer people(the businessmen) having the clear advantage. The result, massive increase in incomes for the rich, while small increases in income for the poor.
So, what implications and benefits does such a scenario have on the country's economy.
Benefits: Businessmen become richer, able to create more jobs, more revenue for country's government, improvement of infrastructure and transportational facilities, increased standard of living and quality of life for all citizens.
Implications: High inequality, inflation due to people becoming richer, tension and distrust between classes.
So, this is the scenario that we are in today. We see a paradox here, while more jobs are being created and this increases job security, there is increased distrust between the rich and the poor as there is a decline in social security. Workers need both to be happy(not considering other factors). So, are the citizens of the country happier or more depressed? In fact, they become more depressed because there is a loss of social cohesion and a common national identity. Instead of being brothers or sisters, people of different classes now see each other as conflicting and different groups of people and this clearly reduces the happiness levels of people in society.
So, now we should ask ourselves, does science have a solution to similar scenarios? The answer is yes, but for this, we now turn to Physics concepts on electromagnetic induction. Remember Lenz's law? Let us apply it to this scenario. When there is a change, people will oppose the change, if we follow Lenz's law closely. But in real world scenarios, the conept is a little more abstract, because when people oppose the change, there will still be people who oppose the people who oppose the change. So what do we do now? For this, we now turn to the psychological aspect and ask ouselves what it means to be a compassionate human being. If we see a fierce tug of war between classes, should we stand by and stare at them, or should we move forward to stop? I am sure most of you would be kind enough to stop them and try to resolve the situation through mediation. This mediation, in real world scenarios, is actually charity. If the rich gives to the poor, will the poor be anything but thankful? And if the rich gives willingly, will the rich be unhappy about it? No, and the problem is solved. Do we see this anywhere in nature? Yes, in the global redistribution of heat energy(General circulation model) in Geography. So, in actual fact, charity is the solution to economic inequality social issues in society. It might not solve the problem completely but at least it reduces the problems and overtime, people will develop so much trust in each other that we will no longer feel we are unequal. Once again, inequality may be represented by data, but the true interpretation of inequality is through the eyes of the people.
So, you might be confused and wondering what does Markovnikov's rule have to do with everything written in the above paragraph? Well, Markovnikov's rule is merely the ignition, the idea that allows us to visualise and understand the issue. It is only through understanding that we realise we need to frantically solve the issue due to inequality, and through scientific concepts we apply other methods to solve it. So, without the ignition, would we go ahead to crack our brains to solve it? Absolutely not. So, one thing leads to another.
I hope you have gained a new perspective on how Markovnikov's rule could be possibly applied to social economic understanding. Even though my explanations may be scientifically shallow, but it may just ignite the passion of researchers to study this inequality issue and propose practical, effective solutions to solve inequality and bridge humanity together.
Note: As I am a busy student, I have no time to read or reply your comments. Please do not criticise anyone(including me) on this blog, as the blog is strictly reserved for constructive discussion. If I had unintentionally offended anyone, please accept my sincere apologies and forgive me for my mistake. Once again, thank you for reading my post and have a nice day ahead.
The most common way to remember Markovnikov's rule: The rich gets more, the poor gets less.
From this simplified understanding of the application of Markovnikov's rule, we can establish a direct link between this and the rising inequality in countries, a serious issue worldwide. So, why am I using this term instead of merely stating the obvious:The rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer?
The key idea is that there is a strange, but rarely explored link between science concepts and economics. Many of these science concepts clearly show that nature tries to oppose instability or inequality in the system, and these methods are discovered by scientists through experimentation and data analysis. In the real world, economics have similar problems but most of the time, people use different methods, of varying degrees of effectiveness, to try to solve the problems. Should it be time for us to relook our scientific concepts and apply the methods nature uses to restore balance in the system to solve inequality?
(Before looking at the next paragraph, may I request that you discard all negative stereotypes of the different economic classes and look at the scenario objectively. This will ensure that the scenario below will not incite any hatred towards other classes)
Now, let us consider a particular scenario. Imagine that a new deal/opportunity emerges and various groups of people from a country, let us call it country A, tries to benefit from it. A consists of businessmen, workers and farmers, where the businessmen are generally richer than the workers and the farmers(not implying communism here, let us stick to A being a capitalist country). Now, the deal is highly lucrative but who will benefit more from it? If we take a look at real world scenarios, we find that for most of the time, the businessmen would gain more, while the poorer people will gain less. Why is this so? Businessmen from A would not only be able to seize better opportunities due to their high capital, but they have the expertise and highly paid experts to analyse the situation and produce the best outcome by using the most profitable method. On the other hand, the poorer people have less analysis of the situation and are hence unable to derive much from this new opportunity. Even if some of them have the knowledge, but they lack the capital. So, from this scenario, we see the richer people(the businessmen) having the clear advantage. The result, massive increase in incomes for the rich, while small increases in income for the poor.
So, what implications and benefits does such a scenario have on the country's economy.
Benefits: Businessmen become richer, able to create more jobs, more revenue for country's government, improvement of infrastructure and transportational facilities, increased standard of living and quality of life for all citizens.
Implications: High inequality, inflation due to people becoming richer, tension and distrust between classes.
So, this is the scenario that we are in today. We see a paradox here, while more jobs are being created and this increases job security, there is increased distrust between the rich and the poor as there is a decline in social security. Workers need both to be happy(not considering other factors). So, are the citizens of the country happier or more depressed? In fact, they become more depressed because there is a loss of social cohesion and a common national identity. Instead of being brothers or sisters, people of different classes now see each other as conflicting and different groups of people and this clearly reduces the happiness levels of people in society.
So, now we should ask ourselves, does science have a solution to similar scenarios? The answer is yes, but for this, we now turn to Physics concepts on electromagnetic induction. Remember Lenz's law? Let us apply it to this scenario. When there is a change, people will oppose the change, if we follow Lenz's law closely. But in real world scenarios, the conept is a little more abstract, because when people oppose the change, there will still be people who oppose the people who oppose the change. So what do we do now? For this, we now turn to the psychological aspect and ask ouselves what it means to be a compassionate human being. If we see a fierce tug of war between classes, should we stand by and stare at them, or should we move forward to stop? I am sure most of you would be kind enough to stop them and try to resolve the situation through mediation. This mediation, in real world scenarios, is actually charity. If the rich gives to the poor, will the poor be anything but thankful? And if the rich gives willingly, will the rich be unhappy about it? No, and the problem is solved. Do we see this anywhere in nature? Yes, in the global redistribution of heat energy(General circulation model) in Geography. So, in actual fact, charity is the solution to economic inequality social issues in society. It might not solve the problem completely but at least it reduces the problems and overtime, people will develop so much trust in each other that we will no longer feel we are unequal. Once again, inequality may be represented by data, but the true interpretation of inequality is through the eyes of the people.
So, you might be confused and wondering what does Markovnikov's rule have to do with everything written in the above paragraph? Well, Markovnikov's rule is merely the ignition, the idea that allows us to visualise and understand the issue. It is only through understanding that we realise we need to frantically solve the issue due to inequality, and through scientific concepts we apply other methods to solve it. So, without the ignition, would we go ahead to crack our brains to solve it? Absolutely not. So, one thing leads to another.
I hope you have gained a new perspective on how Markovnikov's rule could be possibly applied to social economic understanding. Even though my explanations may be scientifically shallow, but it may just ignite the passion of researchers to study this inequality issue and propose practical, effective solutions to solve inequality and bridge humanity together.
Note: As I am a busy student, I have no time to read or reply your comments. Please do not criticise anyone(including me) on this blog, as the blog is strictly reserved for constructive discussion. If I had unintentionally offended anyone, please accept my sincere apologies and forgive me for my mistake. Once again, thank you for reading my post and have a nice day ahead.
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