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Mission Statement
To design and promote productive, fair and stable socio-economic systems
worldwide, with as goal to provide every human being on earth with the means
to live a decent life.
Background
This organization was founded by a product development engineer who over a 40 year
career span came to the firm conclusion that we have technologically all the means
needed to provide all the people on this earth with the means to live a decent
life. With that is meant that we can provide everybody with the food, clothing,
basic shelter and basic medical care needed, without fears that those basics are
not there, and thus can give everybody the ingredients to build oneself a happy
life.
Aside from disruptions caused by natural disasters, like earthquakes, windstorms,
volcanic eruptions, etc., which can be mitigated today with our technical means
quite well too, there is NO JUSTIFICATION for not achieving this, except that we
have not been able to put the organizational systems together yet to achieve
this.
The lack of such fully developed socio-economic organizational systems has caused
immense human suffering and endangers the industrialized and developing nations
alike. The industrialized nations have been plagued by instabilities since the
arrival of major industrialization in the 19th century. Among others this lead to
the Great Depression , which plagued the world from 1929 until World War II and
was a major factor in creating that war. Large sections of humanity, mostly in
the developing nations, still live in a state of poverty and hopelessness that is
not their fault, and therefore are prone to acts of desperation which can hurt us
all, as we have seen for example in the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 in
New York City and Washington, D.C.
It is our goal to design those socio-economic organizational systems and to do
everything reasonably possible to implement them as fast as possible.
The Power of Organization
There are many examples of what good organization can accomplish. The Egyptian
Pyramids and the Greek temples could not have been built without a way to organize
a large group of people. The Roman Empire was to a large extent based on their
organizational skills. Modern science created the technical possibilities, but
organizational talents created the large, often multi-national companies which
gave us cars, TV's, computers, transportation services, communication services and
many other things at very modest prices, to an extent unimaginable only 200 years
ago.
There is no reason why these organizational capabilities cannot be used to create
sound socio-economic systems. Three steps are needed. First the socio-economic
systems have to be designed; second legislation has to be formulated and enacted;
and third they have to be implemented, which requires that people have to learn
how to use the legislated systems.
This web site presently addresses mostly the first step: design of the
socio-economic systems. We hope to expand this soon with the second step,
formulating and enacting legislation, such that the third step can be
accomplished.
Key to successful legislation in the socio-economic area is that the great
majority of the people can understand it and properly use it. This does not
require understanding all the details, just like properly driving a car does not
require understanding all the details of how it works. A good way to do this
in the socio-economic area (and perhaps even generally) would be to let the laws
consist of two sections. A first preamble section, which describes in general
terms and clear general language what the purpose of the law is, including the
human values that are at its root, and a second section which covers the details.
The first section should be such that, combined with basic human values and the
details unique to the field, the detail legislation becomes a LOGIC extension of
the preamble. The courts should be empowered to modify details, if they lead to
situations that are in conflict with the purpose of the law, as defined in the
preamble section of the law.
If the laws are set up as just described, they will be much easier for people to
understand. In addition the people will have to be informed that these
organizational laws exist and taught how to work with them. Much too little is
done in this area. Educational programs in schools and for adults have to be
developed, which focus on APPLYING organizational law and on LOGIC thinking in
socio-economic situations. It is the intent of the Modern Society Association to
be also very active in this area.
Approach
Designing better socio-economic systems is a complex matter and requires a NUMBER
of changes, which will have to interact properly with each other. This in itself
is somewhat of a new approach. In the past many socio-economic innovators tried
to reduce everything to one thing that had to be changed. For instance,
communists believed that communal ownership was going to be the cure-all,
capitalists that an unregulated business environment would cure everything. Their
movements often ended up in polarized confrontations with each other, and neither
achieved the goal of a better world. Modern science and technology have taught us
that the realities are complex and that we have to address that complexity in our
solutions. At the same time we need a relatively simple basic framework for
everyday use, which everybody with a normal properly functioning mind can
understand and learn to work with. This requires that we design a system that
selects a number of socio-economic options, so that we do not get confused by too
many options and end up with anarchy.
Basically this is the "invention" of this approach. The realization that
creating a framework of a limited number of carefully selected socio-economic
options, actually can give us MORE freedom and MORE time to do the things we like
to do, things that can give us enjoyment and happiness. Enjoyment and happiness
we find in options to work productively, to have family life, to travel, to
entertain ourselves in arts and sports, etc., NOT in having the freedom to pursue
a large number of complicated and poorly understood business practices. Many of
these business practices have lead in the recent past to abuses like the ones
practiced by the managements of ENRON, WorldCom and other large companies, which
caused great damage to employees and investors alike. Giving ourselves too many
socio-economic options, the implications of which we do not fully understand, will
create chaos, leading to disaster. This is not what we want!
Yet, this is what the unregulated business environment presently promoted by a
certain dominating segment in USA society is doing. It must be noted that a
substantial number of the people promoting these practices are wealthy people, who
are in a position that they can take advantage of the resulting free-for-all
confusion, because they have the means to get to understand it better than others
and thereby they can exploit the confusion to enrich themselves even more. They
can also pay lobbyists and make campaign contributions to influence legislators to
remove regulatory legislation, creating more of this free-for-all situation.
Essentially they are doing the same thing that criminals are doing. Pursuing
something that benefits them, and/or gives them enjoyment, at the expense of other
people. Like the criminals, they may get hurt in the end too, but in the mean
time they have destroyed a lot of opportunity and happiness for other people.
This greed driven movement is extremely damaging and dangerous to society, and can
cause a complete collapse of the socio-economic system, as it did during the Great
Depression.
In the following sections we will first present discussions of some more
background, basic problems and hurdles, the need for stability, the human values
which we have to use as the starting point, and some basic observations on
property, ownership and money.
These sections will be followed by a first draft for socio-economic restructuring,
consisting of a number of general principles.
These principles are designed to replace the present excess of allowed business
practices with a selection of clearly defined and strictly regulated options,
which give all people maximum freedom to pursue those things that have true
value.
These principles will be followed by sections which summarize how these principles
can be applied in the USA, Western Europe and Developing Nations.
A lot more work will be needed to refine the basics laid out here and to work out
the details of full proposals for individual countries or groups of countries.
Then even more work will be needed to implement them. We need to build a larger
organization for this and are looking for all the help we can get.
See the section on
Organizational Structure
for how you can help us with this effort.
Copyright Notice
© Copyright 2003 Modern Society Association. All rights reserved.
Publishing or otherwise distributing the material on this web site requires
written authorization by the Modern Society Association.
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