This post starts the rough draft of Chapter 4, the last section, for my non-fiction WiP, Baby Floors.
This section of chapter 4 has about 1000 words, (hopefully currently practicable words). Below, I will also include the outlines that I missed last week for Chapter 4.
And once again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases. This chapter will show what Phases III could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us. This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind will eventually have each person’s basic needs met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind.
Chapter Four:
( Chapter 4’s section I was last week…)
Chapter 4, section II
II. (1915/1250 wds): Later years of Phase III -What it could look like:
II. A (359/250 wds).
In the middle to last years of this “Three Universals, Plus” stage of our project, nearly 45 years since the beginning of Phase I, at this point, the task of advocating for and helping to implement a Single Payer System of universal health care across the entire United States. Due to the work of building up the public health service, and improving access to information and education of the earlier phases of this project, there should now be less and less smoking and drug usage, coupled with more and more recognition of the fact that “your health = our health” and accordingly, there will be less and less public expenditure on preventable health maladies. This all results in an easier task of implementing universal health care. Dedicated volunteers will continue to show the public how free condoms and birth control increase public health statistics in several areas, with the Single Payer System of universal health care as a driver for ever improving public and individual health outcomes across the board. As continuously updated public health and financial law workshops remind us all how pandemics have been driven by all residents and visitors in an area, the natural conclusion will become continuously clearer. That conclusion is that all people need free access to health care in order to protect the public, and that protection works more effectively when all people have access to basic preventative health care upon arrival in a community. Studies, and volunteers opening up access to those studies, will continue to show how a Single Payer System lowers the costs of prescription medications over the long term, and improves quality of life for all members of society. By the end of this Phase, 45 years after the start of Phase I and the efforts to build up the public health service, every single person in this country should be able to walk into any clinic, hospital, doctor’s office, or store, and update his or her medical history, make a cost free appointment for medically necessary procedures, and get information and advising on needed medical concerns, all in a safe and comfortable environment via safe, clean, comfortable and efficient public transportation.
II. B(330/250).
By the end stages of Phase III, the work of advocacy and educating should have led to the implementation of a truly universal basic income for every citizen in the United States, if not also for every resident of the country. The work of Andrew Yang to popularize the concept of a UBI for every American adult must, by this point, have come to be understood as the possibility of hope for all of society. It must also have been updated to include access to that rightful income by children able to care for themselves, in cases where parents, guardians, or caretakers are not taking sufficient steps to ensure the care and protection of said children. The results of the 2020 Basic Income pilot in Stockton, CA will also have had time to be understood and updated, by this time, so that every person in our society understands how we all benefit from putting a floor on poverty, want, and fear, through the issuance of a UBI, and why it must be all three things: Universal, Basic, and an Income. Many other documents explain the details of a UBI, but suffice it to say here that such an income must go directly to every individual resident in the form of federal money accessible to that individual without an unwanted intermediary. It should provide enough money to be able to buy all of the basics needed to live simply, including basic nutritious foods like beans or lentils, rice, organic greens (and we hope that by this time, all food will be grown without toxic chemicals), basic essential clothing, and basic safe individual shelter. That it is an individual income means that it must go directly to every man, woman, and child, with that child being able to have full and exclusive spending and saving control over his or her own money after, perhaps, passing a simple basic budgeting test to show ability to safely manage that money independently for basic daily needs. The details of how we could get to a place in which we can safely make this happen for us all we be discussed in chapter 9.
II. C (425/250wds).
Returning to the importance of education across each phase of this project, the last years of Phase III should see the solidifying of a movement across the country in favor of free preschool through PhD or vocational technical education for every member of society. By the end of this phase, marking 45 years of work on the overall project, all child care should already be of high quality educational time, whether designated as childcare or day care, as preschool willl be, but more so. The public education system, starting with the public library system, will have been shored up to be able to reach the highest standards of quality, as is already the case in many OECD countries. Free vocational technical, trade school, arts training, and apprenticeships with on the job training should all be freely available to all residents, by this point in the project, with the support and understanding of the importance of such availability of all of society. Clearly, there must also be free preparation and tutoring, provided one on one by individuals, or also provided by organizations working in the public interest rather than for profit, to ensure that each and every person willing to work hard enough and dedicate the required persistence has the opportunity, like the wealthy, to obtain the best preparation for any educational entrance exam. In this way, society can ensure that time will not be wasted by those merely seeking to use the time in college as a diversion, and can also be assured that only those qualified to complete the training offered by society actually embark upon such educational opportunities, and do not waste them. The benefit of making free university training up through and including research degrees, such as the PhD, should be obvious, when viewed in the light of the number of missed opportunities each person who does not pursue such research represents as a loss to society, in knowledge and in new tools build for later use. Often, research and development in a variety of disciplines does not show its practical utility until later on, when the engineering science has finally caught up with the theory developed years earlier, as in theoretical mathematics. For this reason, and more, all education must be free of cost, but full of work, with discipline and a sense of commitment to the good of society. In the last years of this phase, new educational courses to provide free training for Citizen Jury and government service should also be developed and offered, in preparation for Phase IV.
II. D (335/250wd).
By the end of this third phase of our project, most of the country could be using old tools which have been updated to become modern tools, some with a US twist, in keeping with the needs of each particular community and region in this large and diverse nation. For a local means of complementing the federal money supply, communities may choose to add a community issued currency to the supply of money in circulation, thus adding options for spending on and incubating local businesses, and providing another way of rewarding local customer loyalty. Local currencies have also been shown to improve levels of trust and empowerment within communities (citeGreenMoneyCommunityEmpowermentPaper2010). In combination with other old friends, like Ranked Choice Voting, aka IRV, which should also at this point be in use in cities, counties, and states for elections across the nation, such tools meet the needs of today, adding resources and options in local communities. Participatory Budgeting is another tool already well known places like Porto Alegro and Paris, where they have been used before, but perhaps less known here in the US, but by the end of Phase III, understood and used across the country. Likewise, citizens’ juries could be in use in many parts of the country to help develop local and regional policy, based on the work done in earlier years by dedicated volunteers to educate the public regarding the benefits of using such juries in answering a variety of policy development questions in other countries. Finally, youth courts, also known as teen or peer courts, already known in much of the US, should certainly have greatly expanded use, nation wide, and greater funding and support from a now far more well-informed and thoughtful citizenry. Thus, at then end of Phase III, as old tools have been adapted for modern use, the stage will also have been set for the building and sharing of newer tools, by a new generation, to solve the unique, multiple, and extremely challenging problems that face this new generation.
II. E (403/250wds).
Finally, at the end of Phase III, we finish advocating for and building some new tools in preparation for new policy crafting, and a new paradigm, coming forward in the next and final phase of this project. By this point, 45 years into our 60 year project, the DoE may be able to begin doing on a nation-wide level what many states may have been doing for some years, already: rotating teachers all around the US, as new teachers are rotated in many European countries already. The World Youth Parliament, like the Belgian Youth Parliament before it, could have, by this time, paved the way for experienced veterans of such bodies to take part in transforming the United Nations into a sort of world parliament, modeled, perhaps, on the European Parliament, with nation-states looking to the EU as one possible model for world wide cooperation. Here at home, the movement for a Constitutional Convention could suggest several updates for the needs of the coming centuries based on an educated population that did not exist in 1787, including the use of proportional representation as Denmark has, at least in the House of Representatives, and removing the Electoral College as no longer in keeping with an educated and engaged citizenry, and making health, education, housing, and basic food a human right, as several European constitutions also do. Provisions could also be added for frequent referrenda, as is done in Switzerland, as the start of a move toward greater levels of direct democracy, now that we have the technology to permit this process to work. Building on the work of the Adulthood Challenge rite of passage, this would be the time to begin working actively for all Adults to be placed into a jury pool for a variety of difficult responsibilities, including national policing and defense services, somewhat like that of the Swiss model. This pool of Adults could also be used to build the lottery for Sortition into the House of Representatives, once proper training in good governance and policy craft is assured (although much of that work, in reality, is done by Congressional staffers, rather than the elected lawmakers themselves). By the close of the final year of Phase III, the infrastructure, cultural, and policy tool preparation for a paradigm shift should now be in place, allowing the work of looking forward to the next and final stage of this project, Phase IV, to begin.
— (Next Wednesday: Chapter 5, Introductory section… )
I’m considering this Rough Draft as the block of clay from which my book will eventually emerge, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are still becoming more fixed in my mind as I write, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rough Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.
And once again, yeayyy( !!)with regard to audience, I may have at least a couple of comps: Walden Two meets The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective (by Dr.s Jean and Edgar Cahn, 1964). I know that lots of people consider Skinner’s writing to be stilted, but I like the tilt of most reviewers, in that the idea is that a community should keep trying policies that members agree upon until they find what works for all of them.
As for genre, I’m still wondering: clearly part of Non-fiction.
Many thanks to Dr. Garland for suggesting Philosophy!
Maybe also: System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.
Action Items:
1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how our society can solve homelessness, starting right now,
2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and
3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.
Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?
Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write,
Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans Offline),
and
and
a proposed
Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…
Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil
our year 2021 CE = 12021 HE
(Day 1 Lesson plan…)
Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.
Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.
Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page, and please do let us know here that you’ve reviewed it there! 🙂
Chapter 4
outlines.
Like this:
Like Loading...