A poetic, cynical analysis of politics, unfortunately timeless….
Old people asleep under yesterday's news
A freezing denial of Capital views
Wrapped from the winter in hopeless desertion
While oil heaters soothe our leader inertia
The Ministers gag until Parliament stands
No solvent like recess for washing the hands.
Carousel fever, polepidemic
Power the plague, and glory symptonic
Good men and true have succumbed to the curse
Humanity's syphillis dressed as nurse
More power prescribed as cure for the ill
Sinecure sanctity, smoothest of pills.
Ignorant rhetoric will always appease
A ravenous thirst for mass marketing sleaze
Confidence, colour and loads of compassion
Offering silk from pork auricle rations
Bidding for destiny's role of Messiah
A flourishing specie, Earnest Pariah.
Barely beneath this posturing swagger
Is hidden a sheathed amorphous dagger
Policies hacked from pre-polling-booth crass
Poverty, pestilence, pain for the mass
Tear-streaked appeals or national fervour
Fail to dissuade the starving from murder.
Enter the honest man seeking endorsement
Shouting the truth from podium and pavement
But truth lacks conviction and wreaks of decline
So parasites push for the cosy sublime
Exit the honest man broken and bloody
Onward the bureaucrat smiling and ruddy.
Michael Reid
July 1992
© Michael Geoffrey Reid 1992, all rights reserved
As Autumn recalls the Capital's beauty
(Wasted foliage dying in style)
Government Ministers head to their duty
To gather a case of denial
The Cabinet meets in the plush furnished room
Having pranced for reporters outside
They're all looking splendid in mid-career bloom
Where their egos and ethics collide
"Agenda" begins the paper before them
Yet below it the page is quite bare
Members methodically ponder this portent
With well practised omniscient stares
The P.M. appears looking cool and robust
His suit of the best foreign label
Then speaks in a manner designed to disgust
The roughest of men at the table
"Some backbencher mentioned the dole queues to me
And the Balance of Payments, and stress
Well let me explain so we all can agree
The real issue which we must address
"There's only one cause in Australia today
That is truly worth fighting about
And that's whether we'll still be drawing our pay
When the '93 voters are out
"Real issues and cold facts are not to be seen
From this moment and until the poll
The object of course is a giant smokescreen
To make Hewson and Fightback! look droll
"This week we shall force a debate on the flag
And next week we'll sing a new anthem
And if any democrat vetos a gag
We'll hold his fat pension for ransom
"We're the battler's friend and the nation's elite
And we care for our comrades, amen
But how can we help if we're out on the street
Where we'd be useless scum-bags like them
"We must keep our efforts directed and clear
Away from these pointless distractions
And if any Member should cry like a steer
I'll castrate his whole bloody faction
"Well Gentlemen let us return to our task
To carry us through the election
And if we survive you might venture to ask
Was Keating the new resurrection.
Michael Reid
May 1992
© Michael Geoffrey Reid 1992, all rights reserved
Our philosophies we apply to ClubMaster and ClubMaster Membership
This is an open discussion to enable ClubMaster Members to contribute to the development and maintenance of our collective philosophies. At the outset this is roughly fragmented and very repetitive, often suggesting alternatives, as we seek to refine both our position and our presentation. Please offer your positive suggestions in Comments.
The ClubMaster Club is a private unincorporated special interest group which encourages and supports the following:
Our Mottos:
Do no harm - to good citizens, to the planet
Leave no footprint - try to leave it better than you found it
Add value - improve things and leave a positive legacy
Lift all boats - equal opportunity, win-win, avoid unfair exploitation
* Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.
Our Core Members Charter:
A simplified version:
THE CLUBMASTER CORE GOALS
ClubMaster wants to change the world for the better.
We’d love to participate in:
ClubMaster is building platforms (The ClubMaster Protocols) towards these Core Goals, including:
Members can demonstrate their commitment to these goals by:
Within ClubMaster itself, our goals are primarily:
ClubMaster Members commit to the following policies:
Good Citizens - “Citi/Cits”
Protected Citizens - “Proty/Protes”
Probationary Citizens - “Proby/Probies”
Suspended Citizens - “Suspy/Suspies”
Expelled Citizens - “Expy/Expies”
Declaration of International Rights and Responsibilities:
This is a broad-brush summary, which requires reference to the Citizens Protocol, and other selected documents. These will result in a continual updating of the following. In the meantime, let's get the conversation started...!!!
A Summary of the Elements:
Water - Free water for all Citizens, Residents, Visitors
Food - Open market sources for all Citizens, Residents, Visitors - Free for all PC’s*
Communication - Open market sources for all Citizens, Residents, Visitors - Free for all PC’s*
Power - Warming, Cooling, Lighting, Cooking (these free for all PC’s*), Transportation, Production
Health - Free Healthcare for all Citizens and Residents (plus limited Healthcare for visitors)
Childcare - Free Childcare for all Citizens and Residents (plus limited Childcare for visitors)
Education - Free Education for all Citizens and Residents (plus limited Education for visitors)
Law and Order - Free Protection for all Citizens, Residents, Visitors
Essential Elements:
Infrastructure - Services, Transportation - Free for all PC’s*
Industry - Free Enterprise under Duty of Care Doctrine
Democracy - Doctrine of the Separation of Powers (Government, Law, Religion/Belief)
Community - Protection under Duty of Care Doctrine
Opportunity Equality - Zero discrimination simply by virtue of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or religion
Individual And Collective Role - No rights without responsibilities.
*PC’s are Protected Citizens.
WHITE PAPER - AUSTRALIAʼS CORE VALUES
Equality for All - Rights to education, health, worship
The individual right to choose career, partner, course of study
Commitment to respect and protect Citizens
Commitment to a democratic society
Belief in a free enterprise, laissez faire economy
Commitment to the rule of law and undertaking to act lawfully
Acknowledgement of marriage as two adult people of any gender in a relationship of
equality
Responsibility not to incite hatred or violence
Belief in society providing care for the Genuinely Disadvantaged
Belief in the direct correlation between contribution and entitlements, for all but the
Genuinely Disadvantaged
Acknowledgment of both rights and responsibilities
Employers and employees to demonstrate mutual care
Rejection of any individual, organisation or religion which promotes a restriction of the
rights of Citizens
CITIZENS AND THE GENUINELY DISADVANTAGED
Citizenship bestows benefits which are unavailable to non-citizens;
Citizenship is bestowed at birth;
Citizenship may be suspended or cancelled;
Temporary or Probationary Citizenship may be bestowed on refugees and immigrants who
otherwise meet the requirements of Citizenship;
A Citizen who is Genuinely Disadvantaged becomes a Protected Citizen, either temporarily
or permanently depending on the nature of the Disadvantage, subject to otherwise
meeting the reasonable requirements of Citizenship;
The Genuinely Disadvantaged may include the young, the elderly, and the physically or
mentally disabled.
Rules of Citizenship:
A Citizen who is convicted of a criminal offence will have their Citizenship suspended;
A Citizen who is convicted of treason, a major criminal offence, or a series of criminal
offences, will have their Citizenship revoked;
A Temporary or Probationary Citizen who is charged with a criminal offence will have their
Citizenship suspended;
A Temporary or Probationary Citizen who is convicted of a criminal offence will have their
Citizenship revoked, and will be repatriated to their country of origin;
Definition of a Citizen:
A Citizen is one who seeks to exhibit good character, and consideration for all other
Citizens; who acknowledges the direct correlation between contribution and entitlements;
who recognises the need to care for the Genuinely Disadvantaged; who declares and
practices respect for other Citizens; who respects and honours the rule of law and the
tenets of justice; who promotes and practices equality amongst genders and races; who
understand that the role as Citizen exceeds personal religious convictions;
Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities
I hereby commit:
To be a Citizen;
To honour the Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities;
To live with honour and decency;
To contribute positively to society to the best of my ability;
To the pursuit of justice;
To the pursuit of peaceful resolution;
To government elected by the majority of adult Citizens of sound mind;
To the right of every adult Citizen of sound mind to vote by secret ballot;
To the right of every adult Citizen of sound mind to worship;
To equality between all races and genders of Citizens;
To the elimination of poverty amongst all Citizens;
To the protection of all Citizens from persecution;
To the protection of young, weak, sick, infirm, and elderly Citizens;
To the right of every Citizen to education, health care, employment and physical protection;
To the right of every Citizen to have freedom of speech without persecution;
To actively support and welcome the success of all Citizens who commit to and honour
The Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities.
The Rights of a Citizen
The right to reside in the Country
The right to live freely
The right to be employed or self employed
The right to personal choice in the pursuit of career, partner, religion, or course of study
The right to be protected by a democratic system of government, supported by the
doctrine of the separation of powers
The right to participate in the nomination and selection of candidates for members of
parliament
The right to vote at public elections and referenda by secret ballot
The right to receive a public education
The right to choose, at cost, private education
The right to receive high quality public medical care
The right to choose, at cost, private medical care
The right to live in safety and free of oppression
It was a pleasure to meet Justin Derksen at Great Lake Hotel.
Justin is doing the rounds in his bid for election in Lyons, presenting his views to the folks of New Norfolk and central Tasmania. We had a brief but interesting discussion on politics, health, education, and his passion to serve his community.
For those interested in learning more about Justin, you might select this link: https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/justin-derksen
Many of the world’s minds have been contemplating the future of the USD in its role as the global economic unit of account.
Many are positing that Bitcoin will inevitably replace the USD. Others are anticipating a return of the Gold Standard. China, of course, is jockeying for the Yuan to take this role.
In my humble opinion all of these would be a misstep. They would all would fall short of the measure we need to define the next chapter for humanity.
In contemplating a new unit of account for the next century, we should seek one which indicates the global human condition on the broadest scale possible. It should be a standard which reflects the position of the masses, eliminating the distortions created by the super wealthy. Ideally, it would also be a standard which actively encourages us all to seek to lift all boats, to eliminate poverty, disease, repression, and tyranny everywhere.
In this context I propose The Humanity Standard.
The Humanity Standard will inform us how we’re performing as humans, on a global scale. It will link us and our condition to each other.
Normally an index would apply a balanced perspective by discounting the top and bottom margins. This is a method we apply when presenting various indices, such as index interest rates - we choose not to count the top or bottom 10%, and to average the 80% in between. This formula serves in eliminating the distortions often created by outliers.
My proposal for The Humanity Standard varies somewhat from this methodology, in that we do not wish to dispossess any of the poorest, the unhealthiest, the most repressed. We do wish to ignore, for the purpose of this super-index, only the extremes at the top end of wealth, health, and freedom, as they ridiculously distort the true picture of humanity on a global scale.
For this reason we would include in our calculations the bottom 10%, but not the top 10%, of the global population.
The Humanity Standard is a composite of indices reflecting the critical factors which determine our collective position as a global village.
The key indices I propose to be included are:
1. net wealth,
2. net income,
3. health,
4. safety, and
5. freedom.
As described above, these indices are calculated on the bottom 90% of the world’s population.
The Humanity Standard does not assess regions, continents, countries, states, governments, companies or other entities. It only assesses living individuals.
One critical element to be resolved is the weighting of the five indices. In the interests of simplicity, transparency, and honesty, I propose each index be afforded equal weight. I consider each to be equally important to the human condition.
Another critical element is the base currency for measure of relative wealth and income. This needs to be a unit of measure with the least potential for manipulation by governments, market-makers, and corporations. This requires further assessment, however BTC is perhaps the simplest option at present. The other option would be a proposed World Currency Index, which would be a composite of the middle 80% of world currency values, each measured on a per capita basis.*
Another element is of course the formulae to be employed in measuring the qualitative indices of health, safety, and freedom. These indices already exist in many forms, including some with significant autonomy and integrity. I do not anticipate this aspect to offer any significant impediment.
Once all these elements are established, it would be appropriate to embed them into a smart contract on the blockchain, to limit unwanted interference in the formulae, calculations, and reports.
Many will argue that The Humanity Standard is some form of communist plot to isolate the wealthiest from the rest of the world. On the contrary, there is a natural disinclination to eliminate such an enormous amount of wealth and income from calculations. This composite index, The Humanity Index, is not meant to measure the value of the world’s population. It is meant to measure our humanity. Hopefully this will cause us all to approach the future with a view to unifying humanity, by ensuring that our own measure of real value is directly connected to the status of all.
Our goal is to have The Humanity Standard constantly rising, and never, ever falling.
©️ Michael G. Reid 2024
About the Author:
I am not a scholar, I am not an industry leader, I am not a politician. I am a common man, with no particular axe to grind other than a desire for humanity everywhere to be financially comfortable, healthy, safe, and free. I am personally in reasonable health, financially comfortable without being extremely wealthy, and I live in one of the most stable and successful democracies in the world.
*By way of full disclosure, I’ve been designing a digital currency which might provide the solution to the issue of measuring relative wealth and income, however I’m likely to run out of energy, commitment, breath or other resources before that project takes flight….. 😃
This piece was written on a deck outside our camper van, whilst visiting the magnificent Mersey Bluff Caravan Park in northern Tasmania. The date is 29th January, 2024. Here’s my view….
A Sensible and Peaceful Revolution in Politics
The following is a personal opinion piece from Michael Reid, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of ClubMaster.
Our modern democratic political systems have been structured based on almost ancient principles and assumptions.
The representation system has been essential in previous centuries, caused by limitations primarily in education and communication.
By their nature, or more accurately by human nature, the representation system has become bloated, inefficient, and non-representative of the communities they claim to represent.
I have argued for decades that the Australian political structure is more bloated than most, given these three fat and expensive tiers of government are representing less than 28 million people.
As someone with a habit of bloating my own corporate structures in establishing and developing business ventures, it pains me to acknowledge that our current political structure is clearly a nonsense.
Fast forward to 2022, and we now enjoy, in almost every democratic society of the World, extremely high levels of education, and almost unlimited access to communication. To my great dismay, I have witnessed in recent decades the deliberate deterioration of education, invariably for political gain.
Now is the time to cease shuffling the deck chairs, and to embrace a fundamental change in the way decisions are made by and on behalf of the citizens.
Setting aside the risks posed by influence with ignorance, and the dangers posed by knee-jerk responses to social and other media bias, most citizens are genuinely community-minded.
The majority of the population are across many of the issues, and more than ever before are educated and intelligent.
Had political representatives remained truly representative of their community, and not been so prone to influence, corruption, and power-focus, the status quo may have been retained.
Instead, many now acknowledge that it’s time for truly structural reform, for a redefinition of community decision-making. Technology is the vehicle which enables this reform, alongside education and communication.
Whilst we’re at it, massive political structural reform needs to be accompanied by fundamental reforms of financial, taxation, and expenditure application.
My fervent wish for the future for Australia includes the following:
Democracies need to return to a focus on community, and to the value-add proposition. Non-democracies need to focus on becoming democracies.
Technology enables efficiency; efficiency eliminates waste of financial and other resources; reduced waste results in the redirection of resources, including human resources, into value adding; a direct debits tax and the redirection into adding value will help to eliminate parasite activities at all levels, being individual, commercial, and bureaucratic. A social order will ensure those who deserve protection are afforded protection with dignity.
At a personal level, I want to become more proud of my country. I want to feel safe, not just from “threats foreign and domestic” (to borrow from others), but also from undue interference foreign and domestic; I want my country to know every person who occupies the country; I want the country’s key assets to be owned by the Citizens of the Country; I want every Good Citizen to be protected and valued, and to be committed to their local, regional and National communities; and I want Australia to encourage and support all other nations to adopt and embrace similar strategies and philosophies.
My proposal for the next global economic unit of account
Many of the world’s minds have been contemplating the future of the USD in its role as the global economic unit of account.
Many are positing that Bitcoin will inevitably replace the USD. Others are anticipating a return of the Gold Standard. China, of course, is jockeying for the Yuan to take this role.
In my humble opinion all of these would be a misstep. They would all would fall short of the measure we need to define the next chapter for humanity.
In contemplating a new unit of account for the next century, we should seek one which reflects the global human condition on the broadest scale possible. It is a standard which should identify the quality-of-life status of the masses, eliminating the distortions created by the super wealthy. It should also be a standard which actively encourages us all to seek to lift all boats, to eliminate poverty, disease, repression and tyranny.
In this context I propose The Humanity Standard.
The Humanity Standard will inform us how we’re performing as humans, on a global scale. It will link us and our condition to each other.
Normally an index would apply a balanced perspective by discounting the top and bottom margins. This is a method we apply when presenting various indices, such as index interest rates - we choose not to count, say, the top or bottom 10%, and to average the 80% in between. This formula serves in eliminating the distortions often created by outliers.
My proposal for The Humanity Standard varies somewhat from this methodology, in that we do not wish to dispossess any of the poorest, the unhealthiest, the most repressed. We do, however, wish to ignore, for the purpose of this super-index, only the extremes at the top end of wealth, health, and freedom, as they ridiculously distort the true picture of humanity on a global scale.
Thus we would include in our calculations the bottom 10%, but not the top 10%, of the global population.
All the world’s financial markets and exchange rates should compare against The Humanity Standard, which is a composite of indices reflecting the critical factors which determine our collective position as a global village.
The key indices I propose to be included are:
As described above, these indices are calculated on the bottom 90% of the world’s population.
The Humanity Standard does not assess regions, continents, countries, states, governments, companies or other entities. It only assesses living individuals.
One critical element to be resolved is the weighting of the five indices. In the interests of simplicity, transparency, and honesty, I propose each index be afforded equal weight.
Another critical element is the base currency for measure of relative wealth and income. This needs to be a unit of measure with the least potential for manipulation by governments, market-makers, and corporations. This requires further assessment, however BTC is perhaps the simplest option at present.
Another is of course the formulae to be employed in measuring the qualitative indices of health, safety, and freedom. These indices already exist in many forms, including some with significant autonomy and integrity. I do not anticipate this aspect to offer any significant impediment.
Once all these elements are established, it would be appropriate to embed them into a smart contract on the blockchain, to limit unwanted interference in the formulae, calculations and reports.
Many will argue that The Humanity Standard is some form of communist plot to isolate the wealthiest from the rest of the world. On the contrary, there is a natural disinclination to eliminate such an enormous amount of wealth and income from calculations. This composite index, however, is not meant to measure the value of the world’s population. It is meant to measure our humanity. Hopefully this will cause us all to approach the future with a view to unifying humanity, by ensuring that our own measure of real value is directly connected to the status of all humanity.
Our goal is to have The Humanity Standard constantly rising, and never, ever falling.
Michael Reid
29th January 2024 (as amended)
©️ Michael G. Reid 2024
About the Author:
I am not a scholar, I am not an industry leader, I am not a politician. I am a common man, with no particular axe to grind other than a desire for humanity everywhere to be financially comfortable, healthy, safe, and free. I am personally in reasonable health, financially comfortable without being extremely wealthy, and I live in one of the most stable and successful democracies in the world.
By way of full disclosure, I have been designing a digital currency which might provide the solution to the issue of measuring relative wealth and income, however I’m likely to run out of energy, commitment, breath or other resources before that project takes flight….. 😃
This piece was written on a deck outside our camper van, whilst visiting the magnificent Mersey Bluff Caravan Park in northern Tasmania. The image accompanying this Post is my view….
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