Socio-Economic Issues
Few very simple reforms of common sense, with no expense, rather with substantial savings of public funds, can do a lot to help protect democracy and the quality of civic life. The following suggestions are based on a holistic view of the world, typical of the EthoPlasìn philosophy, where all forms of life are closely linked, a sense of 'Planet Oneness Responsibility', as per rule 6 of its discipline, and a deep interest in questions of Meritocracy and Philoecosophical Values.
The following suggestions are presented as spontaneously conceived by members for the purpose of the Suggestions Registry, without major concern for form or coordination with other pages, even if sometimes they are somewhat too idealistic or provocative to be implemented exactly as formulated. They are nevertheless good 'hot' food for thought.
It is also important to stress that although the following suggestions are interesting ones, submitted by members, they are not the official ones of the EthoPlasìn. The official ones are in two other pages. The first one refers to short term EthoPlasìn objectives: Lobbying To Change The World; The second one refers to long term EthoPlasìn objectives: EthoCracy.
Prisoners and Senior Citizens - Why should prisoners, who committed crimes, be treated better by society, with the use of public funds, than poor senior citizens who never committed crimes? Prisoners who commit crimes receive free doctor, free dentist, free food, free PC with internet connections, free TV, free clothing, free heating, free utilities, fresh linen every week, close personal attention many times a day... etc. Assisted senior citizens who never committed crimes receive none of this and often have to pay high prices or contributions from their small pensions, if not all of it, for their accommodation, their dentists, their clothing, their food and their utilities. A study should be conducted in cities with jails to ensure that prisoners in their city are not better treated than the average senior citizen assisted by that city, in particular the ones living in public hospices for abandoned old people.
Prisons overview -
All new jails should be built to become self-supporting and self-financing
Countryside Prison Farms (CPF).
All existing jails in turn, especially city jails, should be gradually
turned into new City Safety Hostels (CSH),
as explained below, also self-supporting for their food through the products
of the new type of Prison Farms (like shown on the picture to the right).
Pl
anning
should be done in such a way that, in principle, a CPF and a CSH would be
twinned, and both would be fully self-supporting for their current needs through the
auto supply and market sale of
the production of the biological products of the Prison Farm,
including, if possible, for the purchase of their equipment. All healthy
prisoners of working age would work for 8 hours a day for free, without
salary, as a compensation to society for the crimes they have committed. In
an ideal situation, only one third of their food products would go to their
own nutrition, one third to their matched CSH, and the last third would go
to feed free the children of public schools and the senior citizens of
public hospices of the city of attachment. Handicapped or senior prisoners
would be requested to work every day in the jail premises, instead of in the
field, for a number of hours fitted to their condition, for things like
cooking, washing dishes, laundry and various other cleaning or maintenance
jobs.
Criminals work free for the poor and improve their life style - As seen above, new jails should be built only in the countryside, with adequately enclosed areas that would easily include both a good dimension animal farm, to grow animals for meat production, and a vegetarian farm to grow vegetables, cereals and fruits to be consumed by both the prisoners and the poor people of the relevant city, all of it in a perfect biological environment of natural agricultural food production. This would not only save substantial public money but also give civic dignity to the prisoners who offended the community with their crimes, let alone offer them a healthy life style in open nature. In principle there should be no 'free meal' anymore, for the criminals of public jails, and no un-handicapped prisoner should be sitting idle, enjoying unmerited privileges, and doing nothing for the community where they committed their crimes, while many of the honest citizens of that same community starve or suffer serious poverty. By the same token, all city dog ponds should be gradually attached to such Farm Prisons, and maintained free by the inmates, including their food. This would not only also save public money, and give abandoned city dogs better living conditions, with a chance to run in the fields instead of being confided to small cages, but also give the prisoners natural 'friends' to associate with, if they have difficulty associating with their co-citizen inmates, and maybe this way help them develop a better civic sensibility and behavior for their life in the city after their eventual release. Healthy inmates refusing to provide their fair share of work as requested would be automatically restricted to small isolation cells, with minimal food, and with severe living conditions, for as long as needed for them to change their mind and start collaborating. Transferring existing city zoos to be attached to such Prison Farms should also be considered, for both financial reasons, with their food being provided free by the leftovers of the Prison Farm, and the perspective of giving the animals concerned a more natural living environment. The new Prison Farms should also include a small theater, where inmates would have a chance to develop their artistic talents after working hours and express themselves accordingly in front of all the others, for the serious appreciation of these co-inmates or for their good laugh. It should also include a small training technical school where inmates have a chance to learn a job or an artisan skill from the help of each other.
City jails become Safety Hostels - With the gradual transfer of inmates from city jails to the new Prison Farms, the city jail structures should be transformed into new City Safety Hostels (CSH). These would also be self-supportive, at least for their food, from part of the agricultural production of the new Prison Farm they are twinned with. In compensation, all guests of a CSH would have to contribute, according to their own condition, with some of their time and work while hosted in the CSH. In principle, all guests would be able to move in and out quite freely, but under strict ID control and registration of all their movements, even through the use of GPS bracelets if and when required. In turn, they would get free food, free bed and free medical service. They would also get free clothing in priority, if they so required, as from now on, all city old-clothes gathering would be brought to the CSH for repair and eventual distribution to the poor of the CSH and of the city. In many cases, "good-behavior" prisoners form the matched Prison Farm could be transferred to the corresponding CSH for a while on a test period, or permanently, as long as they would provide their 8 hours a day of required free work for the CSH. Many other people could become guests of a CSH. This could include unidentified suspected foreign criminals brought in by police officials for the time of their proper identification. It could include various types of people in need of temporary shelter for various reasons. It could include illegal immigrants ordered deported, until they are actually physically deported. It could include illegal beggars and homeless bums temporarily if they accept the internal discipline of cleanliness and the requirement of providing some of their time and work in compensation for being guests. It could even include various kinds of abandoned mentally ill persons, or mentally dangerous individuals, for temporary stay until better accommodation is found. Under certain conditions it could also accommodate a family member temporarily, under a formal request of another member of family justified and authenticated by a social worker or a judge, to prevent that disturbed member to commit suicide or a serious crime against the rest of the family, at least until the family member involved has been adequately medically attended and considered safe to return to the normal family environment. This would relieve hundreds of families living such terrible drama at the moment and having nowhere to turn for temporary help. It could certainly accommodate temporarily individuals found by police under narcotic drugs and considered temporarily dangerous to themselves or to others until they have been properly medically attended. It could accommodate temporarily minors who have been abused by their families. The same logic could apply to other individuals abused by someone and with no place to go temporarily, like women, senior citizens, gays, victims of racist attacks, illegal immigrants who ask help to be returned home etc. As seen in our page on Micro-Criminality Issues, many guests of CSH could also become good candidates for being appointed as FcaPOL while they are out on the CSH. The hostel would be staffed with a very few permanent positions and many temporary collaborators, either for free or for a small fee. For example, many healthy pensioners with insufficient pensions could offer their collaboration for a supplement of their pension to be based on the degree of their collaboration.
Street sweepers - Why should we not fine the citizens littering the streets instead of paying from public money for the cleaning of these streets? Should we not try to send each street its own cleaning bill, at least in purely residential areas, submitting it to the citizens of that street, and in proportion of the littering found and cleaned on that street? This would force people living on these streets to be more careful. It would also force them to take measures between themselves to ensure all citizens living on their street, and those passing by, do respect the cleanliness of their street. The people living on those street would start to be very careful. As for the outsiders, it might not be possible do denounce all the offenders, but a growing number of outside offenders would certainly have to face the open reprimand of the citizens paying the bills. This would most likely non only save substantial public money in the short run, but also in particular force-in an increasing sense of responsibility and good civic behavior on the part of citizens in general. That growing sense of good civic behavior would also, in the long run, have a positive influence on the littering of other public areas, like parks or public roads outside cities. Certainly we should stop just cleaning streets at high cost in residential areas, without asking questions, independently of the quantity of the littering done and of who did it.
Penalization of universities producing unemployed professionals - Why should we blindly finance public universities to 'produce' a known surplus of certain kinds of professionals who cannot find jobs after graduation? When the unemployment rate reaches a critical point in a certain profession, like over 20%, for professionals like lawyers or doctors, should we not at least impose that the universities increase the difficulty of their selection process in order to reduce their output of graduates in these professions, or else loose some of their financing? We have thousands of NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) characters already in some of professions, for the complete desperation of the NEETs themselves, and the even bigger desperation of their parents who are forced to maintain them well over their thirties, having them at home doing nothing. Making the selection more difficult helps meritocracy, helps the profession involved, helps the parents and especially helps the students screened out to turn to other professions where they will finally feel, and be, useful to society, let alone to themselves.
Civic Technical Schools - These would be known as CTS formation centers. To handle the overflow of students eliminated through a more severe selection process at university level, in order to prevent the deterioration of the dramatic NEET situation (previous paragraph) regarding many professions, technical schools should be revisited and given a new standing and dignity for the absorption and formation of youths in various technical professions. Technical professions are not less important than intellectual professions and often even more advantageous in terms of remuneration. Most of these technical schools have disappeared in the last 50 years after the 1968 revolution spread its false snobbism favoring intellectual professions over technical ones. Remaining technical schools should be revisited as a new type of Civic Technical Schools, and new ones built as required as the NEET phenomenon is being phased out. These Civic Technical Schools should be made free in order to attract as many youths as possible but with a requirement to provide, as directed by the school, up to half of their school time in free workshops around the city, in order to acquire practical apprenticeship on the job in parallel to their theoretical formation in school. These schools would also be assigned an important role in teaching civic education and discipline, including full familiarization with the new MCC and MCR seen in our page on Micro-Criminality Issues with a possibility to have many of their students become eventual FcaPOL candidates until they get regular employment or while being unemployed in future years. City authorities should develop the necessary agreements with employers in the area, and give attractive taxation benefits to employers collaborating. This would not only phase out most of the NEET quickly, but give dignity to generations of new and proud technical professionals and resolve one of the major needs of our civic environment at the moment where citizens find dozens of unemployed and useless NEET in their environment, but hardly any good technician for any type of repair or maintenance job, except maybe self-invented incompetent technicians from the vagrant crowd of illegal immigrants who were never formed nor selected as immigrants for these purposes and work basically out of the black labor market with serious negative consequences on government budgets. It would also form new generations of future FcaPOL candidates if and when required in the future. These new technical schools could also become an excellent gate of entry and civic integration into our society for dozens of newly acquired legal immigrants and refugees, as long as selected with the criteria exposed in our pages on Micro-Criminality Issues and in particular Immigration Issues.
Eliminate human hunger
instead of uselessly fattening animals - The two phenomena are
closely related. Strangely enough, massive meat production, that is meant to
feed people, is responsible for a great part of the hunger suffered by
humanity. To boost meat production there is a need to boost crop productions
but, in the end, most of the boosted crops end-up being used for fattening
animals for massive meat production for the obese populations instead of for
feeding those who suffer serious hunger. Not more than 15% of the proteins
of these boosted crops return to humans through meat. The remaining 85% is
lost while it could have fed thousand of hungry people in terms of cereals,
rice etc. To produce one kilo of meat that will feed 5 obese people, a
farmer needs 13 kilos of cereals that could have fed 25 starving people. To
produce only two kilos of meat, the same farmer will have to use the fresh
water that could have served the purposes of one thirsty person for a full
year. One piece of pasturing grass land necessary to produce one ton of meat
could have produced 20 tons of vegetables, feeding more people, and in a
much more healthy way, at a ration of at least 5 to 1. There
is something
deeply wrong in our farming practices, from an ethical and civic wellness
point of view. Governments and international organizations have to intervene
quickly through severe fiscal measures to resolve this situation.
Stop to torture of animals raised for massive meat production - Many of these animals are grown in terrible living conditions, often including the impossibility to walk, or even move, for months, until they are slaughtered, amounting to incredible animal torturing. This should be made a crime in all criminal codes of all democratic countries and eliminated. Contrary to plants that can die without suffering, animals have an 'animal' soul, just like us, albeit at a different degree of perception, and suffer terribly from torture, just like humans. This animal torturing is a kind of horror that is crudely but realistically evidenced in this incredible video called "Meet Your Meat" that you should maybe only look at if you are an adult in good physical and psychological condition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4. After seeing it, there is no way to express any word, except maybe crying, but a clear need for collective lobbying actions to ensure its prevention and to maybe promote as much as possible at least the EthoPlasìn NABALSOK (No Air-Breathing Animal Long Suffering Or Killing) vegetarianism fully adhered to by members at grade 4 or above. In fact not only can world hunger be eliminated, as seen above, by stopping fattening and torturing animals, but most modern nutrition experts will agree now that the vegetarian regime is the best there is, even for humans. All the biggest animals, that is the ones needing most proteins, and most evolved animals, are vegetarians, like elephants, cows and horses. It is a falsity that man needs meat for best acquisition of its proteins. If global vegetarianism is still not a realistic solution, it can at least be encouraged and promoted in all appropriate instances, like it is eminently the case with EthoPlasìn members, as seen in our page on Basic EthoPlasìn Association Entry Rules.
Each new city quarter should have a CMF - CMF means City Meat (food production) Farm. Animals living in these city CMF should be grown in ideal biological conditions for meat production purposes. The municipality should only pay for a basic staff to manage the farm, and enroll all unemployment recipients as supplementary support staff for the price of their unemployment benefits. Unemployment recipients refusing the deal would loose automatically their unemployment benefits. In turn, the meat production should go to feed the public schools and the public hospices for poor senior citizens, with an eventual overflow going to the other poor citizens living in the area or to the markets to be sold normally by the city for a profit.
Each new city quarter should have a CVF - CVF means City Vegetarian (food production) Farm. Cereals, vegetables and fruits from this CVF should be grown in ideal biological conditions. The municipality should only pay for a basic staff to manage the park, and enroll all unemployment recipients as supplementary support staff for the price of their unemployment benefits. Unemployment recipients refusing the deal would loose automatically their unemployment benefits. In turn, the vegetarian food produced should go in priority to help feed at lower costs the public schools and the public hospices of poor senior citizens, with an eventual overflow going to other poor citizens living in the area or to the markets to be sold normally by the city for a profit.
Encourage the growth of appropriate food - Farmers should be encouraged through taxation to produce the best food for the population in general. As an example, the same land that is required to produce meat for the needs of one person would produce food for 19 persons if it were used for cultivating rice. Meat production and intensive agriculture at the moment favor only the "high revenue" species and they are not the best to resolve hunger, nor to preserve the best quality of the land, or to save the best harmony of the environment. Relevant taxation practices should intervene drastically to correct and improve that situation.
Unemployment Recipients - Unemployment benefit recipients who legitimately receive financial benefits should very well going on receiving them, but not without a contribution of some sort for some of their time. As seen in our page on Micro-Criminality Issues, unemployment recipients would certainly need at least 3 hours a day to look for another job, but could certainly also give 5 hours a day of their free time assisting police as a FcaPOL (Friendly Civic Assistant to POLice), especially if done on a flexible basis over any given week. In fact they would be required to provide 35 hours per week of public social work, but to be distributed on an agreement at the mutual convenience of themselves and a social services involved. Healthy workers who are unemployment recipients and refuse to collaborate would automatically loose their unemployment benefits. As seen above on this page, unemployment benefit recipients could also be used in the new City Farms (CMF and CVF) of the new quarters of existing cities.
Healthy pensioners with insufficient pension - With the same logic, as exposed in our page on Micro-Criminality Issues, healthy pensioners with insufficient pension could also be involved as FcaPOL (Friendly Civic Assistant to POLice), but in this case, with the negotiation of supplement to their pensions based on the degree of their possible collaboration. The same thing could also happen with the CSH (City Safety Hostels) mentioned above.
