Searching For Better
May 24, 2022
There can be little doubt that the world is in crisis. The number of issues humanity is facing seems to increase daily. Soaring inflation and a cost of living crisis, climate change, the war in Ukraine and the threat of global food shortages, millions of displaced people, increasing political polarisation are only some of the challenges we face. And all are largely unprecedented. And one thing is certain – we cannot meet them with historic solutions. As Albert Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it!”
Many of these problems are the result of issues that have troubled me for years. However, as someone who always looks to solve problems rather than criticising or complaining about things, I have always sought to answers. And as matters have increased my concerns, and made me anxious about the overall trend, my efforts have multiplied. This has led me to make more effort to develop and share my solutions, culminating in my latest book, “Searching For Better.”
Book One is sub-titled “How Universalism Transforms the Workplace”, and addresses the root of industrial conflict; offering a model that makes employees ‘virtual’ co-owners of businesses and thereby fuses the conventional corporate structure with the concept of a worker co-operative. It is the sequel to “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” that expounds the proposition of employees as assets and illustrates how you can effectively do so. It explains my Every Individual Matters Model that provides the basis of how you:
- Effectively value employees as assets (rather than exclusively as costs) so you can include them on a balance sheet or virtual balance sheet;
- Can make all employees ‘virtual’ owners of the business without shares and at no cost to you or the organisation, to give them an effective stake in the business;
- Introduce a cost neutral ‘labour dividend’ that replaces your existing incentive remuneration pay and rewards all employees equitably for their ‘investment according to their asset value, in exactly the same way as shareholders, without diluting the shareholders’ stake.
All this ensures more accountability and greater engagement with greater synergy, productivity and social responsibility.
Book Two is sub-titled “Exploring Ideas for Improving our Quality of Life”, and expands on the full principles and protocols of ‘Universalism’. It builds on the commercial (micro-economic) elements of Book One to deal with the sociopolitical (macro-economic) issues of financing government. It thus, amongst other things, illustrates:-
- The fallacy of corporate taxation sand how it could (and should) be totally eliminated;
- How to simplify income tax to address the problem of the widening wealth gap that underpins so many of today’s issues;
- A practical model Net Income Tax or Universal Basic Income that offers the chance to eliminate homelessness and poverty.
Together they help me follow Antoine de St Exupery’s advice, “As for the future … ours is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” They contain a number of ideas that I am convinced will help meet the challenges we are facing and, hopefully, prevent us from getting into such a mess again. Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify anyone willing to work with me to develop them and, as a result, I have been compelled to express them through the books.
I am anxious to avoid the book being nothing more than a vanity project so I hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking and enjoy them sufficiently to share them with others and be best placed to evaluate them. Hopefully you can help take them to a wider audience and implement them as part of an effective solution.
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