As my readers will know,because you’ve been following me for a while,the inevitable ending of our present track will be the replacement of most ordinary work by machine managed operations. This means that for the vast mass of the exploding human race population explosion most will have nothing of any significance to do in order to keep body and soul together. We are even on the cusp of making agricultural workers obsolete.
 

I write fiction and blogs n things and i wrote this blog that follows, based on two stories that appeared in the Business Report section of the local Star Newspaper on the 24th this month.
 
It was written as if to them, but since there is no certainty that it would pass muster to fill diminishing space, it will be on my blogsite, with tags to their edition.
 
Some weeks ago Business Report [BR] published a letter from a person in a place called Mount Edgecombe who wrote that: [BR headline] “Leader’s beliefs entirely opposed to their portfolios”. [BR: Monday May 23 2016.]
 
That headline came to mind when read I the BR Op-ed piece on the 24th [May] by Dr Thami Mazwai. [A Starting point for the State to help fortify small business.]. The writer gives such grudging concessions to the very idea of: “MARKETS!??” that I was left wondering what his actual understanding of ‘business’ was: enabling someone to buy what you want to sell to them? Hard routinely dispiriting work..or dealing with only one customer… the State…. And is that actually business? we were not informed about that.

 

I bear no philosophical grudge against the idea of governments facilitating developing small businesses either. I simply moved on from his resumé/litany of depressingly same ole same ole “we must do this, we must do that…” Surely it is time for a few: “We have done’s?”.

 

I did note too, the sentence in paragraph 6 that said “… that government spent R7,3 billion annually in support of small, medium and micro enterprises.”

 

So I moved on; and a headline in the International section caught my eye: “Swiss look at $2500 for DOING NOTHING!” The Swiss are voting to eradicate most welfare payments in return for a national basic wage payable equally to all [presumably: citizens] Wow! Basic Pay. At last a rational move, from a rational people.

 

The details of it are vague. Nonetheless Basic Pay is an idea I adopted back in the day, as a fictional idea for a work of fiction, and have promoted for 22 years, in promoting my fiction. It was cool to see it headlined at last and we shall establish the present extent to which the idea remains fictional.

 

And then I remembered the SEVEN point three BILLION and I sat down and I wrote down the following equation: What if: 7,300,000,000 is divided by 17,000,000 welfare recipients [BR recent budget report refers]? What would that equals?

 

Answer R132.73. p.a. Not much: A cup of coffee in Dubai.

 

The same equation with the 204.6 billion spent on actual welfare transfers, in the latest budget, was only R12035.31 PA. Again: not much albeit it is keeping 17,000,000 people alive, which was never the natural environment’s intention*. (*Tag`; ‘Reader. John’]

 

Now I would dispute the point made by Dr Mazwai, that the international start up business failure rate is 50% [Paragraph 5]. And that therefore for some weird reason, there must be something wrong with us because we are “5 out of 7” [or 71%]. Depending on size of sample and locations, most places are higher than 50. We have always been higher. In fact most estimates I have read over the years are in the 80% range so the Minister’s observation reflects an improved perspective. This is good because right now there is growing, reported, concern, that the trend in the total number of new start-ups in ‘home of business’ USA [for instance] is disturbingly less than in the past. There is no indication either that the fewer start-ups have an improved success rate.
 

There are businesses that owe their existence to the task [often Sisyphean] of reducing that failure rate. [When I say always, I am mindful that the country’s infancy was rooted in, initially, monopoly control of business opportunities in an encroaching band of territory by an early multi-national corporation: de Dutch East India Company … a period that extended through other means as well for a considerable time thereafter until after liberation.]

 

In fact self-reliance has actually been a hallmark of South African development. But the number who can manage self-reliance is thin. And thus many commentators, in your various supplements, routinely refer to our low, entrepreneurial, enterprise oriented populace, by comparison with such places as, for instance Chile, and more brusquely with those who are, as Dr Mazwai points out, subject to “intermittent explosions”. However our citizenry is really rather normal in this regard, risk taking is often bad for survival, so sensible people attempt to minimize risk. Crazy people start great companies… with no disrespect to those magnificent spirits.

 

So logically, the Swiss should vote YES. After all they have a similar problem to us, being that most people, even there, are not naturally entrepreneurial. Therefore it could actually be cheaper to give everyone a basic guarantee, [“According to need” as Marx observed in his Critique of the Gotha Programme]. Lose job, register online, receive basic guarantee through guarantee credited to account in finance house of choice [not withdrawable [sic] as cash], find new job, tax registration online suspends guarantee until next time. Simple. And: all done by machines. Presumably the place [Switzerland] has modestly effective compliance rates

 

This means it could also save the administrative cost of maintaining an otherwise under-productive, swelling bureaucratic edifice, to facilitate determining who should have the right to receive a slice from a complex welfare payments web: something that will inevitably raise the number seeking productive work… albeit that should in turn produce a surplus that could be added to the stipend.

 

It could nonetheless reduce the number of business start up failures, [for reasons that would perhaps be beyond the scope of this specific blog]. And that would be beneficial to the economy.

 

Obfuscatorily [sic], it would also require a subtle re-engineering of the overall tax system, to move from its present broadly, historically onerous, direct taxation levels with their often violent origins in a pre digital physical world: to less noticeably painful, micro deductions congruent with a digitalised world. These will be made to accommodate the introduction of the Transaction levy concept; as the Chinese have begun, to do, with their introduction of the [presently zero-rated] “Tobin Tax”.

 

On the other hand, of course, a myriad lifetime’s of memes, expressively symbolic of your “DOING NOTHING” headline, will more probably kick in this time, and so the Swiss vote may only pass, on about the fourth attempt… when the current wave of impending doldrums causes serious evaluation of the unintended costs of welfare.

 

Perhaps though it could be argued that Consumption is a job. I did mention that I write fiction, didn’t i?

 

But pass it eventually will. It is part of the future of Public finance, along with the transaction levy; recently nudging into re-existence, now in China… presently and cautiously limited to Currency trades, but, inevitably, spreading out into those world’s of derivatives, hedges and swaps, n all things ephemeral: as Rent is extracted from Time, without due consideration for dues: thereby starving more risky actual ‘real’ value creating businesses, of the kind sought after by Dr Mazwai… while adding less value to the common good. All good fiction isn’t it? Except that some seek to make it fact… and if it could increase happiness shouldn’t we consider it?

 

Thus we [the human race] will strive to harness the kinetic energy of the [so-called] ‘Casino Economy’ that we have invented, through the micro-cent mathematics of the new digital economy.…. as represented by for instance [of all things?] Spotify… ultimately without harming its [the ‘Casino Economy’s’] potential for amplifying change.

 

Thereby we would begin to effect the present ongoing transition of our global enterprise from its current earth warming smokestack era to a digitally driven greener future, where robots do the ‘heavies’ and humans learn to evolve to ‘our next level of consciousness’, as the Late Professor Tobias observed some years ago in his final public speech, in answer to a question from me on the subject.
 

So to return to Dr Mazwai’s R7, 3 billion spent on “supporting emerging enterprise” for what, to judge by the doctor’s gloomy prognosis, is something of a loss leader. So perhaps the Doctor could cut directly to the chase, and not wait to pass go… and take the entire budget and …. Ask …

 

Is it a viable idea? Who knows? So many things that didn’t seem viable or even tenable, when they first happened turned out to be game changers, and perhaps, paying people to become consumers isn’t a bad job in an age of saturation supply overwhelming all traditional theories of economics: a discipline founded on the management of scarcity. After all, surely consumption trumps NOTHING [if we may still use that T word]

 

And then there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that the current slow moving environment is partly due to QE enriched bankers using their haul to prop up their balance sheets, rather than exploiting the leverage potential of flooding struggling under- consumers with life enhancing salaries. That doesn’t sound much like fiction.

 

Aah. Such are the random thoughts of a fiction scribbling blogger.

 

Yours

Nicholas