What is Proper Change?

Proper Change is actually doing what we can now to flourish into the future. Not talking, not researching, not thinking in words… actually doing it!

If we change the way we support each other, we can unleash the most productive and joyful lives ever lived.

Problem

Our problems are big and coming at us fast but our political choices are small and and far too slow.

The ‘change’ on offer from our existing political parties is not real change. They just offer to manage the old, failing system differently. They claim that business, or workers, or green, or immigration, or growth is the answer to our problems. The one thing they all agree on is that proper changes to the structure of our tax and welfare systems is not needed.

People know this isn’t working, and they do not want to carry on as we are. At every chance we get, we vote for change. And people will carry on voting for change until they get proper change.

The system we have built does not work well enough to meet the coming challenges. It doesn’t work now, in the future, or as advertised, and doing more of it won’t fix it.

A positive and practical option must be available for people to be able to vote for it. We need a comprehensive platform of changes to what we do, how we pay for it, and how we relate to each other.

What we cannot do

At the root of this problem is that we know what we cannot do.

• We can’t pay ourselves out of this situation
• We can’t tax ourselves out of this situation
• We can’t borrow our way out of this situation
• We can’t carry on living beyond our means (socially, economically, or environmentally)

So if we can’t do any of those things, what can we do?

We can grow all sorts of things, like productivity, services, effort, contributions, freedom, joy, autonomy, empowerment, responsibility, control, safety, food quality, flourishing, and happiness.

What we cannot grow: pollution, waste, energy, debt, and deficits.

3 Principles

That means that we need a different set of principles for ourselves and different priorities for our government.

Create, not compensate

We need to actually create safety, not compensate for a lack of safety. That means changing the way we support each other. Our taxes must to be used to actually deliver the services that create our safety.

First principle

You are responsible for yourself, we are responsible for the conditions in which we live. We create safety, opportunity and participation together; you contribute individually.

To maximize our contributions we need two parts working well:

• individual support that maintains motivation
• shared infrastructure, responsibly managed

A reliable platform of safety services must be available to everyone if they need them, just like the NHS does for health. And we must build and maintain the infrastructures that we all rely on, for energy, digital, transport, care, shelter, defence, and knowledge.

You & US

Handing out money is a poor and ineffective response to the reality of insecurity. Money does not create the conditions that free up contributions.

The effective response is to ensure that a reliable and comprehensive foundation of services is available to meet basic needs whenever individuals cannot meet those needs themselves.

Second principle

You are guaranteed access to the safety we create.

That means creating and delivering a fabric of de-centralised, unconditional, and interconnected services that can satisfy the basic human needs that enable individuals to make their contributions. This is Universal Services. Highly responsive to each particular place and community, with universal access (but not provision).

Our Commons

Third principle

We, the people, are custodians of all life. We share the present with the future and recognise our responsibility to act accordingly.

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What does proper change look like?

A market economy inside a society with these features:

Universal Services

If proper change had a single primary objective, Universal Services would be it.

The path to Universal Services includes vibrant local autonomy, deeper personal freedom, planetary boundary recognition, and the unleashing of mass contribution (productivity). 

Delivering Universal Services requires that we all own responsibility for the shared infrastructure on which those services sit – the shared infrastructure becomes part and parcel of the drive to ensure individual safety and liberate everyone’s contributions.

Universal Taxes

Obvious simplifications of our tax system connect our contributions to our responsibilities and create the foundation for Universal Services. All incomes taxed equally and progressively. All revenues from Universal Taxes dedicated to Universal Services. This what we call National Contributions.

Universal Democracy

Delivering Universal Services requires responsive and responsible local control. That requires the devolution of power and money to responsive and responsible local democracies. Arranged on the principle of subsidiarity, Universal democracy is the structure that allows Universal Services to be funded at the national level and delivered at service-appropriate local, regional and national levels.

This starts with Councils responsible to local, well paid, well supported, full time Councillors who are frequently re-elected with the highest levels of transparency.

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Read more: Realities & Responses

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