THE DECIDER CLASS – gatekeepers in the system

Written on October 1st, 2015 in politics Comments Off

Published on Basic Income Earth Network BIEN, by Karen Christine Patrick, Sept 28, 2015.

I can attest to “angels in the system” so for people in the social work class who are not only doing their job well, but still care deeply for people… this is not about you. This is about your co-workers who’s body shows up to shuffle the paperwork, but their mind and heart are absent, who stick by the rules even if the “rules” are just guidelines, are badly trained or misinformed. These are the deciders who make of the system a labyrinth of despair. There are also the devils of the system, the ones for whom my mother said, “would break the wings off of butterflies.” Our bureaucratic system acts as a dank, dark cellar system that warehouses human “resources” made from our most vulnerable citizens, the “precariat” with no other door to walk through.

The potential for predation is truly there. Our “nanny state’ is just the kind of hunting grounds for that darker type, a natural habitat for psychopaths and sociopathic behavior that uses the rules as a ruler to whack you on the knuckles with if you get it “wrong” with a larger authority and less advocacy. The ability to decide the fates of people everyday, when one is frustrated and angry, to have a ready whipping post of authority of some kind, is too much of a temptation for some to resist, unfortunately.

Our system of “benefits” is at the mercy of the deciders. Deciders decide at every step of any process. Deciders methodologies are a product of a system that provisions “departments with budgets’ instead of “dividends for citizens”, thus paying the deciders and the “clients” out of the same pool of funds. This creates a natural competition for resources, a contrived animosity, a power play-between “deserving” clients and the ones who decide who is deserving. There are always plenty of deserving clients, especially in a scarcity economy. This is problematic for deciders, because they are outnumbered. However, they are in the system and of it, and know what the clients do not know, know how to make sure that they are provisioned first, and the clients after. They are playing the insider game, knowing they must pay out something to be seen as productive and deserving of budgets, but also knowing the strategies to maintain the superior position and creating a system-within-the-system hierarchy that gives them maximum decider leverage … //

… We have an exciting idea to change the whole paradigm, to implement that we want people to be re-empowered to decide for themselves. We have a way to disband the decider class, reversing the learned helplessness that permeates the economic outlook in this state of global austerity. Those those about to lose their decider jobs, we say, “It’s nothing personal, we just don’t want to need you anymore.” The current system, having been given a large amount of resources is just not doing the job to rid of poverty, is not distributing resources fairly, nor is it fitting our notion that an economy is based on people making personal decisions. Not only do we need a Basic Income Guarantee, but, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, it should not be too low or it relegates a large group of people to being locked into poverty. This Basic Income Guarantee “floor” for people to stand on, we will completely change this decider/client paradigm.

It becomes obvious that a lot of current members of the decider class, who have been dependent on a poverty class as a reason to exist, will lose their jobs. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Those who work at processing poverty, who currently benefit by poverty because it has become an industry will be without a job when we eradicate poverty for real. But they will be provisioned by a Basic Income Guarantee until they transition to doing whatever comes next. Many social workers got into the field “to help people.” They would be free to really help people in a hands-on way instead of a paper-pushing way. This might be a very satisfying thing in the long-run, especially for those who really, deeply want to make a difference in the lives of people.

The day after a Basic Income Guarantee goes into effect, that does not mean people are not going to need each other, or that we won’t need some deciders for people who truly are disabled or incapacitated, it’s just that the process of helping or being helped won’t have a huge complexity to it that creates false hope and false work. For the precariat, from peril-to-provision will be a welcome change. I think the Basic Income Guarantee is a good, humane decision, even for the people currently in the decider class ultimately.

(full text).

Links:

Russian parliament unanimously approves use of military in Syria to fight ISIS, on Russia Today RT, Sept 30, 2015;

Podcast: BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE – A CAREGIVER’S VIEW, 42.30 min, on Caregivers for BIG, by Karen Christine Patrick, Sept 29, 2015;

The TPP and Canada – Playing the Fool, on Dissident Voice, by Binoy Kampmark, Sept 29, 2015;

Why Black Lives Have to Matter, on Dissident Voice, by Kenneth Eade, Sept 29, 2015: Speaking as an attorney and an author who has researched the subject thoroughly for my novel Unreasonable Force, the Black Lives Matter movement has done a lot to generate awareness in the last two years about how blacks are treated differently by our society in general, and by the police in particular …;

on Voltairenet.org, by Thierry Meyssan, Sept 28, 2015:
There will be no Third World War;
La 3ème Guerre mondiale n’aura pas lieu;

THE PEOPLE IN POWER ARE CERTIFIABLY INSANE – Bob Chapman, Part 2, 7.38 min, uploaded by Ezop Nuza, Sept 20, 2015;

Russia, Iran, Iraq & Syria setting up ‘joint information center’ to coordinate anti-ISIS operations, on Russia Today RT, Sept 26, 2015;

on Voltairenet.org, by Andrey Fomin, Sept 22 and 23, 2015:
Who is twitter-luring refugees to Germany?
Wer lockt mit Twitter Flüchtlinge nach Deutschland?

Geheime Straftäter – Whistleblower unter Anklage, 6.51 min, von zerwas2ky am 31. Juli 2015 hochgeladen;

What really happened to Project Camelot – an interview by Mel Fabregas, 62.17 min, uploaded by AlphaZebra, April 1, 2011 … about a now healed schism;

… and this:

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