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Note: This is not a real organization, at least not yet. Below is designed to look like the main web page of such a hypothetical organization, to see if it gets any response. So please read it, and email me if you would join such an organization if it existed (my email address is at the bottom of this page), and tell everyone you can about it. The power of geometric growth is the greatest power in the universe. If each person tells 10 people in a week, in just 9 1/2 weeks everyone on earth will have joined it! They would then collectively have the power to take on The Billionaires by coordinating their actions against them. While I'll be very surprised if this idea gets off the ground, if it does get a good response, those who have responded will collectively be able to turn this from a hypothetical to a real organization.

The purpose of The World Union is simple. The key to a better economic life is

1) to increase labor productivity (automation), so that workers can produce more goods and services in a shorter amount of time than before. That way, workers can choose to work as long as before and have more stuff, or have more leisure time and the same amount of stuff, or a combination of some of both. And,

2) to spread the increased wealth or leisure time from increased labor productivity around to everyone, so that everyone benefits from increased productivity, not just the rich. The way unrestricted capitalism works, since workers only get paid if they work, they receive no more than before when productivity goes up, receive less when automation eliminates work and creates a glut of workers, even receive nothing if their jobs are automated away. Meanwhile, business owners walk off with all of the increased wealth or leisure time from increased productivity, in the form of greater profits as a result of lower labor costs.

The World Union is different from traditional labor unions in a number of ways:

• We do not charge dues. If we win workers increased pay, we ask that they donate 1% of that increase to us, but it is voluntary. Membership in our union is also voluntary. We also encourage people to work for us on a voluntary basis. Too often, traditional labor unions become corrupted, and come to exist for the benefit of the union leaders instead of the workers.
• We are not strictly a "labor" union, but are open to everyone, working or not. Since we are trying to free people from "wage slavery", we would like those people who have successfully freed themselves from "wage slavery" to continue to be members, both to protect their status and to help others achieve what they have. We want to free people from "wage slavery", not merely make them better-paid "wage slaves" as traditional unions do. Even those rare non-selfish leftist millionaires and billionaires are welcome to our cause.
• We are not limited to one nation, or type of industry, or individual workplace, but are world-wide, for all people. Since traditional labor unions are limited to individual countries, too often workers in one country wind up fighting workers in other countries for jobs, instead of all people fighting their common enemy, a tiny group of immensely wealthy and powerful people who run the world. We are against blaming foreigners for taking people's jobs, when the real culprits are that tiny group of billionaires. United we stand, divided we fall.
• We are for creating less work, not more. Creating more jobs by shortening work hours to spread the existing work around is fine. Creating more jobs of the same long work hours as an excuse to pay people, as traditional unions do, is not. Creating more jobs of the same length as now also creates a glut of workers, which lowers wages. On the other hand, shortening work hours creates a shortage of workers, which raises wages. A shortage of workers and high wages also encourages businesses to automate, while a glut of workers and low wages discourages them, when automation, as we have said, is part of the key to a better life.
• We are for more flexible work arrangements, so that workers are more free to choose how long, when, and where they work. Too often, traditional labor unions have actually fought against workers having more freedom to choose, for misguided reasons. Since workers tended to flock to such flexible work because it was more desirable, the resulting glut of workers lowered wages for those types of work. We are for fighting those lower wages, not those flexible work arrangements. Widespread adoption of telecommuting also would drasticly reduce worldwide consumption of oil, which would both curb the power of dangerous religious fanatics in the Middle East in a non-military way, and would slow global warming and delay the world running out of oil.

Our method of operation is simply to sign up enough workers that they know they can effectively strike companies, and we coordinate their strikes, so that they can demand better pay and working conditions and more leisure time. We may even threaten for all the workers to set up rival companies. We start with the worst offenders and then work our way upward.

In addition to achieving our goals in a non-governmental way, outside of politics, we also set up political parties that fight for the same goals. The main policy goals of such political parties are:

• legislating shorter working hours
• raising taxes on the immensely wealthy in order to eliminate taxes on ordinary people and then give them a graduated negative income tax and a guaranteed minimum income
• funding scientific research into automating away work, and all other science and technology, and
• slowing the population explosion by encouraging birth control, both so that we do not run out of resources and can maintain a greater standard of living, and so that we can decrease the work that an expanding population creates, in building new houses and roads and other infrastructure.

Our initial goals are to increase the wealth of undeveloped countries to the level of developed countries with technology that increases worker productivity, and to better spread the wealth within developed countries and shorten working hours by increasing productivity and eliminating all of the make-work in such countries, such as in marketing, which does not actually produce anything.

Once we achieve those goals, we hope that by shortening work hours to a fraction of what they are now, as people are freed from "wage slavery" they will increasingly do volunteer work for others and work for themselves outside of the market, and further reduce the need for people to do involuntary work in order to survive. Especially by automating away unpleasant work, we hope to reach the point where people would voluntarily do all of the remaining work, so that there would be no remaining involuntary work.

Come join us! You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain!

As I said above, please email me at royf @ bellsouth.net (remove the spaces and copy and paste it onto the email address line) if you would join such an organization if it existed, and tell everyone you can about it. The power of geometric growth is the greatest power in the universe. If each person tells 10 people in a week, in just 9 1/2 weeks everyone on earth will have joined it! They would then collectively have the power to take on The Billionaires by coordinating their actions against them. While I'll be very surprised if this idea gets off the ground, if it does get a good response, those who have responded will collectively be able to turn this from a hypothetical to a real organization.

I have set up this page on April 24, 2007, with 4 friends I know for sure would join, and more who would probably agree once I tell them about it. I will periodically update the number of people who have said they would join, below, so that anyone can see how the number of people is progressing. When emailing me to join, please put "I'm joining" in the subject line.

2007 - April 24 - 5 people

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