Enlightened Capitalism

Essays about how to harness people's natural desire to create wealth and improve their quality of life to solve global problems such as war and poverty.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The World We Want

Universal Declaration of What We Want For Everyone

Whereas, all human beings have certain desires in common, and there is a universal tendency to strive toward these goods when they are lacking;

We hereby declare our intention to acquire for all humanity permanent access to the following rights and freedoms, thereby furthering the cause of peace and universal prosperity.

Security
Freedom from violence or threats of violence.
Right to live under rule of law. Not to be arbitrarily deprived of property or privileges.
The ability to put aside wealth for future use.

Health
Sufficient food, including a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates, fat, fibre, vitamins, and minerals. Availability of natural, locally grown food free of undesirable additives or contaminants. Access to list of ingredients in processed or packaged foods.
Clean water for drinking and washing.
Sufficient exercise to maintain healthy muscles, bone, and cardiovascular system, and to prevent obesity.
Sufficient rest, medicines, first aid, psychotherapy, and other items required to maintain health and ensure speedy recovery from any readily curable illness or injury.

Environment
Clean land, air, and water, freedom from toxins and pollutants.
Preservation of natural resources and restoration of habitats which have been destroyed. Maintainance of healthy forests, rivers, lakes, wetlands, oceans, atmospheric layers, and local and global biodiversity.
Pleasant surroundings, conducive to productive lifestyles. Freedom from eyesores, visually offensive scenery, noise pollution, foul odors.

Housing
Weather-proofing, heating, cooling, lighting, air circulation, and waste disposal systems sufficient to maintain the occupants' comfort, cleanliness, privacy, and safety, including during Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Droughts, Floods, and other predictable natural events.
The ability to secure one's dwelling against unwanted entry.

Property
Ownership of Property.
The ability to put something down, go away, and have it still be there when one returns.
The ability to safely store valuables.

Movement
Freedom to leave any place, city, country, or region, and to return. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age and those not wanted for criminal prosecution or suspected of promoting criminal activity.)

Association
Freedom to choose with whom one associates, and to live together in mutually consensual relationships. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
Freedom to leave a relationship with an individual or group and seek new associations. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
The ability to meet and get acquainted with a wide variety of new people.

Expression
Freedom to express and publish one’s opinions, beliefs, values, and religion.
Privacy
A sphere within which one can act free from the awareness or intervention of others.
Protection from outside surveillance.

Work
A broad selection of productive, sustainable occupations, such that each person can match their job to their personality, talents, and inclinations. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
The ability to earn sufficient income to allow regular saving. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)

Education
Access to efficient and effective education and training in at least the following subjects:
First Language Literacy
Health Education, Biology, Birth Control
Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, Logic
History, Civics, Law, Social Studies, Geography
Foreign Language Instruction
Psychology, Interpersonal Relationships, Negotiating, Conflict Resolution
How to Grow Food, How to Survive in the Wilderness, How to Build, Maintain, and Repair One's Home
How to Start and Run a Successful Business, How to Get a Job, How to Advance and Succeed in a Career
Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
Music, Rhythm, Creative Writing, Dance
Techniques & Strategies in a wide variety of Sports and Games
Preparation for a wide variety of entry-level and advanced occupations
Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Self Reflection & Transformation
Science, Information Technology, Computer Applications

Diversity
Access to wide variety of personalities, cultures, philosophies, ideologies, lifestyles, languages, landscapes, cuisines, art, literature, and opinions.

Performance
Freedom to participate fully in society and be evaluated based on performance, regardless of arbitrary personal features or group membership.

Governance
Right to vote, or otherwise participate in directing government. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
Right to voice suggestions and concerns to the governing authorities, and to be listened and responded to. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)

Records
Access to public records, libraries, the internet, personal and family medical records (except where this violates individual privacy).
To know the names of and to contact one's birth parents and other relatives.

Any Persons Who Are Not Able To Care For Themselves Have the Following Additional Rights

Care
The right to be cared for, supervised, and protected at all times by at least one adult who voluntarily takes full responsibility for the person in need of care, and is accountable for their well-being.

Adolescents Ages 13+ Have The Following Additional Rights

Friendship
To meet and interact with others in their age group in the context of friendship building and companionship.

Dating
To meet and interact with others in their age group in the context of dating. (Dating may be restricted to people of full age.)

Children Ages 0-13 Have The Following Additional Rights

Touch
Daily loving embraces and caresses by a parent or guardian.
Freedom from sexual molestation.

Play
Time to play alone and with other children.
Access to a variety of child-safe toys and play experiences.
Freedom from overburdensome work responsibilities.

Discipline
Gentle but firm training and guidance aimed at developing good character and encouraging felicitous social interactions.
Clear explanation of rules governing behavior.

The Not Yet Born Have The Following Additional Rights

Prenatal Care
Freedom from diseases, disabilities, and defects caused by malnutrition, substance abuse, or other unhealthy behaviors or conditions affecting fetal development.

Non-Human Lifeforms Have The Following Rights

Pain Relief
Freedom from torture, arbitrarily induced pain, or senseless killing.

Continuance
Right to continue one's species. Freedom from extinction.

Conflicts arising between various rights are to be dealt with and resolved by impartial adjudication, applied evenly across all of humanity.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

A biographical note

I am an INTP. Before I could talk, I was playing with numbers. I sorted all the books in our house by the number of pages, and at age 3 I learned the order of frequency of initial letters in English from counting encyclopedia and dictionary pages. My favorite toy was these triangles you could make just about any shape out of.

I studied electrical engineering for 4 years and then switched my major to Latin. I applied to three graduate schools (in German, Classics, and Linguistics) and was offered fellowships to all three. I picked Linguistics at Northwestern University, mainly because it was the farthest away. I drove my 1964 VW bug (nickname "suicidomobile") from Los Angeles, over Vail Pass, to Chicago, towing a tiny trailer with all my worldly possessions. (My adventures in that car, whose every part I had rebuilt or replaced several times, make up a very exciting chapter of my life.)

My first successful company (after window washing, magic shows, and such) was the world's first online Latin-English dictionary, which I sold to university Classics departments and made about $800 after paying my typists and proofreaders. My next successful company was an online CD wholesaler, in the days before amazon.com.

In the early 1990s, I spent a lot of time working out formulas to find inefficiencies in the stock options market, and did a bunch of successful trades in a row. I started pooling money from friends and family, but stopped when I couldn't figure out how to peg the value at any given time (some difficult math is involved, if you want to be fair and take different people's money at different times).

I then turned to real estate and discovered some major inefficiencies in that market. I preferred real estate over other investments because I could see and directly control where my money was ACTUALLY going. I started buying properties and helping others buy properties in Oakland CA. I was doing really well, so well, in fact, that I was able to retire from my computer job. At the same time, the neighborhood I and my partners invested in underwent an amazing transformation that took me by surprise. I realised then that I had way more power than I thought.

But my main goal was to be a composer of music, so I wandered around Mexico and Europe for a few years looking for people to collaborate with on operas and chamber music. I was content to live on about $10,000/year, which meant I would never have to work again.

Then I met my wife and I'm not sure she said this explicitly but somehow I felt like I should make a little more money for her, maybe $30,000/year. I could have gotten a cool computer linguistics job in Switzerland but thought, well I know how to do this real estate thing and I could just do it again and then retire again.

So I went back to the USA and picked another neighborhood (I analyse gigabytes of data on thousands of cities in order to do this). This time I was smarter, because I had seen how things worked in Oakland. I and my partners bought 22 properties in a neighborhood in Long Beach CA, and repeated the same process.

One of my other goals in life is to get a massage every day, but I didn't want to pay $50/day, so I put an ad on craigslist for a massage therapist that would give massages in exchange for rent (I had lots of places available). One of the massage therapists that took me up on this deal invited me to an introduction to the Landmark Forum -- she told me about it while I was getting a massage. My experiences with Landmark are another amazing chapter of my life; I discovered so much about myself and about how relationships work that I don't even know what to compare it to.

Perhaps to the Britannica Great Books (another goal of mine was to read them all in the original languages, which is why I taught myself Latin, Greek, German, Italian, and Spanish, and have nibbled at the edges of Russian, French, Japanese, Turkish, Sanskrit, and Mandarin).

Or I could compare Landmark to Classical Music, which also had that sort of impact on my life, which is why I taught myself piano, harpsichord, organ, recorder (SATB), trombone, voice, and guitar. I also dabbled in violin, cello, hammer dulcimer, and clarinet. I have written about 100 songs, mostly variations on nursery rhyme tunes for piano or small ensemble. Biologist and author Lewis Thomas and I share our predilection for Bach above all other composers.

Two of my real estate partners took the Landmark Forum too and we all got really excited about the potential and created a company, pooled $1.6 million from friends and family, and bought, renovated, rented, and sold 35 homes in and around Compton CA (the investors got 27% annualised returns, over 2 years).

We were doing such cool stuff in distressed neighborhoods that the Los Angeles Times plastered us all over the front page of the Sunday real estate section. Then we started getting calls from all over the place. We raised another $2 million and bought dozens more houses. We were on CNN, we were in Fortune, they did a documentary on us on HD.net.

Now we are raising $50 million to do it bigger. When we show that it works at this level, I expect we will do it again even bigger. My ultimate goal is to transform all the distressed neighborhoods in the world. I believe this will have a major impact on sustainability and peace.

Whether this ends up solving any major global problems or not, I hope to be remembered as someone who cared about the poor and designed win-win investments that create wealth for the community as well as for investors.