Tapeinocracy: Public Services

Detailed below are the ways that tapeinocracy vastly improves public services and each area is discussed further in the book.

Topics

• Justice
• Military
• National Health Service
• Welfare

Justice

Current Problems

• The entire system is infected with identity politics and micromanagement by politicians, leading to extremely biased law enforcement towards different groups of people
• Police operate on quotas and targets leading them to focus on crimes that are easiest to close, for example speeding or social media posts, instead of crimes that are genuinely important such as murder or burglary
• Incarceration doesn’t achieve anything except waste time and money: it doesn’t rehabilitate prisoners, it doesn’t punish them sufficiently, the duration of incarceration is theoretically proportionate to the crime ergo society is also punished with a matching financial cost to maintain the prisoner
• Prisons are at full capacity so newly convicted criminals either receive lenient non-custodial sentences or a current prisoner must be released early to create space
• Backwards processes and broken laws make the court system slow with a backlog of cases
• The entire court process can be manipulated due to the subjective interpretation of badly written laws, the bribery or political influence toward judges, emotional pleas towards jurors, the use of eyewitness testimony and other malleable elements
• The common law process enables judges to make up the law when a gap is encountered in legislation, often very poorly, and it means judges create legal precedent without votes or accountability
• The whole system utterly falls apart when faced with irredeemable people; rehabilitation is a voluntary process, no punishment exists beyond incarceration so a prisoner can continue to commit crimes unchallenged, meanwhile society bears the cost instead of the individual and absolutely nothing is resolved

Tapeinocracy’s Solutions

• A renovated statute book with a feedback process enables continual improvement and refinement, increasing everyone’s confidence in the justice system so that citizens, policemen, prosecutors and judges all understand the law plainly
• If anyone finds absurd outcomes, such as loopholes in the law, the ten year time limit on legislation means it’s likely to be fixed in the next version
• Remove common law as a concept so the creation of law is always in one direction from the government to judges
• Change the court process from adversarial emotional manipulation and judges reading the minds of long-dead jurists through mysticism, into a purely evidence-based system: solicitors and barristers only compile evidence and present it to a judge, who then analyses the evidence, applies the law and delivers a verdict
• Juries are removed entirely as a historical relic that interferes with an evidence-based system
• This also greatly minimises manipulation and bribery by making the court process purely about evidence and well-written laws
• When giving a verdict, the judge creates the necessary specific conditions for an appeal to qualify in advance, saving vast amounts of time and money; for example “to appeal this verdict, the defendant must provide new evidence that disproves the prosecution’s established evidence of X”
• No political interference or identity politics with any aspect of the justice system, police operate independently from politicians as part of central government and enforce the law equally to everyone
• Create realistic expectations of policemen and split police roles: one group interacts with the population, assumes no threats by default and prioritises deescalation; the other group is only used for dangerous situations by assuming a credible threat and will use violence without hesitation
• Incarceration and prisons are completely removed from the justice system for being ineffective, wasting everyone’s time and money
• For minor crimes, convicted criminals pay appropriate compensation as money or free labour to the relevant victims and immediately carry on with life
• For major non-violent crimes, convicted criminals pay compensation as money or free labour, then have their citizenship revoked and are kicked out of the country, unless the judgement is reversed in the future
• For major violent crimes, irredeemable criminals or significant repeat offenders, they are executed by a volunteer from an aggrieved party; ending the problem permanently and this design specifically resolves all absurd outcomes currently experienced by justice systems with capital punishment

Military

Current Problems

• Political power is determined by whichever group holds the monopoly on violence, in the UK this manifests as the military which follows orders from politicians
• Political systems with a central figure or small cabal will always abuse this situation
• Violence is the ultimate escalation and supersedes all other human interactions
• Most wars throughout history were started by either a central figure or a small political group and inevitably have unrealistic or completely unachievable objectives
• In peacetime, the military is an expensive liability because it doesn’t perform its primary role of enacting violence and is therefore a negative service (a paid absence functioning the same as insurance) whereas during war, the military suddenly turns into a proactive positive service of enacting violence and becomes invaluable
• The nature of warfare with necessary equipment, maintenance, infrastructure and human skills means the military can’t be completely disabled during peacetime and solely reactivated during war; the upkeep cost is unavoidable
• As the military is a negative service during peacetime and it’s completely disconnected from the everyday lives of citizens, it’s the first department to face financial cuts by politicians controlling the budget as they move the money to the departments that win votes: welfare and healthcare
• Micromanagement and incompetence by politicians severely diminishes the military’s effectiveness, be it defence contractors persuading politicians to buy unsuitable and vastly overpriced products or messing with the rules of engagement that actively harm servicemen by pretending that war can be clean or civilised
• All of the above means the military will be deployed at the whim of a central figure, the strategic-level objectives will be impossible, servicemen have one hand tied behind their backs by arbitrary rules and the quality of their equipment will be substandard

Tapeinocracy’s Solutions

• Accept the simple reality that the military’s purpose is to enact maximum effective violence, thus necessitating the best training and equipment as a positive and to minimise negative obstacles such as treaties that try to sanitise warfare or wayward politicians starting campaigns with unachievable or conflicting objectives
• We don’t live in a world of purely ideal humans therefore the military is always necessary: initially with its presence as a deterrence, then as a persuasive diplomatic tool and finally as an effective means to kill people
• Resolve the negative service issue during peacetime by turning the military into a positive service at all times; units rotate between military training and integration into productive civilian life such as engineers constructing public buildings, signallers upgrading communication infrastructure and medics in hospitals
• Additional benefits from greater public visibility of the military in daily life includes citizens having more confidence about public spending, the display of civic duty provides a positive role-model to civilians and they see tangible results of public work (for example, medics are seen in a public hospital rather than always in the middle of nowhere on exercise)
• The issue of politicians is addressed by systematic changes: initiating offensive military action requires a majority national vote by all politicians on a considered plan with specific objectives and pricing; everything is planned upfront and if the vote passes then the politicians have no further input, can’t micromanage and are held accountable for all consequences of starting a war
• For defensive actions in which the country or any overseas military base is attacked by any faction or nation state: the military automatically retaliates with equal violence without any say by politicians and doesn’t escalate any further; this guarantees retribution in a known quantity and further strengthens the effectiveness of deterrence by removing the ability for politicians to do nothing
• After the military automatically retaliates in equal proportion it stops then any potential further action follows the above planning, costing and voting process; this forces a calm deliberative process rather than a knee-jerk escalation
• The military is defined as a core national function of central government so its funding is guaranteed by money creation and the constitution provides a defined minimum level of functionality to prevent politicians from hollowing out the military

National Health Service

Current Problems

• The NHS was built upon backward socialist ideology with a grand utopian vision that resulted in perpetual failure from its launch in July 1948 to the present day; the NHS has never worked effectively and will never work for as long as it maintains this broken ideological model
• Its principles sound reasonable when taken at face-value but immediately reveal catastrophic absurdities when further examined
• The promise of healthcare provision to everyone makes the NHS extremely vulnerable to changes in population size and demography: the last three decades of mass immigration must somehow be matched by a corresponding increase of staff recruitment, equipment purchases and infrastructure upgrades, while an increased proportion of elderly people drastically increases medical demands and costs per person
• This guarantee also rewards unhealthy lifestyles as alcoholics, drug addicts, smokers and overweight people receive free healthcare for self-inflicted problems; meanwhile people with healthy lifestyles are punished because they still pay for a service they don’t personally use
• A tax system based on work means healthy people are the ones paying for the ever-increasing number of elderly and unhealthy people who, by definition, are less likely to work and pay tax
• Any product or service that’s theoretically infinite in supply (guaranteed healthcare) and has zero cost (no payment at entry) will absolutely be met by an insatiable infinite demand; the only way to avoid this while maintaining the system would be if the whole population magically became healthier as naively believed by William Beveridge
• Prioritisation by medical need sounds reasonable at face-value and works for singular triage events but utterly fails if used every day for the whole population; the elderly and chronically sick repeatedly skip to the front of the queue and everyone else stays on a glacial waiting list that almost never moves forwards
• Another absurdity is created when people with easily treatable lesser conditions never receive treatment due to it not being life-threatening so they stay on a waiting list until the condition deteriorates to the point it becomes life-threatening thus significantly more expensive and resource-intensive (this is why mental health conditions are always at the back of the queue because they’re never directly life-threatening; self-harm and suicide are technically separate events)
• The focus of resources on the elderly and chronically sick sounds compassionate but the treatments are far more costly and unlikely to achieve any positive results, especially as old age is an irreversible deterioration, therefore it’s an extremely wasteful use of limited resources (annual health spending per person is more than six times higher for those aged over 85 compared to those aged under 45)
• Imagine this analogy: there are twenty people with bad health and a doctor has limited resources; the NHS tries to share the limited resources among them all, it prioritises the five elderly patients in the socialist belief of “to each according to his need”, overworks the doctor until he quits and the result is that nobody is truly helped while the elderly people that took most of the resources died of old age several weeks later regardless

Tapeinocracy’s Solutions

• Public healthcare is unnecessary for the continuation of the nation state so it’s not part of central government and therefore is up to each individual local government
• Accept the reality that socialist ideology is utter nonsense that never works and change to a model of healthcare provision that does work; it must be effective, financially sustainable and avoid creating absurd outcomes
• This can be achieved through two particular changes: firstly, change the service model from priority by medical need to priority by the ratio between potential gains from treatment for the individual against the cost of treatment; secondly, any patient deemed as an unproductive use of resources must either be turned away or pay full price out of pocket
• Altering the service model means public healthcare changes from prioritising the elderly, chronically sick and irresponsible to prioritising children, productive adults, people with minor issues and people with healthy lifestyles
• Turning away people that would be a waste of resources reduces demand and enables a greater allocation of resources per person that’s worth helping, or making them pay full price reduces costs on society by moving the cost to the problematic individual
• These changes allow public healthcare to continue operation, makes it far more effective and resolves all of the absurd outcomes that currently exist within the NHS
• The socialist model denies reality so it sounds compassionate on the surface but leads to poor quality care, absurd outcomes and a permanently crippled service; tapeinocracy accepts reality so it sounds harsh on the surface but leads to high quality care, sensible outcomes and the best use of resources
• Repeating the earlier analogy: there are twenty people with bad health and a doctor has limited resources; ten are turned away because they won’t improve regardless of treatment, the remaining ten receive more resources per person with a bigger share for the most useful of this group, meanwhile the doctor performs significantly better because he’s working on fewer patients and has more resources per patient resulting in drastically improved outcomes and the elderly people that were turned away died of old age several weeks later regardless

Welfare

Current Problems

• Welfare in Britain started in the early twentieth century as a small helping hand during difficult times paid by a tax on working men and their employers, then by the mid-century welfare exploded in magnitude and scope from contribution to means-testing
• It began as a well-intended aid from socially-minded liberals to mitigate destitution, then was drastically increased by socialists and the obvious popularity of freebies makes it a vote winner so every subsequent politician is likely to increase welfare payments in the following year
• Between 1948 and 2024, total welfare spending increased in 64 of the years and decreased in 12 of the years; welfare is currently one-third of all public spending and by far the most expensive category
• The oft-used metaphor of the social safety net sounds compassionate but also clearly visualises its major flaws: there’s no requirement to ever leave the net so people can remain on it for life thus increasing the heavy weight that pulls down the rest of productive society
• A system of increasing free money for people that either don’t work or supplement low value jobs rewards those avenues while a primarily work-based tax system means productive people pay for it; the consequences are a destructive feedback loop as the government increasingly punishes work and makes life more difficult so more people turn to welfare, in turn necessitating higher public spending on welfare, then more taxes on work to balance or allow inflation to accumulate
• Coercive redistribution artificially rewards people below an arbitrary line and punishes those above it, turning people of the former group into passive, helpless and extremely entitled children while people in the latter group grow bitter, heartless and resentful from having their money continually stolen and wasted; the government achieves nothing, divides society and psychologically harms everyone due to following destructive ideology rather than figuring out constructive solutions

Tapeinocracy’s Solutions

• To begin, welfare isn’t necessary to the continuation of the nation state so it can’t be part of central government
• Logic, data and experience clearly shows that welfare doesn’t work as a concept for three main reasons and each causes an absurd outcome: one, coercive redistribution pulls everyone down making society worse overall; two, giving free money to people only temporarily addresses symptoms and fails to fix causes, likely reinforcing them; three, endless provision of welfare makes it a preferable lifestyle rather than a small helping hand during desperate times, so people actively seek it as an easier route
• Following the scientific method, welfare must either be improved or removed: free money doesn’t fix anything and creates absurd outcomes so all purely monetary schemes (benefits) are removed; social housing can definitely help but the system must be changed to remove absurd outcomes and improve effectiveness; learning valuable skills and making connections is the best way out of difficult situations so this should be promoted
• Social housing provision is changed from the prioritisation of immigrants and single mothers with children to a time limited provision for people with the highest chances of success and most to gain; this provides a genuine helping hand to worthwhile people and the strict time limit prevents complacency while also allowing more opportunities for other people through continuous turnover
• Community centres are created all over the country with free access to educational materials, classrooms bookable by anyone that wants to teach a useful subject, networking opportunities with local employers, advice for raising children and a hall for events like blood donations; all of this provides a truly constructive catalyst for people keen to improve their lives (education, apprenticeships, business connections) in parallel to building community cohesion, simultaneously it doesn’t provide anything to passive people (no money, food or shelter)
• People that fall upon hard times and prove they’re worth helping can receive a greater amount of public resources thus creating a system that actually lifts people up; meanwhile idle or self-destructive people are ignored and don’t pull society down with them
• Replace the metaphor of the safety net with a ladder; people that fall down in life have access to a helpful ladder but they must choose to climb it and anyone standing idly at the bottom doesn’t negatively affect the rest of society
• Tapeinocracy works on reality and effectiveness, so for welfare this leads to a system where a smaller total amount of public resources are provided and those resources are only allocated to the most promising people as a means of maximising the gains, achieving both lower public spending and helping worthwhile people in society
• Lower overall taxes and no personal taxes besides landholding means almost everyone keeps overwhelmingly more of their money, enabling people to perform greater acts of altruism through personal charity; morally and practically superior to government extortion and waste

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