LIFEHOUR EVOLUTION
Time, the constant current of life.
AESOP's goals can be described in many ways. All involve improving the quality of human life through a better work place. If employment is fair, rewarding and educational, these qualities will filter into the community and family. If employment is unfair the family and community will decline. Human history can be reviewed from this analysis of work and humanity. The peaks of a country's achievement and morality coincide with optimal work conditions. A country achieves greatness when the individual was responsible for his destiny and rewarded for his effort. Decline and decay coincide with the disparity between what one was worth and what one was paid. The history of Greece and Rome as well as other countries are cycles of under- and over-compensation leading to turmoil and revolution. Sadly, the overpaid people eventually buy the public decision-makers. The politicians crystalize this illogical relation of work and reward into written legal laws. Arguably, economic instability, terrorism and war can result from unfair payment for services rendered. When one is required to be responsible, one appreciates the value of one's time. Nature, through the will to survive, imposes responsibility when one is on a deserted island or in a new unsettled frontier. Governments should impose logical, legal laws in established civilizations that both require and reward self-responsibility. When one sees how subtle successes contribute to causes for celebration, one becomes a better human being on and off the job. This is another way of describing the work ethic--awareness and pride in work. Without awareness of how one's time is responsible for one's quality of life, a person will be irresponsible in the use of time. Monthly Summary and Storage AESOP's commitment to objectively standardizing performance through Aesop is summarized in a financial instrument called a "lifehour." An employee's excess profits are converted into ownership quantified by the average value of a work hour in the AESOP company. If one's profits are $500 and the average hourly compensation is $10 then one will receive 50 lifehour shares in the company. AESOP's stock is objectively quantified compared to the subjective assessment and manipulation of stock on Wall Street. When the symbols of capital (stocks, bonds, currency) can be arbitrarily altered, then the people holding those financial instruments will be either "thieves or victims." Stealing a person's time by manipulating the value of his money causes lost production and wealth. Apprehensive of possessing weak currency, people turn from production to speculation, some by choice, others from necessity. A nation will have more goods and fewer problems if a government creates a stable savings reservoir for workers. A government that allows the debasement of savings institutions--savings and loans--will have many problems. The "Lifehour" is a savings reservoir that cannot be debased. Daily Assessment When a project is written up at AESOP, the prices are based on unit costs and a profit markup. This accurate pricing avoids the dire consequences of overcharging or undercharging. The Aesop job prices are calculated from overhead, wages and profit. On a daily basis the value of a lifehour at production in different areas is updated during the bank deposit process. The bank deposit program is activated as part of the Auto-Manager morning sequence. Invoices in the paid directory are retrieved, analyzed and transferred to the archives directory for that month. A job record is kept on each module for recording on-going activity to determine average amount of time to complete the job. Some jobs lend themselves better to this quantification than others. Word processing a letter takes about 12 minutes with little variation while designing a flyer takes longer with more variation. Fortunately, as the frequency of a job increases, the validity of the average amount of estimated time increases. A benefit to tracking performance is to define typical examples of the jobs that take a certain amount of time. For instance, in typesetting there are six degrees of complexity. A grade one page of typesetting takes less time than grade two and so on. A gradation chart of examples would assist in determining time and cost when writing up an invoice. Tracking performance on jobs also allows comparison of individuals as well as establishment of a basic lifehour worth in a business. For products with wide deviation, compare examples and individuals. Financial Instruments: Lifehour Bonds At a certain point in the geographical expansion of AESOP, AESOP will sell "lifehour" bonds. These bonds will have three-year maturity dates with payment being paid in dollars according to the increased value of the corporate lifehour on which they were issued. They are like bonds which are backed by precious metals only Lifehour bonds are backed by increases in human worth by solving problems better and faster. Sales of these bonds will foster "productive inflation," an important consideration for individuals, especially senior workers and retirees. When investing by buying stocks and bonds (symbols of production) one should consider the impact on productivity. One may be gaining more symbols of wealth without a corresponding increase in actual goods and services. The latter, not symbols, are needed to maintain or increase a standard of living. Historical and contemporary hyperinflation have many instances of people receiving a high interest rate in symbols while the real value of wealth is decreasing.
AESOP will develop in all basic services a reputation for fast, quality service
and will appeal to people to invest in needed services. Improving productivity
and pricing lowers the
cost of living
Modern Inflation: A 10% return on your savings with a 12% inflationary cheapening of your total incomes? or, The difference in your lifestyle is a loss and a gain. Social Security should have been designed in this fashion. People did not invest a percentage of their income into lifehour bonds for industrial productivity. Instead, Social Security is a inflationary dilution of workers' savings. America has a retirement plan with questionable durability due to an inherent flaw. International Considerations Another human problem is that countries have different currencies fluctuating relative to each other. International trade requires the exchange of currency. Presently, countries are able to quickly manipulate the value of their currency by printing more money which creates a disparity between the advertised price and the real price. Currency speculators, knowing this disparity before the general public, buy or sell currencies to gain income. Or, they play several currencies to gain immediate income without producing a single item of new wealth. This income does not come out of thin air. It comes from cheapening the worker's lifehours, present and retired. AESOP could slowly create currency stability in the United States. In the process of nationalized lifehour determination, the United States will have a currency that cannot be manipulated. This will prevent the diversion of the best minds and motivation into speculating for quick income from unstable, disparate currencies. This standardization of what time is currently worth will prevent the workers from worrying about inflationary losses from and destruction of their savings and retirement. With better and unworried minds putting more hours into the productive creation of new wealth, the productivity of the American worker will skyrocket. Recognizing the competitive needs and benefits, other nations will adopt the democratic, capitalistic principles of Aesop. If nations, like individuals in a family, become better problem-solvers, then the world will have fewer problems to go to war over. Time, the constant current of life.
Warning: Anyone found
stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards
of Better Democracy and Capitalism. |
