With all due respect, some texts are ripe for updating. For example, I would suggest we respect women, not just our neighbor’s wife. But in particular, we should understand that building a thriving society goes much beyond individual behavior: it is a question of social organization.

If the Almighty, after a few thousand years, remembers that he had created a blue round object and entrusted it to what he thought would come to be intelligent bipeds, and decides to have a look, he will behold how we treat the planet we inherited—the forests cut down, the devastated oceans, the polluted rivers, the poverty of slums, the luxury of nabobs good at getting rich but incapable of good management, the millions that go hungry, and the deaths of innocent children. He will certainly consider we need commandments concerning social organization, not just individual behavior.

As a society, we don’t want just to survive, but to live with a better quality of life. And this means organizing, in an orderly manner, the challenges and answers. These are the minimum results we need to achieve, the “must have” of development, with the corresponding decision-making processes. The proposals or lines of action suggested below have a common denominator: they have all been tried and are being applied in various regions of the world, sectors, or different activity levels. They are initiatives that have been tested and can become widespread policies, with evident flexibility due to the diversity of situations in the world.

I – Thou shalt not buy governments

Rescue the public dimension of the State

How can we have regulatory mechanisms that work if our politicians are elected with the money of the corporations they are supposed to regulate? If the agencies that evaluate risks are paid by those who create the risk? If those responsible for a central bank come from the companies that need to be regulated and then return to get their jobs back?

One of the clearest proposals of the current crisis, and one that we find mentioned in almost the entire political spectrum, is the need to reduce the capacity of corporations to dictate the rules of the game. The number of laws approved to reduce taxes on financial transactions, to reduce the regulations of the Central Bank, to authorize banks to make all and any operations, added to the power of financial lobbies, make the need to restore the regulatory power of the state evident and for that reason, the politicians should be elected by real people, and not by corporate entities that are fictional in terms of human rights. See The Entrepreneurial State by Mazzucato.

II – Thou shalt not present wrong numbers

Redesign our national accounting systems

The national (and local) accounting system has to be centered on the objectives we are aiming for. The GDP indicates the intensity of the use of the productive apparatus but does not indicate what is produced, for whom, and at what cost to the stock of natural resources the planet has at its disposal. It counts as an increase in GDP: a natural disaster, the increase of disease, the restriction of access to free goods.

The HDI was already great progress, but we have to evolve to an integrated accounting of the effective results of our efforts, particularly in the allocation of financial resources, ensuring a development that is not only economically viable but also socially fair and environmentally sustainable. The methodologies exist, partially applied in several countries, sectors, or research. Much more than restricting measuring to commercial output, it’s all about the outcome for the population and the planet. See Doughnut Economy by Kate Raworth.

III – Thou shalt not push thy fellowman into poverty

Basic income

Some things have to be accessible to everyone, it is that simple. Critical poverty is the biggest drama, as much because of the suffering it causes as for the links with the environmental drama, lack of access to information and knowledge, and the deformation of the production profile: business is not interested in the needs of those who do not have purchasing power.

Costs are ridiculous when compared to the trillions transferred to financial groups during the financial crisis. The ethical benefit is immense because it is a planetary scandal that millions of children die every year of ridiculous causes; these children have nothing to do with our political and corporate mess. The short and medium-term benefits of redistribution are big, as money at the bottom of the pyramid immediately boosts micro and small production, acting as an anti-cyclical process, as has been noted in Brazil’s social policies. The theory that the poor will sit back if they receive subsidies is simply denied by the facts: the poor do not lack initiative, they lack opportunities. We certainly know what should be done. See Against Inequality by Tom Malleson.

IV – Thou shalt not deprive thy fellowman of the right to earn his living

Guarantee the right to make a living

Every person who wants to make a living to provide for their family has the right to work. On a planet where there is a world of things to be done, including rescuing the environment, it is absurd to keep so many people out of organized forms of production and income generation. We have the resources and the technical and organizational knowledge to ensure, in each village or city, access to a decent and socially useful job.

In economic activity, besides the productive result, it is essential to think about the social restructuring involved and the creation of social capital. Industrial fishing in the oceans can be more productive in terms of the volume of catch, but the outcome is disastrous, both because of the diminishing stock of life in the oceans and the hundreds of millions of people who used to live from traditional fishing practices and are losing their means of subsistence. The dimension of the job-creating impact of all economic initiatives has to become a central concern. See Working for a Brighter Future, a report by the ILO and the Indian Employment Guarantee Act.

V -Thou shalt not overwork thyself or thy fellowman

Reduction of working hours

The underutilization of the workforce is a planetary problem, even if it is unequal in scale. Regarding top jobs, people do not live well because of the excessive workloads. It is not a luxury demand: the number of suicides in companies where the race for efficiency has become inhuman is impressive. Professional stress is becoming a planetary illness and the issue regarding quality of life in the workspace is becoming central. The social redistribution of the workload has become a necessity. Resistance is understandable, but reality shows that with technological advances, the productive processes become less labor intensive, and reducing the working day is a question of time.

The reduction of the working day will not reduce the well-being or the wealth of the population but will shift it to new sectors more centered on the use of free time, with more cultural and leisure activities. We do not necessarily need more cars or plastic; we need a better quality of life. The New Economics Foundation has great research on the possibilities, as well as the French with the discussions over "Travailler moins pour travailler tous" (working less so that we all work).

VI – Thou shalt not live for money

Promoting change in the style of life

On this planet of 8 billion inhabitants, with an annual increase in the order of 80 million, every policy also involves a change in individual behavior and consumption culture. Respecting environmental regulations, moderating consumption, debt awareness, intelligent use of means of transportation, generalization of recycling processes, waste reduction—there is a wide range of initiatives in our daily life that involve a change in values and attitude when faced with economic, social, and environmental challenges.

An intelligent informative use of the attention industry has become fundamental. In the face of the necessary efforts, it is not enough just to reduce the marketing assault that stimulates consumerism; it is necessary to rescue the informative dimensions of the means of communication. The scientific media has practically disappeared, when what we fundamentally need is a population well informed about the real challenges we face. We need a public policy for changes in individual behavior. See The Uninhabitable Earth by Wallace-Wells.

VII – Thou shalt not earn money with other people’s money

Rationalize the financial intermediation systems

The final allocation of financial resources is no longer organized according to end-use and social needs; it has been reorganized according to the interests of the financial intermediaries themselves.

Credit activity is always a public activity—it can be in the sphere of public institutions or the sphere of private banks—but they work with public money: our deposits in the banks, our taxes in government. This is why we have central banks. The 2008 financial crisis clearly demonstrated the chaos generated by the lack of trustworthy regulatory mechanisms in the sector. In recent decades, we have jumped from one bubble to the next, from crisis to crisis, and governments have not had the will or the strength to update the regulatory system in order to ensure improved systemic productivity of our savings. Until a more favorable balance of power is generated at the global level, we need to promote improved national financial regulatory systems.

Money allocation is not the most productive where the intermediaries earn the most. It is a public resource, and we must channel resources to optimize outcomes for society in general. Resources must be made more accessible according to the greater social, economic, and environmental results. Financial intermediation is a means, not an end. Refer to The Age of Unproductive Capital by yours truly.

VIII – Thou shalt not tax good actions to fund bad debts

Rationalize the tax system

The very concept of how we raise public money, how we allocate it, to whom, and to what end, must be revised. Tax policy is clearly one of the main instruments we have to balance the whole system, above all because it can be promoted by democratic mechanisms. The key issue is not the reduction of taxes (the eternal “big government” scarecrow) but the socially fair form of taxation and the productive allocation in social and environmental terms. It is important to remember that the planet’s greatest fortunes in general are not connected to an increase in the planet’s productive capacities but to an increase in corporate acquisitions, generating even more unstable and less governable empires where the quest is for control of the financial, political, and media power and the appropriation of natural resources.

The tax system needs to be reformulated in the anti-cyclical sense, privileging productive activities and penalizing speculations; in the social aspect by being highly progressive; and in the sense of environmental protection by taxing toxic or climate-changing emissions, as well as the use of non-renewable natural resources. And the giants who do not pay taxes, by nesting in tax havens, should start revising their policies. See New Rules for the 21st Century, Roosevelt Institute.

IX – Thou shalt not deprive thy fellowman of knowledge

Access to knowledge and sustainable technologies

Effective participation of populations in the sustainable development processes involves keeping a wide-ranging and free public access system for required information. The planetary online connectivity that new technologies allow can be made a highway for democracy, social balance, and sustainability. The cost/benefit of generalized digital inclusion is simply unbeatable.

Communities with access to information are much more empowered and become responsible for their own development. The productive impact is immense for the small producers who begin to have direct access to various markets, both in terms of inputs and for their own products, escaping from the varied financial and commercial intermediation systems. Generalized digital inclusion is a powerful opening in the changing process which has today become indispensable. As sustained by so many analysts, we must ensure the flexibility of patents to allow universal access to information for the technological changes demanded by sustainable development. See The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Jeremy Rifkin.

X – Thou shalt not deprive thy fellowman of his word

Democratize communication

Communication is one of the most dynamic areas in terms of its impact on social transformation. We are permanently surrounded by messages. Our children spend hours watching marketing campaigns. The communication industry, with its impressive national and international concentration of control, generated a global way of life industry and obsessive consumerism, which in turn reinforced elitism, inequality, and the waste of resources as a symbol of success. The integrated system permits the costs of media and marketing campaigns to be thrown in with the production costs of the products we are called upon to purchase, and we end up bombarded by a permanent idiotic chatter paid out of our pockets.

More recently, corporations have used this road to generate a positive image of themselves, as if they were green, nice, and concerned persons. The electromagnetic spectrum these messages use is a natural, public asset, and access to public, free, and intelligent information for the whole planet is simply on our doorstep. By gradually expanding the numerous alternative forms of communication that are popping up in so many ways, we can introduce a new culture, another vision of the world, a more diversified and less pasteurized culture, and pluralism in place of religious, political, or commercial fundamentalism. Read The Chaos Machine, by Max Fisher.

In fact, in a balanced society, everyone will live better. Tolerance for a world where 800 million go hungry, where some 6 million children die every year of preventable causes, and where the natural riches of the planet are dilapidated for the profit of irresponsible corporations and their billionaires, is growing thin.