The Beginning

Let's start from the beginning: Self-Management is managed by its members. There are no directors or owners. To be more accurate, it’s managed by its owners. It is a self sustained group that supervises itself. It includes minimal administration, to record, consult, and provide information. Everything of importance to the group is decided by several kinds of referendums, with shorter and longer advanced notices. The group’s aim is to chart its own course and grow in numbers and content. That's about all; it's that simple.
That's the revolution. In my eyes, the biggest problem in today's society the poverty in which a great proportion of humanity lives. A close second, and closely related is unemployment and underemployment. I will try to bring the reader to understand that poverty and unemployment could be alleviated by joining him in ‘Self-Management.’ Even when we couldn't abolish poverty or unemployment completely, our system will be geared to amortize its detriment by the actions we take collectively. Our system is based in part on savings, but also on mutual help and an internal self-organization, simple to understand and handle, to be detailed throughout the book.
Going from the end to the beginning, the most important consequence of self-management may be for the confused and desperate Americans, and people in the rest of the world of the world, living in our complex society of 2009 is to give them a reason to continue living with an attainable goal in sight. As you may already understand, I am asking the mainstream of fellow Americans and citizens of the world to joint me in this system for the common benefit of us all.Self-Management is allergic to bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, in my eyes, is probably the main cause for the deficits in government agencies like Medicare and Social Security. Unemployment today is a real curse. You may find yourself thrown out of your job at age 50 or 48, when you are no longer as productive as younger workers. I beg your pardon, in Europe in 1996, the lay-offs came down on workers in their 30s. When the high-tech bubble burst in 2000, thousands of highly skilled (and previously highly paid) workers found themselves in the streets, with expensive skills that are no longer marketable. This means it is not enough to have just one profession. You should always be planning for a second, or even a third profession, one just in case. Self-Management is also a teaching tool to lead us in all facets of our way of life, not just in health insurance. The teaching tool that self-management puts in your hands and brain is about conducting your whole life in the way you want it to be. It’s not just a ‘do it yourself manual.’ Do it yourself is about things that you already know. Self-Management is about something that you should know and learn, to help you train yourself to be self-sustaining, and eventually change your state of mind. You may become self-employed, or not, but you can always become self-sustaining, finding livelihood under any circumstance.