(1) My father (Kurt Zube, Auwaldstr. 7, D-7800 Freiburg, Br., Germany) designed his Ideas Archive project in 1939, tried to realise it in the late forties and early fifties in Austria and Germany and wrote it up in a book.
I have been involved with this idea since 1949, and have made my own collection of social reform ideas, using microfiche publishing (Ed: see this encyclopaedia's chapter on Communications for more on this).
Since 1952 I was particularly influenced by the treasury of social reform and individual liberty ideas which Ulrich von Beckerath (1882-1969) gathered in a life-long effort from the age of 16.
I have given up on conventional publishers. If I had to approach a thousand of them to get one book temporarily printed, for that outlay I could microfiche 10-100 titles.
(3) I have microfiched material too on the need too for 'Panarchy', a social organisation that would be self-correcting, peace-, freedom- and wealth-promoting. My microfiche deal with the organisational aspects and requirements of individual sovereignty, individual secessionism, voluntarism and personal law.
(4) For the clarification of first principles, I have microfiched (in Peace Plans 589/590) over a hundred private declarations of individual rights (such as P.B.Shelley's), as alternatives to the all-too-limited governmental bills of rights.
(5) I have finally finished preparing a newsletter plus microfiche on 'Monetary Freedom'.
(6) I have publicised the use and potential of micrographics.
(7) Another iron I try to keep in the fire is: a total denationalisation programme for expropriating the worst expropriators, with the assets ending up as transferable assets in the hands of private citizens, free of charge, to be used by them however they please.
(8) Another approach I advocate: a revival of free juries and true direct democracy and local self-government. I would have enjoyed the local self-government that free Englishmen once enjoyed, according to J.Toulmin Smith ('Local Self-Government and Centralisation', my first microfiched reprint).
(9) My most hopeless approach: an attempt through my 'Peace Plans' publications to drum some sense into those involved in the peace movements. There are a handful of sharp thinkers and activists that are worthwhile from my point of view, such as Gene Sharpe and Brian Martin, but the rest are almost hopeless muddleheads and ignoramuses.
(10) Since people have fallen so often for the wrong slogans and catch phrases, I am involved in publishing counter-wordings, 'Slogans for Peace'.
(11) Related to this is my planned 'Encyclopaedia of the Best Refutations of Common Errors, Myths and Prejudices that are Obstacles to Social Progress'. These errors, etc together form something like a common and primitive religion that is the enemy of almost all that is good in humans.
(12) I am preparing a 'Redensarten' handbook: benefiting from the numerous mistakes I make in my arguments with others, I will list ways of making a point skilfully, persuasively, politely or sometimes aggressively.
(13) I am microfiching all the literature and experience concerning ending the 'organised antagonism' of the employer-employee relationship.
(14) I made attempts to start a club of utopists, of those interested in social utopias as opposed to science fiction. Pip Wilson, in Sydney, has been trying for the last two or three years to start such a club, but has not found enough supporters. There may, initially, only be enough people for it worldwide.
Finally: the German Reichsbank, during the Great Depression, got some 100,000 proposals for ending the depression. Ideas still today need registering and marketing properly. Thus do I very much welcome the Institute for Social Inventions as a new associate in this effort. However, I hold that you are very optimistic if you think you could abstract and review all of them in conventional publishing.
John Zube, 7 Oxley Street, Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia (tel 48 771 436).