More security for the least secure means more security for all.
It is easier to tear things down and destroy than it is to build
and create, whether we are talking about a tower of blocks, a work of art or a civilization. A civilization is stronger and more resilient when most everyone believes that we will all be better off by working to improve on what we have made. We cannot have many people wanting to destroy our civilization to see what else might take its place. For the benefit of all of us, there must be very few of us who believe that the world we have created is ugly or hurtful or evil. We need a society that all can believe in and feel a shared ownership of. Among other things, this means that we must have a system that recognizes the people as the rightful owners of natural resources, so that the world we create together will not be a world that has more paving or pollution or noise than the people will consent to.
A guaranteed minimum income for everyone on earth would decrease
the problems associated with disparity of wealth. This minimum
income could result from our realization that we all own the
natural resources of the earth, and to the extent that some
people or corporations take these resources or degrade their
quality in pursuit of profit, they should be made to pay a fee as
compensation to the owners of the resources, the people at large.
An equal ownership of natural resources will end abject poverty.
As our economy becomes more fair and transparent, more people
will come to feel an ownership in the system. By making the least
secure among us more secure, we make everyone more secure.
The resource user-fees could be a mechanism whereby citizens exert their will on the larger economic system to define appropriate limits on economic activity, in terms of pollution or noise produced or natural resources consumed. We would all share in setting limits on human activities insofar as those activities impinge on the commons. If most people vote for more restrictions on monoculture or paving or a particular kind of pollution, for example, then the associated fees would increase, causing industries to try harder to reduce the offensive activity. And the inverse is also true: Any activity that had been discouraged more strongly than the people felt was necessary would have its associated fees reduced. The actual conditions on the earth that result from human action would transform to match the expressed will of the people.
In a democratic society wherein the people own the natural resources, we would not allow loss of biodiversity, pollution of our streams and rivers, high rates of mineral depletion, (including clean air and waterloss of our starscape every night of the year to light pollution--at least not beyond what the people. Given a voice in the management of natural resources that owners should have, we likely would not consent to this world we've made. When we fully apply our principles of ownership and fair compensation to questions of natural resource wealth management--when we recognize commons property rights in our accounting--much will change. We will have achieved a synthesis of capitalism and communism in a radically democratic society.
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John Champagne
gaiabrainearths (at) yahoo.com | newsgroup posts
A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis - long version
A Biological Model for Politics and Economics
Would Cronkite welcome a draft?
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