New ‘‘‘Equitism’’’ Series -- Overview & ‘FAQs’.
Dear Reader,
The
forthcoming series introduced here presents a detailed proposal for the
constitutional and legislative infrastructure needed for a more just successor
system to the present capitalist system. The successor system that we propose
is neither one of a “state-less”, anarchist-localist model, nor any variant of
the presently-prevalent “Big Government” state-capitalist model. The central focus of this series is the
achievement of greater social justice.
What we will
propose, in this series, is a system based upon grass-roots ‘political-ECONOMIC
DEMOCRACY’, extending the rule of law tradition. Its implementation is to be sought, in a
scaling-up fashion, starting on the municipal scale, and extending, ultimately
and sequentially, to the county, state, regional, and national scales, and,
eventually, to the international scale.
All of these scales of implementation are to be achieved by entirely
lawful, legislative reform and constitutional amendment means, not by any
hyper-costly and failure-prone path of bloody, law-less, violent revolution,
which would also potentiate the new dictatorships to which that path tends to
lead: “Meet the new boss; same as the
old boss”.
We do not claim,
in any way, that what we propose, once implemented, would produce a
“perfection”, or a “heaven on Earth”.
Reality is imperfection.
But we do hold that the successor system we propose would produce a
majority life far better than what the majority suffers today. It represents, we hold, the next step in the
evolution of democracy, in the evolution of human wealth, and in the evolution
of collective human happiness.
We are
consciously seeking, in designing the legal infrastructure for this successor
system, to resuscitate the “checks and balances” and “countervailing powers”
founded in the Constitution of the United States. This design is, in particular, targeted to
resuscitate the subverted political checks-and-balances of the U.S.
Constitution -- subverted by a hyper-concentration of wealth that, arguably,
can buy out, and has bought out, all three branches of political government,
and yoked them all to a singular, dictatorial directorate.
The way to
the resuscitation of these political checks and balances, we hold, is by
adding new, grassroots-democratic, ‘economic checks and balances’.
We are also,
thereby, consciously aiming to achieve a synthesis of the, “divided and
conquered”, “left versus right” conflict that has lately engulfed, and incapacitated,
the people and the politics of the United States, of Western Europe, and
beyond.
Our aim is
to present a constitutional and social design for a successor system that will
appeal to the majorities of these electorates, “right”-leaning and “left”-leaning
alike, and that will ultimately prove far more satisfying to their instincts,
and to their social desires, than the traditional models that presently
paralyze both leanings.
This
successor system is designed to be more democratic, more respectful
of individual liberty, more in accord with the rule of law, more
observant of property rights, and more observant of human rights, than
capitalism today is, than it ever was, and than it ever even could be.
For the sake
of clarity, we call this successor system-design by the names ‘Generalized
Equity’, and ‘Political-Economic Democracy’.
We call the social, political, economic, and legal process that
implements this successor system by the name ‘The Equitarian
Reform-Revolution’.
This
“Reform” is a “revolution”, not in the sense of violence in the streets, but in
the sense that, if implemented, by the legally-expressed will of the majority,
it would change the fundamental socio-economic relationship of the majority of
individuals in our society, to their sources of livelihood.
It would
change their primary social relation from that of “capital-only
equity”. That exclusive form of
equity means, for a minority, the ownership, for example, of financial shares
in the assets, hence profits, of capitalist enterprises. For the majority, it means a primary social
relation of wage-labor, or of salaried labor, in enforced service to that
capital-equity, and to its profitability.
It would
change that primary social relation to that of ‘generalized
equity’. That means a system of
all-citizens, universal, inclusive equity properties and rights, by way of
instituting three new, additional forms of all-citizens equity.
It also
means not outlawing, but including -- and also containing the
downsides of -- the old kind of equity, capital equity; equity for
capital-owners only.
The social
impetus that has led us to this design is part of a growing recognition of the
increasing failures of “actually-existing capitalism”. We will, in the course of this series, delve
deeply into the many dimensions of those growing failures of “actually existing
capitalism”.
These
failures include the imposition of ever more severe global recessions and
depressions, and the promulgation, by the capitalist ruling class, of a “people
are pollution” ideology that puts the majority of humanity in their
cross-hairs.
We will also
introduce you, perhaps for your first time, to the dynamical “law of motion” of
this capitalism, the dynamic that unifies these many problematic dimensions as
their singular -- albeit difficult to discern -- root cause. We name this law ‘the law of the tendency of
the rate of reproduction of capital’. By
capital reproduction, we mean the continual production of, and
investment of past profits in, new, for example, fixed capital plant and
equipment, to replace the old fixed capital, that has been consumed in the
process of production, or that has become competitively, technologically
obsolete. By the rate of that
reproduction, we mean the periodic ratio of that new capital value to the old
capital value, already accumulated and demanding its equitable share of
profits.
This series
will also introduce you to the concept of an ‘ascendence phase’ of the
capitalist system, followed by its ‘descendence phase’. The former, ‘ascendence phase’, is already
behind us in history past. The latter,
‘descendence phase’ is the phase that surrounds and permeates and dominates our
lives today. During the ‘ascendence
phase’, now passed, the tendency of that rate of reproduction of capital is to
rise. From the beginning of the
‘descendence phase’, which now engulfs us, the tendency of that rate of capital
reproduction is to fall.
In response,
the owners of concentrated capital, threatened, due to that waning rate of
reproduction of their capital, with the non-reproduction of their power, and,
due to that loss of power, threatened also with the loss of all of the “perks”
of their rule, thereby, of course, institute -- largely in a stealth mode --
extreme measures, in an attempt to reverse that fall, unfortunately in ways
which threaten the livelihoods, and the very lives, of the majority class.
A key aspect
of this ‘descendence phase’, and of its specific “law of motion”, is the
growing tendency of ‘descendence phase’ capitalism to drive toward
state-capitalist, police-state, state-terrorist and totalitarian,
permanent-war, “national security” dictatorship.
George
Orwell perceived this tendency with unsurpassed clarity. He warned us about it in his famous novel, 1984. President Eisenhower, himself a former
General of the U.S. Army, also perceived this threat. He warned the people of the U.S., in his
Presidential Farewell Address, of the danger to democracy inherent in the
emerging “military-industrial complex”, his name for it.
Some
symptoms of this tendency to totalitarianism include a declining
investment in public education, and a “dumbing down” of what education remains,
an increase in punitive social control, such as escalating rates of
incarceration, and in police militarization and armed forces imperial
militarism, an increase in internet censorship of all forms of free expression,
an increase in the seemingly permanent military invasion of other nations, and
an increase in the electronic surveillance of all citizens’ communications and
financial transactions, without even the slightest hint of a probable cause
justification.
In the
transition from feudalism and monarchy to capitalism, in the fight against the
feudal “ancien régime”, and in the early history of capitalism -- during
capitalism’s ‘ascendence phase’ -- many capitalists fought heroically for
greater individual liberty.
They fought
for the expansion of suffrage, and, ultimately, for universal adult suffrage,
for freedom of speech, for freedom of the press, for the right of the people to
bear arms as a potential check against abuses of power by their government, for
freedom of religion and prohibition of the establishment of any religion
by the state, for the rule of law, as opposed to arbitrary rule by
“aristocratic” kings and cults of personality, for human rights such as that of
the assembly of citizens to petition their government for redress of
grievances, for trial by juries of peers, for the right to privacy, and for the
right to the protection of liberty and property by due process of law.
But with the
turn into the ‘descendence phase’, the most powerful faction of the
ultra-wealthy capitalist ruling class seems to have turned against all of this,
and appears to be driving toward dictatorship.
We will, in this series, trace back to the root cause of this turn,
finding it in the “law of motion” already mentioned.
This tendency
to totalitarianism is rooted partly in a corollary of that “law of motion”
-- in its subsumed law of capitalist competition. Competition leads, not primarily to the
reproduction of competition, but to the negation of competition -- to oligopoly
and monopoly. Extreme capital wealth ownership
concentrates increasingly, and into ever fewer hands.
And those ever
fewer hands may act to undermine the political checks and balances, that,
alone, when they function as intended, help mightily to protect democracy from
degenerating into tyranny.
But with
sufficient concentration of gargantuan capital monetary wealth, the ever fewer
owners of that wealth can “buy out” all three political branches of government,
in a “hostile takeover”, overriding the intended ‘inter-mutually’ restraining
and “countervailing” powers of those three political branches of political government.
The houses
of legislature become houses for the rubber-stamp approval of the agendas of
the owners of that hyper-concentrated capital wealth.
The
also-compromised executive branch becomes an agency promoting the interests of
those ever fewer, and ever more dominant, capital owners, against the interests
of the majority.
The
judiciary branch becomes an enforcer of the interests of that same
capital-controlling hyper-minority.
The “free”
press, the media in general, also owned and controlled mainly by that
oligarchy, become agents of the propaganda, and of the “divide-and-conquer”
ideologies, engineered by that plutocratic “1%-of-the-1%”. These ideologies are designed to
psychologically impair and to disempower the majority class. Race, religion, and any other discernible
differences within the majority population become means for these media to
“balkanize” the population into ever smaller divisions, with mutual hatreds
cultivated among them all.
This
hyper-concentration of capital equity wealth ownership, and this growth of
oligopoly and monopoly, contains the potential for the subversion of the
political checks and balances that preserve liberty.
However,
they do not fully explain, in our view, why the strongest faction of the
ultra-wealthy seems to have opted to use that potential to actualize
dictatorship.
While it is
true, in our view, that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely”, we think that this concentrated power of the uppermost capitalists
is not sufficient to explain what has happened, and what is happening now. We detect something more desperate in
the über-ruling-class reaction to their potential for near-absolute
power. We will address, in this series,
the root cause of that desperate anti-democratic agenda as well. To do so, we will have to unearth much of the
hidden history of the late 19th century, and of the 20th century.
The three
“Pillars” of the successor system that this series will present -- each of
which is to be both a newly-recognized, fundamental, constitutional, human
right, and also a new kind of, constitutionally-protected, universal,
all-citizens property right, are named by us (1) ‘Citizens Externality
Equity’, (2) ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’, and (3) ‘Citizens Stewardship Equity’.
These new
constitutional rights, and their enabling institutions, are designed to advance
both the liberty and the prosperity of the vast majority of the population, and
to provide risk management to the individuals and families making up that majority,
against the “market failures” and the other mortal hazards to which
contemporary capitalism exposes us, but against which it offers us no effective
remedies.
1. ‘Citizens Externality Equity’. In brief, ‘Citizens Externality Equity’
provides a constitutional rights-based, voting-rights-based defense against the
“market failures” that capitalist economists call “external costs”, or “externalities”. The new defenses we propose start in the
locale of residence of each citizen, via a kind of grassroots-democratic,
‘economic suffrage’. Such “external
costs” include pollution as well as property value depreciation, rent
unaffordability, traffic and parking congestion, etc., caused for residents by
the activities of capital equity corporations.
The ‘Citizens
Externality Equity’ human right constitutes also a new, constitutional property
right, a collective property right, exercised via voting. It is a right to a preventative
remedy, in return for having suffered the “external costs” imposed upon citizens
by enterprises in relation to which these citizens may be neither stockholders
nor customers. By having so suffered, in
accord with the principles of equitable jurisprudence, said citizens have
“purchased”, in kind, and in effect, this new kind of equity stake in those
polluting enterprises. We are not aware
of any existing examples that approximate this first “Pillar” of ‘Generalized
Equity’.
Otherwise,
as neither stockholders nor customers of those enterprises, such citizens are
unprotected by standard “market forces”.
They have no effective
voice to redress their suffering of the, often deadly, coercive visitations
upon them of these “external cost” damages, by those enterprises.
A way to get
at what the term “externality” means is to ask just exactly what “externalities”
are “external” to.
“Externalities”
are external to the market relationship between the owners of enterprises that
produce goods and services, namely, to the relation between the owners of
“capital equity stock” in those enterprises, as the “first parties” in this
market relationship, and the customers of these enterprises, who buy and
consume those goods and services, as the “second parties” in this market
relationship.
The “second
parties” are at least somewhat protected, in such market relationships, from
abuse by the “first parties”, by the ‘economic check and balance’ of market
competition. If the “first parties”
abuse the “second parties”, by foisting upon them low-quality customer service,
poor quality goods and services, and/or prices that constitute profiteering,
the “second parties” may have recourse to competitors of those abusive “first
parties”. Those competitors may, to win
out in market competition against the abusive “first parties”, offer better
prices, better quality, and/or better customer service.
But the
sufferers of “externality” damages, such as pollution, etc., are “third
parties” to this market relationship. They are “external” to the market
relationship between the first parties and the second parties.
These “third
party” citizens are unprotected, by any market competition kind
of ‘economic checks and balances’, against damages such as pollution, etc.,
imposed upon them, coercively, by the “first parties”.
The function
of the new ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ constitutional right is to provide a
new kind of ‘economic checks and balances’.
This new kind of “checks and balances” is designed to systematically
redress the failure of the market-based, competition-based kind of ‘economic
checks and balances’ to protect citizens from these, often life-threatening,
costs to those citizens as “third parties”.
The
‘Citizens Externality Equity’ human right and property right is designed to
expand the self-protection of each citizen, and their protection of their
families, starting from where they live, against pollution, for example, by
factories and other physical plants that threaten their families’ health and,
potentially, their very lives.
But it is
designed to provide this protection in a very direct and local way, and in a
way that makes ruling-class bribery, to thwart that protection, exhorbitant,
unaffordable -- even to the bribery budgets of the richest of the rich.
This way is
one which also skirts the failed capitalist method of relying upon external
regulatory bureaucracies, that are regularly “captured” -- co-opted -- by the
very industries that they were created to regulate and restrain. Consider, for example, the cases of the FCC,
the SEC, etc.
This way
also skirts the increasingly failed approach of suing the polluting enterprises
in civil court, and fighting a usually losing court battle against
deep-pocketed mega-corporations, and against an increasingly compromised
judiciary, appointed by an executive branch increasingly “owned”, under the
present system of “legalized bribery”, by the lobbyists of those same
corporations, with the “advice and consent” of a Senate increasingly beholden
to same.
For example,
such polluters are typically able to ward off litigation through various legal
maneuvers, and settle out of court, thereby never admitting to any wrong-doing,
and never incurring judicial precedents that might inhibit similar destructive,
even deadly, externalities-generating behaviors in the future.
2. ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’. The ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’ “Pillar”,
financed, primarily, from the proceeds of the other two ‘Pillars of Generalized
Equity’, would make every child born, every new citizen, a de facto
“Trust Fund Baby”, equipped with an absolutely portable, personal
“social safety net”, regardless of which “side of the tracks” that baby was
born into, or which employer that adult citizen later works for. A good example of a proposal that
approximates this “Pillar” of ‘Generalized Equity’ is the recent “Baby Bonds”
proposal.
The
‘Citizens Birthright Equity’ human right constitutes also a new, constitutional
property right -- a right of personal property. It is also surrounded by built-in “moral
hazards” mitigations. This is because
that personal property is sourced in and converted from social
property.
By “moral
hazards”, we mean perverse incentives that might unintentionally reward
personally and socially destructive behaviors -- such as spending the social
funds provided on illegal drugs.
In general,
“moral hazard” is lack of incentive to guard against risks, and against the
costs of those risks, because one is shielded from those costs by others, or by
society as a whole.
Via
‘Birthright Equity’, society would thereby ‘self-invest’ in every new citizen
born, enough to give each new child the wherewithal for a socially supported
decent start in life, regardless of the resources of that child’s birth family.
Likewise,
each new citizen would be more likely to feel valued by their society. They would likely so feel because each would
experience, by society’s grant to them of their ‘Birthright Equity Social Trust
Fund’, material proof of their valuing by society, even if not by their birth
family. No child would be abandoned by
their society, to fend for themselves, if they lacked parental support. No child would be treated, as so often today,
in a desperation-inducing and crime-breeding manner, as if the police, and as
if society at large, would rather that they died young -- very young -- or that
they were already dead, or that they had never even been born!
And, each
new citizen would thereby also have “skin in the game”; would have something to
lose should they nevertheless turn to an anti-social life of crime. That is, if convicted of a crime, by a jury
of their peers, such a citizen’s ‘Birthright Equity’ trust fund would be liable
for the cost of jury-determined reparations to their victims. If that ‘Birthright Equity’ trust fund were
to be exhausted by such reparations, for example, due to very serious and/or
repeated victimizations of others, then such a citizen would have to fall back
upon their own earnings and, in the last analysis, upon much more meager
general social welfare provisions.
3. ‘Citizens Stewardship Equity’. This “Pillar” calls for a kind of ‘Public
Venture Capital’. It would enable
capital-lacking workers to self-organize as ‘Citizens Stewardship
Collectives’. A good example of an
existing institution that approximates this “Pillar” of ‘Generalized Equity’ is
the Mondragon cooperative -- a worker-owned, international, highly-diversified
producers’ cooperative.
Such a
‘Citizens Collective’ would, if underwritten by a ‘Social Bank’, receive the
funds required to procure the means of production, etc., called for in their
Business Plan, and would thereby become a ‘Citizens Stewardship Equity
Producer’s Cooperative’.
Each such
‘Social Bank’ would itself also be a kind of, democratically self-managed,
‘Citizen Stewardship Equity Cooperative’, chartered by the Office of the
popularly elected National Custodian of Social Property.
Such a bank
would fund that Citizen Collective’s Business Plan if that bank so decided, by
majority vote of its own member-owners.
The ‘Social Bank’ member-owners would so vote if they found that the
Collective’s Business Plan and By-Laws met constitutional and statutory
requirements. These would include
requirements for internal democracy, such as ‘recallability’ of elected
managers. The ‘Social Bank’
member-owners majority would vote to fund that Citizen Collective’s Business
Plan if they also found that this Business Plan, and the resumes of its
would-be ‘Citizen Stewards’ -- the member-owners of that Collective --
convinced them to risk their Social Bank’s own solvency by underwriting that
Business Plan. Thus underwritten, the
‘Stewardship Collective’ would become a ‘Stewardship Cooperative’. Each Steward member of that Cooperative would
enjoy two streams of monthly income -- an equal share in the net operating
surplus of their Cooperative, and compensation for their time worked
therein, in proportion to the value of their skills. That value would be determined by the
competition for citizens bearing such skills.
That competition would ensue among ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’, among
remaining capitalist enterprises, and between ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’ versus
remaining capitalist enterprises. This
competition would help to place a floor beneath the capitalist “race to the
bottom” in terms of the treatment and compensation of majority-class wage and
salaried workers. It might even promote
a kind of “race to the top”.
That
Cooperative would compete with remaining capitalist firms, and with
other ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’, in its chosen product and/or service market
or markets.
Those
remaining capitalist firms, however, would have to compete for workers with
‘Citizen Cooperatives’ in which the workers themselves democratically decide
how they are to be treated.
If the
Stewards in a given Cooperative were too easy on themselves, and/or not good
enough to their customers, their Cooperative would likely fail, become
insolvent, and be dissolved.
Each
‘Citizens Stewardship Equity Producers’ Cooperative’ would hold its means of
production, not in local ownership, but in Stewardship, as an
in-kind loan to them from and by their society.
Each
‘Stewardship Cooperative’ would therefore pay a monthly ‘Social Rent’ on those
means of production. This would
encourage economy in the use of means of production. It would also help to finance the ‘Citizens
Birthright Equity’ trust funds. A fixed
share of that ‘Social Rent’ would also form part of the income of the
underwriting ‘Social Bank’.
The human
right of ‘Citizens Stewardship Equity’ also constitutes a new constitutional
property right. It is a right of each
citizen to “individual property” in the form of that citizen’s ownership
of that citizen’s membership in the ‘Citizens Stewardship Collective’
which that citizen co-founded, or into the membership of which that citizen was
later inducted, by vote of the then-existing members.
When that
‘Citizens Stewardship Collective’ becomes a ‘Citizens Stewardship Cooperative’,
that citizen’s right of membership entails the right to an equal share
in the monthly net operating surplus of that Cooperative, and the right to work
in and for that Cooperative, with fair compensation for that work. This “individual property” in such membership
would not be revocable, except by constitutionally-stipulated due process of
law, including trial by jury.
Each
‘Citizen Stewardship Cooperative’, if found to produce externalities beyond the
statutory limit would also -- no less and no more than remaining capitalist
enterprises found to produce externalities beyond that limit -- be required to
determine its ‘annual externalities budget’ in negotiations with its
internalized ‘Citizens Externality Equity Public Board of Directors’. That Board would be elected by the public
residing in the area of impact of the externalities produced by that
Cooperative.
As with remaining
capitalist firms, if those negotiations deadlocked, they would escalate for
adjudication to the “nearest” ‘Tribunal for Externality Equity’ with
jurisdiction for that area of impact.
That Tribunal would consist of elected, term-limited, and recallable
justices, chosen by the electorate of their geographical area of
jurisdiction. The losing party would pay
the costs of the litigation, to discourage frivolous litigation.
Detailed
exposition of these proposed new constitutional human rights, new property
rights, and new enabling social institutions, designed to support these
“Three Pillars”, is the purpose of this series.
Future installments will be devoted, in turn, to each of these
“Pillars”, as well as to their interactions and to their unity as a new
socio-political-economic system.
SOME EXPECTED QUESTIONS, AND OUR
RESPONSES.
We
have stated, and responded to, key ‘FAQs’ we anticipate listeners and viewers
will want answered. We encourage you to
send your actual questions, not covered by the FAQs below, incivilities
excluded.
Question: How would this new system impact
individuals?
Response:
An individual citizen of the majority class would no longer be just
“capital-fodder”, valued only for work that makes profit for capitalists, and
otherwise discarded. Each individual
would be a valued part of the community, with material proof of that valuing in
the form of a ‘Citizen Birthright Equity Social Trust Fund’, plus a right to
pursue a ‘Stewardship Equity’ alternative to a wage or salary relationship to
that citizen’s livelihood, and a voting right to limit the imposition of
externalities upon that citizen by capitalist or Stewardship enterprises.
Question: How would this new system
impact business?
Response: Citizens would have an option to
pursue ‘collective self-employment’, and ‘collective
entrepreneurship’, via ‘Stewardship Equity’, as well as traditional
capitalist wage work and salaried work relationships with remaining capitalist
firms. The economic “checks and balances” of market competition would be
conserved and, in fact, expanded.
Competition among capitalist firms would be supplemented by competition
among ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’, as well as by competition between
‘Stewardship Cooperatives’ versus remaining capitalist firms.
Question: What would be the status of
private property within this successor system?
Response:
Private property rights would be retained, not outlawed. They would also be supplemented, by new kinds
of property rights. These would include ‘collective
property rights’, such as ‘Externality Equity’ voting rights. These would also include new ‘personal
property rights’, such as the right to a ‘Birthright Equity Social Trust
Fund’. These would include ‘social
property rights’, such as the right to the stewardship and usufruct of the
means of production of a Socialized Producers’ Cooperative per the ‘Stewardship
Equity’ property right, as well as the ‘individual property right’ of a
Steward of a ‘Stewardship Cooperative’ to that Steward’s membership in its
undergirding ‘Stewardship Collective’.
Question: What
is the extent of government reform that would have to occur to institute this
new system?
Response:
For the United States, the reforms would extend to several
constitutional amendments, plus the institution of an “intermediate” level of law in the form of
an enabling law ‘constitutional annex’. The latter would be less difficult to
amend than the constitution, but more difficult to amend than a Congressional
statute. We will make our drafts of
these proposed enactments available to our readers and viewers in the course of
this series.
Question: What level
of consensus would people have to achieve to make this new system happen?
Response:
For the United States, the majority class would have to be convinced --
despite all of the plutocracy’s media opposition, and their engineering of
“divide-and-conquer” ideologies -- that “actually existing capitalism”
is failing, and that what we call ‘revolutionary reform’ is necessary, in the
form of the constitutional amendments and enabling legislations that constitute
‘The Equitarian Reform’.
Question:
What organizations stand in the way of implementing this new system?
Response: The
organizations that are the organs of the increasingly democracy- subverting,
plutocratic rule of the minority class of dominant capitalists. These include some organizations that are
secret, and some that are public, including the major mass media organizations,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the Ford
Foundation, the “Democrat” Party, the “Republican” Party, etc. They also include large swaths of the
“standing bureaucracy”, that survives any national election, in the Federal
Executive branch, and that typically represent the growing proto-police-state
infrastructure of “our” government -- the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, various “Black
Ops” organizations, and the industries and lobbies which prosper off of the
burgeoning “National Security State” and “Military-Industrial Complex”, as well
as Pentagon-equipped, hyper-militarized local police forces.
Question: With
regard to ‘Citizens Externality Equity’:
how would its ‘Public Boards’ be ‘unbribable’, or “unaffordable to bribe
even for the bribery budgets of the richest of the rich”?
Response: For example, every enterprise that pollutes
beyond the constitutional and statutory threshold would internalize a ‘Public
Board of Directors’, consisting of 5 ‘Public Directors’, each a mandated,
recallable, term-limited, elected representative of the residents impacted by
that pollution. For the United States,
there would be tens of thousands of such ‘Public Boards’ nationwide. There would simply be too many ‘Public Directors’
to afford to bribe, and too much turnover, due to term limits and/or to recalls
of corrupted ‘Public Directors’, costing ‘re-bribery’ for every replacement
‘Public Director’ sworn-in, if that ‘Public Director’ were even willing to be
bribed. The “externalities” that the
‘Public Directors’ aim to reduce, are pollution, etc., externalities, in the
very places were those grass roots ‘Public Directors’, and their families, live
and work. No “absentee” ‘Public
Directors’ would be eligible for election.
Question: How
would ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ give citizens grass roots level control
over pollution, etc., in their localities?
Response:
Residents of each locality impacted by the above-threshold pollution, etc.,
externalities of a given enterprise, capitalist or ‘Stewardship’, would elect 5
‘Public Directors’, forming a Public Board, to negotiate the annual
‘Externalities Budget’ of that enterprise, per the wishes of their
constituents. These elected ‘Public
Directors’ would all be mandated, term-limited, and recallable. If negotiations between the ‘Public Board’
and the ‘Private Board’, or the local “Management Committee”, of that
enterprise were to deadlock, then the negotiation would be remanded to the
“nearest” ‘Tribunal for Externality Equity’ having jurisdiction over the
impacted locale. The Justices of that
Tribunal would be popularly elected by the residents of their jurisdiction, and
would also be mandated, term-limited, and recallable by their electorate. The losing party in the adjudication of the
deadlock would pay the court costs of that adjudication, to ‘dis-incent’
merit-less deadlocks, and merit-less litigation.
The ‘mandation’ of elected
officials means that each candidate official, upon registering to stand for
election for a give office, would be required to file a statement of intent
regarding the conduct of the office if elected, and the approach of that
candidate to the public issues addressed by that office. This statement of intent, or mandate, would
be published to the electorate before the election. These mandates of the various competing candidates
are what the electorate should be voting on, voting to select. Once in office, if the elected candidate
abrogated their mandate, that would be OK if OK with the majority of their
electorate. If not, that abrogation
would constitute grounds, perhaps together with other grounds, for a petition
campaign aiming to qualify for an election to recall that officer, and to elect
a candidate to replace that officer.
Question: With
regard to ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’: how would it ensure that the ‘Social Trust
Fund’ monies are not spent on frivolous or damaging forms of consumption?
Response:
Desired expenditures from a citizen’s personal ‘Social Trust Fund’ would be
applied-for by that citizen to the ‘Commission for Birthright Equity’, which,
per its constitutional amendment and statutory guidance, could approve or
disapprove that application. That
citizen would have standing to appeal an unfavorable decision by the Commission
to the “nearest” ‘Tribunal for Citizen
Birthright Equity’ that has jurisdiction for that citizen’s locale of
residence. The Justices of that Tribunal
would be popularly elected by the Citizens of their jurisdiction, and would
also be mandated, term-limited, and recallable by their electorate. The losing party in such an appeal would pay
the court costs of that appeal, to ‘dis-incent’ frivolous applications and
resulting frivolous litigation.
Question: With
regard to ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’:
suppose a member of a ‘Stewardship Cooperative’ became totally
uncooperative and/or disruptive within that Cooperative -- how would that
problem be addressed?
Response: The right of each Steward of a ‘Stewardship
Cooperative’ to membership in the undergirding ‘Stewardship Collective’ would
be an ‘Individual Property’ right, that would not be revocable except by due
process of law. If a majority of the
members of a given ‘Stewardship Collective’ voted to revoke a given membership,
then that member’s ‘Individual Property’ in that membership would be revoked,
but subject to appeal by the revoked member.
That revoked member could opt to appeal revocation to the ‘Tribunal for
Stewardship Equity’ with jurisdiction for the principal locale of operation of
that Cooperative. The Justices of that
Tribunal would be popularly elected by the Citizens of their jurisdiction, and
would also be mandated, term-limited, and recallable by their electorate. The losing party in the appeal would pay the
court costs of that appeal. If the
revoked member disagreed with the Tribunal’s decision, appeal for a trial by
jury would be an option. The Tribunal
would not be limited to a “yes-or-no” decision on the revocation of
membership. If the majority of the
Justices held that both the revoked member and the rest of the membership were
both partly at fault for the conflict(s) that led to the revocation, then the
Tribunal could order the ‘Stewardship Collective’ to pay a fraction of that
revoked member’s former share in the monthly net operating surplus of that
‘Stewardship Cooperative’ to that revoked member, while that Cooperative
continued in operation, to the extent of that ex-member’s longevity.
The fraction ordered would
reflect the Tribunal’s view of the proportion of culpability of the former
member versus the rest of the members for the conflict(s) that led to the
membership revocation.
Question: How might we implement some of these
reforms on a smaller geographical scale, say a single city, county, or state,
so that they can be tested and perhaps thereby improved in detail for a scaling
up to the national scale?
Response:
‘Stewardship Equity’ might be scaled down as a ‘Public Venture Capital’ fund,
administered by municipal officials popularly elected for that task. If this implementation developed a city-level
critical mass of cooperative enterprises, then a similarly scaled-down version
of ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ might also be implemented, with cooperative
enterprises filling-in the gaps left by the expected flight of private and
corporate capital in response to that implementation. Such implementations would likely come under
attack by State Supreme Courts, and, ultimately, by SCOTUS.
Question: What are some local examples
that could evolve into ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’-like programs?
Response: Examples include municipal, county, or State
level “Baby Bonds” programs, and a city-level Guaranteed Monthly Minimum
Income.
Question: How might we successfully scale down
from the concept of a national scale ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ human right
and property right, to, say, one at a municipal scale? How might we fund such a scaled-down version
of ‘Birthright Equity’, at that level of a single city, as distinct from how it
would be funded if instituted on a national scale, together with the other two
“Pillars”? How might we preclude, with a
municipal-level, scaled-down version of ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’, a “gold
rush” of people crowding into a municipality that was testing that ‘Citizen
Equity’ benefit, from other cities not offering any such ‘Citizen Equity’
benefits?
Response: This is a difficult problem, in relation to
existing constitutional and statute law, because it might involve breaches to
the principle of the “equality before the law” of every citizen. With a national ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’
system, no citizen would be excluded from ‘Citizen Birthright Equity Social
Trust Fund’ coverage. But, on any
smaller scale, the right of citizens to free movement, and to take up residence
in new localities of their choice, involves exclusion of “outsiders” and
“interlopers” from coverage, to avoid unjust exploitation of this ‘Citizen
Equity’ benefit by them. If the ‘Social
Trust Funds’ were supplied via municipal-level taxes, at least each tax-paying
resident of the municipality should have to be eligible, or at least each of
their newborn children should be eligible, for a ‘Social Trust Fund’. But if such ‘Social Trust Fund’ eligibility
would accrue immediately to anyone who newly established residence in that
municipality, a “gold rush” could be expected, in which non-residents would,
perhaps only briefly, become residents, obtain their ‘Social Trust Fund’
monies, and then perhaps quickly move out of that city -- move on, or move back
to the city from which they came. This
would lead to the quick exhaustion of the ‘Social Trust Funds’ monetary
wherewithal, and to its accrual mostly to citizens who were never real,
contributing residents of that municipality at all. But restricting access based upon, for
example, cumulative taxes paid to, or duration of residence in, that municipality,
might run afoul of the principle of the “equality before the law” of all
citizens.
For more
information regarding these
Seldonian insights, please see --
For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:
¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel
Detonacciones,
Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia
Dialectica [F.E.D.],
Participant, F.E.D.
Special Council for Public Liaison,
Officer, F.E.D.
Office of Public Liaison.
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