‘Political-ECONOMIC
DEMOCRACY’ Series,
Episode 2, Draft
Script -- ‘Citizens Externality Equity’.
An introductory episode has been recorded and posted to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mJHJO3bMw
Episode 2: Pillar I -- ‘Citizens Externality
Equity’.
[Introduction]
In this, second, episode, we introduce the first pillar of ‘Generalized Equity’
and of ‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’, which we have named ‘Citizens
Externality Equity’.
[Episode
2 Main Text: ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ Overview.] 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”. 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 new defenses we propose start in the
locale of residence of each citizen, via a kind of grassroots-democratic,
‘economic suffrage’.
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, in the past, the “external costs”
imposed upon citizens by enterprises in relation to which these citizens may be
neither stockholders nor customers, thus having no say in the decisions and
management of those enterprises, including those that massively impact,
or even destroy, their lives and the lives of their family members. 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/other-externalities-generating
enterprises.
As neither
stockholders nor customers of those enterprises, these 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 -- 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 buy instead from competitors of those
abusive “first parties”. Those competitors
may, to win out in market competition against those abusive “first parties”, offer
better prices, better quality, and/or better customer service.
But the
sufferers of “externality” damages, such as pollution poisoning, 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 check and balance’. This new kind of “check and balance” is designed
to systematically redress the failure of the market-based, competition-based
kind of ‘economic check and balance’ to protect citizens from these, often
life-threatening, costs to those citizens as “external”, “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, exorbitant,
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,
even if their wrongdoing has been overwhelmingly egregious, and never incurring
judicial precedents that might inhibit similar destructive, even deadly,
externalities-generating behaviors on their parts in the future.
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, if not covered by these FAQs, incivilities
excluded.
Expected 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: There are presently approximately 32.5 million
U.S. businesses, nationwide. 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 hundreds of thousands of such
‘Public Boards’ nationwide. Paying
annual bribes of just $50,000 each to the 5 ‘Public Directors’ of each ‘Public
Board’, given just one million ‘Public Boards’ nationwide, would cost the
ruling class 250 billion dollars every year.
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.
Expected 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 the negotiations of the ‘Public Board’ with
the ‘Private Board’, or with 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 entire jurisdiction, and
would also be mandated, term-limited, and recallable by their electorate. The losing party in the adjudication of the
deadlock would be required to pay all of 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.
For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --
http://www.dialectics.org/dialectics/
and
www.dialectics.info
For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH
¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel Detonacciones,
Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia
Dialectica [F.E.D.];
Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;
Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;
Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.
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