Wesley Burt wrote,
>To: Frequent posters, lurkers, and innocents on several mail lists
>
>Hi Folks,
>
>Like the flapping of a butterfly's wings (as in CHAOS, Making A New Science,
>1987, by James Gleik), every post to list futurework probably affects and
>influences each following post such that there is a slow but certain growth
>and deepening of consensus among the list members regarding The Optimum Policy
>(TOP) for creating a new social order. Now I submit to you that this "new
>social order" cannot really be new because the nature of the primary elements
>in the social order; the environment, the capital improvements on (or injury
>to) the environment, and the people have not changed much in the last 10,000
>years. etc.
I still like best the explanation of The Optimum Policy Wes sent two years
ago to the futurework list:
>Here are two rarely acknowledged, and often
>misrepresented, articles of economic rights and
>responsibilities which have been handed down
>to us by succeeding generations of patriarchs,
>prophets, and poets. These articles were ancient
>when Moses broke the first two tables of the Law
>and hid the second two tables in the Ark of the
>Covenant to keep the Whole Law from becoming
>the public property of the Israelites. The first
>article is a statement of the Economic Right of a
>person or capital asset while in development, and
>still dependent on external support. The second is
>a statement of the Economic Responsibility of a
>person or capital asset while in production, and
>capable of being independent of all external
>support. Together, the two articles are the moral
>authority which enables and defines the optimum
>financial structure of a community, a corporation,
>or a commonwealth. Where the people have
>sufficient vision to teach and conform to the two
>articles, the people prosper. Where the two
>articles are violated to a sufficient degree, the
>wealthy, healthy, intelligent, and powerful part of
>the population may still prosper for a while, but
>the people slowly perish.
>
>We are most familiar with a poetic version of
>these two articles which Karl Marx borrowed from
>Louis Blanc, who in turn, probably got the sense
>of them from Thomas Paine's AGRARIAN
>JUSTICE or THE RIGHT'S OF MAN, part II. Marx
>then presented them in the inverse order and out
>of sequence with their consequent effects, when
>he wrote in his 1875 CRITIQUE OF THE
>GOTHA PROGRAM:
>
>"after labor has become not only a means of life
>but life's prime want; after the productive forces
>have also increased with the all-round
>development of the individual, and the springs of
>co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only
>then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be
>crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its
>banners: "From each according to his ability, to
>each according to his needs!""
>
>In this sequence Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and their
>successors gave the world a seventy-two year
>experiment with communism which failed in the
>U.S.S.R. and is losing ground everywhere else.
>Surely Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and their successors
>did not intend the consequent results; that the
>Soviet Union should fail, that the future as
>visualized by 19th and 20th century intellectuals
>should revert to a Democratic Capitalism in
>which the human assets are as well capitalized
>as the physical assets.
>
>I am pleased to propose the two articles, which
>express the economic keynote of an optimum
>community, corporation, or commonwealth, in
>the sequence in which they naturally occur in the
>life-cycle of each individual reproducible
>productive capital or human asset. They are
>numbered as they might have been listed among
>the twelve Moral Commandments promulgated at
>Sinai, of which we are taught only ten; or as they
>might have been listed among the first twelve
>"articles in addition to, and Amendment of the
>Constitution of the United States of America,"
>of which the States ratified only ten in1789 to
>constitute the American Bill of Rights.
>
>Fortunately for us, the omission of these two
>articles did not become critical in America until the
>onset of industrialization in the 1890's.
>
>#5, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED,
>while in development and dependent on external
>support.
>
>Only when this article has been satisfied
>throughout the development period of the capital
>or human asset, will "the springs of
>co-operative wealth flow more abundantly" when
>the asset begins to produce, as every successful
>businessman has learned the hard way.
>
>#6, FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY,
> while in production and independent of external
>support.
>
>This article prescribes, not an equalization of
>condition at the margin of subsistence by taxation
>of all income in excess of subsistence
>exemptions, as some people claim, but a "Flat
>Tax" (% of income) on all income "from whatever
>source derived," as set forth in the XVI th.
>amendment to the Constitution of the United
>States. #6 also defines the structure of the real
>property tax of local governments, as it operated
>prior to the 1890's to provide education,
>infrastructure, and justice, while the U.S. was still
>a nation of property owning farmers and small
>businessmen. Today's total tax rates range from
>23% in Turkey to 55% in Sweden, with the U.S.,
>Switzerland, and Japan clustered around the
>Biblical tax rate of three tithes, or 30% of Gross
>Domestic Product.
>
>To the contrary, the late great U.S.S.R. collected
>92% of its public revenue from indirect taxes,
>which increase the market price of subsistence,
>and only 8% from taxes on personal incomes,
>according to the taxpayer's ability to pay. There
>is no surer way to arrest the economic and moral
>progress of a corporation or commonwealth than
>to impair its reproductive process by raising the
>price of necessities for those "parenting" families
>and firms which are producing the productive
>assets for the future.
>
>Once again, Mr. weeks, nothing I might say at this point
>can more clearly convey the spirit with which I submit
>these two articles of Economic Rights and
>Responsibilities, which are indeed the keystone of an
>economic philosophy, than the words of Rene
>Descartes in his 1641 letter to The Faculty Of
>Theology at Paris. Like Descartes, I know my
>superiors when I meet them. He wrote, concerning
>his "Meditationes de Prima Philosophia," in part:
>
>"It is different in philosophy, where it is believed that
>there is nothing about which it is not possible to argue
>on either side. Thus few people engage in the search
>for truth, and many, who wish to acquire a reputation
>as clever thinkers, bend all their efforts to arrogant
>opposition to the most obvious truths. ----- That is why,
>Gentlemen, since my arguments belong to philosophy,
>however strong they may be, I do not suppose that
>they will have any effect unless you take them under
>your protection."
regards,
Tom Walker
