To: Citizen's Income Online at URL http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/index.shtml and friends on several mail lists Hi folks, This is the last day of debate on the February question: "Is there an argument for a piecemeal introduction of a Citizen's Income?" I would like to leave two thoughts with you, before the debate moves on to other aspects of a CI. First, I want to offer my apology for cluttering up the C/I web page with five irrelevant messages in the course of learning how to post the intended, and I hope useful, three valid messages below: The Universal Citizen's Income.....02/24/2000 Half a loaf is better than none.......02/22/2000 Which Way To A CI/BI?..............01/23/2000 I sincerely hope the clutter did not deter any of the WHIPs at Chatham House and Pratt House from visiting the ten figured Global Model at URL http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html and confirming to their own satisfaction what Henry Carter Adams knew in 1887 when he wrote in Vol. I of the American Economic Review: "Where the law of increasing returns works with any degree of intensity, the principle of free competition is powerless to exercise a healthy regulating influence." Adams, of course, was speaking about the third class of businesses and corporations which are characterized by increasing returns to scale. Thirteen years after Adams wrote a majority of American parenting families were experiencing increasing returns to scale, 4-10% unemployment, and a 2-3% per year decline in value of their medium of exchange. This condition continues, presently, and into the future. Second, I want to assert again the usefulness of a graphical frame of reference, such as the ten figure global model at URL http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html, for evaluating public policy questions. One picture can convey a message which dozens of DDotSQs cannot refute. William Blake, two centuries ago, elucidated so eloquently the vision that is possible to people who rely on a technically valid micro model, such as Figure 7-9 in the above global model, when evaluating any human enterprise. The vision, according to Blake, was: "To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." As our attention shifts, during our search for the key to a sustainable society, from family farms up to national economies, which are likely to be the components of the global economy for the foreseeable future, it helps to be reminded that every human enterprise has forever involved the same four basic elements; a patch of earth, its capital plant, its people, and a medium of exchange, if the enterprise or society has developed a significant division of labor. The only "new thing" we can learn about these four basic elements of society are those few things that have been kept as secrets of the temple since ancient times, to the advantage of the few, and at the expense of the many. The simple solution which Douglas MacArthur allowed in Japan and John J. McCloy allowed in Germany to facilitate the recovery of those nations from the destruction of World War II may recommend itself to the WHIPs as a means of closing the gap between today's first and third world nations. This simple solution would allow all nations to converge at their own pace toward a sustainable global social order. The freely emerging world order, whatever it might turn out to be, would be much less affluent than Switzerland is today but much more affluent than the former colonies of Spain are today, after a century of struggle under the English/American public policy they learned from the USA a century ago. Think about it, and then talk about it. Its your future, not mine! Kind regards, Wesburt
