EOnation: SeD (Socioeconomic Democracy)

[WesBurt@aol.com]

 To:  World Bank, The Quality of Growth E-Seminar, at
        qog@lists.worldbank.org

       The Treaty of Noordwijk aan Zee at URL  
       www.treatyofnoordwijkaanzee.com 

      Citizen's Income (CI) Discussion site at URL
      http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/index.shtml, 

      And friends on several mail lists.

Dear Mr. Paul Collins:

I am encouraged by the progress of the World Bank toward 
an open discussion of the global problematique.  Your letter 
of 10/17/2000 to The Quality of Growth E-Seminar would not 
have been distributed last May by the Panos-World Bank E-
Conference on globalization   You concluded your letter to 
Dear Margret, on War Lords in the Congo, with the 
following invitation:
>>
I look forward to anyone who can respond intelligently, 
informatively and in an unbiased manner to the concerns 
raised in this correspondence.
<<
 
I have been responding intelligently, informatively and in an 
unbiased manner to the concerns raised in your 
correspondence since February 1969.  But the World Bank 
has not yet distributed any of my letters, even though I seem 
to be the only person on the Internet who bases his 
arguments on a $7.95, 1996, World Bank ATLAS.  The 
funding level for my line of inquiry does not include a new 
ATLAS each year at the current price.  I firmly believe that 
a sustainable global society cannot be achieved unless the 
necessary reforms are adopted first in the United States.

If the recent replies to my posts and other messages received are 
any guide, everybody on the Internet, from the moderators of 
ongoing E-Seminars hosted by the Bretton Woods institutions 
(World Bank, IMF, etc.) down to the owners of the most modest 
private web site, seems to be agreed that a prosperous, stable, 
sustainable, and decentralized global society is our common 
goal.  That is to say: we want a global society in which each 
nation assures the full development of each of its citizens, from 
their present condition forward and upward toward that common 
global society in which each individual is, as Milton and Rose 
Friedman put it, "FREE TO CHOOSE."

To the rulers and governors of underdeveloped nations, the way 
forward and upward is a no-brainer, both their material economies 
and their cultural economies must grow!  They, the rulers and 
governors of underdeveloped nations, want the well-being of their 
citizens to move toward the level of well-being enjoyed by citizens 
of the advanced nations, the USA, the European Union, Japan, 
etc.  If, in some nations, they want to preserve the status quo, then 
different rulers and governors must be found by those nations.  

For the rulers and governors of the advanced nations, on the 
other hand, the way forward and upward is also a no-brainer, 
their material economies must grow for the low income citizens 
and be moderated for the high income citizens while their 
cultural economies must continue to grow for both high and 
low income citizens. 

When presented within the above conceptual framework, the 
United States appears to be the most underdeveloped nation 
in the world.  That is, when its present condition is compared 
with its true potential for quality growth and cultural 
development during the 20th century, that was lost by the 
2-3%/year decline in the value of our medium of exchange.  
Our material economy is wasting the world's natural 
resources of water and energy at a per capita rate that is 
three times the Swiss per capita consumption of water and 
energy (according to my 1996 World Bank ATLAS).  Our 
cultural economy may be "as good as it gets" for the 
favored few, and easily exported to the favored few in other 
nations, but the many cannot find the time to enjoy it 
because their nose is on the grindstone at work, their feet 
are in the fire of debt, and their eyes are on the mud.  As 
Gorbachev said to visiting dignitaries from the USA more 
than a decade ago, "It may be easier for me to reform the 
USSR than for you to reform the United States of America."

It will be easier to plot the way forward if we explore our 
global problematique with the aid of a new vocabulary, with 
definitions, which the Center for the Study of Democratic 
Societies, (CSDS) has created at URL www.centersds.com

At this site you will find 31 years of research by CSDS to 
promote what they have termed Socioeconomic Democracy 
(SeD).  I will use the term "SeD" to define something which 
the USA enjoyed from colonial times through the nineteenth 
century, and lost during the twentieth century.

In his 10/13/2000 introduction of this site to SANE FORUM 
members, Russell Bishop, SANE Co-ordinator wrote: 

>>Amongst the concepts which make up SeD is 
one which is core to the SANE position and vision, namely 
a universal non-means tested grant to all citizens of a country. 
The other concepts seem also to be in harmony with our 
position and vision. We anticipate that SANE will be a 
supportive presence for the CSDS in their promotion of SeD 
<<

The owner of this site, and Director of the CSDS, Robley E. 
George, writes with the same self confidence that Henry 
George displayed in his 1879 "Progress And Poverty" and 
with the same irreverence for the establishment that J. P. 
O'Rouke displayed in his recent book, "Parliament Of 
Whores."  I found the sense of this web site to be clearly 
conveyed by the following excerpt at URL 
http://www.centersds.com/define.htm

>>>>>>> Begin excerpt from the definition of SeD <<<<<<<

>>
The following definition of Socioeconomic Democracy will 
appear in the Encyclopedia of International Political Economy 
to be published by Routledge in 2000. 

DEFINITION OF SOCIOECONOMIC DEMOCRACY 

>>>>>>> Snip first part of definition <<<<<<<

Politicosocioeconomic system design, practiced one way 
or another for thousands of years, can be made public, 
explicit, transparent and, perhaps most importantly, 
democratic. Considering the multitude of perplexing and 
painful present problems of the planet, including (but by no 
means limited to) automation, computerization and robotization; 
budget deficits and national debts; bureaucracy; maltreatment 
of children; crime and punishment; maldevelopment; ecology, 
environment and pollution; education; maltreatment of the 
elderly; male domination of the female majority; inflation; 
international conflict; intranational conflict; involuntary 
employment; involuntary unemployment; labor strife and 
strikes; maldistributions of necessary resources; sick medical 
and health care; military metamorphosis; natural disasters; 
planned obsolescence; poor political participation; poverty; 
racism; sexism; untamed technology; unnecessarily unsettling 
societal instabilities and an at best anemic general welfare, it 
can be and has been assumed that the democratic design 
project is of some urgency. Socioeconomic Democracy is 
one theoretical and practical attempt to meet this universal 
need by reducing all these kinds of problems simultaneously 
through systemic change. 
<<
>>>>>>> End excerpt from the definition of SeD <<<<<<<

Away with all those "vocabulary virtuosos" who tell us that 
defects in systems of more than ten degrees of freedom 
are too complex to diagnose.  Here, the designer of SeD
understands how a systemic defect of omission can alter 
the performance of a system of 170 million degrees of 
freedom as illustrated by the 31 year old profile of the US 
Consumer Price Index shown in Figure 10, "The Lifecycle 
Characteristic of Systems and The United States" at URL:
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html#fig10

In all modesty, I can say that the 200 hundred year history of 
the USA shown on Figure 10 may be fairly presented as the 
history of Western Civilization, if you recall that Franklin, 
Washington, and Jefferson traveled at the same speed and 
communicated over the same distances as did Abraham and 
Moses in the Old Testament.  The milestones of US history 
map the rise, the apogee, and the beginning of decline of 
an empire which, for a few more decades at least, will 
continue to be a truly global empire.  Following, are the 
major milestones along the path to our present condition:

(1) The US enjoyed SeD from colonial times to the 1890s.

(2) "The Great Transformation" of the 1890s was anticipated
by Henry Carter Adams and Henry George, and documented 
by Karl Polanyi in his 1944 book of that title.  Polanyi was 
quoted to paint President Nixon's Family Assistance Program 
with the dirty brush of Socialism, and his name is dropped 
whenever anyone wants to demonize the free market, which 
is the only reliable and stable Democratic institution known 
to man, when its technical requirements are satisfied..
.
(3) From the 1890s, to date, the US has suffered unemployment 
of 4%-10%, an average 2.5% per year decline in the value of its 
medium of exchange M1, and a net 5% of GNP deficiency of 
disposable earned income among its parenting families.  This is 
the Washington Consensus, the neo-liberal public policy, the 
demon Globalization, Imperialism, or the "English Disease" as it 
looks when imposed on the world's largest economy.  Picture 
what it looks like when imposed on an under developed 
third world economy!

(4) The former colonies of Spain, acquired by the US in the 
1890s, with US protection and US education, did not achieve 
Walt Rustow's economic "take off."  Those former colonies are 
now sovereign nations, but still "Third World Nations."  Obviously, 
the technical requirements for "take off" were not satisfied, and 
are still not satisfied.

(5) World War I, the great depression of the 1930s, and 
World War II appear as modest perturbations on the profile 
of the US CPI shown by Figure 10.  We must thank the 
Germans and Japanese for restarting the American economy 
in 1941.  Without them, the US would have remained in the 
depression until the American people gave up their liberty and 
turned to a centralized managed economy for relief, as the 
Russians did in 1917 and the Germans did in the 1930s.  

(6) In 1935, President Roosevelt got the cart before the horse 
and established the social security system to subsidize old 
folks rather than parenting families.  If he had done it right, and 
established SeD in 1935, today's old folks would have been able 
to save and invest enough of their earned income in the private 
sector to assure them a decent living in their old age.
 
(7) In 1986, the President's Commission on Social Security 
fixed the system by setting the social security payroll tax at13%, 
without exemptions for dependents, on all earned income 
below $63,000/year, at ZERO % on all earned income above 
$63,000/year, and at ZERO % on unearned income from 
interest, dividend, and usury in any amount.  And our Social 
Scientists cannot figure out why the gap between rich and 
poor gets wider each year.

(8) The cruel retribution of World War II prompted all of the 
advanced industrial societies, except the US and the UK, to 
establish SeD, by a subsidy to parenting families, in the 
amount of 20% of the average wage per dependent.  By 
1970 these other industrial nations had surpassed the UK in 
GDP per capita and Japan and Switzerland were overtaking 
and surpassing the United States in GDP per capita.

(9) In 1971 the Dollar was separated from gold and the US 
money supply M1 was expanded from about $250 Billion in 
1970 to $1,144 billion in 1995, and then receded to 
$1,090 Billion by 1999.  I don't have the figures for the 
increase of the world money supply during those 
twenty-eight years, but I expect it increased by a larger 
ratio than US M1 did, thereby negating the post war family 
allowances.

(10) When Figure 10 was first drawn in February 1969, the 
illustrated restoration of the US to Stability, Full Employment, 
Affluence, and Hard Money required the same corrective 
action that the other industrial nations took in the late 1940s 
to redevelop their societies after World War II.  Thirty-one 
years ago, today, or in 2031 the required corrective action 
will be the same, and there is no one on the Internet so 
intellectually deprived that he/she does not understand 
perfectly the effect of that essential sustaining feedback on 
the performance of any population of reproducible 
productive human or capital assets.

>>>>> End major milestones of the USA <<<<<


Each of today's underdeveloped nations is perfectly free to take 
this corrective action whenever the leaders of a nation, a state, 
a county, or a local community and their constituents agree to 
make the correction.  The two long lost moral Commandments 
on establishing SeD in any size community read as follows:

#1 -- #4, On our duty to God, which we learn in Sunday School

#5, To each according to his need, while in development.

#6, From each according to his ability, while in production.

#7 -- #12, on our duty to our neighbor, which we never learn.

Karl Marx had the two missing Commandments in the wrong 
order in his 1875 "Critique of the GOTHA Program."  The 
investment must happen first, before the quality growth and 
development can be enjoyed.  

The CEOs of every corporation and the WHIPs of every 
nation are "FREE TO CHOOSE" SeD for their constituents, 
and thereby become, respectively, more like the General 
Electric Company or more like Switzerland.  The public 
cannot vote for SeD if you people don't tell them about it.

If you do talk about it, expect to have your employment 
terminated or your funding withdrawn, because you will 
be making a public disclosure of the "Temple Secrets" of 
the General Electric Company, Switzerland, the UK, and 
the USA!  Remember, when world poverty is ended, 
World Bank funding will end.

Kind regards to all contributors to the World Bank 
"Quality Of Growth" E-Conference,

Wesley S. Burt

The Whole Divine Law, Fig. 7-9.GIF
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/
items//19990119WesBurtFig7-9B.gif