EOnation: A Global Economy of Sovereign Nations

[WesBurt@aol.com]

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

To:  The Treaty of Noordwijk aan Zee at URL  
       www.treatyofnoordwijkaanzee.com 
     (see the constructive comment by Dr Paul E. Metz, 
      executive director e5 – European Business Council 
      for a Sustainable Energy Future)

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

To:   Friends on several mail lists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Friends and Determined Defenders of the Status Quo (DDotSQ),

The object of our desire and inquiry, a global economy capable of supporting 
six to ten billion human beings scattered over the two hundred or so 
sovereign nations listed in my $7.95 World Bank 1996 ATLAS, can be made to 
look so complicated that it foils our best mathematicians and systems 
analysis's.  Or, it can be made to look so simple and fundamental that Sunday 
School teachers can teach their sixth grade pupils to comprehend and 
appreciate why it produces the results we see in the 1996 ATLAS.  A small 
leap of faith is required of our six year olds when they contemplate this 
subject.  They have to believe that a head of household cannot support three, 
four, five, or six dependents on a $10,000 per year Minimum Wage.  Only a 
functional illiterate would propose a Minimum Wage law as a solution to the 
problem of poverty among working parenting families.

To the best of my knowledge, there is only one other manmade system which is 
statistically equivalent to the global economy of sovereign nations, and 
might be used as an example of good governance at the national level, or as a 
teaching aid.  There must be several of these interconnected power grids 
delivering electric power to the citizens of the two hundred or so sovereign 
nations.  No doubt, there are only a few people who understand power systems 
while there are so many people who claim to understand, and talk and write 
about, economic/political systems.  The purpose of mentioning power systems 
as statistically equivalent to the global economy is to hold out hope that we 
can make our global system of free trade and markets as stable, as efficient, 
and as reliable as we have made our interconnected power systems.  Be assured 
that every notion and principle expressed in the five URLs below have been 
reduced to practice in the operation of the world's power grids since Germany 
and Japan established family allowances in the 1940s.

>>>>> Begin five URLs on our subject <<<<<<<

A Global Economy of Nations, in Ten Graphs
At URL: http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html
:
The GENERAL THEORY for LOSING GROUND and Figure 8b
At URL: 
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/european-social-policy/1999-04/0019.html

The TORY WORLD VIEW
At URL: http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/messages/82.html

A Sustainable Future, How??? and The Whole Divine Law (Fig7-9b)
At URL: 
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items//19990119WesBurtSustaina

bleFuture.html

>>>>> End five URLs on our subject <<<<<<<

I could not find a URL which adequately explained just how long this subject 
has been kicked around by our best "vocabulary virtuosos," and thought this 
four year old post might cover the topic.  Some of you may have seen the 
following post to a seminar in Massachusetts, but it says something that 
needs to be repeated every few days, least we forget and plunge into a new 
dark age.

Kind regards to the DDotSQ,

Wesburt.

>>>>>>>>>>> Begin four year old post <<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Subj:    #181-0, Two Articles of Economic Rights & Responsibilities
Date:       96-02-16 21:04:45 EST
To: 73514.624@compuserve.com

Stuart B. Weeks
Dir. The Center for American Studies at Concord, Massachusetts.

Dear Mr. Weeks:

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 (the WHIPs) 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 
cooperative 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 
USSR 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 
lifecycle 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 Mt.
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 in 1789 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 1890s. 

#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 
cooperative 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 16th.
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 1890s to provide education, 
infrastructure, and justice, while the US 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 US, 
Switzerland, and Japan clustered around the 
Biblical tax rate of three tithes, or 30% of Gross 
Domestic Product. 

To the contrary, the late great USSR 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.  (This is the method we use to
control the population of rats and cockroaches.  It does 
not work so well with poor people)

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. He wrote, in part, concerning his 
"Meditations DE Prima Philosophia:"

"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."

 Like Descartes, I know my superiors when I meet them, 
and I know that these ideas have no value until they 
become public knowledge.  I wanted to submit these two 
articles by today, in accord with your program schedule.  
Please feel free to use this material in any way that will 
contribute to the success of your program.  I will send you 
an e-mail description of the visual aids to support the 
technical presentation of the two articles, in a few days.

Best Regards,
WesBurt@aol.com

PS (00-01-05) Those visual aids, Figures 7, 8, and 9, 
constitute a micro-model of society and are now 
available at URLs:
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html#fig7-9 
and 
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/19990119WesBurtFig7-9B.g

if
(Notice: These long URLs fail if a carriage return symbol is included.)

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