EOnation: "Principles Of Social Reconstruction," again

[WesBurt@aol.com]

To: A few friends, members of the DDotSQ, and 
pradeepsyird@yahoo.com (Carnivore mail drop)

Good day folks,

The following five items sketch a cross section of the current 
conventional wisdom concerning the knowledge which Bertrand 
Russell, in his 1915 book, called "Principles Of Social 
Reconstruction."  This note will attempt to show what is still missing 
from our present understanding of that knowledge.

Item 1, an excerpt from A BRIEF SUBMITTED TO THE ROYAL
COMMISSION ON THE ECONOMIC UNION
AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS FOR CANADA
- by -
J. MARTIN HATTERSLEY, Q.C., M.A.,LL.B.
at http: //www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7018/hattersley1.html
>>
Our lack of progress in finding solutions to economic problems of long 
standing, therefore, should by now be prompting us to consider whether 
it is some wrong preconception of the economic situation - equivalent to 
the belief that the earth is flat to a would be space explorer - which 
is preventing us from sailing out in a new direction and discovering a 
new world of economic prosperity. And in fact, inspection does reveal, 
around each of our major problems, a conventional wisdom of "flat earth" 
ideas which explains our lack of success.

These fallacies can be listed.
<<

Item 2, an excerpt from "The Pathology of Cultural Delusion" 
By  Everett E. Allie 
at URL: http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/origin/contents.shtml
>>
Although instituted delusion will not go quietly into the night, it must 
go, if Homo Sapiens is to advance beyond the status of being a voracious 
parasite, preying upon a beautiful garden planet called Earth.
<<

Item 3, an excerpt from Re: The Yankee Religion, by Ted Lumley,
author of URL: www.goodshare.org: 
>>
the rising dissonance and dysfunction in society is informing us 
that our 'management approach' in business and government 
needs to reclaim its abandoned 'consciousness'; i.e. it needs to 
put 'opportunity management' back into its natural primacy over 
'action management', or in pool terms, return to 'playing shape 
over shots'.   the 'distribution of wealth' problems are just the 
'little story', ... the 'bigger story' is about how money-movements 
'induce transformation in the shape of opportunity space'
<<

Item 4, a recent response to my messages:
>>
Subj:    
Date:   01/10/2001 4:38:07 PM EST
From:   (name deleted for privacy)
To: WesBurt@aol.com

Wes As I get time, I will try to hook up with the websites you suggest. 
Without wanting to sound like I am pouncing on you I do question 
your observation that something ails us. It sounds like a sickness. 
As a historian, I find that Hitler was sick and did some horrible 
things. However, others felt that he was very sane and lost 
everything by following him. I see myself as a sometimes historian 
who just feels that most of history just happens as Shakespeare 
put it - we are getting our few minutes on center stage. (or something 
like that)  Saying that can sweep a lot of conditions I do not agree 
with under the rug. However, just because I do not agree with them, 
and Jesus probably would not either, does that mean that there is 
something ailing us? Your thoughts please?   (name deleted for 
privacy)
<<

Item 5, an excerpt from Patricia Keays' 01/16/2001 comments, to 
odc-l@lyris.bellanet.org (Open Development Consortium), on the 
role ODC could play in the global development community.
>>
Creating a cumulative usage record in relation to information and 
knowledge in support of learning and change seems like an 
important contribution that ODC could make, that no network 
internal to or seen to be under the wing of a particular development 
agency could do.
<<
>>>>>>>>> End five items <<<<<<<<<<<

There is a critical lowest common denominator of knowledge which 
is not addressed by any of the five authors.  That lowest common 
denominator is the impediment to social development which afflicts 
every community which depends on the division of labor and a 
circulating medium of exchange to assure the well being of its 
members.  And that impediment to social development is the burden 
of educating, training, and supporting those members who are in 
the development phase of their lifecycle.  The propensity of people 
to develop is instinctive,  The knowledge of how development is 
repressed is not instinctive, except to those who regard the rest of 
mankind as their natural prey.  That knowledge must be learned in
school, or, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said about calculus on 
Page 89 of FAMILY AND NATION, 1986, not learned at all. 

I certainly agree with Ted Lumley on what the "bigger story" is all 
about.  And the best way I have found to illustrate "how money-
movements 'induce transformation in the shape of opportunity 
space,'" is to define "the shape of opportunity space" for each 
nation in terms of information published in the World Bank's ATLAS, 
as shown by Figure 1 
at URL http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html. 
 
This manner of presentation of national data was first brought to 
my attention by authors Theodore and Frances Geiger, Neil J. 
McMullen, and Harold van B. Cleveland in their 1978 National 
Planning Association report #160, WELFARE AND EFFICIENCY.  
The keynote of that report was that the envelope of national 
well being, as measured by GNP per capita, increased sharply 
to a peak as the tax rate approached 30% of GNP; and then 
declined slowly as the national tax rate exceeded 30% of GNP.
Nations below the envelope are not developing properly.

Figure 1 was drawn in 1994 to show how far the US would 
improve its "opportunity space" by the year 2000, if the US 
adopted, in 1994, the Swiss "money movements" shown by 
the hollow diamonds and the hollow squares.  That did not 
happen, of course, but the US did manage to reduce the 1994 
M1, the amount of money required to run the US economy, by 
5% in 2000, while all other money measures (M2, M3, L, and 
total debt) continued to increase.  While the W. B. ATLAS 
provided the information in the field of the chart, it did not provide 
the total tax rate data needed for this presentation.  

The values of total tax rate for the nations shown were obtained 
from a book review a few years before 1994 in the Washington 
Post newspaper.  Since 1994, I have found only one book, A 
World Of Nations, 1967, by Dankwart A. Rustow, which gave 
"scope of government authority" measurements (total tax rates) 
on 44 nations.  There is a lot of necessary work for the OPEN 
DEVELOPMENT CONSORTIUM to do in setting standards for 
information, data, and knowledge management in support of 
development.  

This information from D. A. Rustow locates many of the third 
world nations on the chart for comparison with the highly 
developed nations shown.  Eleven were in the 27-33% of GNP 
range along with Japan, the US, and Switzerland, with twelve 
nations above the US ranging up to a 52% of GNP tax rate, and 
twenty-one nations below the US ranging down to a 7% of GNP 
tax rate.

Since Figure 1 was prepared in 1994, new information relocates 
the late USSR at a total tax rate of about 75% of GNP, with 92% 
of the public revenue obtained from indirect taxes, which are 
regressive; and, only 8% from direct taxes on personal incomes, 
which are the best measure of a citizen's contribution and 
consumption.  
 
At some point we must part company with information, however 
well managed and standardized, and move up to knowledge and 
its usage in formulating and promoting a public policy for ending 
poverty everywhere and restoring the sovereignty of nations in a 
global economy of multinational corporations.  Does anyone 
really want a single global Church, a single global government, 
or a single global corporation, which would naturally exercise a 
monopoly of force? 

About a year ago, in a letter,  Who Cares?-5, I proposed the 
Swiss example, as a means to convey the technical requirements 
for successful development to all nations, as follows:

>>
For the rest of the world to converge, eventually, on the Swiss 
condition, the MASTERS of those nations must be able to see 
their advantage in copying the Swiss total tax rate, the Swiss 
ratio of direct to indirect taxes, the Swiss fraction of GNP 
devoted to universal public education, and the Swiss fraction 
of GNP used to subsidize parenting households.  That subsidy 
puts those parenting households on a competitive financial 
footing with Gay, Lesbian and Celibate households which do 
not incur the $5,000/year/dependent expense of raising children, 
but still manage to demonstrate a strong work ethic.  

Nothing less than a technically valid global model will suffice to 
convey that vision to the MASTERS of each nation and persuade 
them of their own advantage in putting their people on that 
converging path to a well developed and stable condition.  
If anyone has a better global model than mine for this task, I 
would be happy to adopt it as my own.

In the slave societies of Classical Greece and Imperial Rome, the 
cost of raising, or acquiring, an additional slave was at the expense 
of the MASTERS.  Can modern (Capitalist) society charge that 
cost of acquisition to the slave, as a debt to be paid back with 
interest, or, to his parents, as a consumption expense?  Yes, 
they can, and do!  But, can they then call the slaves freemen?  
Not in my book.
<<

That year old attempt, to convey the technical knowledge of 
requirements for a free market, presently satisfied by 
Switzerland, to those nations like the US which have not yet 
satisfied those technical requirements, evoked only a sullen 
silence from the Swiss and an "I'm OK Jack" response from 
the nations which are still experiencing 4-10% unemployment, 
a 2-3% per year inflation, and a perennial 5% of GNP 
deficiency of purchasing power in the lower half of 
their workforce.

Some of the obstacles to public acceptance of a graphical 
representation of our present economic condition may arise from 
the fact that life in the US is sweet indeed, as long as you are in 
the comfortable class and not short of money.  While the 
graphical analysis of whole systems is common practice in 
engineering and business, it is passed along orally only on a 
"need to know" basis, and is not taught in our schools or 
universities.  

More than a hundred years have passed since the common 
practice in engineering and business was last applied to social 
problems by Henry Carter Adams, Richard T. Ely, and other 
members of the "New School of Economics" who founded the 
American Economic Association in 1885.  Since the subject has 
not been taught in our schools, no one should be surprised today 
when the subject evokes a response like Item 4, above.

We can explore the question of what ails us by recalling the 
history of the "English Disease," as it was named during the 
post World War II decades.  Begin with the English enclosures 
of the commons in the 16th and 18th centuries as interpreted by 
Oliver Goldsmith in the "Deserted Village."  Continue through 
J. A. Hobson's IMPERIALISM, 1902, for the symptoms of what 
ailed every industrial nation, except the USA during the 19th 
century.  Notice the successful hundred year run of the United 
States during the 19th century and the onset of the English 
Disease in the 1890s, as shown in Figure 10.  The symptoms of 
that disease; 4-10% unemployment, 2-3%/year decline in the 
value of the dollar, and a 5% deficiency of purchasing power in 
the lower end of the workforce are now a century old in the United 
States.

But World War II persuaded all of the industrial nations, except 
the US and the UK, to cure their English Disease by matching 
the Swiss fraction of GNP used to subsidize parenting households.  
That subsidy puts those parenting households on a competitive 
footing with Gay, Lesbian and Celibate households which do not 
incur the $5,000/year/dependent expense of raising children, but 
continue to demonstrate a strong work ethic.  And still, the English 
Disease is sustained in the US by those who teach the public that 
subsidies to parenting families in the workforce are no different 
from welfare payments to society's dead wood, and will weaken the 
work ethic of the workforce.  No!  The real reason for withholding 
that subsidy is to drive the workforce deeper into debt.  The same 
reason terminated the World War II GI Bill as soon as possible 
and replaced it with student loans at (Prime +) interest rates.  The 
same reason capped the social security payroll tax at an income 
of $63,000 per year with a zero tax rate on all income above 
$63,000 per year.
 
To the contrary, that subsidy to parenting families in the workforce 
is the cure for the English Disease.  It brings the purchasing power 
of the workforce, at every level of income, into balance with the 
value-added by workers at every level of income.  That step would 
validate Say's Law in the English speaking nations, and leave only 
the problem of excessive debt to be explained by economists.  

I am sure it would be no more than a half-hour learning experience 
for Ms. Patricia Keays to digest the contents of the graphical global 
model at URL: http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html, and, if 
she were disposed to move from method to principles, only 
another half-hour to write a dissertation on the primary obstacles 
to sustainable global development within each nation.  Or conversely, 
if disposed to preserve the status quo, write a dissertation to show 
why the financial structure of the General Motors Corporation, the 
General Electric Company, Walmart Stores, Switzerland, Germany, 
Japan, and most Western European nations is defective, and that 
"there is no alternative" to the financial structure of the English 
speaking nations, which are still "Losing Ground."

I am delighted to be currently subscribed to odc-l as: WesBurt@aol.com 

Kind regards to all,

Wesley S. Burt