Re: Introduction

[John Logue <jlogue@kent.edu>]

Richard -

What a nice, informative, and inspirational introduction.  Welcome to the
eosubnat group!

I think that it's important to remember your point that "Our worldwide
industrial capacity is--right now--capable of providing life support and a
decent standard of living for every human on earth. It is our defective
economic systems which stand in the way of the fulfillment of that potential."

The question is, how do we best improve it???

I look forward to our cooperative efforts to that end.

John

At 10:34 PM 4/24/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Dan Bell has suggested some weeks ago that I introduce myself as a new
participant in the "Building Employee Ownership at the Sub-national Level"
discussion group.
>
>First, I want to thank COG and the Ford Foundation for providing this
forum. The many articles and letters by the moguls in the fields of binary
economics and distributed ownership have been most enlightening to me.
>
>I have been an admirer of R. Buckminster Fuller since about 1967, when I
began reading his books (on my own, not as a course requirement) during my
senior year of college at University of Florida.
>
>I have no degree in economics nor do I profess to be an expert on the
subject. I am an idealist--a utopian, if you will. In university I
researched operant conditioning as originally discovered and analyzed by B.
F. Skinner. However, I have never incorporated my education on that subject
into any of my career endeavors, which have mostly been in the realm of
electronics and software engineering. Like Bucky Fuller, I like to think of
myself as a generalist. But I'm not sufficiently well read to grant myself
that title.
>
>What turned me on to Fuller's writings is that with my reading of each new
page a light bulb flashed inside my head, figuratively. There are certain
truths that, when you first hear them stated, seem obvious, yet ingenious.
My mundane education in public schools and university, and that resulting
from reading the popular literature, failed to inculcate these truths, as
though there were some conspiracy to hide them from the general
population--truths such as:
>
> 1. Technology creates wealth.
>
> 2. Wealth creation is not a zero sum game.
>
> 3. Techology naturally results in learning how to do more with less
(ephemeralization).
>
> 4. Economic progress is not a linear process.
>
> 5. Birth rates decline naturally as a society industrializes--no need for
artificial anti-birth incentives or doomsday prophesies.
>
> 6. Our worldwide industrial capacity is--right now--capable of providing
life support and a decent standard of living for every human on earth. It
is our defective economic systems which stand in the way of the fulfillment
of that potential.
>
> 7. Full employment should never be a social goal. Our goal should be
universal, sustainable enjoyment of the fruits of nature (land, energy,
minerals, water, air) and of manmade capital (inventions, industrial
processes, manufacturing systems, communications technology, etc.) and of
the productive leisure these make possible.
>
>When I first began reading Louis Kelso's books, that same light bulb
started flashing in my head. The principles of binary economics seem to me
to be self-evident truths. I think of them as an extension of the design
science principles discovered and developed by Buckminster Fuller applied
to the economic realm which will make possible the fulfillment of Fuller's
(50/50) predictions of utopia, provided, humans on earth are destined to be
a successful experiment in syntropy (the antidote for physical entropy).
>
>Thus, I find myself quite interested in binary economics and in other
ideas for distributing capital ownership and its dividends broadly. In
addition to favoring ESOPs and other stock ownership plans espoused by
Louis O. Kelso, am particularly interested in CESJ's Capital Homestead Act.
(See <http://www.cesj.org/>.)
>
>You will find my own attempt to encapsulate by understanding of binary
economics among my other interests on my own web site at
<http://www.worldworks.com/>.
>
><<Richard>>
>-- 
>-----------------------------
>Richard A. Stutsman, Director
>WorldWorks Symposium: An inquiry into how the world works
>URL <http://www.worldworks.org>
>


John Logue
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-3028
(330) 672-4063 fax
jlogue@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/