‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ Series, Episode 2, Draft Script -- ‘Citizens Externality Equity’.

‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ Series,

Episode 2, Draft Script -- ‘Citizens Externality Equity’.

 

An introductory episode has been recorded and posted to YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mJHJO3bMw

Episode 2: Pillar I -- ‘Citizens Externality Equity’.

 

[Introduction] In this, second, episode, we introduce the first pillar of ‘Generalized Equity’ and of ‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’, which we have named ‘Citizens Externality Equity’. 

 

[Episode 2 Main Text: ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ Overview.] In brief, ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ provides a constitutional rights-based, voting-rights-based defense against the “market failures” that capitalist economists call “external costs”, or “externalities”.  Such “external costs” include pollution as well as property value depreciation, rent unaffordability, traffic and parking congestion, etc., caused for residents by the activities of capital equity corporations.  The new defenses we propose start in the locale of residence of each citizen, via a kind of grassroots-democratic, ‘economic suffrage’. 

 

The ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ human right constitutes also a new, constitutional property right, a collective property right, exercised via voting.  It is a right to a preventative remedy, in return for having suffered, in the past, the “external costs” imposed upon citizens by enterprises in relation to which these citizens may be neither stockholders nor customers, thus having no say in the decisions and management of those enterprises, including those that massively impact, or even destroy, their lives and the lives of their family members.  By having so suffered, in accord with the principles of equitable jurisprudence, said citizens have “purchased”, in kind, and in effect, this new kind of equity stake in those polluting/other-externalities-generating enterprises.

 

As neither stockholders nor customers of those enterprises, these citizens are unprotected by standard “market forces”.  They have no effective voice to redress their suffering of the, often deadly, coercive visitations upon them of these “external cost” damages, by those enterprises.

 

A way to get at what the term “externality” means is to ask just exactly what “externalities” are “external” to. 

 

“Externalities” are external to the market relationship between the owners of enterprises that produce goods and services -- between the owners of “capital equity stock” in those enterprises as the “first parties” in this market relationship -- and the customers of these enterprises, who buy and consume those goods and services, as the “second parties” in this market relationship.

 

The “second parties” are at least somewhat protected, in such market relationships, from abuse by the “first parties”, by the ‘economic check and balance’ of market competition.  If the “first parties” abuse the “second parties”, by foisting upon them low-quality customer service, poor quality goods and services, and/or prices that constitute profiteering, the “second parties” may have recourse to buy instead from competitors of those abusive “first parties”.  Those competitors may, to win out in market competition against those abusive “first parties”, offer better prices, better quality, and/or better customer service.

 

But the sufferers of “externality” damages, such as pollution poisoning, etc., are “third parties” to this market relationship. They are “external” to the market relationship between the first parties and the second parties.

 

These “third party” citizens are unprotected, by any market competition kind of ‘economic checks and balances’, against damages such as pollution, etc., imposed upon them, coercively,

by the “first parties”. 

 

The function of the new ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ constitutional right is to provide a new kind of ‘economic check and balance’.  This new kind of “check and balance” is designed to systematically redress the failure of the market-based, competition-based kind of ‘economic check and balance’ to protect citizens from these, often life-threatening, costs to those citizens as “external”, “third parties”.

 

 

 

 

The ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ human right and property right is designed to expand the self-protection of each citizen, and their protection of their families, starting from where they live, against pollution, for example, by factories and other physical plants that threaten their families’ health and, potentially, their very lives.

 

But it is designed to provide this protection in a very direct and local way, and in a way that makes ruling-class bribery, to thwart that protection, exorbitant, unaffordable -- even to the bribery budgets of the richest of the rich.  

 

This way is one which also skirts the failed capitalist method of relying upon external regulatory bureaucracies, that are regularly “captured” -- co-opted -- by the very industries that they were created to regulate and restrain.  Consider, for example, the cases of the FCC, the SEC, etc. 

 

This way also skirts the increasingly failed approach of suing the polluting enterprises in civil court, and fighting a usually losing court battle against deep-pocketed mega-corporations, and against an increasingly compromised judiciary, appointed by an executive branch increasingly “owned”, under the present system of “legalized bribery”, by the lobbyists of those same corporations, with the “advice and consent” of a Senate increasingly beholden to same. 

 

For example, such polluters are typically able to ward off litigation through various legal maneuvers, and settle out of court, thereby never admitting to any wrong-doing, even if their wrongdoing has been overwhelmingly egregious, and never incurring judicial precedents that might inhibit similar destructive, even deadly, externalities-generating behaviors on their parts in the future.

 

 

                        SOME EXPECTED QUESTIONS, AND OUR RESPONSES.

We have stated, and responded to, key ‘FAQs’ we anticipate listeners and viewers will want answered.  We encourage you to send your actual questions, if not covered by these FAQs, incivilities excluded.

 

Expected Question: With regard to ‘Citizens Externality Equity’:  how would its ‘Public Boards’ be ‘unbribable’, or “unaffordable to bribe even for the bribery budgets of the richest of the rich”?

 

Response:  There are presently approximately 32.5 million U.S. businesses, nationwide.  Every enterprise that pollutes beyond the constitutional and statutory threshold would internalize a ‘Public Board of Directors’, consisting of 5 ‘Public Directors’, each a mandated, recallable, term-limited, elected representative of the residents impacted by that pollution.  For the United States, there would be hundreds of thousands of such ‘Public Boards’ nationwide.  Paying annual bribes of just $50,000 each to the 5 ‘Public Directors’ of each ‘Public Board’, given just one million ‘Public Boards’ nationwide, would cost the ruling class 250 billion dollars every year.  There would simply be too many ‘Public Directors’ to afford to bribe, and too much turnover, due to term limits and/or to recalls of corrupted ‘Public Directors’, costing ‘re-bribery’ for every replacement ‘Public Director’ sworn-in, if that ‘Public Director’ were even willing to be bribed.  The “externalities” that the ‘Public Directors’ aim to reduce, are pollution, etc., externalities, in the very places were those grass roots ‘Public Directors’, and their families, live and work.  No “absentee” ‘Public Directors’ would be eligible for election.

 

Expected Question: How would ‘Citizens Externality Equity’ give citizens grass-roots-level control over pollution, etc., in their localities?

 

Response: Residents of each locality impacted by the above-threshold pollution, etc., externalities of a given enterprise, capitalist or ‘Stewardship’, would elect 5 ‘Public Directors’, forming a Public Board, to negotiate the annual ‘Externalities Budget’ of that enterprise, per the wishes of their constituents.  These elected ‘Public Directors’ would all be mandated, term-limited, and recallable.  If the negotiations of the ‘Public Board’ with the ‘Private Board’, or with the local “Management Committee”, of that enterprise, were to deadlock, then the negotiation would be remanded to the “nearest” ‘Tribunal for Externality Equity’ having jurisdiction over the impacted locale.  The Justices of that Tribunal would be popularly elected by the residents of their entire jurisdiction, and would also be mandated, term-limited, and recallable by their electorate.  The losing party in the adjudication of the deadlock would be required to pay all of the court costs of that adjudication, to ‘dis-incent’ merit-less deadlocks, and merit-less litigation. 

 

The ‘mandation’ of elected officials means that each candidate official, upon registering to stand for election for a give office, would be required to file a statement of intent regarding the conduct of the office if elected, and the approach of that candidate to the public issues addressed by that office.  This statement of intent, or mandate, would be published to the electorate before the election.  These mandates of the various competing candidates are what the electorate should be voting on, voting to select.  Once in office, if the elected candidate abrogated their mandate, that would be OK if OK with the majority of their electorate.  If not, that abrogation would constitute grounds, perhaps together with other grounds, for a petition campaign aiming to qualify for an election to recall that officer, and to elect a candidate to replace that officer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --

 

www.dialectics.info

 

 

 

 

 

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

 

 

 

 

¡ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Miguel Detonacciones,

 

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

 

 

 

 

Please post your comments on this blog-entry below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOLUTION –

 

‘Equitist Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’; 

 

BOOK:

MARX’S MISSING BLUEPRINTS

Free of Charge Download of Book PDF --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications.html

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications_files/Edition%201.,%20DPCAIT_,_Part_1_,_%27THE_MISSING_BLUEPRINTS%27_,_begun_22JUL2022_Last_Updated_08AUG2023.pdf

 

Hardcover Book Order --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/F.E.D._Press.html

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH 

Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY Series, Episode 1: Series Overview.

 

Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY Series, Episode 1, Draft Script

An introductory episode has been recorded and posted to YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mJHJO3bMw

Episode 1:  Series Overview.

 

 

[Introduction]  The forthcoming series introduced here presents a detailed proposal for the constitutional and legislative infrastructure needed for a more just successor system to the present capitalist system. The successor system that we propose is neither one of a “state-less”, anarchist-localist model, nor any variant of the presently-prevalent “Big Government” state-capitalist model.  The central focus of this series is the achievement of greater social justice.

 

What we will propose, in this series, is a system based upon grass-roots ‘political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’, extending the rule of law tradition.  Its implementation is to be sought, in a scaling-up fashion, starting on the municipal scale, and extending, ultimately and sequentially, to the county, state, regional, and national scales, and, eventually, to the international scale.  All of these scales of implementation are to be achieved by entirely lawful, legislative reform and constitutional amendment means, not by any hyper-costly and failure-prone path of bloody, law-less, violent revolution, which would also potentiate the new dictatorships to which that path tends to lead:  “Meet the new boss; same as the old boss”.   

 

We do not claim, in any way, that what we propose, once implemented, would produce a “perfection”, or a “heaven on Earth”.  Reality is imperfection.  But we do hold that the successor system we propose would produce a majority life far better than what the majority suffers today.  It represents, we hold, the next step in the evolution of democracy, in the evolution of human wealth, and in the evolution of collective human happiness.

 

We are consciously seeking, in designing the legal infrastructure for this successor system, to resuscitate the “checks and balances” and “countervailing powers” founded in the Constitution of the United States.   This design is, in particular, targeted to resuscitate the subverted political checks-and-balances of the U.S. Constitution -- subverted by a hyper-concentration of wealth that can buy out, and that, arguably, has bought out, all three branches of political government, and yoked them all to a singular, dictatorial directorate. 

The way to the resuscitation of these political checks and balances, we hold, is by adding new, grassroots-democratic, ‘economic checks and balances’.

 

We are also, thereby, consciously aiming to achieve a synthesis of the, “divided and conquered”, “left versus right” conflict that has lately engulfed, and incapacitated, the people and the politics of the United States, of Western Europe, and beyond. 

 

Our aim is to present a constitutional and social design for a successor system that will appeal to the majorities of these electorates, “right”-leaning and “left”-leaning alike, and that will ultimately prove far more satisfying to their instincts, and to their social desires, than the traditional models that presently paralyze both leanings.  

 

This successor system is designed to be more democratic, more respectful of individual liberty, more in accord with the rule of law, more observant of property rights, and more observant of human rights, than capitalism today is, than it ever was, and than it ever even could be.

 

For the sake of clarity, we call this successor system-design by the names ‘Generalized Equity’, and ‘Political-Economic Democracy’.  We call the social, political, economic, and legal process that implements this successor system by the name ‘The Equitarian Reform-Revolution’. 

 

This “Reform” is a “revolution”, not in the sense of violence in the streets, but in the sense that, if implemented, by the legally-expressed will of the majority, it would change the fundamental socio-economic relationship of the majority of individuals in our society, to their sources of livelihood. 

 

It would change their primary social relation from that of “capital-only equity”.  That exclusive form of equity means, for a minority, the ownership, for example, of financial shares in the assets, hence profits, of capitalist enterprises.  For the majority, it means a primary social relation of wage-labor, or of salaried labor, in enforced service to that capital-equity, and to its profitability, without any share in that profitability.   

 

It would change that primary social relation to that of ‘generalized equity’.  That means a system of all-citizens, universal, inclusive equity properties and rights, by way of instituting three new, additional forms of all-citizens equity.

  

It also means not outlawing, but including -- and also containing the downsides of -- the old kind of equity, capital equity; equity for capital-owners only.

 

The social impetus that has led us to this design is part of a growing recognition of the increasing failures of “actually-existing capitalism”.  We will, in the course of this series, delve deeply into the many dimensions of those growing failures of “actually existing capitalism”. 

 

These failures include the imposition of ever more severe global recessions and depressions, and the promulgation, by the capitalist ruling class, of a “people are pollution” ideology that puts the majority of humanity in their cross-hairs.  

 

We will also introduce you, perhaps for your first time, to the dynamical “law of motion” of this actually-existing capitalism, the dynamic that unifies these many problematic dimensions as their singular -- albeit difficult to discern -- root cause.  We name this law ‘the law of the tendency of the rate of reproduction of capital’.  By capital reproduction, we mean the continual production of, and investment of past profits in, new, for example, fixed capital plant and equipment, to replace the old fixed capital, that has been consumed in the process of production, or that has become competitively, technologically obsolete.  By the rate of that reproduction, we mean the periodic ratio of that new capital value added to the old capital value, already accumulated and demanding its equitable share of profits.

  

This series will also introduce you to the concept of an ‘ascendence phase’ of the capitalist system, followed by its ‘descendence phase’.  The former, ‘ascendence phase’, is already behind us in history past.  The latter, ‘descendence phase’ is the phase that surrounds and permeates and dominates our lives today.  During the ‘ascendence phase’, now passed, the tendency of that rate of reproduction of capital was to rise.  From the beginning of the ‘descendence phase’, which now engulfs us, the tendency of that rate of capital reproduction is to fall. 

In response, the owners of concentrated capital, threatened, due to that waning rate of reproduction of their capital, with the non-reproduction of their power, and, due to that loss of power, threatened also with the loss of all of the “perks” of their rule, thereby, of course, institute -- largely in a stealth mode -- extreme measures, in an attempt to reverse that fall, unfortunately in ways which threaten the livelihoods, and the very lives, of the majority class.

 

A key aspect of this ‘descendence phase’, and of its specific “law of motion”, is the growing tendency of ‘descendence phase’ capitalism to drive toward state-capitalist, police-state, state-terrorist and totalitarian, genocidal, permanent-war, “national security” dictatorship.  

 

George Orwell perceived this tendency with unsurpassed clarity.   He warned us about it in his famous novel, 1984.  President Eisenhower, himself a former General of the U.S. Army, also perceived this threat.  He warned the people of the U.S., in his Presidential Farewell Address, of the danger to democracy inherent in the emerging “military-industrial complex”, his name for it. 

 

Some symptoms of this tendency to totalitarianism include a declining investment in public education, and a “dumbing down” of what education remains, an increase in punitive social control, such as escalating rates of incarceration, and in police militarization and armed forces imperial militarism, an increase in internet censorship of all forms of free expression, an increase in the seemingly permanent military invasion of other nations, and an increase in the electronic surveillance of all citizens’ communications and financial transactions, without even the slightest pretence of probable cause justification.

 

In the transition from feudalism and monarchy to capitalism, in the fight against the brutal feudal “ancien régime”, and in the early history of capitalism -- during capitalism’s ‘ascendence phase’ -- many capitalists fought heroically for greater individual liberty.

 

 

 

They fought for the expansion of suffrage, and, ultimately, for universal adult suffrage, for freedom of speech, for freedom of the press, for the right of the people to bear arms as a potential check against abuses of power by their government, for freedom of religion and prohibition of the establishment of any religion by the state, for the rule of law, as opposed to arbitrary rule by “aristocratic” kings and cults of personality, for human rights such as the right of the assembly of citizens to petition their government for redress of grievances, for trial by juries of peers, for the right to privacy, and for the right to the protection of liberty and property by due process of law.

 

But with the turn into the ‘descendence phase’, the most powerful faction of the ultra-wealthy capitalist ruling class seems to have turned against all of this, and appears to be driving toward dictatorship.  We will, in this series, trace back to the root cause of this turn, finding it in the “law of motion” already mentioned. 

 

This tendency to totalitarianism is rooted partly in a corollary of that “law of motion” -- in its subsumed law of capitalist competition.  Competition leads, not primarily to the reproduction of competition, but to the negation of competition -- to oligopoly and monopoly.  Extreme capital wealth ownership concentrates increasingly, and into ever fewer hands.

 

And those ever fewer hands may act to undermine the political checks and balances, that, alone, when they function as intended, help mightily to protect democracy from degenerating into tyranny. 

 

But with sufficient concentration of gargantuan capital monetary wealth, the ever fewer owners of that wealth can “buy out” all three political branches of government, in a “hostile takeover”, overriding the intended ‘inter-mutually’ restraining and “countervailing” powers of those three political branches of political government. 

 

The houses of legislature become houses for the rubber-stamp approval of the agendas of the owners of that hyper-concentrated capital wealth. 

 

The also-compromised executive branch becomes an agency promoting the interests of those ever fewer, and ever more dominant, capital owners, against the interests of the majority. 

 

The judiciary branch becomes an enforcer of the interests of that same capital-controlling hyper-minority.

 

The “free” press, the media in general, also owned and controlled mainly by that oligarchy, become agents of the propaganda, and of the “divide-and-conquer” ideologies, engineered by that plutocratic “1%-of-the-1%”.  These ideologies are designed to psychologically impair and to disempower the majority class.  Race, religion, and any other discernible differences within the majority population become means for these media to “balkanize” the population into ever smaller divisions, with mutual hatreds cultivated by those media among them all. 

 

This hyper-concentration of capital equity wealth ownership, and this growth of oligopoly and monopoly, contains the potential for the subversion of the political checks and balances that preserve liberty.  

 

However, they do not fully explain, in our view, why the strongest faction of the ultra-wealthy seems to have opted to use that potential to actualize dictatorship.

 

While it is true, in our view, that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, we think that this concentrated power of the uppermost capitalists is not sufficient to explain what has happened, and what is happening now.  We detect something more desperate in the über-ruling-class reaction to their potential for near-absolute power.  We will address, in this series, the root cause of that desperate anti-democratic agenda as well.  To do so, we will have to unearth much of the hidden history of the late 19th century, and of the 20th century.

 

The three “Pillars” of the successor system that this series will present -- each of which is to be both a newly-recognized, fundamental, constitutional, human right, and also a new kind of, constitutionally-protected, universal, all-citizens property right, are named by us (1) ‘Citizens Externality Equity’, (2) ‘Citizens Birthright Equity’, and (3) ‘Citizens Stewardship Equity’.

These new constitutional rights, and their enabling institutions, are designed to advance both the liberty and the prosperity of the vast majority of the population, and to provide risk management to the individuals and families making up that majority, against the “market failures” and the other mortal hazards to which contemporary capitalism increasingly exposes us, but against which it offers us no effective remedies.

 

 

                        SOME EXPECTED QUESTIONS, AND OUR RESPONSES.

We have stated, and responded to, key ‘FAQs’ we anticipate listeners and viewers will want answered.  We encourage you to send your actual questions, if not covered by these FAQs, incivilities excluded.

 

Expected Question: How would this new system impact individuals?

 

Response:  An individual citizen of the majority class would no longer be just “capital-fodder”, valued only for work that makes profit for capitalists, and otherwise discarded.  Each individual would be a valued part of the community, with material proof of that valuing in the form of a ‘Citizen Birthright Equity Social Trust Fund’, plus a right to pursue a ‘Stewardship Equity’ alternative to a wage or salary relationship to that citizen’s livelihood, and a voting right to limit the imposition of externalities upon that citizen by capitalist or Stewardship enterprises.

 

Expected Question: How would this new system impact business?

 

Response: Citizens would have an option to pursue ‘collective self-employment’, and ‘collective entrepreneurship’, via ‘Stewardship Equity’, as well as to pursue traditional capitalist wage work and salaried work relationships with remaining capitalist firms. The economic “checks and balances” of market competition would be conserved and, in fact, expanded.  Competition among capitalist firms would be supplemented by competition among ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’, as well as by competition between ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’ versus remaining capitalist firms.

 

Expected Question: What would be the status of private property within this successor system?

 

Response:  Private property rights would be retained, not outlawed.  They would also be supplemented, by new kinds of property rights.  These would include ‘collective property rights’, such as ‘Externality Equity’ voting rights.  These would also include new ‘personal property rights’, such as the right to a ‘Birthright Equity Social Trust Fund’.  These would include ‘social property rights’, such as the right to the stewardship and usufruct of the means of production of a Socialized Producers’ Cooperative per the ‘Stewardship Equity’ property right.  And these would include the ‘individual property right’ of a Steward of a ‘Stewardship Cooperative’ to that Steward’s individual membership in the undergirding ‘Stewardship Collective’ of that cooperative.

 

 

Expected Question: What is the extent of government reform that would have to occur to institute this new system?

 

Response:  For the United States, the reforms would extend to several constitutional amendments, plus the institution of an “intermediate” level of law in the form of an enabling law ‘constitutional annex’. The latter would be less difficult to amend than the Constitution, but more difficult to amend than a Congressional statute.  We will make our drafts of these proposed enactments available to our readers and viewers in the course of this series.

 

Expected Question: What level of consensus would people have to achieve to make this new system happen?

 

Response:  For the United States, the majority class would have to be convinced -- despite all of the plutocracy’s media opposition, and their engineering of “divide-and-conquer” ideologies -- that “actually existing capitalism” is failing, and that what we call ‘revolutionary reform’ is necessary, in the form of the constitutional amendments and enabling legislations that constitute ‘The Equitarian Reform’.

 

Expected Question: What organizations stand in the way of implementing this new system?

Response: All of the organizations that are the organs of the increasingly democracy-subverting, plutocratic, dictatorial rule of the minority class of dominant capitalists.  These include some organizations that are secret, and some that are public, including the major mass media organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the “Democrat” Party, the traditional “Republican” Party, etc.  They also include large swaths of the “standing bureaucracy”, that survives any national election, in the Federal Executive branch, and that typically represent the growing proto-police-state infrastructure of “our” government -- the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, various “Black Ops” organizations, and the industries and lobbies which prosper off of the burgeoning “National Security State” and “Military-Industrial Complex”, as well as Pentagon-equipped, hyper-militarized local police forces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information regarding the

Seldonian insights, please see --

 

www.dialectics.info

 

 

 

 

 

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

 

 

¡ENJOY!

 

 

 

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

 Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

 

 

 

 

Please post your comments on this blog-entry below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 SOLUTION –

 

‘Equitist Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’; 

 

BOOK:

MARX’S MISSING BLUEPRINTS

Free of Charge Download of Book PDF --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications.html

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications_files/Edition%201.,%20DPCAIT_,_Part_1_,_%27THE_MISSING_BLUEPRINTS%27_,_begun_22JUL2022_Last_Updated_08AUG2023.pdf

 

Hardcover Book Order --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/F.E.D._Press.html

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH