Ending Poverty, Promoting Sustainability, and Respecting the Golden Rule

The most fundamental moral principle—the Golden Rule—is simple: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Every major religious tradition teaches it, and people of secular conscience embrace it as well. Yet in politics and economics, we often neglect this principle. We accept governments that meddle in the private lives of peaceful people, even when no one is harmed, and in doing so, we support policies that violate the Golden Rule.

Attempts to regulate private behavior not only infringe on individual rights; they also distract from the proper purpose of government. Government’s legitimate role is to safeguard public rights—protecting people from harms imposed by others without consent. If no one else is harmed, no public duty arises, and government has no cause to intervene.

But when pollution is released into the air or water, or when natural wealth is taken from common resources without compensation, harm is imposed. Polluting industries, in pursuit of profit, force all others to refrain from emitting similar material to a proportional degree—assuming we as a society intend to respect limits to overall pollution. Without limits, the rights of the public would be disregarded in practice, existing only as a philosophical construct.

In such cases, requiring polluters to pay a fee is not an arbitrary use of force but an act of justice. It is the people’s way of enforcing their collective right to define limits. If average public opinion holds that more pollution would be unacceptable, then the appropriate response is to adjust fees until emissions fall within that acceptable range. This is the Golden Rule applied to public life: no individual or corporation should impose upon others what they would not want imposed upon themselves.

When such fees are collected, fairness requires that the proceeds not be absorbed into bureaucratic budgets, but rather shared equally among all people. Natural wealth—clean air, stable climate, fertile soil, rich fisheries, and forests—is the inheritance of everyone. If it is diminished, compensation should flow equally to all, not to the few who hold political power. In this way, the fees serve both justice and poverty alleviation. Every person receives a dividend from our shared inheritance, ensuring that the benefits of nature’s wealth are broadly distributed.

This framework points to a new political possibility: a marriage of libertarian and green traditions. Libertarian principles insist that no government should initiate force or coercion against peaceful citizens. Green principles insist that natural systems be respected, and that human impacts remain within limits that sustain life and fairness across generations. Together, these principles affirm both freedom and responsibility.

A libertarian-green path would respect private property, civil liberty, and personal choice, while also establishing public property rights in the commons. Polluters and extractors would be required to pay the public for the damage or depletion they cause. Dividends from those payments would end poverty by guaranteeing everyone a fair share of natural wealth. Meanwhile, honest prices—prices that reflect real environmental costs—would align profit with sustainability, ensuring that innovation and enterprise serve long-term flourishing.

Such a system offers maximum freedom within necessary limits. People remain free to pursue their interests and livelihoods, but within rules that prevent them from violating the Golden Rule at the expense of others.

If we wish to end poverty, promote sustainability, and bring human impacts on the environment into line with what most people would deem acceptable, then we must return to first principles. Government should not coerce peaceful individuals. It should instead protect our shared rights, ensure that natural wealth is treated fairly, and embody the moral precepts that sustain society. To respect truth, prices must reflect real costs. To respect fairness, proceeds from the commons must be shared equally. And to respect freedom, limits must be set by the people themselves, through democratic processes that give voice to the collective conscience.

This is not utopian. It is simply the Golden Rule, practiced consistently in our economic and political life.



Biological Model for Politics and Economics

Respect individual sovereignty -- What would that look like?

Latitude can be offered to taxpayers, so that no person will be forced to support something that offends their conscience.

The proviso: Put the money toward alternative uses that most people agree are better for society. (An open call for people to document various things that people do to benefit society can produce a library of mini-documentaries. These can be compared randomly, in pairs, so that the best documentaries (most engaging, most informative, balanced) can be brought to the surface. These best docs, depicting various kinds of public service, can be compared, in random pairs again, in A/B testing, iterated many times, to find which kind of public service is consistently rated as more valuable to society. If someone wants to stop payment of their tax money for what they believe to be a harmful or corrupt purpose, they would see by the resulting 'gradient map' in which direction they should move those funds.

This is what we might expect to see in a society that has a high level of respect for individual sovereignty.

Who should decide how to spend public funds?

Empowering Citizens through Participatory Taxation: A Democratic Approach to Public Spending

The Problem

Our society faces a crisis of trust in public institutions. Daily headlines reveal law enforcement officers abusing their power rather than serving the public. Corruption among elected and appointed officials worldwide erodes faith in governance systems. This breakdown of trust creates fertile ground for reactionary ideologies that promise alternatives to dysfunctional systems.

For a healthy society, we need institutions that citizens trust to operate in the public interest. The current paradigm of centralized decision-making about public funds has led to widespread dissatisfaction and distrust.

A Democratic Solution to Public Spending

What if we adopted a new approach that puts spending decisions directly in the hands of citizens? We can create a system that uses comparative evaluation to produce a gradient map of public spending preferences, allowing taxpayers more control over how their contributions are used.

How It Would Work

1. Creating Representative Content: Citizens could create mini-documentaries showcasing various public services and programs. These would undergo preliminary A/B testing to ensure accuracy and quality in representing each type of public benefit.
2. Comparative Evaluation: Through millions of survey iterations, citizens would be presented with random pairs of these mini-documentaries and asked to indicate which shows a better use of public funds.
3. Gradient Mapping: These evaluations would generate a comprehensive gradient map showing the relative perceived value of different public services according to citizen preferences.
4. Taxpayer Direction: If taxpayers find a particular congressionally-approved use of funds objectionable, they could redirect their contribution along this gradient map toward alternatives that most people agree represent better uses of public money.
5. Proportional Allocation: Citizens might allocate a majority of their tax share (perhaps 80%) to widely-supported programs, while having freedom to direct the remainder toward more experimental or controversial initiatives that have at least modest public support.

Benefits of This Approach

• Increased Tax Compliance: When people believe their money is being well-used for purposes they support, willingness to pay taxes would likely increase.
• No Hard Cutoffs: Programs wouldn't suddenly lose all funding by falling below an arbitrary threshold. Instead, funding would gradually increase or decrease based on public perception of value.
• Continuous Improvement Incentive: All public service providers would have ongoing motivation to improve their efficiency and effectiveness to attract more citizen-directed funding.
• Broad Consensus Support: Essential services that most citizens value—like secular education, public parks, libraries, scientific research, public health, and responsible law enforcement—would likely receive robust funding.
• Environmental Management: This approach could extend to environmental policy, with emission permits or extraction quotas set according to democratically determined acceptable levels.

Practical Applications

In education, this system might allow students some budgetary control over their learning experiences, creating flexibility between lectures, hands-on activities, arts, and field experiences.

Secular public institutions funded through this democratic process would likely emphasize our shared identity as global citizens rather than divisive tribalism, promoting cooperation on our greatest challenges.

This participatory approach to public spending would strengthen democratic principles by creating a direct connection between citizens' values and government actions, rebuilding the trust necessary for a functioning civil society.


Based on an earlier essay: Who should decide how to spend public funds?

Empowering Citizens to Direct Public Funds: A Participatory Approach

In an era where trust in governmental institutions is waning, empowering citizens to have a direct say in public spending can rejuvenate democratic engagement. Building upon the principles of participatory budgeting—a process where community members decide how to allocate portions of a public budget—this proposal introduces an innovative system that leverages citizen input to guide the distribution of public funds.​  Participatory Budgeting Project+1Seattle+1

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The Proposal: Citizen-Guided Allocation of Public Funds

1. Interactive Mini-Documentary Surveys

Citizens participate in surveys presenting randomized pairs of brief documentaries, each illustrating different public programs or services. By selecting which of the two they believe represents a better use of public funds, participants provide valuable insights into collective preferences.​

2. Developing a Gradient Map of Public Preferences

Aggregating millions of these pairwise comparisons generates a "gradient map"—a nuanced representation of public opinion on various programs. This map highlights which initiatives are broadly supported and which are more contentious.​

3. Taxpayer-Directed Fund Allocation

Armed with the gradient map, taxpayers can redirect a portion of their taxes away from programs they find objectionable, channeling funds toward alternatives with higher public approval. This ensures that redirected funds support initiatives aligned with collective values.​

4. Open-Source Content Creation and Evaluation

The creation of mini-documentaries is open to all citizens, fostering transparency and inclusivity. A separate A/B testing mechanism evaluates these documentaries, determining which most accurately and effectively represent the programs they depict.​

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Benefits of the System

• Enhanced Trust in Public Institutions: By involving citizens directly in funding decisions, the system fosters a sense of ownership and trust in governmental processes.​

• Responsive and Equitable Resource Allocation: The gradient map ensures that public funds are directed toward programs with broad support, promoting equitable distribution.​

• Increased Civic Engagement: Open participation in content creation and decision-making processes encourages active civic involvement.​

• Transparency and Accountability: Publicly available evaluations and funding decisions enhance transparency, holding programs accountable to citizen preferences.​

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Implementation Considerations

• Technological Infrastructure: Developing secure and user-friendly platforms for surveys and fund allocation is crucial.​

• Inclusivity Measures: Ensuring broad participation across diverse demographics to accurately reflect public opinion.​

• Educational Initiatives: Providing resources to help citizens understand programs and their impacts, enabling informed decision-making.​

• Pilot Programs: Testing the system in select communities to refine processes before broader implementation.​

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By integrating citizen preferences into the allocation of public funds, this participatory approach aims to create a more responsive, transparent, and trusted governmental system. It builds upon existing participatory budgeting practices, enhancing them with innovative tools for broader and more nuanced public engagement.​

Local Government Association+4Wikipedia+4Seattle+4

Overly has questions (but no answers)

Someone who seemed to not like the idea of requiring industries to account for external costs related to production asked me what I think would happen if businesses are not allowed to make a profit. This was in response to a question about whether he thinks producers should be able to hide some of the costs of production from customers, and whether he thinks that air and water and other natural resources should benefit all people equally. [He asked the question about the effect of not allowing profit, and one about how much the proper (honest) fee would be, but ignored the questions I had put to him. (There is nothing about a pollution fee-and-dividend that implies disallowing profit, so I don't know the point of the question, other than to deflect / distract.)]

To Overly:

Why are you asking about the impact of not allowing profit? Where do you see, in a proposal for a pollution / extraction fee, a suggestion that businesses should not be 'allowed' to earn profit?

Businesses earn profit if their expenses are more than offset by their revenue. That remains true if we account for externalities. But any business that had only been able to make profit by externalizing some of its costs will face a greater challenge, if they are not making things that are essential. (If they are making essential goods or services, they will not lose customers if they raise prices, unless many of their competitors had been operating by relying less on externalizing costs, so that they are impacted to a lesser extent by the introduction of the policy to account for externalities, and therefor face less need to raise prices.)

Customers will continue to buy from those who make essential goods and services, even as the price goes up. That reflects the meaning of the word, 'essential'. People will be able to continue to buy essential goods and services, if we charge environmental impact fees and share the proceeds equally, because they will have a natural wealth stipend that more-than-compensates for the rise in price of those essentials.

Why do you suppose that accounting for externalities would mean businesses are not 'allowed' to make a profit?

Some business owners would prefer to simply pay the fee when they extract or emit, and be done with all the other regulations that are in place as a stopgap measure, to make up for the problems associated with the skewing of the market caused by the externalized costs. The other, less efficient methods of managing environmental impacts could be eliminated. (If we set emissions and extraction fees high enough, there will be no environmental problems that require government intervention.)

If we took a random poll, and we found that the amount of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere each year is, say, 15% higher than what most people think is acceptable, then a number of permits could be issued to reflect the amount of emissions that the people (most people) will endorse. These permits could be sold at auction.

We might find that people are very responsive to the change in price, after producers are made to buy the emissions and extraction permits. So, demand will fall with a minor price signal, in such a situation. (If demand for permits is low, price for permits will be low.)

If people are less responsive to price changes, the permit price will be driven higher before it has the effect identified as the target by the random poll.

The auction price of something depends on intensity of demand in relation to supply. I am not able to predict what the auction price for various kinds of permits would be. You seem to think an inability to predict the auction price affects the viability or effectiveness of, or rationale for, the fee-and-dividend system. Do you think that? Why?


Imagine taxpayers could stop their money from supporting things that offend their conscience or that appear wasteful...

Systemic flaws are not reported

What Do We Need to Know That Our Newspapers and Universities Are Not Telling Us?

This is an update of an older version of this letter

To the Editor,

Our economic system has a fundamental flaw that impacts environmental sustainability.

We have an economy that hides resource depletion costs and other environmental costs from consumers. There is no general fee or tax assessed in proportion to adverse impacts caused or natural resources taken by producers, so these costs are not reflected in prices.

Because costs are hidden, there is a distortion that leads all cost-benefit analyses to skew toward more environmentally harmful acts. Consumers do things that tend to pollute air and water more than they would do if the cost of the degraded environmental quality were factored into the prices of the things they buy. This harms the interests of other lifeforms on Earth, and it will harm the interests of future lifeforms, including our own descendants.

"Economic externalities" (hidden costs) cause us to do the wrong thing. When markets function with lack of regard for environmental impacts and quality of life (because natural resource user-fees and pollution fees are not part of the economic calculus), citizens may lose interest in maintaining free markets as an efficient and fair way to allocate resources. This is potentially a very serious risk, because the preservation of institutions requires that the people have confidence in those institutions. Reduced commitment to free markets will usher in a move toward more trade barriers and a less efficient (less prosperous) economy.

Where are the reporters and commentators who will report on and speak out against an economic system that gives us incentive to do the wrong thing? This defect in our economy disrespects the interests of other inhabitants of this world, and of future generations of humans, by depleting resources that they might rely on and polluting air and water that they need. They cannot speak up in protest. Should we?

If we determine that natural resource wealth is owned by all equally, then any money paid by users of natural resources would go to all the people; to each an equal amount. A proper accounting for this wealth would end abject poverty in the world.

It is immoral—particularly so for journalists—to acquiesce in a system that gives people incentive to do the wrong thing. It is immoral, too, to acquiesce in a system that gives, at most, mere lip service to respect for public property rights, while making no effort to manifest that idea in reality. If a more efficient and fair accounting of natural resource wealth would spell an end to abject poverty, it seems to me something worth talking about.

There is deafening silence in discussion of and reporting on systemic flaws—in economic and political realms.

I hope a reporter or editor can explain why my analysis is flawed; or begin meaningful reporting on environmental journalism and the urgent need for natural resource accountability.

gaiabrain.blogspot.com | @TallPhilosopher

Natural Law Requires Respect of PUBLIC Property Rights, Too

Human beings have a collective moral right to assert public property claims. We have a collective moral duty to do so, too. Public property rights (and private property rights) are human rights. Human rights are an example of natural law. As a kind of natural law, human rights must be respected. Public property rights include the collective right of the people to benefit from commons resources (wealth made by natural processes, not human effort). Public property rights include a shared right to decide overall limits to humans' impact on the environment. These collective rights imply corresponding shared moral duties to create systems of governance that assure that natural wealth is shared equitably and that limits on pollution and on rates of taking of natural resources are consistent with the will of the people at large. No society can hold together in the long run in the absence of a respect for basic rights. Economic justice, the stability of our society and the future health of the planet all depend on us recognizing these rights and carrying out these shared responsibilities. Natural phenomena emerge in the cosmos according to natural law. Moral precepts can be seen as natural laws of social interaction, while the emergence of civilization can be seen as a particular kind of natural phenomenon. But civilization as we've made it thus far exhibits some serious flaws related to our near-total neglect of a basic moral precept. There is broad agreement on the idea that human beings have a collective right to define limits to pollution and limits to the rate of taking of natural resources, yet we have thus far failed to carry out our collective duty to establish those limits in reality--limits that align with average opinion about what is acceptable. This neglect of a basic democratic principle impairs economic justice. Neglect of principle impedes efforts to build a sustainable society. We have a civilization that is plagued by widespread extreme poverty and we are threatening to produce a planetary ecological disaster. We are challenged by circumstances to create a sustainable and more just civilization. Civilizations thrive then collapse because, first, conditions emerge that make them possible, then they grow beyond what the natural environment can sustain. Economies boom then bust because they grow beyond what their resource bases can support. The arc of civilization and the boom and bust of the business 'cycle' are similar phenomena operating at different scales. These sometimes wild swings may appear to be cyclical variations, but they actually reflect chaotic instabilities. A closer adherence to basic principles would mean a dampening of these gyrations to the point that they would no longer pose an existential threat to the system. Fees on the taking or degradation of natural resources could be applied as a mechanism to moderate human economic activity, with the aim of keeping overall environmental impacts within limits that most people find acceptable. (We might assume that people will identify as acceptable that which they believe is sustainable--a society that is democratic in terms of limits to environmental impacts is more likely to be sustainable.) We could use a system of random surveys to discern whether more people want to see more strict limits on emission of various types of pollution and on the rates of taking of resources, or more want to be more lenient, or whether there is a balance between the number of people holding one view vs. the other. A fee is a lever or mechanism that society could use for applying incentives to influence the behavior of those who use natural resources. Fees for particular kinds of environmental impacts would rise or fall, as need be, when the actual conditions do not match what most people want to see. Fees would be held steady when the reality matches what the largest number of people say is the best balance between the alternative positions: Freedom vs. constraint; More vs. less impact on the environment. [There is an implicit trade-off that translates restraint now into more opportunities later, as stricter limits on environmental impacts now leads to a more healthy and resilient environment and more abundant mineral reserves in the future. (This mirrors the challenge that confronted traditionally nomadic, hunter-gatherer humans who had begun to settle in choice spots several thousand years ago: After a dry year, they were faced with the choice to either eat their seed grain, or sacrifice now so that they might prosper in the future.)] Defining appropriate limits to humans' environmental impacts is a primary function of government in an advanced industrial society. Such a system as that described above would ensure that the basic human right to collectively decide limits would be embodied in practice. The hope and expectation is that people will in fact choose to keep overall impacts within limits that the larger environment can sustain. Apparently, eternal vigilance is the price citizens must pay to ensure that a human population that has the ability to exceed what the Earth can support in fact does not go beyond those limits. Citizens (even those who are not 'environmentally conscious') would have a natural inclination to call for less impact on the environment (higher fees) because the sum of all proceeds from these fees would be a monetary representation of wealth owned by all. The money collected would be shared to all. Equal sharing of fee proceeds would manifest in reality the idea that we all own natural resources in common. A vote for less environmental impact will translate to a larger natural wealth stipend. Equal distribution of this money would buffer the downward slide of a shrinking economy, because the entire human population would continue to receive a modest income from shared natural resource wealth, independent of income from work, family inheritance or investments. A 'floor' on the loss of human confidence that causes or contributes to business contractions would be created. Spending in support of basic human needs would continue. Resources would continue to flow to the sectors of the economy that provide essential goods and services. With a modest income assured, people would continue to spend in ways that support the most vital economic activities. Sharing natural wealth will mean that economic sectors devoted to meeting basic needs would be insulated from the worst vicissitudes of the business 'cycle'. Swings in the economic climate would be moderated. With demands on renewable biological resources (e. g., forests and fish stocks) kept sufficiently low and with availability of minerals extended farther into the future through a fee mechanism, civilization becomes a more sustainable phenomenon. With extreme poverty ended and disparity of wealth reduced through equal sharing of fee proceeds, society rests on a stronger foundation of justice, which would further contribute to social stability. We can imagine an equal payment to all people that would protect every person against extreme material deprivation. This natural wealth stipend would be drawn from the proceeds of fees charged to those who take or degrade natural wealth in pursuit of profit. Those who are at the greatest disadvantage under the current system will be better off with this policy. Respect for public property rights would significantly improve the material condition of those who experience the greatest economic hardship. We will no longer have large regions of the world populated by mostly dispossessed people. Everyone benefits when the economy adapts to the pricing of natural resource wealth. This adaptation is implicit in the transition away from an economy that allows economic externalities to go uncompensated. Externalities are the hidden costs (or benefits) of economic activity. For example, the cost of pollution (born by the human community and the larger community of life) is hidden from investors, corporations and consumers when producers do not pay a fee proportional to the amount of pollution that they cause. If there is no monetary payment made when pollution is created, then pollution costs are not reflected on the financial balance sheet. Economic actors are unable to see costs that are off the balance sheet and therefore hidden from view. They cannot properly take account of these costs.

Because environmental impact costs are hidden, all choices about what manufacturing process to adopt, what products to buy, what mode of transport to use, what to eat, etc., are skewed toward more environmentally-harmful acts and away from sustainability. Putting a price on natural resource wealth moves us toward an economy that embodies the concept of public property rights in its structure and accounting. Industrial processes and business models will be redesigned to improve resource efficiency. Individuals will change habits toward more sustainable practices. People will choose more environmentally-friendly lifestyles--even if they are not trying to do so because they are temperamentally inclined to be concerned about environmental issues. This means improved conditions for everyone: More ecological health and more personal health. (Environmental impact pricing would favor whole foods, locally-produced foods and plant-based diets.) A sustainable human society built on a broader moral foundation is good for all Earthlings. Taking ownership of our environment is also good for us in ways that may not be immediately obvious. For example, if we were to decide that advertising billboards are an adverse environmental impact due to their contribution to unwanted visual blight, then fees could be charged to those who post such ads, to assure that the prevalence of billboards on the landscape is kept within acceptable limits. Maybe signage in earth-tones would be considered less offensive. (What would a random survey reveal?) There could be a graduated fee structure. Now imagine that every kind of television or radio broadcast is a sort of billboard in the public space (the public airwaves). If we want to manage the use of the airwaves in a way that is consistent with the will of the people, we could charge a fee for certain uses of the broadcast spectrum that promote private or commercial interests rather than the public interest. We could pay a stipend to broadcasters and/or producers who offer programming that a random survey indicates would make a valuable contribution to the public interest, in the view of most people. Shaping or tilting our use of the broadcast spectrum toward the public interest might change the character of broadcast television and radio in profound ways. We could get an idea about how these changes would affect our culture if we start asking the pertinent questions. Given a multitude of choices for how to use the broadcast spectrum, how might we best promote the public interest? Making channel space available for distribution of programs according to what random surveys show would promote the public interest will likely produce a menu of programs that would serve the public interest more effectively than what we have now. The current system favors quantity (size of audience) over quality (depth of engagement with topics that matter). We can make the world more what we want it to be. By changing our relationship with our political and economic systems--by changing the way we participate in them--toward a fuller respect of our basic principles, chief among them, respect for truth in pricing and fairness in sharing the wealth bestowed by nature, we transform our society and ourselves. With a change in the rules toward greater respect of primary values, we can build a global civilization that is both sustainable and more just.

https://gaiabrain.blogspot.com