The Gaia Brain Paradigm: Biological Model for Politics and Economics

A sustainable and just civilization is built on principle

2011-09-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

A sustainable and just civilization requires that we exercise our moral sense.

Indeed, to be complete human beings, we must exercise our moral sense. This means, primarily, that we respect the golden rule. A sincere and thorough commitment to basic moral principles, including the golden rule, implies a strong commitment to human rights, including property rights, public and private.

When the people at large are recognized as the rightful owners of the air and water and other natural resources, we will require that the industries that pollute air and water and that take and degrade natural resource wealth paying a fee, with proceeds going to all people, as compensation for damage done or value taken. The fee charged for using that which belongs to everybody could increase when demands on natural resources exceed what most people say is acceptable. This system of fees would cause industries that use natural resources to try to decrease their demand for them, thus bringing actual impacts on the Earth more into line with what the people want. (We could use a random survey to learn what the average opinion of the people is regarding various kinds of environmental impacts.) A policy based on moral principle that recognizes public property rights is also highly consistent with basic democratic principles.

An advantage of a system that requires industries to pay a fee or rent to the people for using resources that belong to society at large is that simply by adjusting the rent, we can give capital markets, investors, and business planners the information and incentives they need to most efficiently produce the reality that the people consent to in terms of acceptable environmental impacts. Industries will try to avoid causing adverse impacts on the environment, to reduce costs and increase profits. This will help to ensure that we will have the kind of world that we want to live in. When natural resource values are reflected in prices, our economy will respond in the most efficient way possible to the urgent need for significant reductions in humans' environmental impacts.

The key to a sustainable and just civilization is to follow moral principle in all action, with particular attention being paid to actions that exert and amplify power or influence over distance. When we participate in the modern economy by spending money, we can influence people at a great distance. But with environmental impacts reflected in prices, we will be less likely to give incentive to others to do the wrong thing.

The golden rule implies libertarian principles and green political policies. A thorough commitment to the golden rule would mean no use of government as an instrument of force or violence against a peaceful person. In the political sphere, limits to government power are to the public realm, with private action being privately regulated.

We can apply the principles of agriculture, economics, politics, and indeed all of the various fields of knowledge to produce an impressive civilization. But real success over the long term requires sustainability. Real success requires an end to environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Real success requires a consistent and thorough application of moral principle.

A longer version of this article:
A sustainable and just civilization requires that we exercise our moral sense.

Quantum mechanics of gaia brain theory

Systemic flaws are not reported

2011-08-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

What the news media are not telling us: There is a defect in our economic system that threatens the stability and sustainability of civilization.

Self-interest dictates that we look for the low price. Enlightened self-interest suggests that prices should tell us the truth about real costs so that we can make well-informed decisions. But prices do not tell us the truth. 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 impact 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 and buying decisions to skew toward more environmentally harmful acts. Consumers do things that tend to deplete resources and pollute air and water more than what they would do if the cost of the degraded environmental quality were factored into the prices of the things they buy.

"Economic externalities" (hidden costs) cause us to do the wrong thing. When markets function with a 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 loose interest in maintaining free markets as an efficient and fair way to allocate resources.

This defect in our economic system harms the interests of all of Earth's inhabitants. It causes long-term damage that will harm the interests of future inhabitants, including our own descendants, by depleting resources that they might rely on and polluting air and water that they will need. They cannot speak up in protest. Should we? 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?

If we believe that natural resource wealth is owned by all equally, then the industries that take or degrade this wealth in pursuit of profit ought to be made to pay a fee when they use or mess up that which belongs to all. Any money paid by users of these resources should go to all the people; to each an equal amount. A proper accounting for this wealth would end abject poverty in the world. We would not only improve the efficiency of markets and of our whole economic system in terms of natural resources used, we would also improve the fairness of markets by making access to them (in the form of economic power) universal across the human population. When natural resource wealth is shared equally, disparity of wealth becomes a much smaller problem.

It is immoral--particularly so for journalists--to acquiesce in a system that gives people incentive to do the wrong thing. It is immoral, also, 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 concept in reality. If a more efficient and fair accounting of natural resource wealth (necessary as a foundation of a sustainable civilization) would bring an end to extreme 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 somewhere can explain why this analysis is flawed; or start reporting on natural resource wealth accounting.

Open Letter to Secretary of State Clinton

Natural Law Requires Respect of Public Property Rights, Too

The Golden Rule and Public Property Rights... There's a connection

2011-06-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

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 in its current form is plagued by widespread extreme poverty and our society is threatening to produce a planetary ecological disaster. We are challenged by circumstances to create a sustainable and more just civilization. This will require a fuller respect of basic moral principles.

Civilizations thrive then collapse because they grow beyond what the natural environment can sustain. Economies boom then bust because they grow beyond what their resource bases can support. These sometimes wild swings may appear to be cyclical variations, but they are actually chaotic instabilities. The arc of civilization and the boom and bust of the business cycle are the same phenomenon seen at different time scales and different magnitudes. A closer adherence to basic principles would mean a dampening of these gyrations to the point that they would no longer be an existential threat to the system.

Increasing social instabilities and dwindling resources present us with a great challenge. A change in our thinking about property rights could offer a real solution. Since the advent of civilization, we have developed the concept of private property rights. Now, if we look closely at our fundamental rights and moral duty in relation to the natural environment and our social environment, we can see the concept of public property rights emerging. This concept is rooted in our innate sense that we have a right to use air and water and other natural resources. It says that we have a collective right to define the overall extent to which human beings will degrade, deplete and destroy these resources. With public property rights respected, we will share equally in the benefits of ownership of natural resources. A public property rights paradigm will emerge when we bring our actions in the political and economic realms more closely into line with basic moral principles.

As a kind of natural law, basic human rights must be respected. Society cannot hold together over the long term when basic rights are chronically and systematically neglected. Within the realm of basic human rights we must include public property rights. Such rights include a right to decide collectively what the overall limits to humans' impact on the environment should be. This right implies a corresponding collective moral duty to create systems of governance that define limits to humans' environmental impacts such that they are consistent with the will of the people at large. When this moral duty is carried out, then this basic right is respected.

We need to start accounting for economic externalities. Externalities are those side-effects of economic activity that are not reflected on the financial balance sheet of profit and loss, income and expense. Sometimes there are spillover effects produced by economic actors that actually benefit a community, but more often, externalities consist of negative side-effects of industrial and commercial activity. Externalities, also called 'market failure', can be seen as a way that producers (and consumers) foist environmental impact and depletion costs onto the larger society and community of life on Earth.

Pollution is a classic example of a negative externality. Resource degradation from excessive use or extraction of resources is another. Since these costs to society and the larger community of life are NOT reflected in prices or in the cost of doing business, producers do not take into proper account the true costs of their actions. Corporations will pollute the air and water more and use up resources faster when the costs of doing so are hidden. In pursuit of higher profits, economic actors put effort into reducing costs that they can see on the balance sheet. When costs to society are not shown on the balance sheet, businesses act as if those costs do not exist. Almost since we started carrying things (or since animals much like us started carrying things) we have traded based on what we could see as the costs and benefits of a transaction. But the effect of externalities is to prevent us from seeing clearly.

We know that natural resources are valuable—even indispensable—to industry and to society at large. Yet we allow industries to take and degrade natural resource wealth without any expectation that they will pay compensation for the damage done or value taken. A fee on the taking or degradation of natural resource wealth is a tool that society can use to influence industrial and economic sectors, so that sufficient effort is put into resource conservation and sustainable business practices. This fee mechanism can replace other, less efficient governmental efforts at natural resources management.

Charging fees on the taking or degradation of natural resources could moderate particular kinds of human economic activity, with the aim of keeping overall impacts within limits that most people find acceptable. This could ensure that the basic human right to collectively decide such limits (a theoretical construct) would be respected in practice. The hope and expectation is that people would in fact choose to keep overall impacts within limits that the larger environment can sustain. Eternal vigilance by citizens is required to ensure that a human population that has the ability to exceed what the Earth can sustain in reality does not go beyond those limits. It might be easy to persuade people that stricter limits on environmental impacts are preferable when it is understood that stricter limits means higher payments to the people by those who produce the adverse impacts. Higher fees charged to industries that pollute or take and degrade natural resources in pursuit of profit means higher payments to the people in the form of their natural resource wealth dividend.

Proceeds from environmental impact fees would be a monetary representation of the value of natural resource wealth. Equal sharing of these proceeds would buffer the downward slide of a shrinking economy, since the entire human population would continue to receive a modest income from shared natural resource wealth, independent of income from work, investments or family inheritance. A floor on the loss of human confidence that causes or contributes to business contractions would be created. Spending in support of basic needs would continue. Resources will continue to flow to the most vital sectors of the economy. The part of the economy devoted to meeting basic needs would then be insulated from the worst vicissitudes of the business cycle. With human-caused stresses on ecosystems and demands on resources kept sufficiently low through a fee mechanism, and with swings in the economic climate moderated, civilization becomes a more sustainable and more stable phenomenon.

If we recognize a basic human right to define overall limits to environmental impacts, then there must be a corresponding responsibility to create systems of governance that bring about the limits in reality that the average opinion of the people says are most appropriate. The shared human right to define these limits implies the collective human responsibility to do so. If our governmental institutions are not functioning so as to bring about the limits consistent with the will of the people, then we must change our institutions.

The short answer for how to change institutions toward a public property rights paradigm of sustainability and moral responsibility would seem to be to start voting green AND libertarian. This combination would combine a good sense of the practical challenges and responsibilities of government (what government must do) with a principled understanding of the proper limits to government power (what government must refrain from doing).

Government power has proper limits to its authority, as does individual power and autonomy. Political activities (such as voting) must be moral undertakings to have good results. If we understand that governments get their just powers from the consent of the governed, then any moral foundation for governmental powers requires that we only delegate powers to government that we legitimately have as individuals. If we do not have authority to initiate the use of force or coercion against a peaceful person, then we cannot delegate this power to governments. We cannot legitimately use government to regulate others’ private actions. We cannot legitimately vote for politicians who would do so, either. Principled limits to governmental power and authority must be respected.

It is quite fitting that we should leave off trying to regulate private behaviors as a matter of principle. Such a change may be absolutely necessary from a practical standpoint, too. Perhaps only by freeing up the attention and resources now devoted to fighting drug wars and other wars can we have sufficient attention and resources available to meet the great challenges facing the entire human community.

The new economy will make material consumption cost more on the financial bottom line, to reflect more honestly the fact that it costs much in terms of natural resources used. This new economy will spread material wealth more evenly across the human population, while improving the fluidity of the job market. (People are more free to leave oppressive or disagreeable employment situations when their work income is not their sole source of income.) The new economy will limit pollution levels and rates of taking of natural resources so that they are within limits that most people agree are acceptable. We will have a more true democracy.

This change makes the chaotic thriving and collapse of civilizations, (the large-scale version of the boom and bust of the business ‘cycle‘), into a less wildly gyrating phenomenon. Still on the edge of chaos, yes (as are all living systems), but potentially a sustainable phenomenon.

Natural Law Requires Respect of PUBLIC Property Rights, too.

2011-04-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

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 are human rights. Human rights are an example of natural law. As a kind of natural law, human rights (including property rights) must be respected. Public property rights include the collective right of the people to share in the benefits of commons resources. Public property rights include a collective right to decide overall limits to humans' impact on the environment. This right implies a corresponding collective moral duty to create systems of governance that define limits to pollution and limits on the taking of natural resources such that actual impacts 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 this responsibility.

Natural phenomena emerge in the cosmos according to natural law. Moral precepts can be seen as natural laws of social interaction. 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 near universal agreement that human beings have a collective right to define limits to pollution and limits on the rate of taking of natural resources, yet we do not act in a way so as to carry out our collective duty to establish those limits in reality.

This neglect of a basic moral precept impairs economic justice and it 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. This requires a fuller respect of basic moral principles.

Civilizations thrive then collapse because 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 the same phenomenon seen 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 be 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. A system of random surveys could be our instrument to discern whether more people want to be more strict in our limits on pollution levels and on the rates of taking of resources, or more want to be more lenient, or do a larger number feel that we have struck the right balance between the alternative positions. As a lever or mechanism that society could use for applying incentives to influence the behavior of those who use natural resources, the fees for particular 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 actual reality matches what the largest number of people say is the best balance between the alternative positions of freedom vs. constraint.

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 such limits would be respected 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. To borrow from Andrew Jackson, eternal vigilance is the price citizens must pay to ensure that a human population that has the ability to go beyond what the Earth can support in fact does not go beyond those limits.

The sum of all proceeds from these fees would be a monetary representation of the value that natural resources contribute to the economy and to human society. Equal sharing of these proceeds would buffer the downward slide of a shrinking economy, since the entire human population would continue to receive a modest income from shared natural resource wealth, independent of income from work, investments or family inheritance. 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 support of these most vital sectors. The part of the economy devoted to meeting basic needs would be insulated from the worst vicissitudes of the business 'cycle'. With demands on renewable biological resources (e. g., forests and fish stocks) kept sufficiently low and with mineral resource availability extended farther into the future through a fee mechanism, and with swings in the economic climate moderated, civilization becomes a more stable 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 contribute to social stability.

Imagine an equal payment to all people that would protect every person against extreme material deprivation: a natural resource wealth dividend. It would be drawn from the proceeds of fees charged to those who take or degrade natural resource wealth in pursuit of profit. Those who are at the greatest disadvantage under the present system will be better off with such a policy. Respect for public property rights would significantly improve the material condition of those who are least well off economically. We will no longer have large regions populated by mostly dispossessed peoples around the world.

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 in proportion 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 all skewed toward more environmentally harmful options 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 inclined to be concerned about environmental issues. This means improved conditions for everyone: More environmental health and more personal health. (Environmental impact pricing would favor whole foods, locally-produced foods and plant-based foods.) A sustainable society built on a broader moral foundation is good for us all.

Taking ownership of our environment is good for all of us, even in ways that may not be immediately obvious. 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 put billboards, 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 to the eye than bright colors. (What would a random survey say?) 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 might want to charge a fee for certain uses of the broadcast spectrum that actually promote private or commercial interests rather than the public interest. With the proceeds of this fee, 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. This bending or shaping of our use of the broadcast spectrum toward the public interest might change the character of broadcast television and radio in profound ways. We could glimpse how these changes would affect our culture if we start asking the questions. Given a multitude of choices for how to use the broadcast spectrum, how might we best promote the public interest? Random surveys would very likely produce a mix of programs that would serve the public interest more effectively than what we see today.

We can make the world more what we want it to be. By changing our relationship with our political and economic systems toward a fuller respect of our basic principles, we transform our society and ourselves. With a change in the rules, we can build a world civilization that is both sustainable and more just.

A Biological Model for Politics and Economics

More security for the least secure means more security for all

2011-04-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is easier to tear down and destroy than it is to build and create, whether we are talking about a tower of blocks, a work of art or a civilization. A civilization is stronger and more resilient when its citizens believe that it is to the benefit of all to participate in seeking improvements to this human society and the ecosystem that sustains it. Ideally, each of us should appreciate and fully identify in the development of a promising and beneficent global society. We should strive to make a world that recognizes the people as the rightful owners of natural resource wealth, so that the world we create together will not be a world that has more paving or pollution or noise or extraction of limited resources than what most people say is acceptable.

A society that recognizes the people as the rightful owners of the Earth's natural resources will not tolerate inequitable exploitation of this shared legacy. A guaranteed minimum income for everyone on Earth could result from the collection of fees for use of natural resources in agriculture, industry and commerce. A minimum income would decrease the problems associated with disparity of wealth and would end abject poverty, while the universal nature of such a payment would ensure that no one would forgo productive work for fear of loosing their public property dividend. As our economy becomes more fair and transparent, more people will come to feel an ownership in the system. They will be more likely to want to protect and improve rather than destroy. By making the least secure among us more secure, we will make everyone more secure.

Attaching fees to the use of natural resources would create a mechanism whereby citizens could exert their will on the larger economic system, to define appropriate limits to potentially harmful human activities. What levels of pollution and what rates of extraction of resources are acceptable? We could all share in deciding limits to human activities insofar as those activities impinge on the commons. If most people polled in a random survey say that they want stricter limits on monoculture or paving or a particular kind of pollution, for example, then the associated fee would increase, causing industries to try harder to reduce the offending activity. And the inverse is also true: Any activity that had been discouraged more strongly than the people now deemed necessary would have its associated fees reduced. The actual conditions on the Earth that result from the sum of all human activities would come to reflect the expressed will of the people.

In such a democratic society, we would not allow loss of biodiversity, pollution of our streams and rivers, high rates of mineral depletion, (including fossil fuels), loss of our starscape every night of the year to light pollution--at least, we would not allow these things beyond what is acceptable to the people. Given a voice in the management of natural resource wealth (which owners should have) we likely would not consent to the conditions in the world as we've made it thus far. When we fully apply our principles of ownership and fair compensation to questions of natural resource wealth management--when we recognize commons or public property rights in our accounting--much will change. We will have a synthesis of capitalism and communism in a truly democratic society. We will have a more sustainable and just civilization.

Minimum Wage vs. Minimum Income

2011-03-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

Equal ownership of natural resource wealth promotes social justice and sustainability.

Minimum wage laws would seem to help those who have jobs at or near the defined minimum level. And they help those who make and sell machinery that replaces low-skilled workers. Minimum wage laws would seem to hurt those who might earn below the legally-defined limit but who have not yet developed skills or experience sufficient to command a higher wage. Minimum wage laws harm everyone if the rising cost of labor causes employers to choose a method of achieving their goals that leads to more pollution or depletion of resources than what a more labor-intensive method would cause.

We cannot create wealth by legislation, but we can alleviate poverty by ending the current practice of allowing theft of natural resources from the people. We all own the air and water--that is, we all have an equal right to use the air and water, and to say what the limits on pollution levels should be. (Some may recognize this basic right as a function of natural law, while others may see our right to breathe air and drink water as flowing from God's grace, but these different views are not mutually exclusive.) We also have an equal right to access the shared mineral wealth of Earth, and a right to share in deciding overall limits to levels of pollution and to the rates of taking of resources.

We could attach fees to the taking of resources and the release of pollution, both as a way to measure the value of natural resources and services (owned by the people and used by industry in pursuit of profit), and as a way to discourage unwanted and potentially harmful environmental impacts. We could set the fees at the levels that would result in only the amount of pollution and rate of resource extraction that the people deem permissible. (Industries would not be able to afford to pollute so much, as the cost of doing so increased.) The fee proceeds could and should be shared among all people equally, because these proceeds would in fact be a monetary representation of the value of resources owned by all. Public policy would assure not a minimum wage, but a minimum income.

If we look beyond questions of air and water quality and minerals management, we can see that this method of charging a fee or rent for causing adverse environmental impacts could be applied to the management of other commons resources. The number and diversity of fish in the sea is decreasing. We could attach a fee to the taking of those species that are threatened with depletion. We could attach VERY HIGH fees to the taking or killing of any member of a species that we do not want anyone to take, so that no one will see that activity as profitable.

Biodiversity is being lost at an astounding rate. Considering the current rates of desertification and loss of topsoil, the pace of forest destruction, the speed of encroachment on and paving of wilderness areas, the increasing threats to coral reefs, and our ongoing assault on climate stability, one might wonder whether we really care what kind of world we will leave for our children. If we were to decide that protecting biodiversity and promoting ecosystem health is a worthy public policy goal, we could charge a fee for any land use that disturbs or decreases biodiversity, from monoculture to asphalt, with the fee greater for those activities that produce more harmful impacts on the Earth and that are more disruptive of wildlife habitat.

With all people voting (through random-sample surveys, which could be conducted by any interested person) on whether the amount of paving, rates of taking of resources, levels of pollution, etc., are acceptable or should change, we would have a system where we could all share in sculpting the overall human impact on Earth. We would shape the world to match what we want it to be. Our economy would function in a way that would bring about a balance between supply of and demand for produced goods and services, AND it would achieve an appropriate balance, as defined by the people, between preserving environmental quality and promoting ecosystem health on the one hand, and the convenience of availing ourselves of natural resource wealth in pursuit of human goals on the other hand.

The amount of money collected through fees on the putting of pollution and the taking and degrading of resources would be substantial. We may not be able to afford such a system and the current system of taxes on income and sales. We may want to eliminate those taxes, or reduce them to negligible levels. (Some sales tax might be appropriate, to cover the cost of policing the marketplace.) We could fund community services from our 'accounting for externalities' fees. The monies collected could be shared among all people equally. We could each spend an agreed-upon fraction (perhaps half) on community needs (e.g.: libraries, schools, public health, police and fire protection, etc.) and spend the remainder on our own personal needs. We would all share in creating the kind of environment that we would choose. We would share, in a more direct and obvious way, decisions about what our community priorities should be. And no one would live in abject poverty.

This paradigm sees the role of government as an arbiter between the individual and community. It recognizes no authority of government to initiate the use of force against citizens. Only those actions, by individuals or corporate entities, that adversely affect others would come within the purview of government. In fact, government, per se, would not exist as we know it. The decisions of government would become dispersed, decentralized to all the people. This 'public realm only' focus for government action is an important point, because such profound change cannot occur except through the active support of the people. Many people subscribe to the libertarian view that the government ought not initiate the use of force against citizens. Libertarians will appreciate this paradigm if they are persuaded that it appropriately draws the line between regulated or restricted actions (those that affect others or the community) on the one hand, and actions which are the free choice of individuals (private behavior) on the other hand.

Some people believe that the prevalence of outdoor advertising signs and billboards is too high to allow for an aesthetically pleasing visual landscape. Is the prevalence of outdoor lighting so high that our ability to see the stars has become too severely diminished? We may want to adopt a few "lights out" nights, to remind ourselves that there are stars out there. If enough people share these views, then this vision will be borne out in reality. Perhaps someday the power to decide these kinds of questions will be vested in the people. It will be if we, the people, care enough to take that power into our hands.

Natural law requires respect of public property rights, too

More security for the least secure means more security for all

Steven Pinker on the myth of violence

2011-02-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

Governments that initiate force or coercion violate moral principle

2011-02-04T21:56:00.000-08:00

We violate the Golden Rule when we vote for politicians and give our allegiance to governments that attempt to regulate private behavior.

Is it possible to create a sustainable and just civilization where neglect of basic philosophical principles is commonplace? The most fundamental moral principle, the Golden Rule, familiar to all religious traditions, requires that we limit our actions so that we do not produce effects on others that we would not want for ourselves. Yet this is what we do when we support politicians, policies and governments that meddle in the private lives of peaceful citizens. Using government as a kind of tool, we are doing to others exactly what we would not want done to ourselves.

The proper function of government is to regulate public behavior. Any action that is private, that is not open to public view and that does not impose effects on any individual against their will is not a legitimate target for control by government.

Attempts to regulate private behavior not only infringe on basic civil and human rights, they also inevitably draw resources and attention away from the legitimate functions of government. We are less able to regulate public behavior effectively and appropriately when we are distracted in this way.

Let us consider the Golden Rule when we cast our ballot and when we communicate our interests and concerns to our elected representatives. A political path that respects this most fundamental moral principle might seek a marriage of libertarian and green political traditions. Not "Republican or Democrat", but "Libertarian AND Green", if we wish to embody this philosophical principle in our political life. Guided by the first principle of libertarian politics, we would refrain from giving any support to any policy or politician that would initiate force or coercion against any peaceful person. With a green political agenda, we would ensure that the overall level of pollution and the rates of taking of natural resources would be kept within limits acceptable to the largest number of people—and within limits respectful of the interests of other inhabitants of the planet.

With a libertarian perspective that respects public and private property rights, and with a green social conscience, we would expect and require that polluters and others who degrade natural resource wealth to pay a fee, money to the people, as compensation for the damage done or value taken. Such a public property rights paradigm could serve as a foundation for a society that is both more sustainable and more just.

Robert Wright on optimism | Video on TED.com

2010-05-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Robert Wright on optimism | Video on TED.com

We are all in this together - Wright says that a moral revolution is required for humanity to survive the current crises. An awareness that our fate is tied to the fate of others, even to those who may hate us, could help us want to try to understand why they feel as they do, and help us respond in ways that respect their humanity. They may become more able to see our humanity, too, when we go down this path of trying to understand, to see from the others' perspective... "All the salvation of the world requires is the intelligent pursuit of self-interest, in a disciplined, careful way."

Biological Model for Politics and Economics

2010-03-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

Natural laws of chemistry and quantum mechanics govern the functioning of cells. Moral principles are the natural laws of social interaction. We must respect moral principle to have a healthy and sustainable civilization.

A truly democratic political system would provide ways for citizens to share their opinions (information) about what they feel are acceptable levels of pollution, rates of taking or depletion of resources, extent of paving or monoculture, etc. In a truly democratic society, this information would be conveyed to the economic actors who produce these kinds of effects on the Earth in a way so as to affect the behavior of these actors. If the people express the opinion that there is too much pollution or too rapid extraction of limited resources, industries would change the amount of pollution they produce or the rate at which they take resources. The expressed will of the people would be borne out in reality.

In an economic system, information is carried and value is represented by money. If the signal that the people want to send to industry is that we value clean air and water so much that we feel it is necessary for industries to try harder to avoid fouling the air and water, then the most efficient and fair way of communicating this information is to attach a fee to those actions that are causing the detrimental impact. Imposing a fee or raising the fee would give a signal to industry to try harder to reduce environmental impacts. Reducing or removing the fee would be the signal to indicate to industry that they can relax those efforts a bit, or a lot..

A fee is a straightforward way for a democratic society to manage pollution and the taking of scarce natural resources. The appropriate fees would make environmental impacts cost what society collectively decides they must cost in order to induce industry to put the necessary amount of effort into conservation and pollution prevention. 'Necessary effort' is the amount of effort required to bring overall impacts to levels that most people find acceptable. And in a society that respects public property rights, the people would receive a monetary payment equal to their share of the value of natural resources taken by corporate interests in pursuit of economic gain. Fee proceeds would go to all people, to each an equal amount.

Biomass is increasingly being used as fuel. Fuel prices will increase in the coming years, as fossil fuels become more scarce and as governments enact policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There will be more pressure to convert meadows and forests (what is left of them) into cropland to produce biomass fuel to burn. Also, some farmers who now grow food will switch from food crops to fuel crops. This will put upward pressure on food prices.

A public property rights paradigm could mean less incentive for farmers to destroy meadows and forests. If most people polled in a random survey were to say that monoculture adversely impacts ecological health because it involves the destruction of other, more diverse ecosystems, then we could decide through such a random survey what limit on the overall extent of monoculture is most appropriate, i.e., acceptable to the largest number of people. We could charge a fee to landowners who convert rich biodiversity to monoculture cropland, as a damper on the economic incentive to disturb or destroy the larger community of life.

A public property rights paradigm would tend to decrease the social instability that comes with poverty and wealth disparity. Equal sharing of environmental impact fee proceeds (equal sharing of the value to human society of natural resource wealth) may be the best way to reduce the hardship caused by rising food prices. Increasing cost of food hurts the poor and dispossessed the most; but an equal payment to all people in the form of a natural resource wealth stipend helps the poor more than it helps the wealthy. This paradigm of commons or natural resource wealth being owned equally by all promotes justice by eliminating extreme poverty and reducing disparity of wealth. It also embodies within the economic structure the awareness that biodiversity is more valuable than biomass.

Within this paradigm, expressions of opinion by the people about appropriate limits on human transformation of the Earth would directly affect the things people do that impact the Earth and that affect the human community. Similarly, signals from neurons in biological brains affect the behavior of other neurons, and they affect conditions in the larger organism. A system of fees on those human activities that people feel are harmful or should be limited would function as an autonomic nervous system for Earth by helping to maintain a healthy ecological balance. The fees could also be seen as a sensory nervous system, reducing and preventing injury to the Earth. We become not a cancer on the Earth, fouling and depleting resources beyond what is sustainable for ourselves and for the larger community of life. Instead, we become like brain cells for a healthy planet, with an economy that functions within limits that the larger ecological system can support.

Natural law requires respect of PUBLIC property rights along with PRIVATE property rights

Charity is no answer to systemic injustice.

2010-03-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

Only a deep commitment to basic moral principles can resolve the systemic flaws that produce a civilization that is neither equitable nor sustainable.

The Golden Rule requires a strong respect for human rights, which include rights to property. Respecting property rights means respecting the right (and duty) of property owners to participate in the benefits (and responsibilities) of ownership. But we are committing a serious error when we only pay attention to some of the fundamental human rights that we can call property rights. We respect private property rights with the full force of law, while almost completely neglecting questions relating to ownership and management of public or commons property--the natural resource wealth of the planet. Legitimate governments must respect the moral principle that recognizes the Earth and natural resource wealth as a shared legacy, a kind of commons or public property vested in the people at large.

Ownership in the Earth and the benefits and responsibilities of ownership ought to be vested within all of us equally. We need a paradigm shift – profound and sweeping change in our politics and economics. A society that respects public property rights will require industries that take natural resources or emit pollution in pursuit of profit to pay money to the people when they take or degrade that which belongs to all. The fee amounts to be paid could float up incrementally, until they are high enough so that businesses have the necessary incentive to change their practices so as to bring overall environmental impacts into line with the will of the people. A system of random surveys could reveal whether environmental impacts caused by human activity are being kept within acceptable limits. A democratic society would aim at creating conditions (rates of taking of resources or putting pollution) that most people say are about right. If most people felt that there should be more strict controls on pollution or slower taking of natural resources, we could raise the fees charged to industry to put pollution or take resources. Our political system would serve as an arbiter between owners and users of natural resources. As owners, we would all share in the benefits of ownership. We would share the rent proceeds from those environmental impact fees. We would share the civic duty to help decide what the overall limits ought to be for various human impacts on the Earth. Perhaps simultaneous to our receiving our natural resource wealth stipend, we might answer a few random survey questions on topics that most people agree are questions of public concern.

Within such a public property rights paradigm, the public policy survey question about whether we ought to be more strict or more lenient in our control of environmental impacts is the same question as whether we ought to require corporations to pay more or less money to the people when they take resources or cause pollution. So, the self-interest of citizens to prefer higher payments to the people when corporations cause environmental damage or degradation helps to promote the general interest of the larger community of life and future inhabitants of Earth to establish stronger incentives to reduce environmental impacts of various kinds. Corporations seek higher profits, then, not by trying to ever-more-effectively externalize their costs onto the larger community but by trying to reduce environmental impacts in whatever way feasible. What is better for the corporation will also be what is better for the larger community of life.

On a thoroughly populated planet, neglect of basic moral principles can make a world of grinding poverty and environmental degradation inevitable. Neglect of public property rights means that extreme poverty can exist alongside great opulence. Such neglect means that environmental damage and depletion of resources is more profitable than what would be the case if industries had to pay money to the people when they use or use up natural resources that belong to all.

If citizens of a free and democratic society resolve to live and act only in ways consistent with moral principle, we will see a shift in voting patterns toward green and libertarian alternatives. If we combine these threads, we may find both the principles that define a proper limit to government power (no first-use of force or coercion by government) and the programs that allow us to fulfill our responsibilities to one another and to the larger community of life on Earth.

Societies require for their proper functioning that members give due regard to the interests and concerns of their fellow members. If we look at a collection of neurons as a community or society of members in communication with and interacting with one another, we may see patterns that bring to mind some basic principles or rules of social interaction.

Because of the kind of molecular-quantum-machine entity that it is, a neuron has the tendency to want to be either in a resting state or in a state of steady activity. A neuron is no more likely to want to remain in a state of being somewhat active than is a ball likely to want to roll along the mountain crest between two valleys. Neurons make adjustments in how they interact with their neighbors such that, if they are operating at a pace that is a bit slower than their most comfortable steady pace, they will increase their connections to their more active neighbors, so that they themselves become more active and thereby approach their ideal steady pace. Conversely, if a neuron is nearly quiet, it will want to decrease connections with active neighbors so that it can enter a state of more restful quiet.

But a neuron may not make these discernments and adjustments only with an “eye” toward what will improve its own state. It is a decision machine and it may try to make its adjustments in a way that allows it to meet its own goals while also aiding its neighbors in achieving their goals. There may be several ways that a neuron could adjust its pattern of connections with its neighbors that would improve its own state. The neuron may try to make those adjustments that most benefit both itself and the larger community. Otherwise, any attempt by one neuron to improve its own state might interfere with or frustrate the efforts of neighboring neurons in their efforts to improve their states. By trying to discern the states of and the interests of neighboring neurons (which of them are trying to become more active, and which are trying to move to a state of rest) and then acting to improve those states or serve those interests, a neuron improves the efficiency or functionality of the neural network and the quality of its work.

Within each neuron, there are countless microtubules that can connect and disconnect with neighboring microtubules to create, from a large number of possibilities, specific pathways for ions to travel. Both the tips of the tubes and the molecules in the walls of the tubes are in a peculiar state of oscillation between quantum and classical realms. There are moments when the pattern of connections among tube tips are in quantum superposition. It's as if the tubules were simultaneously connected to several of their neighbors (and those neighbors to several of their neighbors) and were sampling the various possibilities to see which pathway provides the best 'fit' for the context.

For a neuron, the golden rule says to make your decisions about how to interact with your neighbors in a way that aids them in achieving their goals of reaching a more comfortable state. Likewise for members of human society: We must follow our own Golden Rule to ensure the proper functioning of our society and civilization. We must act in ways that show concern for the interests of our fellows. Brains function only because neurons follow their own golden rule. So should we follow our Golden Rule if we seek to establish justice and sustainability as the foundation of a properly functioning global civilization.

The Golden Rule requires that we not use government as an instrument to initiate violence or coercion against any person. We would not want others to use government against us in this way. We should not support policies that involve government agents initiating force against peaceful people. Private behavior within private spaces should not come within the purview of government.

When we learn that our systems of governance are at odds with our most basic moral precepts due to our failure to adhere to principles relating to proper restraints on the use of force, and to principles relating to the sharing of natural resource wealth—when we learn that our inattention to basic principles is the cause of abject poverty and environmental degradation—we have a moral duty to take steps to remedy the situation. A different way of thinking about the power and responsibility of government (and of citizens) could ensure that our political and economic systems will serve as a foundation for a sustainable and just civilization.

Where are the voices challenging us to exercise our moral sense as we form and participate in our political and economic systems? What responsibility do our religious communities have, if any, to address questions of public property rights, to ensure a sustainable and just civilization?

Natural law requires respect of public property rights, too

Open Letter to our Secretary of State

2010-02-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Secretary Clinton,

Disparity of wealth and abject poverty in the world today fuel anger and desperation in the dispossessed, and in those who identify with them. This anger and desperation can be exploited by those with an extremist agenda who would use violence to further their aims. To allow grinding poverty to persist, then, threatens our safety. We could change our political and economic systems, to reduce disparity, and to ensure that those on the low end of the income distribution spectrum are assured a significant minimum. By promoting the material security of those who are least secure, we would be promoting the security of all.

We need not violate any of our principles to bring about this change. Indeed, we need only live by our principles more faithfully. Almost everyone believes that the air and water and other natural resources belong to all. We could require that a fee be paid by anyone who takes or degrades the quality of natural resources. The proceeds of the pollution fees and natural resource user-fees would constitute a monetary representation of the value of Earth's natural resources, (including air and water), and could rightly be shared among all people equally. The value of these resources has been estimated at $33 trillion per year.

We should pay more attention to how natural resource wealth is managed and apportioned. We allow those in pursuit of profit to take or degrade natural resources but do not require any compensation be paid to the owners of the resources, the people at large. If we address this inconsistency in our own behavior in relation to our principles, we will solve many social and environmental ills.

Equal sharing of the wealth of the commons would mean about $20 per day for every person on the planet--perhaps enough to make everyone feel that they have a stake in the system and should work to build and improve it, rather than destroy it. Even those who would not do evil may sit by quietly when they know another is bent on destruction, if they feel that the current system is unjust and offers no prospect for meaningful change. We must win the hearts and minds of the world's people if we want them to help build and defend a sustainable civilization, a free and democratic global society.

We must empower the dispossessed. Would they choose a world that impoverishes them? Within a free and democratic society, what kind of world would they make? What kind of world would we make? Every one of us should have opportunities to express our opinion in meaningful ways, (ways that make a difference), regarding how much pollution, paving, noise, monoculture, or extraction of limited resources is just too much. Agreement, (or lack of agreement), between people's expressed will on these questions on the one hand and the actual conditions in the world on the other could serve as an objective measure of democracy.

This change would bring our society more into accord with our own principles regarding commons property ownership; and with principles regarding responsibility for compensating owners when damage is done or value taken. Human rights are based on moral principle. Moral principles are natural laws that govern social interaction. So a public property rights paradigm can be seen as a major step toward respect of fundamental natural laws.

Economic power based on a shared ownership of natural resource wealth belongs to all of us. Our political and economic systems should reflect this fact.

John Champagne

This letter was posted as a comment in response to a news report at npr.org

Read more of my comments at npr.org

What do we need to know that news media and universities are not telling us?

2010-02-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

There is a systemic flaw in our civilization that threatens its stability..

Self-interest dictates that we look for the low price. Enlightened self-interest suggests that prices should tell us the truth about real costs so that we can make well-informed decisions. But 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 impact 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 and buying decisions to skew toward more environmentally harmful acts. Consumers do things that tend to deplete resources and pollute air and water more than what they would do if the cost of the degraded environmental quality were factored into the prices of the things they buy.

"Economic externalities", (hidden costs), cause us to do the wrong thing. This distortion harms the interests of all of Earth's inhabitants. It causes long-term damage that will harm the interests of future inhabitants, including our own descendants. When markets function with a 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 loose interest in maintaining free markets as an efficient and fair way to allocate resources. 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 believe that natural resource wealth is owned by all equally, then any money paid by users of these resources should go to all the people; to each an equal amount. A proper accounting for this wealth would end abject poverty in the world. We would not only improve the efficiency of markets and of our whole economic system in terms of natural resources used, we would also improve the fairness of markets by making access to them (in the form of economic power) more universal across the human population. When natural resource wealth is shared equally, disparity of wealth becomes a much smaller problem.

It is immoral--particularly so for journalists--to acquiesce in a system that gives people incentive to do the wrong thing. It is immoral 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, (which is necessary as a foundation of a sustainable civilization), would bring 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 somewhere can explain why this analysis is flawed; or start accounting for natural resource wealth in their reporting.

Biodiversity as a public good

2010-01-26T09:29:00.000-08:00

Decisions regarding the extent to which humans shall disturb the larger community of life need to be collective decisions.

A basic principle of property rights requires that those who degrade the value of property should compensate the owner(s) for the damage done or value lost. If we believe that we all own the air and water, then it makes sense that we should require industries that cause pollution to pay a fee to the people at large in consideration of the fact that their actions degrade the quality of resources that belong to all of us. We should respect public property rights, too.

If we believe that destruction of meadows and forests for conversion to monoculture cropland adversely impacts environmental quality, we might choose to attach a fee on monoculture, as a counterweight to the economic incentives from food and now biofuels markets that drive destruction of biodiversity. Putting a damper on destruction of biodiversity could mean a more democratic society. The most appropriate fee would be a fee that is high enough to ensure that destruction of wildlife habitat and loss of biodiversity is not carried to an extent that most people would say is excessive.

Furthermore, if a large fraction of people polled in a random survey said that monoculture dedicated to production of sugar cane or tobacco or opium included these adverse environmental impacts and that such monoculture supported excessive consumption of sugar or cigarettes or heroin, to the detriment of the human community at large, we might attach a higher fee to monoculture dedicated to growing these crops. We could thereby manage the overall prevalance in society of sugar, tobacco, heroin and other potentially problematic substances without the need to take a war-like or militaristic stance or police action against individual citizens who choose to use such substances within their private spaces.

In our not-so-distant evolutionary past, certain foods were quite rare, but necessary and highly beneficial to those who could find them. Our taste buds (our physiology) and our psychology are adapted to ensure that we are highly motivated to seek out these previously scarce, high-energy foods. But since the development of agriculture and modern economic systems, scarcity of these high-energy foods is no longer a reality, while our appetite for them remains strong.

A fee system could ensure that the mix of foods produced by our agricultural system more closely matches what most nutritionists and most people would agree is a more healthful balance. With a different political and economic paradigm, we could see improvements in personal health and improved ecological health, too.

Fees attached to the cultivation of plants that most members of society feel ought to be controlled would make the products derived from these plants more expensive than what they would be in the absence of any controls. But the extra profits associated with those higher prices would go to all the world's people as part of a natural resource wealth stipend. This method of control would not feed black market profiteering or corruption of public officials, as current methods of control do.

The threat of legal sanctions against people who use controlled substances in private spaces, including the threat of lengthy and costly prison sentences, would be removed. This would tend to make it easier for people with substance abuse problems to seek help when they recognize that they do in fact have a problem.

A fee system can be applied generally as an efficient and fair way to control pollution, to manage rates of taking of natural resources and (through equal sharing of fee proceeds to all) to end abject poverty in the world.

This proposal assumes that the decision of how we ought to balance the amount of the Earth's surface dedicated to monoculture and paving on the one hand versus forests and meadows on the other hand belongs to all of us. It implies that ownership of the decision about how we ought to balance overall production levels of various kinds of food belongs to all of us. The responsibility for deciding such questions does not rest solely with the minority who are landowners.

A public property rights paradigm will embody within the structure of our political and economic systems the awareness that biodiversity is more valuable than biomass.

A Capitalsim-Communism Synthesis

Natural law requires respect of public property rights, too

Is civilization a success or a failure, or is it too soon to tell?

2009-12-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

As long as there is grinding poverty on the same planet that supports extravagant luxury and opulence, we cannot say we have a just society. As long as we are consuming natural resources at profligate, unsustainable rates, civilization will be subject to collapse. If we have a large fraction of human beings living in dire poverty and natural resources are being depleted at truly astounding rates—in short, if our civilization is unjust and unsustainable—we cannot call it a success.

When we study history, we can see that civilizations thrive and collapse. But we have never had any experience with a collapse of a civilization that had attained a planetary scale. There has never been a collapse of a global civilization. Whether there will be such a collapse may depend on what we do.

A key question will be whether we respect our basic moral principles and remember the golden rule when voting. Since we have no authority as individuals to initiate use of force against peaceful people, we have no authority to delegate that power to government or to give political power, (our vote), to politicians, to lawmakers, who would use government as an instrument of force or violence against a peaceful person. No first-use of force by government. No regulation of private behavior by government. When we recognize this limit on our freedom of action in the voting booth and exercise appropriate self-restraint in our voting choices, we will free up attention and resources of government to address the more urgent problems of the day.

Can we create a world where the people could express their opinion about what are the most appropriate rates of use and taking of natural resources, (publicly-owned resources), including fresh air and water? Can we design our public policy such that the people's expressed preferences are taken into account in a way that makes a real difference, so that only the environmental impacts that most people say are appropriate and acceptable would be manifest in reality? We would base our collective opinion on what citizens see in their environment and what they learn from other citizens like themselves, (or somewhat like themselves, but with different experiences, education and character types).

A democratic political system that respects public property rights would provide mechanisms whereby information from citizens about their preferences regarding acceptable levels of pollution, rates of taking or depletion of resources, extent of paving or monoculture, etc., could be conveyed to the people who actually produce these kinds of effects. And the people--each person--ought to receive a monetary payment equal to their share of the value of natural resource wealth taken by corporate interests for the purpose of economic gain.

In an economic system, information is carried and value is represented by money. If the signal that the people want to send to industry is that they value clean air and water so much that they feel it is necessary for industries to try harder to avoid fouling the air and water, then the most efficient and fair way of communicating this information is to charge a fee on those actions that are causing the harm that the people want to limit. A free market auction of a limited number of natural resource user-permits would cause those resources that the people wish to conserve to cost more, to cost what society collectively decides they must cost to cause industry to put the necessary amount of effort into conservation and pollution prevention.

When a random survey shows that a particular kind of environmental impact is neither excessive nor is it too severely limited -- when most people say the particular kind of environmental impact is about right (whether it be the extent of paving, intensity of light pollution, rate of emission of carbon dioxide or methane, for example), then we know that the appropriate amount of effort is being put into controlling that kind of impact. The fee is set at the right amount.

Within a public property rights paradigm, expressions of opinion by the people about what are the most appropriate limits on human transformation of the Earth would directly affect the actions that humans perform that impact the Earth and that affect the human community. Similarly, signals from neurons in biological brains affect the behavior of other neurons, and they affect conditions in the larger organism. A system of fees on those activities that the people feel are harmful or should be limited would function as an autonomic nervous system for Earth by helping to maintain a healthy ecological balance.

When we define appropriate limits to government power by ending the practice of using government power to regulate private behavior, we bring our society more into accord with our basic moral principles. When we free up attention and resources of government that have up to this point been devoted to regulating private behavior, those resources and that mental effort can be directed toward the task of regulating effectively those things that people do that adversely impact the natural and social environments.

Moral principles, which would seem to require that we respect privacy on the one hand and public property rights on the other hand, can be seen as a kind of natural law. If we respect basic laws of nature, (moral principles are natural law that governs social interaction), we can produce a sustainable and just civilization.

Natural law requires equal ownership of natural resources

2009-04-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

This post moved to my personal blog

Neural Networks Follow the Golden Rule

2009-03-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

We can understand the functioning of neural networks best when we see them as communities of neurons. Like communities or societies in the more conventional sense, their members behave in ways that reflect concern for the well-being of their neighbors.

Recalling Marshall McLuhan, we are able to do only what some portion of our body specializes in doing. Our various organs have cells that specialize in doing the work of that organ. We can be members of communities concerned about one another perhaps only because we have brain cells that try to help their neighbors.

Neural networks within organisms emerge when entities (cells) within the organism develop the ability to read or discern the state of other entities like themselves which they are in contact with, in communication with, with the "intention" or aim of helping their neighbors approach their more ideal state.

Neural networks function most effectively to the extent that each neuron, each member of the community of neurons, is "trying" to bring itself toward its more ideal state (that is, either a state of being active at a steady pace, OR a state of rest); while at the same time "trying" to help bring its neighbors toward their more ideal state (of steady activity OR rest).

For neurons that are molecular machines within biological organisms, the question of whether a neuron is at or near its ideal state depends on the levels of activity and patterns of connections among the various members of the community. These patterns of connection are exceedingly variable, since each synapse tip can grow or shrink slightly to form or break a connection with a neighbor. Each neuron has about 10,000 synapses. Ten thousand neighbors that it chooses to be or to not be in communication with.

Particular patterns of connectedness can result in a particular neuron community's having most of its members settled firmly into either a resting or a steadily active state (the ideal); or, conversely, with a different pattern of connectedness, most of the members of a community could be in an in-between, somewhat active state (a less-efficient state).

When in the less-efficient state, each member will try to adjust its connections with its neighbors so that moderately active elements will become fully active, while moderately quiet members will become more completely quiet. They do this by forming connections with some neighbors while breaking connections with others.

Each member of the community seeks to adjust its connections with its neighbors so as to approach a state of steady activity, OR (if it is near a resting state) to approach a state of being fully at rest. But it makes these adjustments while also "discerning" and responding to what changes would most aid its neighbors in their movement toward either a state of activity or rest.

The golden rule among members of a neuron community is to increase signaling to neighbors that appear to be tending toward more activity, while decreasing signaling to those who are inclined to become more quiet. In other words, the golden rule is to help your neighbors reach their more ideal state.

Without this concern for the 'other', any adjustments that a neuron might make in seeking a pattern of connectedness that results in a more nearly ideal state for itself would very likely frustrate the attempts of neighboring neurons to reach their more ideal state.

(Within each neuron there are countless microtubules that are able to affect one another's states, which are defined by how many electrons or ions are trapped in them, if any. When these microtubules lengthen or shorten or bend slightly, they change which of their neighbors they are able to communicate with.)

If we think of a society of human beings as a neural network, then we will see that we are more likely to bring ourselves AND the larger community (one another) toward our ideal state when we are trying to help others and respect the golden rule while also trying to take care of ourselves.

Natural Law Requires Respect of Public Property Rights, Too

Biodiversityt as a public good

A sustainable and just civilization requires that we exercise our moral sense

2008-12-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

Indeed, to be complete human beings, we must exercise our moral sense. Primarily, this means that we must respect the golden rule. In our political life, we have failed to abide by this fundamental moral obligation. This failure has resulted in serious flaws in our systems of government and economics. Social instability and injustice follow from this failure.

A sincere and thorough commitment to the golden rule implies a strong respect for human rights, which can be said to include property rights. But we are neglecting some basic questions that should emerge from a strong respect for property rights. We are neglecting questions that could help us manage, in a sustainable and fair way, the natural resource wealth of the planet. We are neglecting questions related to public property rights.

When the people are recognized as the rightful owners of the air and water and other natural resources, we will have the industries that pollute the air and water and take natural resource wealth in pursuit of profit paying a fee to the people at large, as compensation for damage done or value taken. The fee charged for using that which belongs to everyone could increase when demands on natural resources exceed what most people polled in a random survey say is acceptable. Fee proceeds would constitute a monetary representation of the value of the commons. Sharing of this wealth among the entire human population would mean an end to abject poverty in the world.

Does reality match what the people believe is most desirable, in terms of our use of the resources that we all own in common? In terms of the extent of paving or intensity of light pollution? Are the rates of taking of natural resources and rates of the putting of pollution into the air and water acceptable, or are current limits too strict, or too lenient?

When industries have to pay a fee or rent to the people for using resources that belong to all of us, then capital markets, investors and business planners will have the information and incentives that they need to produce the reality that the people consent to in terms of acceptable environmental impacts. With appropriate fees, industries will try to avoid producing adverse impacts on the environment, to ensure that we will have the kind of world that we want to live in. When prices reflect the value of natural resources used in production, our economy will respond in the most efficient way possible to the urgent need for significant reductions in humans' environmental impacts.

We inherit our shared legacy of natural resource wealth as a birthright. Our charge is to manage this inheritance wisely and bequeath to future generations, and to share equally for the benefit of our fellow inhabitants of the planet. A strong respect for public property rights would mean that we would each receive part of our income from earnings from work and / or investments, and part of our income from our shared legacy of natural wealth.

The key to a sustainable and just civilization is to follow moral principle in all action. We need to pay special attention to actions that exert and amplify power or influence over distance. When we participate in the modern economy by spending money, we can influence people at a great distance, but with environmental impacts reflected in prices, our natural tendency to avoid higher prices will help to ensure that we will not give incentive to do the wrong thing.

The golden rule implies libertarian principles and green political policies. A thorough commitment to the golden rule would mean no use of government as an instrument of force or violence against a peaceful person. In the political sphere, government power needs to be limited to the public realm, with private action being privately regulated. We can apply the principles of agriculture, economics, politics, and indeed all of the various fields of knowledge, to produce an impressive civilization. But real success over the long term requires sustainability. Long-term success requires an end to environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Real success requires a consistent and thorough application of moral principles.

A Capitalism - Communism Synthesis

2008-05-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Secretary Rice,

Disparity of wealth and abject poverty in the world today fuel anger and desperation in the dispossessed, and in those who identify with them. This anger and desperation can be exploited by those with an extremist agenda who would use violence to further their aims. To allow grinding poverty to presist, then, threatens our safety. We could change our social system, to reduce disparity, and to ensure that those on the low end of the income-distribution spectrum are assured a significant minimum. By promoting the material security of those who are least secure, we would be promoting the security of all.

We need not violate any of our principles to bring about this change. Indeed, we need only live by our principles more faithfully. Almost everyone believes that the air and water and other natural resources belong to all. We could require that a fee be paid by anyone who takes or degrades the quality of natural resources. The proceeds of the pollution fees and natural resource user-fees would constitute a monetary representation of the value of Earth's natural resources, (including air and water), and could rightly be shared among all people equally. The value of these resources has been estimated at $33 trillion per year.

We should pay more attention to how natural resource wealth is managed and apportioned. We allow those in pursuit of profit to take or degrade natural resources, but do not require any compensation be paid to the owners of the resources, the people at large. If we address this inconsistency in our own behavior in relation to our principles, we will solve many social and environmental ills.

Equal sharing of the wealth of the commons would mean about twenty dollars per day for every person on the planet--perhaps enough to make everyone feel that they have a stake in the system and should work to build and improve it, rather than destroy it. Even those who would not do evil may sit by quietly when they know another is bent on destruction, if they feel that the current system is unjust and offers no prospect for meaningful change. We must win the hearts and minds of the world's people if we want them to help build and defend a civilization, a free and democratic global society.

We must empower the dispossessed. Would they choose a world that impoverishes them? Within a free and democratic society, what kind of world would they make? What kind of world would we make? Every one of us should have opportunities to express our opinion in meaningful ways, (ways that make a difference), regarding how much pollution, paving, noise, monoculture, or extraction of limited resources is just too much. Agreement, (or lack of agreement), between people's expressed will on these issues on the one hand and the actual reality on the other could serve as an objective measure of democracy.

This change would bring our society more into accord with our own principles regarding commons property ownership; and with principles regarding responsibility for compensating owners when damage is done or value taken. Economic power based on a shared ownership of natural resource wealth belongs to all of us. Our political and economic systems should reflect this fact.

John Champagne

The Gaia Brain Paradigm

2008-03-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Pollution fees: Part of the Gaia Brain

(An earlier version of this article was offered as a response to a Call for Papers put out by the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association that sought "ideas from different disciplines brought to bear on solving environmental problems". It resulted in an invitation to attend a conference and present a longer paper, which, the conference organizers said, would be considered for publication in the Conference Proceedings.)

We have a problem with pollution. Our economy treats the Earth as a free dumping ground for wastes. The ecosystems of Earth provide a valuable service by affording us opportunities to share in the use and enjoyment of natural resource wealth, and by taking our waste products and transforming them into clean air and water and soil. Our economy allows economic actors to avail themselves of these natural services essentially for free, or at unrealistically low rates of payment. These rates of payment should reflect the value of these services to humanity; and they should reflect, as well, the urgent need to tie economic costs to actions that harm the environment, to encourage the appropriate amount of effort toward reductions in environmental impacts. Industries make no payment to the owners of the resources, the people at large, as compensation for the fact that the taking of natural resources reduces the value of the resource base. To the extent that resources are limited, takings by some actors necessarily reduces the opportunities that others might otherwise have to enjoy the use of these same resources.

Like anything that is free or almost free, these natural resources and services that the Earth provides to us are subject to overuse. The Tragedy of the Commons is the situation wherein shared resources degrade in value because individuals have incentive to continue to take more and more from the resource base beyond what is sustainable or optimum.

We treat these natural resources and services as free goods (or nearly so) because, until recently, there were not such great demands placed on them--we could use them as though they were free without destroying them from overuse; and, we lacked the tools to measure and allocate them. Now, the demands placed on the Earth's air and water and ecosystems by our practice of putting industrial and agricultural wastes in them are exceeding their capacity to absorb and clean. Now, rates of resource extraction have exceeded sustainable levels. So the problem is: How to allocate limited natural resources in an efficient and fair way?

If the Earth's waste removal service were treated as the valuable resource that it is, and if our industries were required to pay a fee according to how much they use the service, then the problem of overuse due to zero cost would be eliminated. A pollution fee would require the measurment of emissions and would cause a reduction in the emissions. This is akin to how a sensory nervous system operates: information about injury to the organism is transmitted by sense nerves into the neural network (the brain) and the neural network changes in a way that causes a reduction in the injury. In this analogy, pollution, or stress to ecosystems, represents injury to the organism, the Earth. Information about the environmental impact of industry and agriculture enters society (the neural net) through the price of goods and services in the marketplace. Cleaner products cost less, while those with higher ecological costs would have correspondingly higher prices attached. Individuals would have appropriate economic incentives to change habits and lifestyles toward sustainability. Similarly, sustainable business models would be favored by industry.

Another way to think of this process is as an autonomic nervous system for Earth: The pollution fee is information about stresses or demands on ecosystems that would tend to move the Earth organism out of homeostasis; and it is an economic incentive or pressure to maintain a homeostasis, or a healthy ecologic balance. The fee system also functions as a mechanism whereby the information about the extent to which people want to reduce rates of depletion of limited resources (so that future generations are afforded more time to learn to adapt to the scarcity of these resources) can enter the larger society through the price structure of the economic system.

We must decide what the Earth and its ecosystems can sustainably absorb from us in the form of wastes. But we do not know the answer to this question. No one does. So we begin by recognizing that we cannot be certain of the numbers. Let us resolve, then, to err on the side of caution; that is, let us be conservative in our estimates and err on the side of preserving and restoring ecosystems for the benefit of our grandchildren, future generations and other lifeforms on the planet.

We could issue permits for various pollutants according to how much of each pollutant we will allow, as determined by a random survey, and auction these permits in the free market. Thus, those industries which can adapt processes to reduce or eliminate waste emmissions will have an advantage in the market, while those industries which continue to emit large amounts of waste will have to include a monetary representation of the environmental costs in the price of their products.

Because just about everyone will have a different opinion regarding the levels of pollutants, extent of paving, rates of taking of resources, etc., that would be safe and acceptable, the actual amount that we decide on will be a summary or average of the opinions of all the world's people. And, because many of us are not able to make an informed decision about appropriate levels of some or all pollutants, we may choose to delegate our vote to someone whose opinion we respect. For example, if I believed that it is safe to release 100 million tons of fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the environment each year, and that no level of CFC or chlorinated hydrocarbon (e.g.: Heptachlor, DDT) emissions can be called safe or sustainable, but I had no opinion or knowledge about safe levels of other pollutants, then I might refer to lists of people who share my views on CO2 and chlorinated hydrocarbons to see what their opinions are regarding other pollutants--either to inform my own opinion, or to find a knowledgeable and responsible person to whom I could delegate my 'emmissions allowance' vote.

This concept of assigning fees to the use of Earth's waste removal services can be applied to other areas. Pollution fees are actually a subset of green fees. Green fees are a way to manage scarce natural resources, such as forests, fisheries and grazing land, that are subject to overuse and depletion. This idea of paying compensation for harm caused to the environment could readily be applied to the management of the use of non-human animals by human beings, where actual bodily harm and psychological stress occurs. Someday, perhaps soon, we may completely eliminate the systematic enslavement and exploitation of non-human animals in industry and agriculture. But until that time, we may wish to create a system whereby industry and agriculture are subject to economic costs in some proportion to how much suffering and severe discomfort they inflict on the animals they use. This will give them an incentive to reduce both the numbers of animals they use and the amount of suffering inflicted on each one.

Some people believe that the proliferation of outdoor lighting for advertising, car dealers' lots, and other commercial activity is too disruptive of our view of the stars in the night sky. If a random-sample survey of the population shows that most people would like to see less light pollution, we could apply this paradigm as a way to bring about an overall reduction of light pollution; and/or, as a way to institute occasional "lights out nights", so that we can sometimes experience the beauty and wonder of a starry night sky, meteor shower or passing comet.

The Gaia brain/pollution fee system will so transform the global economy and society, we probably ought to think in terms of an elimination of government as we know it. With the introduction of significant pollution fees, conventional taxes not only would be difficult to support financially, they might also appear to lack a philosophical foundation: We may see that a fee according to our use of the Earth's natural resources is well founded on philosophical principles of fairness, while taxes on income or sales do not seem on the face to be eminently fair.

The proceeds of the pollution fees and green fees would be a monetary representation of the value of Earth's air and water and living systems. As these resources can be thought of as belonging to all, the proceeds of these fees probably ought to be shared equally among all the people of the Earth. This could be the basis of a guaranteed minimum income. Perhaps we could each contribute half of our share to financially transparent providers of social services or other community needs, according to our own sense of priorities but in accord with what most members of the community agree are important public concerns (those functions currently served by government) and spend the other half toward more personal needs. If everyone had access to such an account, no one would live in abject poverty and low-income people would have essential social services available.

The pollution fee/gaia brain concept applies ancient principles to today's challenges: We must live in accord with nature; We must give something back in proportion to what we take; We are the stewards of this planet. The greatest challenges that life presents are those which must be met to ensure the very survival of the organism. The difficult but life-sustaining task before us is to transform ourselves from cancer cells of Earth to brain cells of Earth--to make a healthy, properly functioning world brain; to create/re-make our global society.

A longer version of this essay: Biological Model for Politics and Economics

From Cancer Cells of Earth to Brain Cells of Earth: A Synthesis of Human Society and the Biosphere

2007-09-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

Gaia Brain: Policies aimed at managing natural resource wealth that are rational and just produce something like a nervous system for the planet.

By creating policies that reflect an equal ownership of natural resource wealth, we can create a civilization that is more just and also more likely to be sustainable.

The History of Life
Development of Societies
Language Allows Elaboration of Mental Models and Social Structure
Development of Culture Allows Living Beyond Means
Introducing Mechanisms for Taking Account of Environmental Impacts
Ecology and Economy Integrated: A Sensory Nervous System for Earth
Implementation Strategies Invite Democratization in Economics and Politics
Gaia Brain Provides Tools for Sculpting Society
Impact of Paradigm Shift on Institutions and Society
References

The History of Life

A noticeable trend throughout the history of life on Earth is the nearly continual, albeit unsteady, progression from simpler, small-scale organization to more complex and large-scale organization. Simple entities elaborate themselves into more complex forms in response to changes in the environment; changes that are often brought about by the very life processes of those simpler entities. [Alberts, et al]

Mitochondria were once free-living cells in symbiotic relationship with one another, (much as animals and plants are in symbiosis). Over time, these bacterial cells developed such intimate connections with one another that the relationship evolved from that of separate, interdependent organisms to that of interdependent entities within a larger organism. This transition appears to have been triggered by the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen is a highly reactive gas, and would have been poisonous to most of the early life on the planet. This accumulation was caused by living things. They changed their environment, by releasing oxygen into it, and so were compelled to change themselves, or die. [Ibid] What were at one time separate organisms have integrated to form the eukaryotic cell. This transformation represents an early example of a meta-system transition wherein interacting systems or entities become subordinate to and come under the control of a larger scale emergent system. [Turchin]

Multi-cellular organisms, or meta-organisms, continue the progression toward higher levels of complexity by extending and distributing the various internal processes of a prototypical eukaryotic cell, (e.g.: protozoa), to a community of cells in communication with and cooperation with one another. Each cell in the community specializes and concentrates on performing one function, or a narrow range of functions. Every member of the community receives products and benefits from its neighbors; and every member returns some benefits or provides some service to its neighbors.

Development of Societies

Members of societies also share resources. And they share information about their environment (and about their own actions or state of being) with one another. Through this sharing they are able to act as an integrated entity, cooperating in the exploitation of their environment, as if the society itself were a single organism. The social insects, (ants, termites, bees), are a classic example of this phenomenon. Howler monkeys, (and other primates), also illustrate this point: A call from a single individual can cause the whole troupe to move in a particular direction, either toward food or away from danger.

Development of Language and Culture Allows Elaboration of Mental Models and Social Structure

Human society and culture present yet another level of this phenomenon of entities organizing themselves into communities to form entities of a higher order. Culture is the product of humans' language, artistic, and tool-making abilities. It represents a quantum leap in the ability of hominid society to share information among its members, and to transmit that information across space and time. Culture greatly expands humans' ability to organize as a single entity and exploit the environment. With the advent of human language, the Tribe became the newest form of the meta-organism.

Language allows naming things; and it allows elaborate mental models of the environment and of social relations to develop. Bringing information about an environment into an entity--a human being or human society--in the form of mental models or social structure, is a step toward integrating that environment with that entity. Integration of interacting systems always involves the transfer of information between those systems. [Turchin]

Language and Culture Allow Living Beyond Means

Culture has enabled human society to expand into virtually every ecosystem on the planet. As we expand into an environment and change it by interacting with it, we adapt our methods, so that our ability to extract wealth persists, even as we degrade the resource base and exceed the carrying capacity of the environment. Increasingly intense extraction methods in the context of a dwindling resource base will result in catastrophic collapse. This tendency of humans to live beyond what is sustainable, with innovations in culture and technology driven by the challenge of adapting to a degrading environment, even as our numbers continue to increase, points to the need for new feedback mechanisms that will enable the human society supra- organism and its members to exist within the limits of the biosphere at large. In the absence of culturally-based limits to our own potentially self-destructive behavior, the physical limits that manifest on the lower levels of organization, (soil, air, water and food supply), will become evident. We will face resource depletion and famine--the biological limits to survival.

An ancient city can be seen as a multi-organism organism: City walls are the skin; the grain stores are the stomach; the systems of commerce, roads and sewers are the circulatory and digestive systems; soldiers are like the fists and claws and immune system; and the protocols of behavior that mediate interactions among the various citizens--the records of grain ownership and tax liability, laws, mythology, the beliefs about the intentions of the gods and what the citizens ought to do, people's sense of possibilities--make up the hormonal and nervous systems. Civilizations rise and fall because they lack the feedback mechanisms that would enable them to moderate their growth and achieve a dynamic equilibrium with their environment. The supra-organism consumes its resource base and either dies, or finds a new resource base to exploit in another location.

The most complex entity that has yet to arise on the planet--our modern global civilization--is utterly transforming the environment that has thus far sustained it. There is now an urgent need to integrate the entity with the environment, the economy with the ecology--to prevent the one from destroying the other. We need to learn how to live with, how to interact with our environment in a way that promotes our well-being while also preserving the health of the larger living community. The health of the ecosystem, economic health and personal health are all inextricably linked.

Money, in combination with other inventions, such as agriculture, pottery, road systems, writing, etc., makes cities possible. When combined with certain bookkeeping tools and economic and governmental institutions, money makes capitalism possible. And money makes it possible for economic actors to exert pressures that may harm the environment. Such pressures can now be felt even half way around the world. When people buy hamburgers, for example, they exert economic pressure that induces ranchers to cut forests. Soil erodes and biodiversity is lost forever. We now have a world full of people who are spending money in ways that are exerting unsustainable pressures on the natural systems that are the very basis of our survival [Brown]; but there is no mechanism whereby economic actors can get information--relevant feedback--at the time of purchase about the ecological consequences of their actions. We cannot tell by looking at a price tag how much ecological damage was caused in the production of an item. A system of feedback that provides such information at the moment of decision and in a form that all will pay heed to would be most effective.

Introducing Mechanisms for Taking Account of Environmental Impacts

The challenge that we are facing may be the greatest challenge that human beings have faced since the forests receded and we learned to stand up and walk and talk, and carry things and use tools. We must reconcile our ability to extend ourselves into the environment -- with ever increasing impact on that environment -- with the inherent limits of that environment to withstand such impact. We must learn to interact with our environment without destroying its capacity to sustain our lives.

We face a choice either to allow our actions to continue to produce ecologically destructive pressures across the globe, to the point of catastrophic collapse of our civilization, or to remedy this problem with our economic system. We can solve this problem by incorporating a measure of the ecological pressures of human activities into the price of those activities, with the aim of discouraging the harmful impacts, to reduce them to acceptable levels.

Ecology and Economy are Integrated: Creating a Sensory Nervous System for the Earth

We can cause ecological costs to be reflected in the price of goods and services by attaching fees to the use or degradation of natural resources. This would cause the price of things to reflect the ecological pressures or cost associated with their production. We would be deterred from doing certain things that are harmful to the biosphere by the fact that the price that we would have to pay to do these things would more fully reflect the true costs.

The historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, writing more than a hundred years ago, described the movement of civilization across the continent as a nervous system in the process of growth and development. If we follow this analogy, we see that Turner's nervous system is a nervous system of the Earth, and that, as of yet, it lacks an essential element of a healthy nervous system in a healthy organism: an autonomic feedback system. The proposed fees on resource use and pollution would correct this defect by causing information about injury to Earth, or stress to the biosphere, to be conveyed to economic actors through the prices of goods and services in the marketplace. Thus, the resource fees would constitute an autonomic or sensory nervous system for the Earth, conveying information about injury or imbalance in the Earth organism to society, (the neural network), and causing a change in society and in the behavior of individuals that would tend to reduce the injury and restore balance.

Any commercial or corporate entity or industrial operation can be seen as subordinate to the larger planet organism, just as mitochondria are subordinate to the cell. Part of the function of a healthy cell is to monitor the productions of its mitochondria, and ration resources according to the needs of the larger organism for those products. From the perspective of the cell, or the larger Earth, what goes into and what comes out of the subordinate entity must be closely monitored, while what actually goes on within the sub-entity is of lessor concern. If we follow this analogy, we should expect governments (the larger community) to take note of what resources are used by an industry, and what pollutants are emitted, but we could decide that the question of what production methods to adopt and what contracts said entity ought to enter into with employees, (assuming no coercion), would be outside the purview of government.

Implementation Strategies Invite Democratization in Economics and Politics

We must decide how much the Earth's ecosystems can sustainably take from us in the form of wastes, and what they can provide to us as resource. But we do not know the answer to this question. No one does. So we begin by recognizing that we cannot be certain of the numbers. If we choose to err on the side of caution, we will be conservative and err on the side of preserving and restoring ecosystems and reducing natural resource consumption, for the benefit of future generations and the larger community of life.

We could take random-sample surveys to discern what overall impacts on the environment are acceptable in the average opinion of the people and consistent with democratic principles. We could issue permits for various pollutants, according to how much of each pollutant the people would allow, and auction them in the free market. Likewise for the taking of valuable resources. Thus, those industries which are most successful at conserving resources and cleaning up processes will have an advantage in the market, while those industries which continue to emit large amounts of waste and/or extract large amounts of natural resources will have to include these high costs to ecosystems in the price of their products. [Sharp, et al]

Because nearly everyone will have a different opinion regarding what levels of pollutants should be considered safe and sustainable, and because we are committed to democratic principles that call for all voices to be heard, the actual amount that we decide on ideally would be a summary of the opinions of all the world's people, but more practically would be a summary of a random sample of people. And, because many of us are not able to make an informed decision about appropriate levels of some or all pollutants, we may choose to delegate our vote to someone whose opinion we respect. For example, if a person believed that it is safe to release 100 million tons of fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the environment each year, and that no level of chlorinated hydrocarbon emissions (e.g.: CFC's, Heptachlor, DDT) can be called safe or sustainable, but they had no opinion or knowledge about safe levels of other pollutants, then they might refer to lists of people who share their views on CO2 or chlorinated hydrocarbons to see what opinions those people hold regarding other pollutants--either to inform their own opinion, or to find a knowledgeable and responsible person to whom they could delegate their 'emissions allowance' vote. If our hypothetical survey respondent were convinced that the level of emissions that they regard as sustainable could not be achieved immediately, they may want to structure their vote in the form of a percent reduction per year, toward a specified target.

Gaia Brain Provides the Tools for Sculpting Society

Virtually everything we do that impacts the Commons, every way that we apply technology to exploit our environment with potentially negative impact, may need to be measured and rationed, according to the method outlined above or some other method. Through our normal participation in the marketplace (which would no longer be hiding environmental impacts as 'externalities'), human behaviors and lifestyles would have associated economic costs which would reliably reflect the perceived environmental costs of those behaviors. Economic forces, which all people respond to, will induce us to make changes in habits and lifestyle that are compatible with the interests of the larger living community, and with the interests of future generations of human beings, too.

We could attach or increase a fee on anything that we would like to see less of in the world. We could say: "Less asphalt"; "Less advertising billboards"; "Less outdoor lighting, less interference with our view of the stars in the night sky", if we are randomly selected to give an opinion on such topics. Fees would increase and money would flow away from those whose actions tend to take us in the direction opposite of the people's expressed will. Then we could contribute a portion of our share of the proceeds of natural resource fees toward those things that we would like to see increased. We could say: "More city parks"; "More libraries"; "More schools", and a portion of our share of the fee proceeds could go to those who provide those valued and preferred public services. The economic incentives that would accompany our expressed wishes would result in real change, so that our wishes would be born out in reality. Alienation, in the Marxist sense of living in and creating through our actions and interactions a society that cuts us off from that which sustains us, which has no meaning for us, and which we would not choose, would be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced, as society evolved to reflect our expressed will.

Impact of Paradigm Shift on Institutions and Society

This concept of assigning fees to the use of Earth's natural resources and waste removal services can be applied to other areas. For example, we could apply gaia brain methods (a fee mechanisms applied according to a public survey) to regulate the use of non-human animals by human beings. Currently, property rights are recognized by society as justification for holding animals captive in pursuit of profit, but these are not absolute rights. Limits to the severity of confinement are subject to the will and judgement of the people. Such limits cannot be decided by those who seek to profit from the confinement and commodification of animals, because of the inherent bias. Someday, we may completely eliminate the systematic enslavement and exploitation of non-human animals in industry and agriculture [Singer], but until that time, we may wish to create a system whereby industry and agriculture are subject to economic costs in proportion to how much suffering they inflict on the animals they use. This will give them an incentive to reduce both the numbers of animals they use and the amount of suffering inflicted on each one. When neither the numbers of animals held nor the conditions of their captivity offend the sensibilities or conscience of most people, we will know that the fees are set at a level consistent with the principles of a democratic society. (It may be that most people feel that the numbers of animals kept captive in pursuit of profit and the conditions of their captivity do not offend the sensibilities of most people, in which case no fee need be applied.)

This model of human society as meta-organism, and as nervous system of the gaia organism would transform the educational process, if for no other reason than that a citizen veto on spending public funds would likely mean that dollars would not flow to institutions that fail to follow 'best practices'. Beyond that transformative influence of a system-wide incentive toward excellence, the educational experience will change because children can understand the concepts of 'organism' and 'interaction with environment'. They themselves are organisms. They eat and breathe. They can observe protozoa. This gaia brain model would invite early introduction of ideas about social interaction, and would invite the active involvement of children in the collection of opinions among community members about appropriate levels of pollution and use of natural resources, and about perceived community needs. This model would invite their involvement in the assessment of actual conditions.

A question is a linguistic device for directing one's attention onto a topic [Minsky], therefore, just the act of posing questions about pollution, natural resource use and community needs will cause us to think about these issues more. The fact that the questions might be put by young people would help to remind all concerned who it is that will be most affected by the answers: the children who will have to live with the consequences of these decisions about how much to conserve resources or how to use public funds for many years to come.

Students could map their neighborhood and larger community. As assessors of actual conditions and of the accuracy of reports issued by industry(they could take air and water samples in their community), they would be involved in the protection of resources that will sustain them in the future, and they would gain valuable knowledge and insight into the workings of society in the process.

Students might cast their own mock votes about what kind of world they would want to live in and what human impacts on the Earth ought to be deemed permissible. If they did so with a clear explication of why they voted as they did, then adults in the community may want to honor their careful research and serious consideration by copying the students' votes--in effect, delegating their own votes to those outstanding students.

This new paradigm will so transform the global economy and society, we probably ought to think in terms of an elimination of government as we know it. With the introduction of significant pollution fees, etc., conventional taxes would be difficult to support financially. And we may decide that such taxes lack philosophical foundation: we may see that a fee according to our use of the Earth's natural resources is well founded on philosophical principles of fairness, while taxes on income or sales do not seem on the face to be eminently fair.

The proceeds of the pollution fees and green fees would be a monetary representation of the value of Earth's air and water, minerals and biota. As these resources can reasonably be said to belong to all, the proceeds of these fees probably ought to be shared equally among all the people of the Earth. This could be the basis of a guaranteed minimum income. Perhaps we could contribute half of our share toward programs that address perceived community needs and put the other half toward meeting our own personal needs. Community programs would be funded according to the priorities of the people, and no one would live in abject poverty.

This new source of economic security would cause the psychological rewards of work to become more prominent as an issue of concern, while job security and pay would become somewhat less important. This would give both employers and employees more freedom to end relationships that they find unsatisfactory; which, in turn, would give them more freedom to enter into relationships that look promising, as there would not be any need for the burdensome legal obligations that often accompany the decision to hire, (although binding contracts would remain an option). A more fluid job market will make it easier for both employers and employees to find what they are looking for. This direct democracy, capitalism-communism synthesis that is gaia brain theory would make it easier for all people to follow their bliss.

The pollution fee/gaia brain concept applies ancient principles to today's challenges. All things are connected. We must live in accord with nature. We must give something back in proportion to what we take. We are the stewards of this planet.

The greatest challenges that life presents are those which must be met to ensure the very survival of the organism. The difficult but life-sustaining task before us is to transform ourselves from cancer cells of Earth to brain cells of Earth--to make a healthy, properly functioning world brain; to create anew our global society.

John Champagne

References:

Molecular Biology of the Cell, Second Edition; 1989; Bruce
Alberts, Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts,
James D. Watson; Garland Publishing, Inc., New York

Turchin, V.; The Phenomenon of Science;
Columbia University Press, (1977)

Lester Brown; Vital Signs;
WorldWatch Institute, (1996)

Turner, Frederick Jackson;
The Significance of the Frontier in American History;
Paper presented at the American Historical Association meeting, 1893;
Reprented in 'Milestones of Thought', Harold P. Simonson, Ed.; Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co., New York
Sharp, Ansel M., Richard H. Leftwich, Charles A. Register;

Economics of Social Issues, Tenth Ed.; Richard D Erwin, Inc.;
Homewood, Illinois, (1992)

Peter Singer;
Animal Liberation; Oxford University Press, (1973)

Marvin Minsky; The Society of Mind; Simon and
Schuster, New York (1985)

Further Reading:

Costanza, Robert, et al; Science News and Nature

Amit, D. J.; Modeling Brain Function: The World of Attractor Neural Networks; Cambridge University Press, (1989)

Lovelock, James; Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth; Oxford University Press, (1979)

Formulas for Fairness: Applying the math of cake cutting to
conflict resolution; Science News, vol. 149, May 4, 1996

The Human Numbers Crunch: The next half century promises
unprecedented challenges; Science News, vol. 149, June 22, 1996

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan,
McGraw-Hill, 1964
Gaia Critique and Response

A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis

Popular Ownership of the Commons: Direct democratic ownership and management of natural resources

2007-09-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

Population increases and continual expansion of the many ways that human beings impact this planet together are causing depletion of resources that support human civilization and destruction of ecosystems that make up the diverse communities of life on Earth. We cannot continue on our present path. We must find ways to counteract the economic forces that drive people to tax natural systems beyond their carrying capacity.

When a living system (made up of many interacting, interdependent parts) experiences unsustainable stress, that stress is perceived and an adaptive response is produced that tends to reduce the stress and preserve the health of the organism. An overheated animal will sweat, pant, rest and / or seek shade, and its body temperature will fall. A system that responds to stressful stimuli in a way that reduces stress constitutes a system of negative feedback. Rising temperature causes a change in a physiological process or behavior that then causes a decrease in the stress. The Earth, as a complex system made up of many interacting, interdependent parts, resembles an organism in many ways, but it lacks a system of negative feedback that would cause an adjustment in the system when human economic activity starts to exert unsustainable pressures on the larger ecosystem.

Attaching appropriate fees to the taking of resources and putting of pollution would bring information about ecological impacts into the economy (Information-processing model of political-economic theory and practice) and it would keep economic activity within sustainable limits (within limits that most people agree the economy ought to be allowed to impact the larger ecology and environment, but not in excess of those limits).

A monetary representation of ecological pressures and degradation, an 'ecological impact price', would be factored into the price of goods and services in the marketplace. People would have incentive to change buying habits that are harmful to the environment because they would feel the ecological impact in their pocketbook. Resource user-fees and pollution fees would correct the defect that causes our economy to injure or deplete the larger systems which sustain it and of which it is a part.

No one person or small group of people knows for certain what level of human impacts the Earth can sustain. The question is a highly subjective one which implies qualifiers such as, "At what level of risk, to present and future generations?"; and, "Do we want to slow and stop present trends of degradation, or do we want to go further and reverse these trends and actively work to expand the portion of the Earth's surface covered by forests, other diverse ecosystems, etc.?" "Do we want to bring carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels, or do we want to institute a policy of 'No net increase of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere?'" These are questions of long-lasting import. The answers we give will affect ourselves in the short and long term. They will affect our offspring and generations not yet born.

Management of natural resources through a fee on release of pollution and taking of resources would produce a monetary representation of the value of the Earth's air and water, biota and minerals. As these resources can be thought of as public property, as belonging to all, we can rightly share the proceeds of the pollution fees and resource fees among all people equally. Such a sharing of the wealth of the commons would secure each and every one of us against the threat of abject poverty. A system that combines equal ownership of the commons with free markets and private ownership of man-made capital would include essential elements of both capitalism and communism.

The magnitude of the challenge we face, the stakes involved, and our democratic principles all point to the need to secure the participation of the largest portion of our society in deciding what human impacts on Earth we will allow. A democratic society will not allow levels of resource extraction or pollution to be much in excess of what most people would say is acceptable. And, in a democratic society, we cannot expect to use the instrument of government as a means for holding emissions or taking of resources below levels that the people are willing to accept. A democratic society would set limits on environmental impacts such that about half of the people would consider the levels about right or somewhat too strict while the other half would see the limits as being about right or somewhat too lenient.

(If some of us believe that we know better than others what human impacts should be judged sustainable and acceptable, we will have the instruments of change in a free society to bring our fellow citizens around to our view: reason and sustained pressure, education and the free flow of information.)

This new paradigm, built on the principle of democratic ownership and management of natural resources, will have as its most basic political act the citizen expressing a preference about what kind of world we should make, what human impacts on the environment we ought to allow. But this act, this expression, must be in a form that users of natural resources can read so that it can inform their actions. We will need to develop easy to create, easy to read documents that we can use as our palate for painting a picture of the kind of world we want to live in. This is a question that any democratic society asks its citizens, implicitly or explicitly: What kind of society do we want to create?

How can we translate the expressed will of the people into industry action and permit prices without a central authority interpreting what the people said and decreeing what the permit price will be? Can we create a decentralized system that reflects the character of the new tools that make this direct democracy possible?

One possibility: Let each polluter survey a random sample of the people to determine what is acceptable behavior overall. They can then declare how many permits they expect to buy and what price they expect to pay, and survey others' projected demands and prices. Businesses would be guessing what the permit price would be given the observed projections of supply and demand. This is an inexact science. When all business on average estimates a too-low fee for use of natural resources or putting pollution, the low estimate will result in levels of projected use or pollution that exceed what the people say is permissible. More iterations of public statements of estimated prices, projected demand, and surveys of other buyers' estimates, informed by the results of the previous iteration, would bring the community of resource-users closer to the ideal market-clearing price.

In the past, in a less-populated world, the supply of natural resources generally exceeded any demands that humans placed on them (but for the periodic and episodic times when they didn't). There was no need for markets to manage the demands placed on the commons. Natural resources were treated as a free good with good reason (except when they weren't, as in the case of competition between tribes). There was an abundance of opportunities opened up on the landscape of this recently-evolved imagining biped who roams the planet imagining these myriad possibilities to discover what the Earth offers up.

People could take what they wanted when they wanted because the supply always exceeded the demand. (Well, this is true more or less: Since the advent of civilization, various populations at various times have increased their numbers and degraded their resource base to the point that their civilization collapsed.) But conditions have changed. Now, population pressures and resource depletion are felt simultaneously across the globe.

Whatever level of human impacts on the environment we decide to allow, we will gain the greatest benefit from limited resources if we allow the free market to manage their allocation. Free markets are the most efficient means of allocating resources because, at a given cost of production, they accurately balance supply and demand. In the case where the supply of natural resources is set by vote or survey of the people, we should say the free market offers the most efficient and fair means of reconciling an elastic demand to a limited supply, through a public auction. The resources will go to those for whom they have the greatest value or utility.

One potential problem with a popular vote on acceptable levels of pollution and use of resources is that some people may want to vote very far beyond what they would honestly consider as acceptable, as a ploy to skew the average in their direction, knowing full well that their vote is but one among many, and voting an extreme position would move the average farther in their preferred direction than a vote that reflected their true, more moderate position. How could we address this problem?

One possibility: We could agree that most of our votes for next year's environmental impacts will be within, say, ten percent of this year's levels, with perhaps only 10% of the total natural resource wealth of the planet being subject to a yearly change of as much as 25%. Each citizen would then want to consider carefully which human impacts were most harmful and deserving of extraordinary efforts at control. But would the fraction of total resource wealth subject to more abrupt adjustment be measured in dollar terms? How can we compare CO2 impacts with asphalt or coral reef destruction, other than in economic terms, e.g.: as a fraction of the overall economy?

Another strategy for discouraging the practice of voting an extreme position in order to skew the average would be to decrease the weight of votes that fall far from the mean. We might apply a formula to votes, W = 1/(1+sd), so that a vote that fell four standard deviations from the mean would have only one-fifth the weight of a vote at the mean. All votes would be counted, but some would be given less weight, according to how much most people, by their votes, indicated the more extreme votes were simply not responsible. Voters whose views fall far from the mean could include comments with their votes, in an attempt to educate others as to the reasons behind their less conventional views. These comments, if well presented and backed with credible evidence, could be the basis of a change of opinion of larger segments of the population.

This system will mean that capital investments will only turn a profit to the extent that they successfully meet human needs at the lowest cost to the environment--in terms of resources used and pollution released. Anyone who has any money to invest will see that the place to put it is into clean industries and enterprises. Thus the economic situation changes to one that has money flowing toward people engaged in cleaner industry rather than primarily toward those who control capital engaged in the most advantageous exploitation of a free ride on the commons.

Polluters are now subsidized by everyone: we all, most especially the poor, must pay the price of dirtier air and water and soil: more disease, lower quality of life. Appropriate fees on use of natural resources and on adverse impacts on the community, with proceeds shared among all equally, would end this injustice.

Within such a system, industries and investors will only make money to the extent that they can conduct themselves in ways that are not offensive to workers, since people who receive their equal share of the Earth's natural resource wealth would be more free to seek better working conditions, more rewarding work, if they find themselves in an unappealing situation. They would not be paralyzed by the prospect of abject poverty if they find themselves temporarily without work. And is this not exactly what we want? Psychological rewards of work--meaning and purpose--would become more prominent as an issue of concern. Ecological sustainability would become an integral component of the corporate bottom line. Employers and employees both would be more free to follow their bliss.

Human beings come in many personality and character types. Some people are more inclined by their nature to say, "We will do it this way because it is best for the community... and we make more money". Others will be more inclined to say, "We will do it this way because we make more money this way... and it is better for the community". Our current system tends to exclude from business participation and success those who would be more inclined to the first type. And it forces those who are of the second type to say, "We will do it this way because we make more money, even though it is not really the best thing for the community or environment". When we shift our paradigm to internalize externalities into the price of products, every economic decision accurately reflects the whole mix of costs and benefits of an action. By pursuing profit or low prices, we will be following the path that is best for ourselves and the larger community.

Many people believe that the only reason for government to exist is to protect the individual and community against those (individuals and groups) who would violate the rights and interests of others. A government dedicated to take action against those who initiate the use of force, and committed to never initiate the use of force itself, is the best guarantee of individual and minority rights. If putting pollution and taking more than your share of natural resources is recognized as forcing others to live with your pollution and live without, with less of, what you are taking, then this principle of no first use of force by government provides the legal/moral basis for a paradigm of democratic ownership and control of the commons, with users of commons resources compensating the people in proportion to the magnitude of use or degradation. This paradigm is an integration of libertarian and green politics. We may need further shifts in our perception of the boundaries between what we consider public and private acts before many people who call themselves libertarian will embrace this paradigm wholeheartedly. Consider: is it a public act or a private act to do things on your own land that tend to destroy wildlife habitat and diminish biodiversity? Is preservation of biodiversity an issue of public concern? Can a private landowner pave the surface of the Earth without interferrence from the community at large? What about the water that falls from the sky--as a blessing if the soil absorbs it and releases it slowly into the streams and rivers; but as a hazard if ti comes down quickly and is rapidly shed by asphalt to produce a torrential flash flood downstream.

With significant green fees, conventional taxes may be difficult to support financially. They may also be seen as lacking any philosophical foundation. We may see a system requiring payment to the people in return for the privilege of taking publicly owned resources for profit as fair and just, while the requirement that we make payment to the government in proportion to how much income we earn or goods and services we sell may not seem on the face to be eminently fair. Fees on things that we do that are detrimental to the community are best thought of as an alternative to conventional taxes, rather than as an addition to them.

We could determine that a portion of the proceeds of the fees on use of the commons will be public funds, dedicated to the support of public and community programs. With each person receiving a substantial stipend as their share of Earth's natural resource wealth, many of the functions of government that are intended to aid the poor and otherwise distribute income would be unnecessary. For those government programs that continue to be seen as necessary or desirable, each citizen could decide what programs are most deserving of support. We could vote on priorities for spending our share of public funds in the same way that we vote on priorities for moderating ecological impacts.

The people would set the agenda. Money would flow toward those who work toward some aspect of the agenda that is set by the community. Money would flow away from those who are working counter to some aspect of the agenda set by the community. If the people say they want less CO2; less asphalt; less light pollution interfering with our view of the stars, then the people whose decisions run counter to these community-agreed goals will be made to pay a fee.

When emissions levels drop and most people stop saying they want to see less of the economic 'bads', then we will know that the fees are at the appropriate level. What we call externalities today would become internalized into the economic calculus. Actions which produce negative impacts will be performed only in so far as their benefits outweigh those costs.

Many people will not feel qualified to make taxing and spending decisions, at least on some issues. They may choose to delegate their vote to other, more qualified persons. We could have a direct / representative democracy with the option of calling back our proxy if ever we feel it is being used in an irresponsible way. This need not be a formal arrangement. If our votes on how to manage community resources and how to spend public funds are public statements, then we could examine others' votes to find people with whom we agree. We could copy their votes if we are convinced that they are well-informed and responsible. Some people may gain a reputation of being more informed than others. Those entrusted with the responsibility to decide, on behalf of thousands or millions, appropriate levels of emissions and resource extraction would likely enter into that position by virtue of a reputation among many that they do quality work and are people of integrity. Because there may be some social prestige and status, (perhaps even a small stipend from the public funds), for holding such a position, there would likely be some incentive for a person to maintain this reputation, so as to preserve this favored status position. The persons or organizations entrusted with this responsibility for assessment would have every incentive to make their work widely available, both the data-gathering and the analysis, to possibly further increase their constituency. This could only help to improve the quality and relevance of information and materials available to schools, libraries and the public at large.

This paradigm gives each of us an equal voice in sculpting our society. When we ask questions about the quality of environment that we want to create, and translate the answers into reality, we change our understanding of the role of the citizen in society. We change our consciousness about our responsibility and our power. We are invited to consider carefully what we mean by progress and a good life.

A system of fees for use of resources, with control of overall levels of use vested in the people at large, could provide the feedback mechanisms that would cause economic activities to adjust to the ecological conditions that sustain them. Control of the proceeds of these fees vested in all people equally would go a long way toward redressing problems of disparity of wealth, and it ensures that the proceeds would be invested in ways consistent with the interests of the people at large.

This article is posted at Common Assets Headquarters and appeared earlier at the Progress Report web site.

2007-07-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

A sustainable and just civilization requires that we adhere to moral principles when we engage in political action.

Civilization is doomed to failure when we use powerful instruments (such as the voting booth and political process) in ways that are not consistent with our basic moral principles.

If we enter the voting booth and pull the lever for a candidate who promotes policies that would mean government exercizing power against peaceful people, then we have violated the Golden Rule. This fundamental moral principle strongly suggests or even requires that we let people be when they are not bothering anyone. (Don't do to others that which you would not have others do to you.)

We need to look not for Republican or Democratic candidates. We need to look for candidates who put libertarian and green together. Republicans and Democrats both support policies that involve coercion against peaceful people. Republicans and Democrats want a government that regulates private behavior. But since no person has authority to compel or coerce another person's private behavior, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to governments.

If we are electing representatives to act in our name but we do not insist that their action be limited, so as to keep within the principles that we believe in, then we will have representatives who act on our behalf in ways contrary to our principles. In such a situation, it becomes more likely that representatives will be distracted by excessive demands for government action that would impinge on private behavior, to the neglect of necessary action by government to regulate public behavior. This necessary action, which appears to be neglected in today's politics, would include efforts to limit the rates of taking of natural resources and the putting of pollution, efforts to limit the extent of paving and monoculture on the Earth, efforts to manage allocation of broadcast spectrum space for various public interest uses, etc.

When I asked my Congressman where is the source of the authority of government to initiate force or violence against peaceful people, I got no reply. (If no individual has such authority, no group of two or twenty has such authority and if no group of 49% of the people has such authority, then how could 50% of the people plus one more person have authority to enact policies that involve coercion against non-offending people? Government gets its power from the consent of the governed, but if the people have no power to initiate force or coercion, then they cannot delegate such power to government.)

My friend says that I can't raise a philosophical point with my Congressman. He says that lawmakers can only understand appeals for concrete action. I think we must be able to raise moral questions if we want a sustainable and just civilization.

A cure for what ails the planet

Pollution credits defraud the people

2007-05-13T19:46:00.001-07:00

The practice of putting unwanted materials into the air and water as a way to get rid of them places burdens on the other users of the air and water. The privilege of doing so is valuable to industry. The users of the air and water who degrade this publicly-owned resource ought to compensate the owners--ought to pay the people--in proportion to how much they use it.

A government that issues a 'pollution credit' that allows the bearer to emit pollution at a specified rate in perpetuity would seem to be usurping a right of the people who will inhabit this Earth in the future to decide what levels of pollution they will consider acceptable. But I suppose that any government that can decree that a permit allows, say, ten tons of emissions per year, can also decree that that same permit will subsequently allow only one ton of emissions per year, or, perhaps, 3% less emissions each year.

The all-too-common practice of government granting permits to pollute to those entities which have historically been big polluters is a travesty. It ought not be true that someone who has a history of fouling the air and water is awarded official permission to continue for some period into the future simply by virtue of their past tresspass on the commons. These permits ought to be valid only for limited periods of time, and they ought to be sold at auction to the highest bidder, to ensure that the limited resources are only used for those purposes that the people consider important enough that they are willing to actually pay a price that reflects the environmental costs along with all the other costs involved in the production process.

The problem with 'pollution credits' which give the bearer the right to pollute at a specified rate in perpetuity is that the market in pollution credits will not involve the public at large, the ultimate owners of the natural resources in question. Any trading of these 'credits' would only reflect changes in activity among polluters and users of resouces. The market would not reflect actual use.

The system of fees for the taking of resources and putting of pollution that involve time-limited permits avoids this problem. The transaction is between the user of resources and the public at large. The market reflects actual use of resources, and it includes the people as a party to the transaction. (If ownership of 'perpetual rights' permits were taxed at a rate close to the return earned on well-invested money, then a 'perpetual rights' system can be effectively transformed into a system of payment to the people in proportion to actual use.)

Polluters should pay the people when they degrade the value of what we all own in common.

A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis

Gaia Brain: democratic ownership and free market management of natural resources

Walter Cronkite at the first World Court

An earlier version of the gaia brain idea

2007-02-24T10:44:00.000-08:00

The Gaia Brain Paradigm: Democratic ownership and free market management of natural resource wealth.

Concepts of public property rights lagging acceptance of private property rights

2007-02-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

We have established a social/political/legal framework that embodies a strong respect for private property rights. We expect that those who take or damage or degrade the value of private property will be made to pay some compensation to the owner.

We do NOT have the same political and legal protection of public property rights. Business and industry may pollute the air beyond what most people would say is acceptable, but they are not required to pay any compensation to the people at large when they degrade the quality and value of that which belongs to all of us.

If we were to attend to public property rights in the way that we attend to private property rights, (if we were to require compensation be paid when damage is done or value taken}, we could solve many of the world's most vexing problems.

For example, where clean water is scarce, we could charge a fee to those who take it or degrade its quality for profit. Where noise is a problem, we can charge a fee in proportion to the intensity and duration of environmental noise.

Where the people say that street lighting, car dealerships, advertising signs and fast-food restaurants have put out so much artificial light that we have lost too much of the starscape at night, a fee can be charged to those who cause light pollution.

The fee can be made just high enough to ensure that there is a balance between those who say we have too much light pollution, and those who say we have too little outdoor lighting. Who really owns the view of the stars? I would say that we all do, and to the extent that some would act in ways that would deprive us of that which is ours, they should be made to pay compensation. This is the conclusion of a radical view of property rights that insists on bringing public property rights into the equation.

Those who use natural resource wealth for profit will have more incentive to use it efficiently. More efficient use of resources is a key factor in deciding whether a society can adapt to resource scarcity. Adapting to resource scarcity is a challenge that our civilization will be engaged in for the forseeable future.

Many problems in the world today are caused by abject poverty. If people had a little bit of funds, they could do for themselves that which charity or government programs do, (or don't do so well, as the case may be).

Many other problems are caused by government programs designed to help the poor. If we respect public property rights along with private property rights, (by charging appropriate fees to those who take or degrade natural resource wealth and giving the proceeds to the people at large), we can reduce pollution, preserve natural resources, and end abject poverty--without onerous government programs which are often a dis-incentive to seek productive, income-generating activities.

A proper accounting of public property wealth would mean a change of human economy and society--from something that resembles a cancer on the earth, (consuming beyond what is reasonable and sustainable, jeopardizing the overall planet), to that of a healthy nervous system of the earth, where fees incorporated into the price structure of our economic networks will inform us about environmental costs and cause our behavior to change in ways that promote environmental health or sustainability.

A Biological Model for Politics and Economics

Walter Cronkite for President - Should we only consider those who promote themselves, or should we look for someone who most all Americans would say might be a good or great president?

(This post was censored from something called "Free Republic", and I was banned. Free in name only, I would say.)

If our president selection process isn't working well, let's change it. Who would you want to have as president, if you could ask anyone? Walter Cronkite thinks that we need new thinking in this area. He put out a question like this one. I say draft him

2007-02-23T15:37:00.000-08:00

Civilization does not seem to be working well. It is not obvious that human society as we know it is sustainable. On the contrary, we may be headed for a collapse greater than any previous collapse of civilization in the past.

What could we do to avoid a global collapse?

My theory is that we must learn to live in accord with moral principle as a life-sustaining strategy. The life of our civilization and the life of many people depend on our right action.

If it is true that compensation should be paid when damage is done to property or when value is taken from that which is owned by others, what could possibly justify the complete and utter neglect of public property rights that results in polluters fouling the air and water without any requirement that they pay a fee to the people, as compensation for the damage done?

There is no way to justify this neglect. We can understand the historical context within which it exists, though. We have not yet become convinced as a society that we must take account of the effects of economic activity in a way that causes the adverse impacts to be reflected in economic terms, and for these harmful effects to be felt by economic actors so that causing harmful effects results in real and proportional costs to industry.

When one person or corporation pollutes, all the rest of us must refrain from polluting to a proportional degree, to ensure that we do not exceed some acceptable limit to overall levels of pollution, (to be defined by the people at large). One polluter's actions constrain the actions of all others. (Or, we must give up on the idea that the community at large, through the instrument of government, can and must establish overall limits on levels of contaminants in our air and water).

One polluter putting contaminants into the air changes the atmosphere so that it becomes less able to receive similar unwanted material from any and every other person or industry. (Again, assuming that we intend to enforce overall limits.) When a polluter acts so as to reduce the value of the atmosphere to all of us, property rights doctrine requires that some compensation be paid to those who suffer the diminished value. In other words, principle dictates that polluters must pay a fee to the people at large when they foul our air or water, (or when they spoil our view of the night sky, or cause some other change which offends the people at large).

The same principle applies to the taking and depletion of natural resources: When one actor depletes the resource base, all the rest of us must take less.

The twin scourges of poverty and environmental degradation can be eliminated, or can be brought to levels where they are no longer threatening the existance and sustainability of civilization when we learn to apply our principles of fairness and just compensation to the realm of the Commons--when we learn to respect public property rights along with private property rights.

2006-02-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

There are topics that are not discussed on the public airwaves that really ought to be discussed because they involve issues of public concern.

Why do public television and radio broadcasters not include any reporting on the question of whether the levels of pollution and rates of taking of natural resources are consistent with the will of the people; or whether most people feel that government allows more pollution and faster depletion of resources than ought to be the case; or whether government is too strict against industry and could allow for more economic growth by relaxing the limits on environmental impacts by industry.

Are these not questions that should be raised by and discussed by broadcasters -- public and commercial -- operating in the public interest?

Would a rational and just society adopt the most efficient and fair method of pollution control and resource management -- a fee assessed in proportion to actual environmental impacts caused (according to economists)?

Would a truly democratic society adjust pollution fees and natural resource user-fees such that industries have the necessary incentives to produce the level of environmental impacts that the largest number of people will endorse? Or would a democratic society allow levels of pollution or rates of resource depletion to exceed what most people say is acceptable?

What is the responsibility of those who hold monopoly licenses to use slices of the people's airwaves? They must decide how the airwaves can be used to promote the public interest.

The failure of broadcasters to include any discussion of these kinds of questions in their programming does not serve the public interest.

John Champagne

2005-11-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

What do we need to know that our newspapers and universities are not telling us?

To the Editor,

There is a defect in our economic system.

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. 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 some reporter or editor can explain why my analysis is flawed; or start reporting on natural resource wealth accounting.

When we commit to moral principle in politics and economics, we create a sustainable and just civilization

2005-07-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

We will either learn to make a civilization that will last, or we will once again develop more varied and more intense means of extracting resources, over-exploit our resource base, and grow our population beyond what is sustainable--to the point of collapse.

The defects that have caused civilizations to collapse in the past are still with us today. When civilizations collapsed in the past, there was always an elsewhere that the people could flee to when things started to fall apart. And there were other civilizations in other places. We no longer have an elsewhere to go to. When the system breaks, it will be a global failure.

We need to make our civilization a sustainable phenomenon.

We need to limit the taking and degradation of natural resource wealth so that our environmental impacts are sustainable. If we continue to uglify and despoil the planet, and if we continue to allow abject poverty to persist, some people may perpetrate violent and destructive acts in hopes of eliminating what they see as an evil system, or a cancer on the Earth.

Extremists can and will exploit discontent to further their agenda. We can best enhance our security not so much through combating and apprehending people who would do harm. We enhance our security by making a healthy, sustainable and more just society that the vast majority of people want to be a part of and exceedingly few want to subvert.

If we bring a respect of basic principles regarding political rights and property rights to our participation in political and economic systems, we will NOT allow levels of pollution to exceed what most people would identify as acceptable. We will NOT allow rates of taking of limited natural resources to exceed what most people say is appropriate.

If we were to truly respect property rights, polluters would be paying us money when they put their unwanted stuff into our air and water. Natural resource wealth can be thought of as belonging to all. Natural resource wealth is the Commons. It should be recognized as belonging to all, to the extent that it can be said to belong to anyone at all. The most efficient and fair way to manage the taking of these resources, to keep within sustainable limits, is to charge a fee in proportion to value taken or damage done. Respecting public as well as private property rights means that industries pay the people when they take or degrade that which belongs to all.

We could end abject poverty AND put a lid on the harmful effects of our economic system, (and achieve a truly democratic society), by recognizing the people at large as the owners of Earth's natural resource wealth, and as the final arbiters in defining limits to environmental impacts.

Attaching fees to actions that foul the Earth or push ecosystems out of balance would produce a kind of a sensory or autonomic nervous system for Earth. Injury or harm to ecosystems would be reduced. Ecological balance could be maintained. From cancer cell to brain cell of earth--if we bring our economics and politics into accord with our own basic principles.

Is there any other path to a secure and sustainable society?

This proposal is consistent with a marriage of libertarian and green political philosophies and a synthesis of capitalist and communist economic paradigms.

I say, let's get on with it.

Biological Model for Politics and Economics