This posting is not an endorsement of the American
Revolutionary Party. The American
Revolutionary Party has a platform incorporating elements of the Just Third
Way, but any other political party on earth is free to adopt any or all
elements of the Just Third Way as well — and we wish they would.
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| Okapis are cool, but not American. |
No, we mention the American Revolutionary Party only to be
able to contrast the Capital Homesteading proposal adopted as a plank by the
ARP with the less rational economic policies of the Elephants and the
Donkeys. The ARP doesn’t (yet) have a
cool animal to use as a symbol.
What it does have is Capital Homesteading, which either of
the two major parties (or both) are free to adopt as well. Capital Homesteading is an application of the
principles of the Just Third Way.
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| Bison are cool, too, but the Constitutional Party already snagged them. |
The Just Third Way is a free market system that economically
empowers all individuals and families through the democratization of money and
credit for new production, with universal access to direct ownership of
income-producing capital. This socio-economic paradigm offers the logical
“third alternative” to the two predominant socio-economic paradigms today —
capitalism and socialism/communism.
In capitalism, economic power and private ownership of capital
are concentrated in a small percentage of the population (i.e., a few own). In socialism/communism, the state owns and/or
controls productive capital (i.e.,
nobody owns). In the “Just Third Way,” widespread dispersion of capital
ownership functions as the economic check against the potential for corruption
and abuse, including by the government. Restoration of the full rights of
property and extension of private property to every individual, serves as the
basis for economic democracy, the necessary foundation for effective political
democracy.
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| This would have been WAY cool. |
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| The Whig Party got the owl. |
The new paradigm views as a virtue healthy self-interest (i.e., where individual good is directed
toward, or in harmony with, the common good). It views greed and envy, on the
other hand, as vices, both destructive of a moral and just society. In contrast
to capitalism that institutionalizes greed, or socialism which
institutionalizes envy, the “Just Third Way” institutionalizes justice.
Capital
Homesteading is an analogue of the nineteenth century American programs enacted
to bring about a broad distribution of the ownership of land. Capital
Homesteading expands the concept to include ownership of advanced technologies,
including management, marketing and distribution systems, through equity shares
in enterprises capable of competing without special protections within a free
and just global economy.
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| Is anybody using actual people? |
A
Capital Homestead Act would be a national economic policy based on the binary
growth model, designed to lift barriers in the present financial and economic
system and universalize access to the means of acquiring and possessing capital
assets. A Capital Homestead Act would
allow every man, woman and child to accumulate in a tax-sheltered Capital
Homestead Account, a target level of assets sufficient to generate an adequate
and secure income for that person without requiring the use of existing pools
of savings or reductions in current levels of consumption.
So, if you’re worried about either the Republicans’ spending
cuts or the Democrats’ spending increases (or, like any sane person, put off by
both of them), take a look at the American Revolutionary Party platform. If you’re put off by third parties, consider
persuading your party of choice this week to adopt something sensible in place
of the failed efforts currently in place.
#30#