What would you do
if somebody offered you $100 million to change the world? What is the problem you would address? We got asked that question recently, and — as
you might expect — the first reaction was, “Haven’t you read the CESJ
website?” After all, we’ve been saying
pretty much the same thing for decades.
Of course, our real reaction was, “Just give us the money and let us
think about that . . . which is probably acceptable when you’re talking about
something that isn’t real in the first place. . . .
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| "Here I come to save the day!" |
But what if the
offer was real . . . at least, real enough to treat the question with a little
more seriousness? Not just, “Like if you
wish you had $100 million to change the world!!” and had a picture of a fluffy
kitten or cuddly puppy to go with it.
Well, first thing
we need is a snappy title. “How to Save
the World” probably won’t do it. Mighty Mouse and Superman do that every day. How
about —
A Proposal to Develop a Comprehensive, Turnkey Institutional Program
of Regional-to-Supranational Restructuring to Achieve the Economic and
Political Empowerment of Every Person with Fluffy Kitties and Cuddly Puppies
for All
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| "Eat this, you'll feel better." |
We probably should
have added Mom and Apple Pie, too, but we didn’t want to get too obvious. Anyway, we probably should focus on poverty,
by which we mean not alleviating the symptoms of poverty, but eliminating the
causes of widespread, endemic poverty as a way of life. That means institutional and structural reforms,
not just buying food and distributing it, or giving everyone a college
education and a computer.
Poverty, however,
is a problem to be solved, not a political football to maintain an élite.
We have to keep in mind that we not only want to eliminate the causes of
widespread poverty, we want to remove any reason for keeping people in poverty
. . . one of which is that, if you have people whose jobs depend on helping
“the poor,” it’s in their best interest to make certain that there are always
poor people to help. . . .
How do you arrange
matters so that the system no longer encourages poverty? Arrange the system to encourage productive
behavior.
That does not mean “creating jobs.” Creating jobs doesn’t result in production,
but in consumption. Ideally, production
and consumption must be equal.
Otherwise, more is produced than people can consume, or not enough is
produced to meet demand.
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| "I'm not lazy. I just haven't had my coffee." |
It does mean
empowering people to be productive.
After all, all other things being equal, the only way to consume is
first to produce, whether directly for your own consumption, or indirectly by
trading what you produce for what others have produced that you want to
consume.
So what’s the
problem? Are people these days just too
dadburn lazy to be productive unless they have jobs? Or is it that, in a day when more and more
labor is displaced by advancing technology, there is no way to own the
technology that is displacing their labor in favor of technology. It’s just plain too expensive if the only
source of financing is what someone can save out of an already inadequate or
even non-existent wage.
No, the only
logical — and adequate — source of financing for new capital that everyone can
own (individually, not collectively) is future savings, i.e., money you receive in the future generated by the asset you
bought today that you use to pay for the asset.
That way you don’t have to have the money now. You just have to have it when the bill comes
due.
This benefits
everyone, all the way up to the entire world by making the political order much
more stable. That’s because a stable and
just political order that benefits everyone requires a stable and just economic
order. A stable and just economic order
requires a stable and just financial system.
A stable and just financial system requires a stable and just commercial
and central banking system. A stable and
just commercial and central banking system requires a stable and just currency.
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| "Listen to me and save the world ... oh, wait...." |
Under Keynesian
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the idea is that to achieve a better life for
all, the government manipulates the currency and controls the financial system
and the economy to achieve a stable and just political order by making everyone
dependent on the State as the universal caregiver. This is a tautology: a stable and just
political order is achieved by having a stable and just political order.
This illogic, the
basis of virtually all modern monetary and fiscal policy, has resulted in an
enormous increase in State power, gargantuan public and private debt,
widespread poverty, and growing concentration of wealth and power in fewer and
fewer hands. The only possible solution
is the Just Third Way.
The Just Third Way
seeks to restore widespread personal empowerment and a greatly reduced role for
the State by reforming monetary and tax systems to enable ordinary people
access to the means of acquiring and possessing private property in
capital. This will allow them to become
productive and contributing members of society, providing for themselves out of
their own efforts instead of relying on government handouts.
These are
principles that hold true in any economy in the world, regardless how bad
things may seem at the present time.
With the right institutional principles and sound theory to guide the
process, any economy on earth can be put on a sound footing and maintained as
such in a manner that benefits every child, woman, and man in the country.
So, although
having $100 million to spend on saving the world sounds good, it’s better to
have a plan, and the plan should include the most basic need at the bottom of
the pyramid: producing something that you and others can consume. Get that, and the means to get that, and the
rest will follow.
#30#
