Yesterday we
raised the eternal question, if capital ownership is so good, why aren’t more
people owners? The answer is that the
rich who control existing money and credit aren’t likely to let go of it, and most
people who are not rich do not generally have access to new money creation that
would enable them to purchase new capital that pays for itself out of its own
future earnings, and thereafter provides income for the owner.
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| Kelso: "If the machine wants your job, buy the machine." |
One exception to
the general rule of lack of access to money and credit for acquiring new
capital is the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), invented by
lawyer-economist Louis O. Kelso, and first implemented in Monterey, California,
U.S.A. in 1956. It was not made a part
of U.S. law until 1974, however (in the U.S., if something is not legally
prohibited, you can do it; you don’t need a law to say what you are allowed to
do), whereupon “the Expanded Ownership Revolution” really took off.
Since 1974, then,
ESOPs have enabled millions of owners in thousands of companies to become
capital owners without them putting up a cent of their existing savings or
taking any reductions in pay or benefits.
Today, more than 10 million American workers without past savings are 100%
owners of their companies, as described in The
Just Third Way and other writings at www.cesj.org).
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| Money and credit are to economics what the vote is to politics. |
Equal personal
access to the political ballot gives every citizen a share of control under
political democracy. In the same way, sharing
equal opportunity and effective means to become a personal owner of private
property would provide each person with the means of participating in a
non-monopolistic market-based form of economic democracy.
Democratic access
to money and credit (and to insurance for collateral) can help everyone
contribute their labor inputs and their own capital assets to the production of
marketable goods and services. The key
is to make it possible for everyone, not just workers employed by corporations,
to use the “ESOP technique” to acquire “self-liquidating” capital.
All people could
then become independent and afford what they need, and a good bit of what they
want. And they would do this without
becoming permanently dependent on charity or welfare distributions from
whatever any ownership élites, politicians, or government
bureaucrats who control the State. Every person could purchase new
capital using newly created money, with the loan secured by capital credit
insurance and reinsurance, and repay (and cancel) the money when the capital
becomes productive and starts generating income.
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| "But without my money monopoly, I'm no better than YOU!" |
Today, monopoly
capitalists, central bankers, Nation-States, and unions of Nation-States
control the money and capital credit systems of the world. Citizens organized to promote Just Third Way
reforms, however, can legitimately demand legal and systemic reforms to the
central banking and capital credit systems affecting their future ownership
opportunities. Besides other Just Third Way reforms, every citizen now deprived
of equal ownership opportunities would share with all other members of society
access to personal power to advance economic democracy in the money and capital
credit systems that affect their economic wellbeing.
Under socialist
assumptions, justice no longer means that in an exchange I should get something
back of equal value for my labor or capital contributions to the productive
process, or a pro rata share in accordance with what I
contribute to a common effort. No, I get what I want or need because
I want or need it, assuming the State or collective determines what I
need. Might makes right.
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| "Ordinary people as good as I? I'll have to think about that." |
This makes
perfect sense, given the monopoly over money and credit the world’s élites enjoy
— control over access to money and credit being the chief means by which
any élite can control future ownership opportunities . . . for
themselves. Given the monopoly over money and credit, the only way
democracy and justice in the socialist sense can exist is if somebody takes
wealth away from the (capitalist) élite, and transfers it to
whatever élite controls the beneficent State (socialist)
bureaucracy for redistribution . . . at least by the élite’s way
of thinking.
What people like
Secretary Tillerson, once the head of the world’s largest oil company, don’t
realize, however, is that under the Just Third Way’s version of economic
democracy and justice, all that today’s capitalists really would stand to lose
is not their current wealth (they can keep that for the rest
of their lives). But the few with
monopoly power over today’s money and credit system, would no longer determine
who will share ownership of future wealth opportunities
because of their monopoly.
#30#