Yesterday we
looked at the importance of economic democracy to political democracy and, of
course, justice — and asking why U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson is having
the Department of State draft new statements of purpose, mission, and ambition
that drop the commitment of the United States to support democracy and justice. The U.S. not support democracy and
justice? Isn’t the United States
supposed to be the beacon to the world for democracy and justice? What gives?
It’s right there in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, isn’t
it? —
We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
In the modern
sense of the word, Justice “recognizes the inherent dignity and equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family and is the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world.” (The first sentence in the Preamble
of the United
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) Article 1 of the
Declaration adds to our understanding of Justice as a natural right by
declaring that, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.”
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| From left to right: Adam ("man"), God ("God"). State: not in the picture. |
If you stop to
think about it, what else is there that a government should be doing? Read the rest of the Constitution, and
it’s just a list of applications of the virtue of justice. This
makes sense, because justice is the highest natural virtue, and a just and
democratic government at any level has no business violating natural
law. Why? Because the State did not, and does not, create human
beings . . . and knowledge of natural law comes from observing human nature and
applying reason.
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| Not on your tintype, Bub. |
Just as we did
for all other institutions (“social tools”), human beings create(d) the State. What makes the State unique as a social tool
is that it has a natural monopoly over the use of coercive force — which is
only legitimate when those in charge of the State are there with the free
consent of the people of the State. The
State is not a god, not even the “Mortall God” that the totalitarian
philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it in Leviathan (1651), and
cannot legitimately function on its own authority.
The State only
has its power to serve people. This is not
only to establish Justice, settle conflicts, and set standards for all citizens
and other institutions, but to promote and defend the human rights of all people
within its borders, whether or not they are citizens, and to do the same for
its citizens, wherever they are.
Since the State
has the power to coerce people, however, democracy and justice require that
people have some means to keep the State in line — and there is only one way of
doing that: control over the purse strings.
As Henry C. Adams noted over a century ago, political power and
sovereignty very quickly falls into the hands of those who control where government
gets its money. As ordinary people have
lost property, their control over government has decreased in proportion.
That’s why for
most people today, “democracy” means the same thing as “socialism” — “equality
of results and condition” instead of the real democratic “equality
of opportunity and means.”
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| Please observe the lack of qualifiers, Mr. Tillerson. |
“Own or be
Owned!” Political democracy is easily
corrupted without an effective system of economic democracy. Economic democracy must be based on universal
citizen access to private property rights and profits from land, natural
resources, and ever-advancing new physical and social technologies. These last are important because in today’s
world advancing technology of all kinds is increasingly the source of
marketable goods and sources.
Fortunately, the
world design science ideas of Louis Kelso, Mortimer Adler, Buckminster Fuller,
Harold Moulton, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other futurists, give us hope. Universal personal future access to equal
ownership opportunities can be achieved without violating the private property
rights of current owners over existing assets, or resorting to class warfare.
Is it possible
for all citizens to become capital owners?
Yes. By using “pure credit” loans
from local commercial banks repayable with future profits (“future savings”) and
collateralized with capital credit insurance and reinsurance, anybody can
acquire capital that pays for itself.
And that is what
we’ll look at tomorrow.
#30#