In a book that proposes a new political theory it seems reasonable to discuss existing political theories. I apologize in advance to the adherents of the political theories that are not discussed. Also, I hope I have interpreted theoreticians correctly. [Note in proof (5-10-96). The Unabomber Manifesto [1] should be discussed either here or in Chapter 5 under “Models of Society”. Unfortunately, time constraints forbid. I shall provide a separate analysis of that remarkable document soon.]

Conservatism

While it is recognized that the old labels – conservative and liberal, right and left, etc. – do not apply perfectly in today’s political climate, it still makes sense to speak about a generic political conservatism. The Random House Dictionary [2] defines conservatism as “the disposition to preserve what is established and to resist change”. This is not quite a fair assessment of American conservatives, some of whom would like to roll back the clock and re-establish some principles long abandoned by most people. Some of these principles make good sense, e.g., reducing the size of government; however, conservatives want to reduce the size of government in a manner that would be injurious to poor and powerless people as well as most species of animals and plants. Naturally, not every conservative policy is bad. I have indicated some conservative policies that I support, usually in an altered form and usually not for the same reason that they are supported by conservatives. However, it is important to discredit the bulk of conservative political doctrine because, in particular, it is “soft” on capitalism and markets or, as Noam Chomsky would put it, “mercantilism” [3]. Also, it is not difficult to see that, while mocking “bleeding-heart liberals”, conservatives reveal the meanness and lack of compassion that traditionally invites liberals to despise them.

It is easy to criticize conservatives because the flaws in their thinking are under our noses. The difficulty, however, lies in remembering, for comparison, a time when the evils of conservatism were not upon us – mainly because there were no “happy times” that might be “here again”. By definition, the world has always been conservative. History may be viewed as the overthrow of one conservative doctrine after another – not always with happy results (for instance, the view that the atom is indivisible is a conservative view, albeit outside politics). The criticism of other American political views requires speculation. [Note in proof: Bill Clinton is now president of the U.S. It is difficult to classify him politically, but it is easy to predict in May, 1993, that nothing he does will work, i.e., conditions in the United States will get worse.] [Note in proof: A sub-headline in the Houston Post today, October 7, 1994, reads, “Census: More poor in U.S., but rich getting richer”. So, what else is new!]

Conservatives believe in respect for authority in various forms and in various degrees, namely, the nuclear family with the man in charge, the law, the government, one’s employer, the church, etc. Presumably, conservatives differ in their support of feminist ideals, which, clearly, would prevent men from assuming traditional head-of-household roles; but, among those who most wish to preserve the nuclear family, one does not hear objections to the economic conditions that require both senior partners to be employed to earn a living wage between them.

In the United States we have legal chaos. The laws are designed to preserve the power and privilege of the rich, to protect the rich from the poor, to appease the superstitions of the masses, and to create an appearance of justice. Occasionally, therefore, a rich or powerful person becomes a scapegoat in a charade designed to reinforce the myth of “equality before the law” and to provide circuses for the people. Usually, when a conflict at law arises between a commercial interest and a public interest, the moneyed interest wins. It is nearly impossible for a person of average means to get satisfaction in a grievance against a corporation or a rich person. So, why should anyone respect the law? The government itself is exempt from its own laws – including the law against murder!

Employers, for the most part, are interested in profits and don’t give a damn about their employees. Why should we respect our employers?

The churches seem to be in league with the corrupt ruling class (defined in the appendix to Chapter 1) and basically treat their flocks as sheep to be shorn. Churchgoers are told whatever they want to hear as long as the collection plate is full. The fundamentalists are dangerous, but one has to be pretty stupid to fall into their trap. The televangelists are stealing millions. So much for respect for authority.

Conservatives are “tough on crime”. However, they do not wish to address the social problems that cause crime, many of which can be traced to conservatism itself. I have discussed this in Appendix II and in one of my collected essays.

Conservatives believe in the old-fashioned values of responsibility – of a man to his family or to his employer, say, and duty – of a man to his country, say, but these values are used against the people as weapons. For example, a man who hasn’t had a good chance to support his family outside of jail is put in jail where he has no chance at all. In my system, one has a duty to do as he pleases only. “Duty” rendered in any other way seems to me to be without honor.

Conservatives believe in a day’s work for a day’s pay and they believe that what constitutes a fair day’s pay should be determined by a free market. But the employer always has the advantage of less urgency in a labor market. Just imagine – a market in human souls – and it is essentially the soul that is for sale. If we define the soul to be the totality of events, both physical and psychical in the life of a human being, we see that the entire soul is altered when any part of it is altered and it is precisely the time and events of a person’s life that are in the bargain.

Conservatives believe in a political system that permits each man (or woman in the case of some conservatives) to rise as high as he can rise in the scheme of things based on his own merits and efforts. But, the scheme of things provides an extremely tilted playing field. The advantages of a rich kid with a large inheritance who has attended expensive schools are not to be compared to the advantages of a child of the ghetto. [Note in proof: Just now (May, 1993), in Texas, conservatives are battling to prevent money raised in rich school districts from being shared with poorer school districts, thus helping to ensure that, if a child be born poor, less money will be spent on his education and, presumably, the likelihood of remaining poor will be greater, unless, of course, material success is unrelated to education or the quality of education is unrelated to its cost.] Nor is a person’s rise determined by a person’s merit, but rather by who thinks he has merit, where, by merit, is meant being the “right sort of person”.

In America we claim that we are free; but, if one wishes to be considered the “right sort of person”, one’s thoughts are circumscribed narrowly. (One stray insight crosses your brain and you’re down in Greenwich Village smoking grass and shooting speed before you know what hit you! Do I exaggerate? How do you suppose a person gets on one path rather than another?)

For the sake of argument, however, let’s suppose that everything is fair and above board. (Suppose life is a proper game.) Why should a person benefit from an accident of birth, even if that accident of birth is superior intelligence, a devastating will, or even good character? What sort of person would want to benefit from these accidental advantages? And, even more importantly, why should a decent, civilized person want to rise as high as he or she can under the circumstances that prevail in American society?

On Page 37 of The New Yorker of January 13, 1992, we find a cartoon by Warren Miller in which a man who, presumably, has just been promoted is answering his colleague as follows, “Actually, Lou, I think it was more than just my being in the right place at the right time. I think it was my being the right race, the right religion, the right sex, the right socioeconomic group, having the right accent, the right clothes, going to the right schools, ...” It wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t true. So much for meritocracy. Meritocracy would be an improvement but not a solution.

Conservatives support the work ethic, which encourages three harmful notions: (i) a person who doesn’t work shouldn’t be allowed to live, (ii) provided a person does work, a person should be allowed to do anything to earn a living (provided he or she pays taxes), and (iii) if it’s not onerous, it’s not work. The work ethic is denounced in my essay “On the Work Ethic”, available in my collected papers [4], which might serve as a companion volume to this essay. Please, figure out how to obtain a copy and read it!

Conservatives feel that it is harmful to the individual to be permitted to get by without pulling his (or her) own weight and, in many cases, this is true, but we have a non-negligible class of individuals who are really not cut out for work – at least the sorts of work that are available in Western society. Perhaps, if a truly broad range of activities were provided for a broad spectrum of individual characteristics, this notion might make sense, but workers in the U.S. are forced to be clones of one another to an alarming extent. Moreover, the idea of forcing everyone to work is mean-spirited at best. People can be educated to find activities toward which they are intrinsically motivated; and, in a nonmaterialistic world that takes the best advantage of humanistic technology, it is not necessary for everyone to be doing something useful. The means employed now to ensure that creative people working at the arts are doing something useful are cruel and probably diminish the quality of art produced, since every artist must cater to the system to some extent.

But, more important, the people at the top don’t pull any weight at all. Many people in the United States, perhaps most people, earn a living by “counting beads”, “shuffling paper”, devising schemes to get a bigger slice of the pie for themselves or their employers, or telling other people what to do. This is, in part, the change to an “information society”. Well, we can’t eat information, as we shall soon discover. People who devote their lives to the pursuit of money and wealth, mostly in business, have been guilty of incredible crimes against society; but, for the most part, their punishment, in the unlikely event that they are prosecuted, has not driven them from the wealthy classes. [Yesterday, May 25, 1993, Teledyne Corporation was indicted (Houston Post, May 26), but will its officers be asked to resign from their clubs! What do you think?]

People perform best when they are doing something because they want to do it; but, in the American workplace, even in high places, most people are doing what they do because of ulterior motives, primarily because they need the money, if that can be considered an “ulterior motive”. To understand how little respect people might get for doing what they want to do, one has to consider the case of aspiring artists only. If they succeed, they go from being “bums” to being “geniuses” – overnight”, cf., the great writer Henry Miller.

Conservatives believe in equal opportunity, but they also believe in the right of a man to do as much as he can for his children to give them an advantage. They claim that a “person of quality” can overcome any disadvantage incurred because his parents were not able to give him the same advantages that the children of the privileged had and they can cite a number of examples of people who have tended to prove this rule; but, to be fair, the examples are few and far between. The horrible truth is that most people in the United States start out with reasonably high hopes, particularly if they are white, but they end up disillusioned. Failure – not success – is the norm. Nearly everyone fails!

Conservatives believe in the rights and privileges of the ruling class provided they were fairly gained and they believe that the ruling class is open to anyone with the gumption to get into it. (A working definition of the ruling class is given in the appendix to Chapter 1.) This suggests a number of questions: Do some people have the right to rule others? If so, why not have done with the notion of equality of all “men” and abandon hypocrisy in favor of forthrightness? In order to have the right to rule one must have acquired power fairly. Also, one would have to exhibit moral and ethical behavior above reproach. I believe it is fair to doubt that either of these conditions are met.

Further, one may well ask if the rulers rule well. The persistence of injustice and the other overwhelming problems listed in this essay indicates that they do not. Also, it is clear that the ruling class is closed to nearly everyone. Nor may one enter it with a clear conscience if one is at all thoughtful. I think it would be fun to refer to the conservative tenet stated at the beginning of the previous paragraph as the Marcus Aurelius Myth. Contrary to our delusionary “meritocracy”, only the most barbaric and morally depraved individuals possess the lack of scruples necessary to rise to positions of importance, status, and, conceivably, a share in the ownership of the world – normally denied to nearly everyone regardless of moral condition. Even the super-rich rarely climb to such dizzying heights – or should I be serious for a moment and refer to the plutocracy as having descended to incredibly abysmal depths, which best describes the real world as it actually is.

Conservatives tend to be suspicious of social programs and, indeed, most social programs sponsored and implemented by a massive bureaucracy tend to become victims of the law of unintended effects if they weren’t simply schemes to defraud the taxpayers at the outset. But, conservatives are much given to the type of reasoning described by Jeremy Bentham in his Book of Political Fallacies [5] whenever they wish to oppose social reform of any type, even when desperately needed. They exhort us to rely on private charity to correct the cruelest conditions resulting from competition for wealth, but the institutions of private charity have become just like every other commercial enterprise. Government programs are inefficient, but private charities are inefficient too, especially when they are run for the benefit of their hierarchies. (The president of the Houston United Way earns in excess of $130,000 per year. Moreover, the United Way essentially extorts money from people who live on the edge of poverty by contriving to make contributions a matter of record within large companies.) Most hypocritical of all, though, are the big-time formal charity balls, which expend a fortune on ostentatious festivities for the privileged few putatively to contribute a pittance to those with essentially nothing. How many dollars do they spend on themselves for each dollar given to the poor in these great displays of public charity, replete with media coverage contrived to exalt the parasitic “upper” classes?

Conservatives are fervently patriotic and, in most cases, believe that, if America should go to war, God would be on her side. They tend to support free trade and the right of the United States to have interests worth fighting for in foreign countries, particularly in countries in our so-called sphere of influence. [Note in proof (1-23-96): According to Noam Chomsky [3] the heads of trans-national corporations (presumably conservative) do not permit the inconveniences of the market or “free” trade to hamper their own particular trading ventures, which they arrange to be protected from market influences whenever expedient to do so. However, this essay does not depend upon detailed knowledge of corrupt business practices. Public information known to anyone who wants to know (virtually everyone) is sufficient to make my points – whenever they cannot be made by a priori logic alone.] The typical conservative might drive an expensive European car. This is one of the rewards he reaps for his shameless exploitation of the natural resources and human labor in this country and wherever the United States has “interests”. Regrettably, the American flag has become the symbol of conservative values including America’s “God-given” right to exploit whomever she pleases. When a symbol becomes corrupt, we are obliged to disrespect it. But the worship of icons and totems is a foolish primitive ritual even when the icons and totems do not represent absolute evil.

The attributes of conservatives that I respect the least are their stupidity and naiveté if they are not beneficiaries of the policies they advocate and their viciousness if they are. Of course, the possibility remains that man be capable of great evil of which he is unaware. On the other hand, he may be just a damn liar. William Buckley has described the conservative agenda in a little pamphlet that I have seen fit to criticize in my essay “On William Buckley’s ‘Agenda for the Nineties’ ”, available in my collected papers Vol. II [4], the companion volume to this essay. (I sent it to Buckley, but he did not respond. Perhaps he didn’t read it – although he read as much of another essay of mine “as he had time for”. No one can accuse me of preaching only to the choir.) William Bennett’s conservatism is denounced in “On American Myths and Higher Education” (renamed “A Litany of American Myths”), also in Vol. II of the collection of my papers.

I am always faintly amused or to a large degree sickened (depending on my mood) when I hear American conservatives championing freedom. Even the old-fashioned phrase “free world” is a nasty joke because every policy of so-called conservatives puts the ruling class in a better position to rule totally. Even the populist republican or the libertarian espouses indefensible political positions built on myths.

Indeed, every conservative position is eventually overthrown, whether it be the flat earth, the earth as the center of the universe, the divine right of kings, the inferiority of the “colored” races, etc. After each such defeat, the conservatives pretend they never held such a position and go on to defend the latest claptrap. Conservatism is the defender of falsehood.

Libertarians

The Libertarians do not recognize the right of the government to regulate the affairs of mankind, particularly as government has traditionally done, namely, in its own interests or in the interests of monopolists, of whom Libertarians do not approve. But, by personal liberty, Libertarians include the liberty to exploit other people for profit. Whereas they deny the right to consume wealth in proportion to one’s skill at warfare, they accept the right to consume wealth in proportion to one’s skill and success in what I have called the money game. Thus, by medieval standards they are liberals. They defend the notion that some individuals may rightfully control vast portions of the earth’s surface while other individuals control none, depending, of course, on the individual’s success in the money game or other unfair or arbitrary circumstances. In addition, they imagine that owners of private property hold the right to earn money solely by virtue of that ownership, by collecting rents, say, or even by despoiling the natural beauty and suitability for wild animal life of their own land by logging, strip mining, or hunting, to mention only a few abuses. Undoubtedly, they believe in the right of every family to have as many children as it can afford, but I am not absolutely certain of that. As shown in this essay, these liberties impose directly upon the liberties of others and, therefore, are not exercised by thoughtful and considerate people. Libertarians are approximately half-way between (i) the ethics espoused by feudalists, imperialists, and other reactionaries who agree that the state may assist rich and powerful people in their quest for even greater wealth and power and (ii) the philosophy advocated in this essay. While they will defend my right to choose whatever lifestyle I prefer, they will not protect my fair share of the earth’s surface and natural resources from predators, which may cost me the use of a fair and equal share of the earth’s dividend sufficient to live at all.

Liberals

According to the Random House Dictionary [2], a liberal favors “progress or reform” and “concepts of maximum personal liberty ..., especially as guaranteed by law and secured by government protection of civil liberties”. A liberal favors “freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression”. A liberal is “free from prejudice or bigotry”, is “open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.”, and is “characterized by generosity and willing to give in large amounts”. (Conservatives would say “willing to give other people’s money in large amounts”.)

On the face of it, it would seem that everyone should be and would want to be a liberal. Unfortunately, most people who are characterized by themselves and others as liberals do not meet many of the dictionary’s criteria. Almost nobody is open to new ideas. While it is true that so-called liberals wish to address social problems usually by legislation, all they are hoping to achieve is to provide a safety net to prevent the most horrible catastrophes and to address the most egregious examples of public corruption by even more laws. Typically they are not in favor of making the essential changes advocated in this essay to get to the root of the fundamental social problems. They are barely distinguishable from conservatives. I find it amusing, whenever I have the opportunity to speak among them, to refer to them casually, in an offhand manner, as – conservatives (or even reactionaries). A section of Chapter 2 on thermodynamics, emergy, and economics is devoted to indicating, by means of system diagrams, why liberal policies to help the poor won’t work – principally because of government overhead.

Socialists

Fundamentally, socialists accept the theories of Marx, which are certainly correct as far as they pertain to the past. We have already seen that Marx appreciated the defects of capitalism one hundred and fifty years ago. Most of his predictions have been amazingly accurate. People who wonder about the disorder in our cities and the alienation among our urban youth obviously haven’t read Marx! Unfortunately, no one can predict the future with perfect accuracy. I like to say that Marx understood capitalism perfectly (in fact, he may have coined the term), but he didn’t understand Marxism at all. This is understandable. (I probably don’t understand Wayburnism as well as I might. Dear reader, that is up to you.)

Socialists accept the ownership of private property by the government, which usually arranges itself into a large unwieldy bureaucracy that affords privileges to itself that are denied the ordinary citizen. Most socialist governments have gravitated toward what might better be called – state capitalism. It is important to show that the system advocated in this essay does not suffer from these defects. Socialism is discussed further in my essay “On Socialism, Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels”, available in a collection of my papers [4]. [Note in proof (3-15-96): Noam Chomsky [3] pointed out recently (and perhaps earlier) that the Soviet government set out to crush socialism wherever it could as soon as it (the Soviet government) had acquired the power to do so. In particular, on Page 37 of Ref. 3, we read, “Abroad, the USSR was not a major actor, though its leaders did what they could to undermine socialism and libertarian tendencies, their leading role in the demolition of Spanish libertarian socialism being a prime example”.]

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), for example, is asking only for jobs, housing, health care, education, human rights, and self-determination, an end to racism, bigotry, intolerance, and pollution, treatment of drug abuse, and dismissal of third-world debt. Sounds good, but the goals are inconsistent and not nearly good enough to save the world, except that to achieve self-determination the measures recommended in this paper will have to be adopted, but they are not stated specifically in the SWP agenda. The SWP does not favor the socialism of William Morris [6], which advocates only “preaching and teaching” as opposed to running for office, passing laws, etc. I believe I prefer the Morris approach. Nothing can be done until we know where we should be going. Perhaps nothing will come of debate, but debate we must have.

Capitalism is an undesirable form of materialism; but socialism, as it actually is found in countries that claim to be socialist countries, is a form of materialism too. Therefore, I reject it. (Noam Chomsky, in a television address or in one of his books that I actually read [3,7,8], stated that, under true socialism, the workers would own the means of production. This is not the socialism to which I am referring. By the way, he does not state whether true socialism would be materialistic or not. As far as I know, he is not familiar with the concept under any name.) In any case I had this to say about socialism in a letter to Ted Turner written the day after he interviewed Jimmy Carter. (I think I was too lavish in my praise of Jimmy Carter. I say that mainly because of what Chomsky said about him, if it be true. Also, I am not thrilled about the architectural ideas of Habitat for Humanity.)

From a Letter to Ted Turner

Last night I saw and heard your interview with Jimmy Carter. He certainly is a credit to the office he held, but his recommendation that Soviet agriculture be conducted as free enterprise is flawed. Ultimately a system based on a negative emotion such as greed or even a nearly-neutral emotion such as self-interest, but divorced from charity, will lead to more problems than it will solve, as enumerated in [Chapter 5]. This is virtually a spiritual law.

The main problems with Soviet agriculture, as far as I can tell without having seen them first-hand, are: (i) centralized control by a large, inept, inefficient, self-serving bureaucracy and (ii) cynicism that comes from knowing that the wealth is not distributed equally or even fairly, that the big-city manager is getting a much bigger slice of the pie than the peasant on the land who produces real wealth.

Both of these problems can be overcome by my system. Taking the last first, the farmer will stay up all night with a sick hog if he knows he is getting his fair, equal share and is contributing to the people, not to some ambitious commissar in Moscow who doesn't give a damn about farmers. Moreover, the farmer will produce more than enough if he has complete control over the day-to-day internal operations of his farm, or rather if the farmers have complete, democratic [isocratic] control of the farm since very few farms are operated by only one farmer. Even the farmer's wife had better get a vote and, if a leader (manager) must be chosen, i.e., if the farm cannot be run by consensus, then let that leader be chosen, for a term of fixed length, by unanimous vote or by some truly random process that selects from among those who are willing, and are qualified as determined by education and past performance, to serve. What good is a democracy if everyone still has to put up with an externally chosen boss in nearly every aspect of his daily working life! "No one is good enough to be someone else's master."

The role of centralized control or planning should be to determine statistically how many beets are desired, plus a reasonable surplus, and then apportion the growing of beets according to the abilities, inclinations, and locations of the farms and farmers so as to minimize waste, effort, and inconvenience and to ensure congruence with the natural resources of the nation and with reasonable forecasts and probabilities of good or bad weather. This is a problem in applied mathematics, not in applied politics, and if the right people are allowed to solve it, namely, scientists with no ax to grind, the results should be completely felicitous. The farmer has complete control over how his work is to be accomplished and has only to notify the central-computer database what things he has need of to produce the unit beet. As technology improves, the farmer can spend more and more time practicing the French horn and relegate the drudgery to robots and other machines. He knows he is getting his fair share of all improvements and he is motivated primarily by his love of the land and by his generous feelings toward his fellow man.

This isn't just naive idealism. This is a practical way of making things work and, perhaps, the only practical way.

Houston, Texas

January 6, 1990

LaRouche

At a meeting of the Texas Populist Alliance a follower of Lyndon LaRouche rose to speak and was applauded – even – for his initial remarks; but, when, without making any other statements of substance, he announced his affiliation with LaRouche, he was immediately hooted down. I and a few others protested the denial of his right to speak but to no avail. (The LaRouchites believe many things that make sense, but LaRouche’s own book [9] denies the validity of the three laws of thermodynamics without saying what they are. Also, it refers repeatedly to Dirichlet’s Principle without stating it. When I asked Harley Schlanger, the LaRouchite candidate for Senator from Texas, if he understood the book, he said yes. But when I asked him to state Dirichlet’s Principle, he could not do it. (I can, but most folks wouldn’t enjoy it.) This suggests a little bit of phoniness on the part of LaRouchites, but it is still necessary to repudiate their doctrines one by one. This is actually done in this essay but without identifying the doctrines as those of LaRouche because, in most cases, they are shared by others.)

Others

I have discussed the positions of most candidates one finds on the ballot in the United States. Regrettably, space does not permit a discussion of other political positions here. My position is never represented on the ballot and, I must confess, I resent it, therefore I am sympathetic with other minorities who are never taken sufficiently seriously to have their doctrines repudiated – even. Perhaps in another edition (or a later draft) I will discuss the views of political minorities, especially if they will take the trouble to make me aware of them. (I intend to make myself available to my readers – except in the unlikely event that they are too numerous to carry on discourse with individually.)

Some Questions for People Who Accept Markets

To the conservatives, who do not recognize the need for a complete transformation of society in which an entirely new social-economic-political system is constructed from the ashes of the corrupt and obsolete institutions of the Western world, to the Libertarians, in fact, to anyone who still accepts any form of the current world economic system, I must address a number of questions:

Questions Related to the Global Commons

Question 1: Who owns the sky? The oceans? The other waters (including the aquifers)?

Undoubtedly, most people would agree that no one owns the sky and the oceans, but they may not have deduced that the entire human race holds them in custodianship for the rest of the earth’s population and may use them only in a nondestructive and nonexhaustive manner. Wars have been fought over the use of inland waterways, especially if they provide sustenance, e.g., the River Jericho, the Colorado River. It is not a difficult leap of logic to recognize that the same principles of commonality apply to inland waterways and the oceans.

Question 2. Who owns the natural resources of the earth?

Again, although industrialists would like to draw a distinction, no essential philosophical difference lies between the use of the natural resources of the earth and the sky. The members of species other than our own, presumably, would not be able to exercise their natural proprietorship over the natural gas, say, and rights that cannot be exercised are not valid. Ecologists may wish to correct me on this point.

Question 3. Since all natural resources are bequeathed by Mother Nature to all of humanity in common, are we not all communists in this sense? Also, on the question of health care, as a conservative commentator pointed out recently, “No one will stand for someone else’s child getting better health care than his own. When it comes to healthcare, we are all communists” [quoted loosely].

Question 4. Does posterity have rights?

Actually, we are all communists; and, clearly, posterity does have rights. This is not arguable. We must find a way humanely to restrain those who believe otherwise, as we cannot continue to let them put their “all for us and nothing for anyone else” philosophy into practice – as they are doing currently. It’s impossible to do useful work without exploiting the global commons. Moral people find a way to restore whatever they take, repair whatever damage they inflict. This is a moral axiom. Now, where does that leave the Libertarian, who is willing to let me starve while he exploits my share and my posterity’s share of the global commons! The global commons is Mother Nature’s bequest to all of humanity and other living creatures for all time and in equal shares. The age of conquest (and genocide) is over. No philosopher will defend it as a present-day policy regardless of what wicked or stupid men do.

Question 5. Since posterity cannot express its wishes, how are we to protect the rights of posterity and who will do it? How will posterity’s share of the earth’s resources be used? Who is the rightful guardian of the rights of posterity to the earth’s natural resources?

I guess we all are. I wish to propose an interesting possibility for the edification and amusement of the reader: We all know that we have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. That means we ought to have over one trillion ancestors only fifty generations ago. But the population was smaller formerly not larger, therefore many of our antecedents must have been the same people. Now, suppose my wife and I have (the maximum allowable) two children. These in turn take mates (assuming monogamy, etc., persists) and each couple has two children. If I count my in-laws as part of my posterity, after n generations the number of my posterity is – assuming everyone lives in the youngest two generations, that is, no one dies before his grandparents, everyone reproduces, etc. Now further suppose that the carrying capacity of the earth is ten billion souls. Then, taking P = 10 and solving for n, my posterity will exceed ten billion souls, the carrying capacity of the earth, in only 32 generations, or, allowing 25 years per generation, 800 years. After only 800 years, all of posterity could be my posterity. I wish to have a voice in defending the rights of my descendants!

Question 6. In view of this possibility, how much input should I have in decisions concerning the use of these resources?

I must exercise the veto power at the very least, but this discussion is far from over.

Question 7. In a market system what is to prevent clever players of market games from usurping excessive amounts of the earth’s resources – beyond what is replaceable during their lifetimes? At a recent talk at Rice University, Dr. Herman Daly suggested a tax on natural resources. This won’t work. They taxed coal (probably still do) in Wyoming to provide a resource when the coal is gone (or the market collapses), but coal extraction increased and they spent the money right away rather than saving it for a posterity without coal. It is easy to see that a tax on natural resources won’t work and I’ll leave the reasons as an exercise for the reader. (Daly thanked me cordially for making him look like a moderate. We both laughed.)

Question 8. Isn’t this the same as deficit spending?

I hope I have made that abundantly clear in Chapter 2.

Question 9. In a system that permits competition for wealth and power what is to prevent successful players from damaging the sky, the oceans, etc., which are owned in common by all species? – especially if the government does not have strong, extensive, and expensive regulatory powers, which none of us seem to want?

Some Ethical Questions Concerning the Money Game

Question 10. Whereas they produce no food, clothing, shelter, health care, etc., how do businesspeople justify their lavish consumption? Is this ethical?

They imagine that they produce jobs for those who actually do produce the things we need to live. This shows a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of an economy. The time spent on the job – although regrettably excessive – and the money earned are the least important factors in the economic equation. The products that sustain life and at what cost to the environment are the real issues. Jobs are an anachronism – as shown earlier.

Question 11. Why should people who produce nothing have more than those who produce useful things?

Good question.

Question 12. Why must I, for whom I feel qualified to speak, spend a non-negligible percent of my time engaged in activities that provide remuneration, which are, perforce, dull and boring since useful and interesting activities offer little or no remuneration, as society is set up to prevent me from getting out of the money game entirely. Even if I provide everything I need to live by my own efforts on my own land, I must come up with property taxes? Why don’t so-called Libertarians recognize that by supporting any materialistic economic-social-political system they force me into remunerative activities, which is the opposite of libertarianism – it is slavery? Why do members of the Libertarian Party shun isopluty (equal sharing of wealth), which they imagine will lead to totalitarianism (all societies that tried to institute isopluty were totalitarian to begin with) according to some magical and unexplainable supernatural law, whereas they embrace materialism, which is guaranteed to lead to totalitarianism according to the simple logic employed in this essay, which doesn’t resort to anything unknown or mysterious? Why must I concern myself with money (to hold my own in an improper game) simply because you insist upon living your life under a cloak of greed and fear?

Question 13. Why should a talent for making money allow people to control more of the earth’s surface, and the ecology dependent upon it, and influence the affairs of their communities more than people with talent for natural philosophy, art, music and other nobler pursuits? How will you prevent this from happening without abandoning materialism?

Question 14. In a world where the average consumable wealth (on a sustainable basis) is barely enough to avoid misery (as I showed, in Chapter 2, was probably the case for this world, namely, ten billion people living on an energy budget that is likely to be less than ten terawatts per year (1 kilowatt per person) because of the exhaustion of high-grade fossil fuel reserves), how can you justify letting billions live in misery and poverty – even starve to death, simply because the free-enterprise market systems permit inequality in consumption?

Question 15. Why should we accept free markets when we know the rule about all players having equal strength is never satisfied?

Question 16. How can you justify selling the time of one’s life for money? Can’t you see the other contradictions in the institution of employment, cf., allowing the extinction of an entire species to save the jobs of only seventy workers, who will soon be out of work even if they do kill all the spotted owls? Keeping a useless military base open and operational because the nonmilitary residents of its community depend on it for a livelihood. For that matter, what distinguishes those hard working people from welfare recipients?

Question 17. How will you prevent monopolies like the one Bill Gates will have achieved as soon as he drives software for the Macintosh off of the shelves of nearly every software retailer? (He already has reduced the space allotted to software that runs on the Mac to less than 10% and, probably, closer to 5%.) I suspect that he employs illegal and immoral methods, but I can’t prove it. This is not an accusation, so forget about a libel suit, Bill.

Question 18. If you are opposed to the use of violence to achieve political goals, how can you justify large multi-national corporations that sometimes exercise more tyranny than sovereign states?

Question 19. Why would Libertarians imagine that dematerialism (defined below to coincide with the reforms advocated by the author) involves violence when, by definition, dematerialism requires consensus and voluntary institutional change?

Question 20. Why don’t Libertarians recognize that by supporting artificial economic contingency they force virtually everyone including themselves to participate in remunerative activities to the exclusion of activities that are interesting and useful and permit us to get into the flow of life whereas they do not provide remuneration, e.g., spontaneous scientific and mathematical investigations, poetry, music (art is useful; it teaches scruples and satisfies essential spiritual needs)? Those who tolerate the playing of the money game, which makes life a game and dominates this strange and improper so-called game of life (now virtually congruent with the money game down to seemingly insignificant flirtations in the sexual arena), force others to play the money game even if those others despise it.

Question 21. If Libertarians are willing to use force to prevent people from murdering their oppressors, why are they not willing to use force to prevent people from usurping a disproportionately large share of posterity by procreation – especially when those usurpers are motivated by a desire to obtain converts to their religion from among their own pre-reason children, who are easy prey to fallacies, superstitions, and myths?

Questions Related to Social Problems

The plain fact is that no political philosophy discussed publicly other than the philosophy presented in this essay, which has been discussed publicly on a few occasions but only in Houston, (and to a very slight extent socialism) even begins to address the hundreds of social problems from which we all suffer, whereas this philosophy is guaranteed to solve virtually every social problem. No one can stand up to me in protracted debate. (In view of the life-and-death importance of the subject, it does not seem excessive to spend one week in debate.) Other political systems of which I am aware don’t even make a pretense of solving social problems. They are wrong and worthless.

Question 22. Why is Libertarian “philosophy”, for example, so ineffective in solving social problems such as those listed in Appendix II? Would not my philosophy, on the face of it, seem more complete as well as more reasonable, beautiful, and practical? Of course Libertarians and other conservatives will answer that my philosophy is completely impractical, but their “proof” will be the recent history of Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, and China. But, this is no proof at all as there were no controls and the armed might and expensive propaganda (television, motion pictures, and pseudo-music extolling consumption) of the West was set against these nations to ensure the failure of whatever social experiments were tried. If the West had said, “What a beautiful idea; let’s see what we can do to increase the chance of its success”, that would be an entirely different matter – not a proof but a reasonable plausibility argument if these systems still failed with every aid we could afford to provide them. The same question applies to any conservative political ideology. Most conservatives, however, don’t seem to have any philosophy at all. Aside from some vague notions and prejudices, they don’t seem to think anything!

Question 23. And, by the way, how do you intend to address the population problem? By denying its existence?

Question 24. How will you prevent chemical companies, say, who are in competition with chemical companies in other nations with different laws or with unscrupulous companies in their own nation from giving themselves the advantage of making less effort to protect the environment and to protect the public from hazardous wastes and other forms of pollution, as much as they would like to do it, when they may actually be driven out of business if they make that extra effort, which most of their competitors avoid in one way or the other? Certainly, allowing emissions has only a minimum effect on the value of the property of the polluter. Small reductions in pollution can lead to economic savings, but we can prove that, in a market economy, it is still more efficient economically to pollute unacceptably than not to pollute beyond acceptable limits.

Question 25. What do you intend to do about the homeless, the disenfranchised, the welfare class, the working poor, the millions of Americans who are not covered by adequate health insurance, and the intolerable conditions in the Third World?

Question 26. How do you intend to address the intolerable injustice of two legal systems – one for the rich, another for the poor – and what about the incredible disparity in legal clout between corporations and ordinary individuals?

Question 26. How are you going to eliminate the threat of war while retaining materialism?

Question 27. In view of the high probability that the winner of campaigns for elected office will continue to be the candidate who spends the most money on advanced scientific marketing techniques, how do you intend to restore democracy to America?

Question 28. Finally, and here is a little social problem for the rich, how are you going to protect yourselves from an enraged “criminal” (soon to become “terrorist”) class? Do you wish to be a murderer? Do you wish to participate in another holocaust that will dwarf all past atrocities put together? On the other hand, do you wish to be murdered in your sleep?

The questions for conservatives have been asked or could be asked of Libertarians, who claim to be conservative only in economy; but, in reality, are conservative in their social outlook and their lack of compassion for the losers of the rigged game they – the losers – have been forced to play by the armed force of the state, i.e., by tyranny backed up by the biggest and most expensive lies ever manufactured and supported by technology beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell. Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, would have been impressed – if I may borrow a Chomskian witticism. However, almost nobody in America can fail to be at least slightly embarrassed by these questions – except that shame has been virtually banished from their emotional repertoires by the multi-billion dollar feel-good-about-yourself personal-salvationist industry.

Dematerialism as a Political Theory

Isms

We are not fond of -isms, whether it be Communism, Socialism, Paulism, or Wayburnism. It will not help to call it an -ology. Isms, if I may abuse a suffix slightly, seem to put a box around a set of ideas and paralyze subsequent thought. It is as though one could bottle wisdom. I am not particularly happy with my choice of the term dematerialism to describe a specific notion, let alone an entire philosophy, despite my cautionary remarks. Nor did I like the term decompetitionism when that was my term of choice. Actually, I am not against competition in every context. It is important to distinguish between competition in what I call proper games, like tennis, gin rummy, and baseball (if the strike zone were the same for all hitters and pitchers), and competition in improper games, like business.

[Note in proof 8-6-95, revised 5-12-96: Baseball is not quite a proper game as a pitch to a veteran superstar will be called a ball, but would be called a strike for a rookie. This is not in the rule book. One is reminded of the rookie pitcher who complained to the umpire that many of his pitches to the great Rogers Hornsby were being called balls even though they seemed to be decidedly in the strike zone. The rookie was informed by the veteran umpire, “When you throw a strike Mr. Hornsby will let you know.” This, of course, is a de facto rule as opposed to an ad jure rule, which is improper. In my essay “On Sports”, which may be found in a collection of my essays (eventually), I will discuss the introduction of an automatic, balls-and-strikes caller, employing technology readily available in 1995. This would not, I repeat not, put an umpire out of work.]

Despite our dislike of -isms, we find it useful to supply names for things. Somehow even knowing the name of a plant increases our joy in contemplating it, although a rose by any other name would still be a rose. In this essay I have taken my rejection of materialism, i.e., artificial economic contingency, defined to be the notion that our personal material well-being should depend on our behavior, combined it with a few additional ideas that I believe are necessary for the survival of humanity, and named the personal point of view derived therefrom “dematerialism”, for better or for worse. I am not satisfied with the term, and I have seriously considered changing the name to “anti-materialism” or “non-materialism”. (Lately I have been toying with the term natural economy.) Perhaps I should just refer to “the reforms recommended by me”. (Calling my ideas Wayburnism is more humble than calling my ideas something fancy like dematerialism because the term Wayburnism reminds us all that these ideas are, after all, only my ideas. But no one is going to buy that line of thought, so I had better stick with dematerialism. Nevertheless, when people ask me whether I am a Democrat or a Republican, I always answer, “Neither, I’m a Wayburnian.”) Hopefully, no one will wrap these ideas into a neat little package and apply them thoughtlessly. Just as we must reject leadership in the usual sense, we must reject the idea that anyone can do our thinking for us. God forbid that we should resolve our conflicts in living by referring to a book whose authors are dead and cannot elucidate the meaning of what they wrote. Even as I write these words I am undecided as to what to name the theory or the essay. If I weren’t concerned about someone else naming the theory for me, I might be more strongly inclined to give it no name at all.

It is entirely possible that ideas identical to those described in this essay have been presented in the past in another context or even recently. I have not read everything. I have not read Saint-Simon or William Morris. It has been so long since I read Thomas More that I remember nothing of what he said. I don’t think it matters. [Note in proof (1-24-96). Recently I reread Utopia [10]. I was horrified, but More never heard Billie Holliday sing – even. For readers who don’t know what I mean by that cryptic remark, I am speculating merely that one can learn more philosophy from great art than from great philosophical writings, if any exist.] No matter what I hear or read I have to figure it all out for myself all over again anyway. There is no substitute for independent thought. With this apology I continue to discuss what I regretfully have chosen to call dematerialism.

Dematerialism

Introduction to Dematerialism

Definition (Dematerialism). Dematerialism is shorthand for a collection of reforms that are intended to prevent gradients (differences from person to person) in status from existing or arising. (Status, you remember, is a technical term chosen to subsume (i) wealth, (ii) power and negotiable influence, and (iii) negotiable fame.) Dematerialism might just as well be called anti-materialism or non-materialism or something else or nothing. (Perhaps it would be better if no term at all were employed, but that would be inconvenient for writers.)

We must abandon materialism as defined above. People must voluntarily stop competing for status. This means, perforce, that all human beings will enjoy equal status. The type of fame that a great artist or scientist might accrue could not be exchanged for power or wealth, therefore it is not what I mean by ‘status’. (Most people say they would like this, but no one else would! Does anyone else see the irony in this? I quickly point out that I am not asking what others would like; but, clearly, many people, even self-styled conservatives, would prefer to live in a world without materialism. We may even have a majority, especially if it’s explained properly.)

We must stabilize our population. I believe these reforms will facilitate a stable population without coercion (or famine, war, and epidemic disease). People tend to have fewer children when they expect all of them to live and when they do not intend to rely upon children to support their old age or assist them in their middle years. More importantly, we need a strong quasi-steady-state economy (defined in Chapter 3), which cannot be achieved without a stable population. Also, it would be desirable to replace giant national bureaucracies by nonintrusive part-time communicators to manage relations between (among) small decentralized communities that barely recognize national borders but rely upon practically nothing that is not within walking distance. The main business of communities, once they are self-sufficient, or nearly so, is to cooperate with other communities in managing the ecosystems wherein they reside, which, normally, will be much larger than the area occupied by a single community.

The minimal changes required to save the world, then, are equality of wealth and power in a quasi-steady-state world (with a stabilized or shrinking human population). To achieve these goals, I suggest the following:

1. The elimination of materialism, which might be achieved most easily by abandoning money and other fiduciary certificates that facilitate the hoarding of (surrogate) wealth that can be converted into real wealth as long as people believe that it can. Abandoning business, trade, commerce, “free” enterprise employing wage slaves (anyone who has sold the time of his life for money whether or not he enjoys his work), capitalism, or whatever you want to call it.

2. Worker custodianship, in equal shares, of the means of production. (I have not used the word syndicalism to describe dematerialism because syndicalism sometimes connotes trade unionism, which requires conspiracies among workers engaged in similar activities but in different enterprises. In this system, trade unions would be unnecessary; but, as in syndicalism, workers would own the means of production.) I subscribe to Schumacher’s view that “small is beautiful” [11]. I hope that the gigantic factories will disappear to be replaced by production facilities that can fit in a two-car garage, say, and need be staffed by at most a half a dozen workers.

3. The abandonment of “leadership” and traditional management and the replacement of leaders and managers by communicators selected randomly. (People who are emulated by others or whose suggestions are solicited frequently and followed voluntarily are not the “leaders” I have in mind. Elected officials, corporate and military officers, and demagogues exercise power over people who do not wish to have that power exercised. This is tyranny. Perhaps I should not refer to it as leadership, but that’s what it’s called in common parlance.)

4. The replacement of a corrupt and incomprehensible system of laws based on taboos, superstitions, and lies by rational morals derived from moral axioms and abandoning the institutions of punishment and revenge. The adoption of the Minimal Proper Religion discussed in this essay as a social contract.

5. Reducing the size of government to practically nothing.

6. Establishing small decentralized, nearly self-sufficient eco-communities with planned economies lightly coupled to one another (by single-track rail or by something even simpler, e.g., man-drawn barges) to effect a few minor economies of scale.

First physicist: “I’m going to really get back in shape this year by hauling the St. Clair Shores / Wyandotte barge.”

Second physicist: “You’ll never make the team. I know two dozen guys from our lab alone who applied months ago. And they’ve been pumping iron (working out with weights) all year!”).

7. Residences and residential property of equal or nearly equal value per capita. The notion of selecting new residences by lot every few years has some merit, but I prefer the notion of “the old family place” passed on by lot to one of at most two children. New concepts of family should be expected, however. (Waterfront property should be reserved for industrial or recreational commons, i.e., owned in common and used in shares.)

The results of these reforms should be:

1. Replacement of employment by involvement, replacement of coercion by volition, replacement of greed by generosity, replacement of fear by love, and replacement of ignorance by knowledge.

2. Renewed respect for leisure and a vast improvement in the quality of life such that the word education would take on a useful meaning (actually its dictionary meaning).

3. Quite naturally, the equilibration of wealth and power, hopefully with sufficient abundance of life for everyone, but not the lavish and wasteful lifestyles of middle-class Americans.

4. The establishment of a strong quasi-steady-state environment.

5 Nearly universal happiness until the sun burns out or a similar astronomical catastrophe occurs. I believe I have proved in my essay “On Space Travel and Research”, in Vol. II of my collected papers [4], the inadvisability of attempting to preserve the human race beyond such a time.

I hope no one rejects these ideas without showing in detail why they are wrong. If we do what is only “realistic”, we may end up doing something that is useless or harmful. Of course, no one knows what the actual results of these reforms might be, therefore I suggest introducing changes one at a time to anticipate and deal with unintended effects. No one can predict the future!

A Natural Economy

The Parable of the Shipwrecked Brothers

A man A and his brother B were marooned on an isolated island, such as Jules Verne’s Mysterious Isle. A, wishing to survive, began to extract a living from the earth. His brother, B, did nothing except wander through the lush forests of the island. When harvest time came and A had built suitable shelter against the approaching harsh weather; he shared everything equally with his brother without conditions or reproaches – because he was a generous man (perhaps a follower of the Sermon on the Mount), and one’s brother is, after all, one’s brother. (To be perfectly honest, the thought did not escape him that it might be unwise to create a grievance against himself in such a remote region far from the courts and the laws of man.) What do you think of the behavior of the brothers so far?

The industrious brother, A, prospered and the “lazy” brother, B, continued his idle wanderings with A’s tacit approval. One day A fell dangerously ill with malaria. Normally, he would not have survived; but, as it happened, his brother, B, in his wanderings, had discovered a patch of quinine and B engaged his skill in chemistry, learned years ago at the university, to save A’s life. Clearly, then, it is impossible to evaluate a person’s worth until after his life ends and, perhaps, not for hundreds of years after his life ends – if ever.

This is an example of a small isolated natural economy; but, after all, we are all brothers and sisters and this small isolated circumstance should be the natural state of the world. The people who claim this is inconsistent with human nature are claiming much more complete knowledge of human nature (under every circumstance and with every sort of upbringing) than anyone possesses about anything. I have not dared to make such an aggressive assumption about any hypothetical world I have considered. Moreover, I would surmise that such people, i.e., detractors of my view of humanity, imagine it is reasonable to be happy while others are miserable (in contradiction with my Fundamental Premise). Perhaps they find the misery of others, particularly members of “undesirable” races, strangely and perversely satisfying; but, undoubtedly, this is an unfair assessment. If I have guessed rightly, though, I would ask them to look deeply into their own “hearts”, as the metaphor goes. I propose that one’s reaction to the Fundamental Premise divides people into two distinct classes – from my view the only useful class distinction we have. For the sake of convenience, I shall refer to people for whom the Fundamental Premise is true as people of good will. I’d rather not name the other class.

Description of a Natural Economy

In a natural economy people are motivated intrinsically to do what interests them or what gives them great pleasure by being of use to those whom they love. Either mode of behavior is admittedly consistent with self-interest. Why would one wish to act on any other basis? People are motivated by love and generosity (as opposed to greed and fear) – sometimes the love is of other people; often it is the love of a pleasurable activity such as an act of creation. No one accepts compensation for anything one gives, does, or says. That would create contingency, which diminishes personal freedom, and, in turn, happiness and the enjoyment of life, according to the theory of Deci and Ryan [12], which obtains in , a hypothetical world similar to this world. Other aspects of status would be rejected as compensation quite as readily as wealth. On the other hand, excellence is bound to be noticed and so long as no one uses that recognition for an extrinsic purpose, I see no reason why some people might not be noted for talent, genius, good behavior, honor, nobility, friendliness, or just being good company.

It should be noticed immediately that in a natural economy it is impossible for large accumulations of “paper” wealth to occur; moreover, wealth is guaranteed to be divided essentially equally. While one man may own an expensive tool – a grand piano or a microscope – his housing, clothing, consumption of food, availability of health care, and access to information are bound to be roughly equivalent to that of every other person, especially if the infrastructure is in place to ship essential natural resources from resource-rich regions to resource-poor regions under a weak world-federalist organization, say. In a natural economy, political power and fame tend to be distributed evenly too. Power over other people would be unthinkable.

Of course, in a natural economy people will still be faced with natural economic contingency such as drought, forest fires, and floods; but, with proper planning and sharing of resources (with no strings attached), things ought to be much better than in an economy where people must cope with artificial economic contingency as well.

A Quick Sketch of the Ideas that Led to this Book

Excess wealth leads to excess political power, moreover the path of materialism leads directly to doom because materialism promotes consumption in a world of scarcity where stockpiles of high-grade energy are being depleted rapidly as shown in Chapter 2; therefore, money and commerce must be abandoned as soon as nearly everyone wants to have them abandoned. Whereas it may be possible to eliminate materialism, as defined above, without abolishing money, clearly materialism cannot survive when money no longer exists and all goods are free, which, incidentally, would eliminate a host of inconveniences. In a dematerialist (anti-materialist or non-materialistic, natural) society, housing will be distributed equitably. Food, health care, communications, tools, household goods, clothing, and the few standard luxuries that take the drudgery out of life will be free, with some temporary limitations. In a scarcity situation, we, all of us, might employ temporarily some sort of rationing, implemented by means of a community credit card that accounted for material goods individually to discourage excessive consumption and hoarding – not without some danger. Goods might be denominated in currency units (perhaps emergy units, cf., Chapter 2); but, to facilitate the necessary change, it might be better to abandon the concept of money altogether. In a non-scarcity situation, we might dispense with individual accounting. In an amusing twist of fate, former members of the business community might be well-suited to help us accomplish these goals by applying techniques (such as real estate appraisal) that were intended originally only to make money. Thus, help might come from an unexpected quarter.

If our inclinations become more spiritual, presumably because of education in the humanities and exposure to great art – or, if our inclinations become, at least, more rational, we might decide to use the savings effected by eliminating business and improving technology to reduce our impact on the environment rather than to increase our material abundance. Always, we should seek innovative social reforms that encourage us to consume less of every resource.

Leadership, which constitutes, a priori, the abridgment of the freedom of the nonleaders by the leaders, leads to materialism because many of us must respond by trying to increase our own share of the power over our own lives. Also, leaders are well-placed to appropriate an unfair share of material wealth to themselves and their friends. Moreover, power corrupts! Therefore, let us reject leadership and give our children the education they need to take charge of their own lives, rather than a twentieth-century education that inculcates docility, stupidity, and conformity; and, thus, prepares the graduates of today’s elementary schools, high-schools, colleges, professional schools, and graduate schools to be dominated. Leadership was discussed in detail in Chapter 6, “On Tyranny”.

Since big government leads to bureaucratic tyranny, we shall privatize all but a minimal government – hopefully a government that consists of reasonably small and independent committees formed on an ad hoc basis to take care of such needs of the community as may, from time to time, require concerted action such as building a bridge. To prevent the rise of “natural leaders”, it might be wise to select public servants by a random or quasi-random process for reasonably short terms of service or, perhaps, until they are voted out of office, whichever comes first, after which they are exempt from public service for a reasonably long period of time. The Freedom Axiom guarantees the right to refuse to serve. In a natural society, when public service ceases to be a profession or a career, most people should be able to gain spiritually from failure at one or another task to which one has been appointed accidentally and relieved of by popular request. Everyone fails at something; no one can do everything. Natural people treat failure as useful information.

It is easy to see (by a simple process of elimination) that private enterprises should be owned in equal shares by their workers with all participants sharing power equally. It seems reasonable to select organizers and communicators as above. Perhaps neighbors, consumers, and other stakeholders should be empowered as well, provided, of course, that conflicts of interest do not arise. More details are given later.

Since our material well-being will be independent of what we do, no one can coerce us or exploit us. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for one person to acquire power over another. People who wish to dissent will have the same access to the media and the minds of children in school as everyone else. The idea of this system is to replace coercion, hierarchy, and privilege with freedom, equality, and justice by turning the way we think about wealth inside out. Dematerialism is really nothing more than faith in the essential goodness of man, for which, I suppose, we will need to provide some sort of scientific proof. I find it amazing that people believe in God, but they don’t believe in Goodness.

Another Quick Sketch of the Same Ideas from a Different Angle

Equality of Wealth Essential: The Inconsistency of Scarcity Economics with the American Dream

Quite obviously, the average American is strongly disposed to believe that political and economic systems involving equal incomes and equal wealth are guaranteed to fail because of human nature. This, after all, is the official party line with which he has been indoctrinated since birth. I have indicated a number of reasons for taking the contrary view. I believe I proved the opposite view in the last chapter, therefore I would like to consider the matter settled. I believe the previous discussion and proofs should satisfy a reasonable person. (I proved the Fundamental Theorem in Chapter 10. In the preface, I gave a good plausibility argument for the Fundamental Premise, which, in Chapter 4, we agreed to accept as an article of faith in the absence of a rigorous proof.) Unfortunately, we have been brainwashed to the point where even very intelligent people lack what used to be called common sense! Therefore, we shall state a few more reasons why we reject materialism even in this next-to-last chapter.

The type of economics we learned from Samuelson [13] is scarcity economics. It assumes that nature and society cannot provide enough emergy to satisfy everyone and that people will compete for what is available. And yet, the establishment teaches small children that, if they stay in school and behave according to accepted norms, they will still be able to live the “American Dream”. The establishment has done a pretty good job of spreading this idea beyond the schools because our borders are besieged by thousands of illegal immigrants who believe they have a reasonably good shot at the American Dream. They are willing to risk their lives for that chance, which they must imagine is better than it can possibly be.

But, haven’t we forgotten that this is a scarcity economic system! Not everyone can live the American Dream. Actually if more than about 20% of the world’s population did, the rest would starve to death as shown in Chapter 2. The American Dream can be shown to involve vast overconsumption of scarce resources. But, there is no danger of the American Dream coming to all of America. We must have poor people who will continue to be exploited as they have always been. From this disparity between the rich and the poor – not just the rich and poor of our own country – comes increasing social disorder. The person who shoots your wife and takes her car doesn’t earn as much as do you. Whose fault is that? The system itself and its propaganda is bound to engender enormous conflicts – not just between the rich and poor of our nation but between the rich nations of the world and the poor nations.

[Explain to me just why you think you are entitled to consume more than someone else. What was that? Now, you don’t believe that, do you? I didn’t think so. In any case, you would not fare well in protracted debate with me. I hope you didn’t think we were going to debate in sound bites. We are not running for President of the United States; this is important!]

In Chapter 2, we showed that a population of about ten billion human beings can afford to spend about 1 kilowatt per capita. This is more than three times the subsistence expenditure of 0.3 kilowatts per capita and, probably, will permit adequate food, clothing, shelter, comfort heating and cooling, global communications, health care, etc. (We must assume that a 1 kilowatt per capita society is possible if we wish to consider the sufficiency part of the Fundamental Theorem proved; i.e., this assumption is true in hypothetical world, , described in Chapters 1, 4, and 10.) Of course, if someone exceeds this average, someone must do with less and conflicts are bound to arise. Thus, we may assume the necessity of equality of wealth as essentially proven. “One can never prove a theorem too many times, especially if no one believes it.”

No One Who Has a Job Is Free

We like to brag about freedom in America. I never cease to be astounded at how readily the American people swallow this absurdity. If you have a job, you must do as someone else wishes – whether the plain fact of the matter is evident or not. (Perhaps you think you are “empowered”.) If we are not free when we are at work, we are not free people. Period. But, the theory of intrinsic motivation shows that autonomous workers will produce effectively. We can replace employment by more humane and efficient institutions.

People Will Work without Jobs

“The Parable of the Two Ship-Wrecked Brothers” provides a scenario wherein people have lived successfully without jobs or, in fact, any type of artificial economic contingency whatever. It is easy to extend this to an entire community.

Immorality of Accepting Rewards

The Founding Fathers hoped to make America a nation where no one would have to violate the dictates of his conscience to live. We have fallen far short of that goal. For example, many people consider it immoral to accept a reward or any compensation whatsoever for anything done, given, or said. I believe Jesus was one such person. I know that I am another. And, yet, it appears that I am forced to violate my (proper) religious convictions – at least occasionally. Lately, though, the idea has entered my mind to do as Jesus advised and refuse payments for what I produce. I wonder what would happen. Could this be the answer? To follow such an honorable policy for an extended time would require tremendous faith in ultimate Goodness. (Also, what would my wife say?!)

As far as non-monetary awards go, I would like to cite two cases where, apparently, awards poisoned intrinsic motivation. (1) In 1987, I won the Ted Peterson Award for the best paper written by a student in the field of Computers and Systems Technology (CAST). This was presented by the CAST Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. (The award included a $500 check, but I think the money was too small an amount to have had the effect I am about to describe.) Since winning that award I have not written an original paper in that field. (2) In his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman [14], Richard Feynman tells the reader that, after he had a one-man show of his graphic art, Maurice Tuchman said, “You know, you’re never going to draw again.” When Feynman expressed surprise, Tuchman explained, “Because you’ve had a one-man show, and you’re only an amateur.” For all practical purposes, Feynman tells us, this turned out to be true. Naturally, I shall have much more to say about awards – both monetary and non-monetary. See, for example, my essay “On Awards” in my collected essays [4], if it becomes available. (As long as I am able, I will accommodate people who write me to request essays.)

The World Owes Us a Living

Recently, I completed a year as a visiting professor at the rather new chemical engineering department of an old Historically Black University. Out of a class of 20 juniors studying separation techniques (such as distillation) I was forced (by my own numerical recipe for determining grades) to fail five students who did not have the foggiest idea of what was going on. I don’t know whether they had insufficient time to study because of large course loads and outside jobs (all too common in this university) or they really have no talent for the profession of chemical engineering, which, by the way, is very difficult and demands the best and the brightest – with sometimes catastrophic results in case incompetents slip through the degree and licensing process. In any case, I encountered serious indignation from some students who received Ds and Fs. They went to the dean and demanded a hearing before a special panel, which they received. Now, suppose I was a lousy teacher. Then, they could have learned the material from the book. (Very little material was covered.) Suppose it was a lousy book. In that case, they could have learned from another book or from each other. The dean, who is Black, refused to change their grades despite the recommendation of the panel.

My interpretation of these events is as follows: The students recognize that the world owes them a living. I would be the last person to employ the old saw and claim it didn’t. After all, they stayed in school; they stayed off drugs; they paid their tuition; and, probably, they went to church (which could be part of their problem). Their local society has virtually contracted with them to provide, if they do all these things, the American Dream – a house, car, clothing, jewelry, luxuries, and plenty of dough.

So far, so good. The world owes them a living – one way or the other – either because society owes everyone an equal share of the social dividend or because they were in effect promised it by their local society. But, if they are to attain the American Dream, they must have jobs with good pay – presumably in chemical engineering. But, if they are to get jobs with good pay in chemical engineering, they must get degrees and reasonably high grades – because, nowadays, companies are loath to hire C students. (Of course, this has resulted in grade inflation. I have read that the average grade at Harvard is B minus. Wait a minute. Everyone knows the average grade is C.) Therefore, the course material is viewed as a barrier toward achieving their goals in life rather than as an end in itself. They try to get the best possible grade while learning the least possible course material.

Now, I agree that the world owes them a living, but it doe

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