Professor Wolff presents current events and draws connections to the past to highlight the machinations of our global economy. He helps us to understand political and corporate policy, organization of labor, the distribution of goods and services, and challenges us to question some of the deepest foundations of our society.
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Open vote means the right of people, in case they wish, to step out of their anonymity as voters in the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
Vote of correction means an open vote of confirmation or rejection at any, desired by people time from the continuous election process with the non-cyclic democracy.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the number of mandates is changeable. It is defined by the sum from the number of anonymous cyclic votes, combined with the number of open and correction votes at any time from the continuous election process.
Threshold of trust of an elected via voting candidate in elective office means half of the number of people who have voted for them minus one vote.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the duration of the mandate of an elected via voting candidate is discontinued with the expiry of the allotted for the mandate time or with the reaching of the threshold of trust.
The list of candidates in elective office is bulk of information of free public access with data about each candidate in elective office. There, at any time from the election process, each voter and each public organization can add candidates or withdraw their trust from the proposed by them candidates in elective office.
The open-type voters have the right of a correction vote at any time from the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
The vote of correction is as follows:
1. Open vote against one’s own choice, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process.
2. Open vote in favour of another candidate from the list of names, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
3. Open vote in favour of a chosen by other voters candidate, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust, distancing the newly-elected from the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the current updated rating of a candidate in elective office for the purpose of their positioning towards the threshold of trust must be freely and publicly accessible in the list of candidates at any time from the continuous election process…
I agree with Prof Wolff that a worker coop will provide stability and responsibility, though not so much wealth, as a means to bridge the gap to basic income since computers and robots are taking over much of the job market; something that the Indians and Chinese will also have to cope with. They are enjoying a booming business now, but they also will start to feel the pinch.
Professor Rick Wolff is a master teacher.
What made Henry George different? His analysis of history and of societal arrangements and institutions identified the fundamental ill as monopoly privilege. Monopoly privilege in the control of land and natural resources had survived every introduction of new forms of production and the ownership of business enterprise.
The settlement of people into one place required rules for allocating access to what nature provided. Early on, the rules were more or less made by consensus. Over time, however, every society succumbed to hierarchy. The laws were codified to benefit hereditary privilege and an elite that extracted as rent a significant portion of what others produced (without producing anything in exchange). This system of landlordism lasted until the expansion of trade between peoples and the technologies (e.g., shipping) that facilitated this trade. Peasants were displaced from the land to permit the raising of cattle and sheep. Thus, agrarian landlordism was expanded to include commercial landlordism. Other innovations followed. Added to agrarian-commercial landlordism came industrial, financial and corporate landlordism. The entire system secured and protected monopoly privilege, rewarding rentier elites over those who actually produce goods or provide services.
The solution Henry George came to was to use the system of public revenue to eliminate the potential to profit from monopoly by taxing rents. Every parcel or tract of land has some potential annual rental value. This value is societally-created and rightfully belongs to society to pay for public goods and services. Patents and copyrights also yield unearned rents to the owners. Others sources of unearned rents include the licenses to control frequencies of the broadcast spectrum, licenses to extract fish and other resources from the seas, and take-off and landing slots at airports. Capital goods and the income generated from the use of capitals goods, on the other hand, are individually-created and should be exempt from taxation. Make these changes to the system of public revenue, George argued, and we are on our way to a full employment society, a fair distribution of income and wealth and the end to generational poverty.
Economists who have specialized in the study of economic cycles have discovered a strong causal relation between credit-fueled, speculation-driven land markets and an 18-year cycle of boom-to-bust. Read Mason Gaffney (emeritus professor of economics at the University of California) for the details.
There are, as Professor Wolff explains, a long list of arguments against corporate privileges under law. Cooperative enterprises serve the interests of members as well as the community in which the enterprise operates. A real problem for cooperatives is how to raise the funds necessary to create the capital goods required to efficiently produce what the enterprise is formed to produce. The current banking system has not served either cooperatives or small businesses very well. Monetary reforms such as Ellen Brown are calling for every state to establish a public bank to serve the needs of the non-corporate players. Ellen Brown has taken a page from the mutualist program of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who sought to organize workers into cooperatives to counter the rentier elite dominating France in the early 19th century.
Getting from where we are to where we need to be has proven to be almost impossible. Professor Wolff is a voice in the wilderness challenging the status quo. He is not alone. Joseph Stiglitz, former economist at the World Bank is another. Too few of our politicians are paying attention. Their ability to run for office and get elected depends on money, and the money comes from those who most benefit by maintenance of the status quo.
Would term limits help? Perhaps. Another, far more radical solution, is to eliminate campaigns for legislatures and elections altogether. Instead, anyone who is willing to serve in a legislative body would take what amounts to a civil service examination to demonstrate competency to serve. Their name would then go into a lottery. When a seat in the legislative body becomes available, someone is chosen to fill the seat for a single term of office (say, four years). After his or her term is completed, the person returns to private life. Delegated democracy and privilege is replaced by actual participatory democracy.