The law of marginal utility comes into play. There is some point at which the amount of property a rich guy owns is more than his family can use. So the incentive should be for him to list the property for sale and increase inventory in the market. However, the provision of housing is a valuable service that invites rent revenue. This has been tradition for a very long time.
The issue is that some people own property while others do not. Economic inequality is extreme. The government regulations that make the financial system what it is (capitalism) causes those who save to get work-free money as they invest. The more you save the more “wellfare” you get from interest and dividends. Wealthy people were better savers and once they reach the “break even point” they earn enough work-free money to pay for their taxes. Most people pay far more in taxes then they make from their investments, but the super rich get far more from their investments then they pay in taxes.
How should things be? People should have roughly the same net worth or own the same value of property. Such a balanced world ownership structure would provide security to all individuals and would be a basis for reciprocal voluntary trade. However, as I said. The laws are not designed to encourage balance. Those who work for the government or get the government to pay them a profit (after taxes) win, while those who don’t have access to a portion of government spending (restaurant workers, retail workers, ect.) are paid pittance and taxed to boot.
In today’s technological world we should be able to know where useful government run organizations are receiving their funding from. Crowd funding technology should allow individuals to choose how their money is spent. Maybe I want to support new energy infrastructure, self driving cars, lane balanced freeways, or an accountable/transparent financial system RATHER THAN war spending. Using democracy to elect and Washington’s process to make laws has lead to extreme decay. Having those politician choose how to borrow money in our name and spend on our behalf is involuntary socialism. Crowd funding is the new better way to do it.
It may be that there is economic inequality today. There may be people who need property more than those who currently own it. There should be a system that gives those people who need property the means to give value to those who own property in exchange for the property. Laws should treat every individual human the same and treat them right. Treating people the same regardless of how much property they have amassed is human rights. Why should those who “qualify” for government programs and those who “invest” get work-free money while everyone else is left out? Just because it is tradition to have unequal treatment and we (each of use) have been promised unequal treatment (benefits) doesn’t mean it is right. It only means we are afraid to loose it.
Our culture is extremely money focused. We all have to meet our financial obligations and we all think in terms of scarcity of money and the need to secure our incoming money flows for the future. We all want to game the currently legal capitalism/democracy system to our benefit, which, by definition will “immorally” take income from those who earn it. If we have not saved enough to “immorally” take income from company workers with investments yet then we try to use government to “immorally” take income from those who earn it and give it to ourselves and our family. “We live in a wheel where everyone steals.” -Bush (the band) Our money system governs us.
Our money system governs us. Regulations (whether devised by federal/state governments or corporations are implemented by hiring enforcers in exchange for money income. Incomes govern people while ballots in our democracies are comparatively irrelevant. In fact, relearning “economics” or finances is required. What we need is a curriculum that teaches people about money exchange in the market and “the economy” in terms of a republic’s ballots and law that treats everyone the same rather then the capitalist system and democratic system that we are so accustom to today. Money should be ballots. Ballots should be money. One ballot per person is equality based in law. A 4 year term is based in law. The republic’s ballots are what should prevail, not the traditional banker’s capitalist system.
We need a market that everyone can participate in and a financial system with a currency that is not our main focus. We should be focused on what we want to do in the real world (economy) and how we are going to cooperate to make those projects a reality (corporations.) We should be flexible with our employment and be able to change our minds without being debt slaves. Things change in this world and our contracts should allow for that and not oblige us to pay for up to 30 years. It is that mentality that maintains a focus on money rather than real world innovation and it creates inflexible order that keeps us in low engagement jobs.
Contrary to common understanding it is lending (especially bank lending of newly created money) that determines which corporations can gain access to credit and, therefore, have the money to change the world. If you look at the firms that are in debt (such as governments and corporations) you can see that it is those firm’s socialistic regulations that define the world the we live in. What matters is the ability for innovation as entrepreneurial leaders change the way we cooperate and improve the world we live in. How do we track which leaders are worthy of continued support? How do we allocate power to different leaders? How often can we change those allocations? Who has the ability to make power allocation decisions?
It is the spending of money that allows us to measure power. By comparing people’s incomes in a transparent financial system we can determine how a network of many people cumulatively allocate power. But, if spending money is power then, people must first have incomes to have power. And, even more important, there must be a stock of money in existence to exchange between people. Without “energy” (money immobile in an account) there can be no “power” (money flowing from one person to another in exchange for real world consideration.)
Under today’s current laws a very few banks have an ability to supply new money and thus increase the stock of money in existence. Those banks are chartered legally and have a franchise granted to them by government. Very different than the no universal franchise to vote in a democratic election, the franchise to operate as a commercial bank is a licence to lend money that is conjured into existence by a loan contract. Today, money comes into existence when a corporation (including governments) borrows money from banks. Not all bank loans create new money (banks reserve some deposits to cover what they lend out) but when the bank “runs out” of money to lend they have the legal franchise to create (or supply) more money by authoritative whim (fiat) so that the corporation can borrow.
Once a corporation borrows it has the means to hire people to change the real world according to it’s socialistic whims. All businesses (Apple, Procter and Gamble) and all governments have borrowed money to hire and lead people the way the leadership see fit. The only stipulation is that they must make a revenue to cover the cost of employees (obligations) and to pay interest (principle.) How do we (as voters and consumers) have control over this? Voters let majority rule winner takes all and compromised filibustering choose how the government spends it’s credit whereas corporations are dictatorships (and much more efficient.) Corporations rely on consumers voluntarily choosing to buy their services whereas governments use the threat of violent force to tax consumers for revenue.
The obvious problem with banks lending new money to large world leading firms is that large world leading firms (like governments and corporations) are naturally resistant to change and have an interest in maintaining the status quo traditional way of doing things. Banks have always been limited by the credit worthiness of borrowers. Individuals who start small businesses are notorious credit risks and the government’s regulations force new money supply to be created through lending by franchised banks. This means that it is the government’s banking regulations that give banks profits for lending new money to large status quo firms while causing inflation which taxes money on deposit in bank accounts and causes the currencies standard of value to decline thus raising prices.
The point is that there is a inflation tax on money deposited in bank accounts and it is commercial banks who have to legal franchise to determine which firms can use that tax money to change the world. Only the very richest have to ability to influence this appropriation of funds by banks, but here is the rub: the inflation tax is more just than income, sales, or property taxes. In fact, the inflation tax is an incentive for people with cash deposits in banks accounts to spend that money and thus stimulate the hiring of people in “the economy.” Which is good for those who need jobs and need to save to buy property. An inflation tax without an income tax allows everyone to keep their entire earned income without being forced by threat of violence to give some of it to system imposed “extortionists” like the government’s income tax or corporate shareholder’s dividends. Rather, everyone would be free to by property (free of sales taxes) with all of their income and have that property for their and their families secure enjoyment.
The problems with the inflation tax as implemented today are that it debases a currency’s standard of value making that currency a poor measurement unit of power exchange and human values. Also, the inflation tax is implemented today with a rate is loosely controlled and mostly unpredictable because there are many commercial banks with the franchise to create new money and there is no thought through regulation that make the monetary system work in a coherent, predictable, business friendly manner.
The obvious other problem is that only a few decision makers at banks choose leaders who change the world. The banking franchise is not universal and equal, but if it were then crowdfunding of leaders may allow for innovation to displace firms and make employment flexible so that individuals can follow their passions rather then “collect rents” at “un-engaging jobs.”
When Democracy came to be it was a revolution and now we expect one ballot per person. That equality is built into the system, but it didn’t used to be that way. There was a time when that was a very crazy and different idea. It is time to get different with our thinking again. If every individual had an equal franchise to be a bank then we could call each individual’s ability to lend new money a ballot. That would mean that the unit of the currency would be Ballots which can be divided and exchanged just like other currencies are broken into cents and exchanged. The total stock of money would always be the same as the number of people in the republic because there is one Ballot per person. That is a rule that makes the stock of money consistently predictable while always matching supply with demand achieving the maintenance of a standard unit with which to measure individual human’s values and their sovereign power exchange.
A new Ballot currency can be used as an alternative in today’s world. The idea is to have a system that balances people in terms of the amount of money they have on deposit in a “bank” account. This is a Republic’s monetary system as an alternative to a bank’s monetary system. And, in a republic, there is one ballot per person every 4 years. That means that everybody gets 1/4 of a ballot every year and it establishes the rate of (1/4)/365 ballots per day which is an incoming power (to the people) of 0.25 Ballots per year. This power comes from the inflation-like tax which is a direct tax on money (Ballots) on deposits in accounts. By tieing the stock of money to the number of people in the Republic the standard of value does not change so prices do not rise die to debasement of the standard unit, rather the money is deducted directly from accounts explicitly. And we know the rate is 25% per year because the term in the republic is 4 years.
By rethinking government in terms of the monetary system and applying a Republic’s term and the idea of one Ballot per person we create a financial system that balances itself and provides an equal amount of “base power” (a Universal Basic Income) to everybody while allowing everyone to work for others in a networked service marketplace in pursuit of the future world we choose for ourselves, lead by the leaders we choose to crowd lend to. The system gives the power (to create money and lend to leaders) equally to the people while encouraging the hiring of other people to provide the services we most desire. It secures each one of us financially to the same degree which allows us to focus on our lives and the world we wish to build for ourselves in the present moment rather than on securing income in the future with an attitude of corruption.
Teach a new curriculum.
Elastic Republic Ballot Market 