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How Can Humanity Best
Regulate Itself

By Stephen Hren

08 February, 2006
Countercurrents.org

How can humanity best regulate itself? This is the question politics strives to answer. After the many contradictions of Marxism were empirically discovered in the twentieth century, a general consensus seems to have been reached globally that a neoclassical economy supported by a representative democracy is the ideal. But a civilization-changing event is approaching. The peak in the extraction of fossil energy will expose many of the inherent contradictions in this system as well. For this reason, it is imperative to consider alternative methods of social structure that are both just and sustainable over the long term.

A government that enforces access to as many rights as can be applied universally should be the new ideal. Reduced to their simplest terms, this means that all citizens have an equal right to life, liberty, property, and privacy. The opposite of equal access is privilege, when some have access to rights that are denied to others. Privilege is endemic and widespread in our current system of political economy, and we should use the historic events that are occurring to eliminate it.

The right of property has been fundamentally misunderstood due primarily to the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels. This vast accumulated energy and its concomitant access to raw materials produced the illusion that the quantity of property can be expanded limitlessly. This has justified two structural imbalances that must be corrected if humanity is to survive indefinitely. The first imbalance is the existence of extraordinary wealth side by side with crushing poverty. The second imbalance is the belief that the natural wealth of the earth can be used up and discarded because once this wealth becomes too scarce other resources will be discovered that can be substituted.

The peak in fossil energy extraction will expose the fallacy of limitless growth. This realization can lead to two paths. The first is the violent theft of the last remaining resources. The second is a fuller understanding of the right to property that makes it truly accessible to all.

A universal right to a finite rather than infinite quantity of property is necessarily more restricted. In fact, the amount of property has always been limited, but the expanding extraction of fossil energy gave the illusion that it would continuously grow until all on earth had their fill. Now that we know the quantity is finite, it becomes clear that when someone owns some physical object, no one else can. How can we reconcile this with universal access to the right of property?

Frivolous consumption should be discouraged through taxes on its sale, while consumption that fulfills basic needs should be subsidized with the revenue. This is an attempt to value goods at their social marginal utility. Treating everyone as equal, then the amount of benefit they derive from an equal-valued good should be equal. So if the amount of benefit that a well-off person derives from the purchase of an additional nonvital good is trivial, then its price should reflect that by being raised. And if the benefit that a less well-off person derives from a vital good is great, then its value should be lowered to reflect its social marginal utility.

To maintain the universal right to property when the quantity of property is finite it is also necessary to maintain as much property as possible. Decreasing the overall amount of property means reducing everyone's right of access to it. So goods also need to be priced based on the amount of resources that they permanently use up. This means that all components that are unsustainable or cannot be recycled need to be taxed to discourage their consumption. These taxes can be used to try and recreate the damaged goods or to try and create goods of comparable value.

With our foundation of universal rights the question now becomes what is the best mechanism for regulating them. Our first desire should be to keep it small and local. This will produce a government that is responsive to the needs of its citizens, less capable of attaining privilege, and able to operate in a limited energy environment.

I propose a system of government that enshrines our universal rights into law. These rights would be protected by a local police force, and the interaction of these rights would be regulated by a local judiciary. No other entity should be required for the peaceful, sustainable existence of all humanity.

I realize these concepts are revolutionary. Remember, though, that government can only exist by the consent of the governed. Your government is seizing and will continue to seize by violence the natural wealth of other peoples. It makes no difference what political party is in power. Violence is the inevitable result of attempting to achieve limitless growth in a finite world. If you want the limitless growth to continue, you must accept both the responsibility and the culpability of this never-ending violence. There is an alternative, a world where we try to develop and encourage the sustainable well-being of all humanity instead of the frivolous material gain of a select few through environmental rapine. If these ideas interest you, please read the essay in its entirety. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments, and please consider making a hard copy and/or a link to this site.

I entreat you, withdraw your consent, and let's all work together towards a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

The authors email address is [email protected]. This article was originally published in Nonmoral.org

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