World Renovation

What a way to run the world.

We can do better. Much better.

First: A short and dirty economic and political history of the world.

For millions of years our ancestors lived in extended families and clans. These consisted of between a dozen and a hundred people with no leaders as such, and where everyone had a say in whatever decisions were made. Knowledgeable older men or women were listened to more than others, and the men willingly followed a hunter who had proven himself most proficient. This earned them respect but did nothing to elevate them either politically or economically.

Being hunter-gatherers who had to carry everything on their backs as they constantly roved the land, nobody owned much. What they had would be shared with other members of the clan, as was everything that each member managed to hunt or gather.

Not that this was a golden age. Being unable to store much food meant there were constant famines. Life could be short. And, humans being human, there were arguments, fights, murder, and if the situation became dire, the occasional massacre. However, seeing as there were few people and they were well separated, most meetings of different groups were harmonious or even joyous.

Then, just ten thousand years ago—an eyeblink in the time of human existence—someone invented agriculture. And that changed everything.

Suddenly there was valuable fertile land, cleared of vegetation, irrigated and planted to crops. And even more, there were herds of domesticated animals and stores of grain, wealth greater than anyone could previously imagine, and it was all for the taking.

Leaders of the hunt became leaders of war, first in raids of theft, then conquest. This brought real change. Those who were conquered naturally didn’t want to be killed or cast into the wilderness to starve, so they begged their conquerors to be allowed to live, working the fields as slaves.

Before, when everybody had to hunt or gather for the group to survive, humans from outside the clan had no value. Now that fields had to be worked and herds tended, they did. Raiding and conquering being clearly much more rewarding than tending livestock or digging fields, the hunt leader advanced to becoming a warlord and his hunters to being full-time warriors. Both could now claim a much larger share of the communal wealth—the warlord most of all—the main downside being that they now had to defend against others wanting to conquer them.

Over time, warlords consolidated their holdings into kingdoms as large as they could hang onto with two hands and a sword—lands they claimed as their personal possessions, property they could sell or give away at will, along with all the people living there. These self-crowned kings still had the problem of defending their lands from would-be usurpers both inside and outside their kingdoms, so they gave land and the people on it to relatives or others they hoped they could trust, on condition that they remain loyal and help fight the king’s battles. Kings wanted their gifts of land to be only temporary, but the new lords soon ensured that both lands and titles became hereditary.

The next change in economic and political power came with the rise of the merchant and banking class. Until then, wealth had always been connected to land, but when kings saw this new money created by manufacturing and trade, they exercised their kingly right and took it for themselves. They soon discovered the result of exercising that god-given right, as merchants, bankers, money and trade vanished from their lands.

There followed a long period of to-ing and fro-ing, as lords as well as kings found they had to come to grips with this new economic reality. In exchange for loans that were never repaid and outright bribes, kings gave ever more say in their kingdom’s affairs to this commoner class. This has continued until property rights are well established in law, most adult citizens have the right to vote for a representative in the legislature, global capitalism rules the markets, and kings have either been done away with or reduced to constitutional monarchs.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Things to consider.

Is the nation state the best unit of government?

Is global capitalism the best way to run the world economy?

Is representative democracy the best way, from the citizens’ point of view, to be governed?

1) The nation state

The nation state is the natural inheritor of the kingdom with all its rights and prerogatives. Nation states run by dictatorship—be that communist or otherwise—are no different from old-fashioned kingdoms where everything and all people in them belong to the leader, his to enslave, torture or kill at his whim, with often little more than a feeble protest from the outside world.

Wanting to get re-elected, governments of nation-states with representative democracy are naturally more restrained in their actions. But if the leaders want, they still have the power to tax or confiscate their citizens into destitution, imprison them for laws that they enact, or even take their lives.

In a global sense, if one had to devise a system to govern the world, the existing jumble of squabbling nation states would be close to the bottom of the list. Collectively, they manage to do some good in the world but mostly we see bickering, spite, bigotry, scheming and beggar-thy-neighbour. And this is when they are not supporting insurgents or actually at war with each other.

There have been several attempts over the last century to improve world governance. Let’s see how they fared. The League of Nations foundered almost as soon as it was formed, the short-sighted peace treaty at the end of the First World War not having given it a chance. The United Nations, formed after the Second World War, has lasted much longer, gives a useful forum and has managed to do some good. But it costs an exorbitant amount and nobody thinks it really works.

The next attempt, this time in a European context, was the European Union. Given the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century that twice tore the continent apart, the concept was brilliant. Unfortunately the execution was dreadful. Negotiated by leaders of nation states behind closed doors, those leaders and their successors have shared power with an ever-growing and ever more intrusive bureaucracy. Realising that they had to make a show of including the citizens of Europe in their governance, they opened the European Parliament. Unfortunately, they gave Parliament little power, attracted low-grade representatives, and alienated the citizens even more. In so doing, they have condemned the Union to a slow and painful death.

The last effort is Globalisation. Through treaties, international law and open markets, elites from around the world are slowly nudging nation states towards what they hope will be an ever closer Union of the World. Some, for instance financiers and global corporations, are doing their nudging out of obvious self-interest. But most—those working in the UN, other international institutions, NGOs and as diplomats or negotiators—feel they are acting in the best interests of humankind. They are right in that a world union could benefit us all. (A fat book could be written on all the ways we could be better off—no more war for a start!) But they are wrong in thinking that an elite can create a sustainable union without the consent of the rest of us.

Already there is pushback round the world as nationalism once more raises its ugly head. We cannot know how the conflict between these two forces will end but either way, the outlook is not good. We will have either an unstable quasi world union totally alienated from the population, or an unruly mob of fiercely nationalistic nation states that will bring us trade wars, cold wars and probably a few hot ones as well. This outlook makes it even more imperative that we come up with a better way to run the world—the only world we have.

2) Global Capitalism

The capitalist system as it is now, runs much more on debt than it does on capital. The problems of debt have been known since ancient times. All three major Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—forbade the lending of money at interest. Judaism and Christianity surrendered to the God of Money centuries ago, and although Islam now twists itself into knots trying to conform to the letter of the law, Mohammed’s intent has long gone. So the world is left with debt, mankind’s worst economic invention.

Over the last couple of centuries, the major setbacks to the world economy haven’t been caused by wars, lack of technological advance, people not wanting to buy or merchants not wanting to sell—but by the financial system failing. Recessions and depressions, be they Great or merely ordinary ones that come along every decade or so, are caused by failure in the financial system. What is at the heart of the financial system that causes this repeated failure?

Debt. Mountains of debt. Sometimes to governments, sometimes to corporations, and sometimes to ordinary citizens—but always a lot of debt.

The biggest problem with debt is that everybody likes it. Governments can borrow money without most people being aware of the burden imposed on them, their children, and their children's children. The governments then spend that money in ways that make their voters happy to re-elect them. Those at the head of corporations like debt because it’s easy to get when times are good, it gives them corporate control with comparatively small investment, it allows them to expand the corporation, and increases their profits.

Humans love to feel they are getting something without having to put down hard-earned cash. Intellectually they know it will cost them even more than if they paid cash but it feels almost like they are getting what they want for nothing. Sadly, most of us can’t resist, and many end up with a thing that gives far less joy than the debt does sorrow.

3) Representative democracy

Representative democracy, as many of us now have in different forms, is a vast improvement on rule by emperor, king, warlord, political party, self-selected group, or dictator. However, the ancient Greeks who invented democracy would sneer at us calling our representative system a democracy. They had a strong distrust of politicians, and insisted on making decisions by vote at meetings of all male citizens. For those positions that they did elect, they allocated juries of common citizens to see that the elected carried out their task without corruption and as the citizens required.

Various other forms of direct democracy have been tried over the years, with the Swiss system, despite its faults, being the best. Referendums in various forms have been tried in many countries and while they have had their successes, mostly by pushing representatives into tackling what they should have dealt with in the first place, they do have their problems.

First, the vote is self-selected. A small minority that favour the referendum passing or who would benefit financially would be sure to vote, while the majority who either don’t understand the subject or couldn’t be bothered, wouldn’t vote. The referendum could be passed by the minority who benefit, and paid for by everybody. Second, the referendum can be taken as a protest. Voters, unhappy with the leader, government, state of the economy, or whatever—and feeling they have no other way to vent their displeasure, vote against whatever the government is for. The third and most important weakness in referendums is that they are too hard. Anything passed by the legislature can be revoked, altered as circumstances change, or bits added and subtracted. Not one word or comma in a referendum passed by voters can be altered without an inordinate amount of effort.

At the best of times, legislatures seem less efficient at passing laws than voters might expect. Hard referendums make legislatures run away from problems they might cause, and we all suffer.

The other idea that has been often mooted but fortunately never acted on since the internet arrived in virtually every home, is to let voters OK laws passed by the legislature before the laws are enacted. Anybody who knows anything about the web can imagine what a security nightmare that would be. We would also be back to the self-selecting problem. Those who benefit would be sure to vote and the rest of us who have our lives to get on with, would pay.

Now that we have looked at some economic and political history of the world, and some problems and attempts to solve them—Where to next?

In a cynic’s view, nobody can change a single thing of any worth in the economic and political function (or dysfunction) of this world. The holders of power and money would fight tooth and nail to defeat anything that threatens the status quo. Those cynics might well be right—but perhaps not. Kings, emperors and lords of the not-so-distant past held the same view, and where are they now?

Even if the cynics are right, there is no reason for us to passively accept what is. Instead we can dream of what could be. And in the midst of those dreams, we might find threads of ideas that we can share with others. Those others might have threads of their own that could join and be spun together into stronger yarn. Then, if yet more others become involved and spin their own threads into yarn, we might weave all that yarn into a system that would benefit everybody.

HERE ARE OUR THREADS

We will go into them in more detail but first let us say that the premise of our thoughts can be summed up in a simple statement—

Planet Earth and all her resources is the personal and private property of each and every one of her human inhabitants. Each human, and only them, should therefore decide what resources are exploited, and share equally in revenues raised.

GOVERNMENT

The first thing that needs to go is the nation state. Not the actual land, of course. Nor the people. Not even the leaders. Just those powers and rights over natural resources, citizens’ property and citizens’ lives that leaders of nation states inherited from kings. We suggest that the current system be replaced by a House of Representatives, a House of the People, and an elected constitutional monarch.

(Note: ‘he’ is used in place of ‘he/she’ for simplicity)

The House of Representatives

Representatives are elected from districts as most countries do now, and would form a majority government to oversee needed bureaucracies. The representatives would debate and pass legislation, and the government would formulate proposed spending bills. These would then be passed on to the House of the People for consideration.

The House of the People

This would be made up of randomly chosen voters of sufficient number to be statistically identical to the electorate as a whole. The numbers could be whatever the voters decide, but one in a thousand would be plenty. Secure direct connection would be needed from a dedicated terminal in the voter’s home to the House of the People for the term of perhaps two years. Taking perhaps between one and a dozen hours each week, this would not be a fulltime job but the remuneration should be enough to encourage acceptance and a willingness to do a conscientious job.

Members would consider bills passed to them along with arguments for and against, and make their vote. Because a bill could be passed by just 50% of representatives then, if say, another 30% could agree on an alternative bill on the same subject, this could also be submitted. Receiving this one or perhaps two bills, the Administrator of the House of the People would consult with his advisors, and, if he considered it appropriate, submit a bill of his own along with his reasoning. Members of the House could be faced with four choices:

The government’s bill

The opposition’s bill

The Administrator’s bill

None of the above

Members would vote these 1 to 4 by preference. After counting, the least popular option would be rejected, and second-choice votes would pass to the other options until one receives 50% of the vote. If the members choose the government’s bill, then that bill becomes law. If they do not, the representatives have six months to submit an alternative bill. Failing that, the members' choice would pass into law automatically
The House of the People would maintain a website where the administrator would provide updates on bills being debated in the House of Representatives together with any other information he considered useful. There would also be a forum where members could discuss bills or other issues and ask questions or advice of the administrator.
The House of the People, not having the facility to debate and negotiate bills as the representatives do, would have no legislative power or right to propose a bill to the House of Representatives. However, if the administrator perceived a significant amount of members' interest in an issue that wasn't on the government's agenda, he could ask the House of the People to vote on whether they wanted the House of Representatives to consider the matter urgently, less urgently, or not at all. The members would have no power to force the representatives to look into any issue, but it would be a bold and probably foolish government that didn't accommodate their request without a good enough reason to satisfy the wider electorate.
The administrator is a servant of the House of the People and should therefore be accountable to members. At the end of each sitting of the House of Representatives, members would be asked to rate the administrator. If the majority of members were dissatisfied, the administrator would formally advise the king and request a replacement.

The King

As a constitutional, elected king (be the person a man or a woman) he would have no connection to any political party and would stand aloof from politics—to the extent that after he has submitted his name for voters’ consideration, he would let others laud his experience and virtues while he disappears from public view until after the vote. As a constitutional monarch, he would have little more power than the British monarch does now (and a lot less wealth). He would act as a ceremonial head of state and his only power would come from his prerogative to appoint or dismiss the Administrator of the House of the People and the People’s Advocate. This last is the person who any citizen who thinks he has been wronged by a corporation, a bureaucracy, or the government, could come to and lay out his grievances. If the People’s Advocate agrees with the complainant, then, given the threat of pursuit through the courts, the government or the House of the People, a simple phone call would often resolve the problem.

World Government

Having taken away the power of nation-state leaders to make a squabble of world affairs as they always do, and having reduced the nation states to just states, we would need to set up a more formal alternative to deal with those affairs of our new United States of the World. This is a risky thing to do.

Nation states can flex over time, experiment with different lifestyles, political systems, and ways of running the economy. Even something as hard, all-pervasive and rigid as communism cracked, shuddered, shattered into pieces, and evolved into something else. (Pity that something else wasn’t better than it is.)

However, what would have happened if communism ruled the world? There would be no outside system to compete against. Nothing outside to look at with fear, envy or wanting to emulate. Without this, a world communism could have staggered on, half-dead and zombie-like for centuries, destroying the planet and everyone on it in the process. To ensure that this never happens, any world government would have to do three things:

Be flexible. No system should ever become locked, unable to shift in a new direction as the citizens might want.

Know who owns the world. Citizens should feel that while there are checks and balances, and experts whose advice they should listen to, planet Earth and all her resources belong to them personally, as does world government.

Allow states flexibility. Within their states, citizens should be free to practice different customs, pass different laws or just do things differently to everyone else. World government should therefore be restricted to trade, commerce, financial regulation, resource management, basic human rights, and collecting revenues to pay citizens their yearly dividend.

The United States of the World would, like the states, have a House of Representatives and a House of the People. In addition there would be a House of the Kings where the kings of the various states or their trusted deputies would sit. Being constantly together as they would be, the kings would represent their states in any discussions, help formulate interstate agreements or resolve disagreements. In addition, the House of the Kings could formulate bills and present them to the House of Representatives, and then the House of the People.

The head of the United States of the World would be the Emperor who would be elected by voters from the ranks of kings who had finished their term in office. The position of emperor would, like that of kings, be a constitutional one. He would have influence and, through standing aloof from politics, a certain moral authority but no legislative or executive power. His sole powers would be to appoint the Administrator of the World House of the People, the President of the World Reserve Bank, the Chair of the Corporation of Earth, and the World People’s Advocate.

THE ECONOMY

Command economies such as national socialism or communism are marvellous at doing big things like establishing heavy industry, fighting major wars or educating millions of illiterates. Where they fall flat on their faces is generating the efficiencies that provide wealth for their people, along with products and services that they want to buy. For that, there is nothing to beat free enterprise.

We in the West tend to confuse free enterprise and capitalism—thinking they are the same thing. They are not. Free enterprise seeks an environment free of corruption, with decent infrastructure and laws, and the lightest regulation necessary. This allows a person or group of people to use their energy and creativity to undistracted efficiency, making wealth for themselves and raising the standard of living for everyone else. Energy and creativity need capital to develop an enterprise. But while capitalism as it has evolved does provide some benefits, it and the giant financial industry it has spawned are rent seekers—parasites on human energy and creativity. There are other parasites sucking the blood of human enterprise—taxes and regulation being the worst.

Imagine an efficient, flourishing world economy with no debt, minimal regulation, a tiny financial sector and no taxes.

No, we are not mad, we promise. Please stay with us while we explain. You might agree with us. Or see flaws that we have missed. Or come up with improvements that never occurred to us.

Regulations

Regulation in the states and in the world is up to the different Houses of the People to resolve. If they are shown the costs of regulation imposed on both small and large businesses that those businesses must need to pass on to customers in higher prices, the Members will ensure that each regulation justifies itself.

Taxes

Seeing as all governments have lost their right to confiscate citizens’ wealth by way of taxes, other ways of raising money are needed for government to carry out functions as wanted by their citizens. The government of the day in each state would compile an itemized bill of everything they feel they should do over the coming period, together with projected costs for each, and pass it to the House of the People for their consideration. The Members would read opinions and explanations from the government’s economic and other advisors, along with those from the opposition and those from the Administrator. They would then approve or reject each item in the bill.

Seeing as the Members would know exactly how much will be deducted from the dividend they are due to receive from the Corporation of Earth (more on this later), for each item they approve, they could be relied upon to give all items careful scrutiny. In the case of world government, the bill would first go to the House of the Kings. Not to gain their approval but to gather comments, opinions and suggestions.

The financial system

At the moment, the head of the central bank in each country keeps an eye on the amount of money in the economy, and if he thinks there’s not enough, he waves his magic wand and makes more, literally out of thin air. Jokes aside, once upon a time he had to get his printing press to print out physical banknotes, but nowadays just a few taps on the keyboard produces a few billion dollars that he can lend to banks. The banks borrow the electronic, made-out-of-nothing money from the central bank, and lend it to businesses, the government, and to people.

The difference between what the banks pay for the money and what they charge gives them the fat profits to pay large dividends, to build palatial buildings, to give bloated salaries and even more bloated bonuses.

An economy that doesn’t run on debt and can allocate capital to enterprises in need, without large parasitic costs, would be much more efficient, creating more wealth for everybody.

The economy would also be more stable. As mentioned earlier, debt has been at the heart of every recession and depression we have ever had.

Debt

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have at different times, forbidden the lending of money at interest. Not even the power of religion and the fear of God could prevent people wanting to lend at interest or others wanting to borrow and prepared to pay high interest.

Getting rid of debt would be beneficial to all, but it doesn’t need to be banned outright. People could be free to lend or borrow—but interest could be limited to one percentage point over inflation. Either charging or accepting more could be a criminal offence equal to theft. In addition, the lender would have no recourse in law if the borrower refuses to repay the loan. In combination, these two actions would end all commercial lending while leaving small loans at low interest between friends and family legitimate.

Financing enterprises

Debt being no longer available, enterprises big and small would have to sell shares in their business to raise the capital they need. Startups could sell shares to friends and family to get going, then advertise on the web or through customers to draw in more. If the enterprise grows to the stage where the owners want to incorporate and float on the World Stock Exchange, they would draw up a prospectus and submit it to a branch of the World Reserve Bank. There, an accountant would go over the prospectus with them, offer his suggestions, then write his comments and forward both to the Stock Exchange.

When the enterprise floats, the World Reserve Bank buys 40% of the shares using some of the Bank’s made-out-of-nothing money. Seeing as these shares come with no voting rights and the Bank’s promise to never sell them, they would be bought at a significant discount to ordinary shares. The dividend would be the same for all shares, but the only concession demanded would be that a World Reserve Bank accountant sit on the board as a non-voting member to advise on finances and to ensure that all shareholders are dealt with fairly.

The Bank would not need to make a credit-worthy assessment of the owners or a full study of viability on the corporate business plan before spending public money on the shares. It would be making an investment, not a loan, and basing the viability on their accountant’s assessment, and even more on the value outside investors buying in place on the enterprise.

Another method of financing enterprises would be for the Bank to set up a Stock Market Index Fund connected to a second currency—the Stock Exchange Dollar, or Stock Dollar for short. Prices and payments would be in World Dollars which would remain fairly steady—but the Stock Dollar would be connected to the World Stock Exchange Index, and therefore rise and fall with the market.

A debt-free market, however, would be unlikely to experience the frenetic booms and busts of the past. In the highly liquid Stock Dollar market this would create we could expect to see most people join the corporations in keeping all but their ready-use cash invested there.

The Corporation of Earth

This is an independent corporation set up to auction off rights to exploit Earth’s resources as voted by the World House of the People. The Corporation would make its yearly submission, including all resources extracted in the past year, its estimates of the world’s requirements for each resource in the coming year, and its suggestions for resource extraction permits and land use leases to be auctioned off. After reading the Corporation’s list and suggestions, and the opinions of those whose thoughts they respect, each Member would decide the number of permits and leases he wants auctioned for each resource.

Another significant revenue stream would be from the sale of life-time shares in the Corporation of Earth. As some readers would have noticed, if a child just has to be born to earn a share of Earth’s resources, then the financial side of child rearing would be not only cost-free, but highly profitable. Women so-inclined could pump out babies as fast as biology allowed. Seeing as this would be against planet Earth’s self-interest, a restrainer would need to be placed on this inclination. For the sake of maintaining genetic diversity and because most women would want to have at least one child, she should have that right free of charge. Because this could be the only child she ever has, she should be allowed to have the fetus screened by the best technology currently available and allowed to choose a boy or a girl. Naturally, if every woman has just one child, the population would be unable to maintain current levels, let alone expand to numbers that would threaten Earth more than they already have. In its submission to the World House of the People, the Corporation of Earth would give the current population, the births and deaths over the past year, the advancement of technology, the growth of food production, and the Corporation’s estimates for the future. After reading this and as much more as they cared to, each Member would decide how many life-time shares in the Corporation of Earth he wanted auctioned.

For this to work, contraceptives and abortions would have to be freely available. However, human nature being as it is, there will always be some who think they can cheat everyone else by giving birth to a second child without buying a share of Earth’s resources for that child. The woman would be taken to court where her own share in Earth’s resources would be taken away and given to the baby. The baby would then be taken from her and auctioned to those most keen to adopt a child. Finally, because she had proved herself untrustworthy with her own fertility, that would be taken away.

Wealth

One could expect to see a hardworking, creative man with a good sense of business, no tax and little regulation to hold him back, and able to go anywhere in the world to work or trade, would soon make much wealth. Because of competition this would benefit not just him but all of us. However, if he should gather more and more wealth, this would not be. Instead of using his enterprise and energy to create new wealth, he would use the wealth he had accumulated as capital and begin extracting rent from the enterprise of others. He shouldn’t have that much money—but what can be done?

A cap could be placed on how much wealth any one person was allowed to own. (Perhaps 20 million dollars?) The exact amount would be up to the World House of Representatives and the World House of the People to decide, and they could alter the figure as and when they see fit.

Assuming the figure is 20 million dollars, what happens when our enterprising businessman adds up what he owns and finds he has burst through the cap? There is no Tax Office that he has to submit annual returns to, but 20 million dollars invested in an enterprise is not exactly invisible. If he does nothing and is audited by the Corporation of Earth, everything over 20 million would be instantly confiscated and placed in the fund for citizens’ next dividend payment. He would then have to submit an Account of Worth for the next ten years. With this threat hanging over him, our enterprising businessman would be more likely to turn himself in. Because he had self-reported, he would be allowed six months to dispose of the excess by either giving it away (perhaps to a good cause dear to his heart) or by consumption.

Seeing as shares in Earth’s resources would not be cheap, buying one or more shares for himself or close family members to have a child or children would be an obvious way of spending excess money and would add to the redistribution through the citizens’ dividend. Our businessman could have a problem if all his wealth was invested in his enterprise and he needed the shareholding to keep company control. His solution could be to give the excess shareholding to family members and/or trusted friends for free on their agreement that, while they own the shares and will receive all dividends, they will always vote as he asks, and never sell the shares without his permission.

The World Reserve Bank

We have already seen how the World Reserve Bank would help finance corporations by buying 40% of the float in non-voting shares. The main task entrusted to the Reserve Bank, as it is with the US Federal Reserve, is to maintain balance in the economy, mostly by keeping control of inflation and deflation. The Fed, along with other central banks around the world, does this by raising or lowering interest rates. This discourages or encourages lending, and therefore reduces or increases the amount of money sloshing round in the economy.

In our world of no lending and therefore, no interest rates, this isn’t possible. Another method would be needed. Instead of interest rates, the Reserve Bank would control inflation by holding between zero and say 20% of the ordinary voting shares on the World Stock Market Index. Every month the Bank would declare its percentage holding, and say how it thought it might move over the coming month—reduce the Bank’s holding, stay the same, or increase its stake. Corporate dividends paid on both the voting and non-voting shares would be forwarded to the Corporation of Earth’s fund for the citizens’ next dividend.

Trust

Trust is such a valuable commodity, and sadly, not one that is as often found as we might like. The best way to encourage and institutionalise trust is accountability. And if selected groups of just two professions—lawyers and accountants—were not only totally honest and totally incorruptible, but seen to be, this would be achieved.

Several dozen different institutions for each profession could be set up round the world. These would be top universities where students could earn their degrees, plus fellowships composed of selected graduates. These fellowships would take a keen interest in the work and ethical stance of their fellows for the simple reason that the Fellowship’s standing, and therefore each member’s individual professional prospects, would depend on the actions of fellow members. Seeing as, for extra surety, all fellows plus their close relatives would be expected to lay out their full finances for all to see, they would need to be well rewarded. This would give reliably honest accountants and lawyers at every government department and on the board of every corporation, loyal to their Fellowship and to citizens’ perceptions of their honesty, while being unbeholden to the government minister or corporate CEO. And incorruptible lawyers and judges in court.

Although any citizen could run for election to the House of Representatives, the reassurance of honesty and professional competence that come with membership in a high-rated Fellowship could mean that many would be elected. Kings and therefore emperors, with their need to stand aloof from party politics, should be elected just from Fellows.

Sharing the loot

Having received revenue from corporate dividends and the auction of life-time shares, permits, licenses, and leases—the Corporation of Earth has to distribute this to citizen shareholders. Resources from the oceans and lands not occupied by states would be shared equally by everybody. However, resources from state land and ten kilometres out to sea would be divided in the ratio of 10:20:70. A mining corporation, having bought a permit to extract, say, 50,000 tons of copper, and which has a prospective site, now has to approach the district where the mining would take place as well as the state. The citizen shareholders of the district stand to get 10% of the permit price for just them, and those of the state 20%. Both sets of citizens have strong incentives to approve the mine. They have to set this against the possible negative impact the mine could have on their district and state, and both have to agree or the miner will take that valuable permit elsewhere.

Advertising

Advertising is added to a country’s GDP. And to the per person GDP. Unfortunately, advertising is a product that benefits no one other than the industry itself. No consumer in their right mind would voluntarily pay for the advertising that goes into each and every item they buy. This is often more than the cost of making the actual item itself, but nobody has a choice. In the marketplace as it has evolved, a manufacturer couldn’t sell its products without advertising. The shops wouldn’t even place them on the shelves. So the manufacturer advertises, adds the cost to the price of the products, and we—poor sods that we are—have to pay. But that’s not the only way that advertising gets us.

Around the world, advertising is considered a valid input into a product—and as such, is tax-deductible. And because it is tax-deductible, the tax has to be made up somewhere else—perhaps higher taxes on our wages?

Fortunately, an economic system like ours that has no taxes would eliminate the tax-deductible problem and the subsidy that comes with it—and since this would make advertising significantly more expensive, perhaps cut down on the bombardment of parasitic ads we endure every day.

If the representatives and the House of the People so wished, they could reduce that bombardment to near zero by banning ads other than at point-of-sale, and by facilitating a virtual marketplace where shoppers could view promotionals and consumer reports, compare products and prices, and buy. Creativity thus saved might be better employed making those products better, cheaper, or both. The only downside, from the customers’ point of view, is that we would have to pay directly for news and entertainment instead of having them cash-lite and ad-heavy.

Corporations

As suggested earlier, the World Reserve Bank would take and hold 40% of any corporate float in the form of discounted non-voting shares. The Bank would also hold between zero and 20% as ordinary voting shares, depending on whether it considered the economy needed reining in, or encouragement. In addition, the Stock Market Index Fund would hold as much as corporations and people had deposited with the Fund at any one time. This could be a significant proportion of the remaining shares. As mentioned previously, an accountant from the World Reserve Bank would sit on the board as a non-voting member, to give financial advice and to see that all shareholders are treated fairly. He would be joined by a lawyer from the World Reserve Bank and another accountant from the Stock Market Index Fund, as voting members.

Together, these two could represent the majority of voting shares, but their task is not to run the corporation, or even dictate the policy the corporation should follow. That is a job for entrepreneurs. Their job would be to side with the entrepreneur major shareholders that they deem best for the corporation, to vet any CEO before appointment, to fight off any hostile takeover that they judge not in shareholders’ best interests, and to facilitate those takeovers that are.

A corporation is an artificial legal person. However, it is not a human citizen. Its only purpose is as a construct—to facilitate capital plus human creativity and endeavour in the creation of wealth for human beings. Corporations should stick to their knitting and serve their purpose as intended. They should never give contributions to someone’s good cause, union, and certainly never ever to a politician. Humans can do all those things and a lot more. So if giving to one of these is the wish of a shareholder, board member, or CEO, let them show their own generosity.

DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE?

Fortunately not. Any nation state and possibly any province, state or territory with a large wealth gap and a significant majority of voters who object can organise, elect politicians who feel the same way, and change the constitution. A nation state or smaller would not be able to achieve the full benefits of global renovation, but would be a good part of the way there. And who knows what could happen then? Neighbours peeking over the border fence could like what they see and decide to join in. Soon every nation state with a majority of citizens fed up with an economic and political system rigged against them could be joining.

Full global renovation would give us even more benefits, and we would finally have reclaimed our inheritance. Planet Earth.

THREADS

These are our threads. But they are just that—threads. Nothing is carved in stone. If you have threads of your own that you think can be joined to ours and spun into a stronger yarn, we'd love to hear from you.

The well-known short online attention span of readers has meant that we had too keep this proposal short. The downside is that we haven't had several hundred pages to explain the reasoning behind much of our proposal, or describe the many impacts it could/would have on us, our cultures and our world. For this, we apologise. If you'd like fuller explanations, have criticisms, suggestions, or questions, please write and we will do our best to answer your queries.