Good Day, John, and other friends, Getting old is better than than any of the alternatives, but it does make you realize that the necessary work probably cannot be completed in the time we have left. You wrote, on 99-08-26, among other things: >> The problem will be to get an international decision to draw-up and apply laws based on any principles you define. << This idea came to mind only recently, that if each nation would impliment the first and second rule of all well managed corporations, following Adam Smith's First Maxim Of Taxation, the result might be a fairly stable and prosperous global economy even if the nations could not agree on what international decisions were needed. After all, our well managed corporations do not share their methods with their conpetition. Briefly stated, Smith's first maxim says that the expense of government is like the expense of management. Not all of the ten corporations I worked for were well managed, but none of them departed very far from, and each kept secret from the public, these two rules: 1, Adequately fund the corporation's development (engineering) function (about 10% of $sales), which for the commonwealth is the education and support of all children. 2, Adequately fund the executive compensation budget (about 10% of $sales). In the U.S. we pay our Congressmen about 4.5 times the average wage, or $135,000/year. But our Congressmen and Senators must raise an additional $1,000,000/year to cover their campaign expenses every two or four years. Our elected representatives (? Democracy ?) face a greater financial obstacle than a worker trying to support a wife and four children on the minimum wage. And we wonder why corruption is so common. My Figure 1 of the Global Model at <http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html> shows that only the U.S. and the U.K. impliment the first rule at 50% of an adequate level, while the other industrial nations fully implimented rule 1 by 1946. I don't have any data on how well other nations impliment the second rule, but who ever pays those campaign expenses, makes the laws. Maybe these two rules would make sense to the public, if enough reformers could agree on them and talk them up. When these two rules are followed, every thing else is easy in the corporation. Regards, WesBurt
