Ironically, the transition to a post-labor political economy I worked out in a white paper 20 years ago (1992)<http://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.txt>was motivated by my experience getting legislation drafted and signed into law that privatized government technology programs<http://push.pickensplan.com/profiles/blogs/2187034:BlogPost:822703>, including the US fusion energy program<http://www.oocities.org/jim_bowery/BussardsLetter.html>. Essentially the idea is to replace all government functions with market functions that are supported by a citizen's dividend. Critically, however, that citizen's dividend must be funded by a net asset tax during the transition. This view resulted from my confronting not only the public sector rent-seeking embodied in government programs -- centralizing power in the public sector -- but the manifest capital market failure resulting from private sector rent-seeking and the concomitant centralization of wealth in the private sector without that sector taking on the risk of technology development. The political economy debate has been limited to basically a choice between Keynesian school public-sector trickle-down economics and Austrian school private-sector trickle-down economics. Neither one works -- especially in a post-labor economy.
Since that time, in addition to refining the operational definitions, I've expanded the scope of that political economy to reformulate the fundamental approach to human rights around the citizen's dividend so that rather than voting in the ballot box, people vote with their feet to assortatively migrate to live among those sharing their strongly held beliefs in causal laws of human ecology (sociology). This rescues the social sciences from the quasi-theocratic morass in which it has wandered by offering voluntary controlled experiments to test strongly held beliefs in causal laws of human ecology. On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Nigel Dyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Is ancient China included as being part of the west? A quick check of > some basic history of ancient china seems to suggest that what I would > consider to be the organisation of human labor was present going right back > to the very earliest dynasties. > > However, I would tend to think that so many things have now changed so > much, that we cannot simply assume that any economic system that was > appropriate in the past is necessarily right for the future. > > Nigel > > > > On 06/10/2012 10:44, Guenter Wildgruber wrote: > >> ---- >> Well. >> >> I'd like to comment on this a bit: >> 1) any economic system is embedded in a system of societal beliefs -- >> how the world works -- >> 2) a) ...human labor... is a western abstraction >> >> Sorry for being so picky. >> >> Guenter >> > > >
