Three Design Principles for a New Political and Economic Operating System for Humanity

A proposal by Hendrik Tiesinga.

Hendrik runs multistakeholder dialogues and has a website on “Natural Innovation“. You have to read the proposal in the context of what he calls “the 3 Ground Rules of 20th Century Welfare State Capitalism”:

* Rule 1 – Linear Production Models and Absolute Ownership Rights
* Rule 2 – Equity through State Provision of Public Goods
* Rule 3 – Separation of the Public and Private Spheres

In summary, the 3 Design Principles for a new Political and Economic Operating System for Humanity, are:

* Principle 1 – Circular Economics and Temporary Ownership Rights
* Principle 2 – Universal Basic Income
* Principle 3 – Multi-Level Democracy

Excerpted from Hendrik Tiesinga:

“This pamphlet is a call to fundamentally rewrite the rules of our current social contract. To reintroduce politics with a capital P. It aims to provide a radical yet pragmatic alternative vision for progressive politics. Radical in challenging some of the fundamental assumptions of our current liberal democratic capitalist order, pragmatic in the sense that nothing proposed here is impossible to achieve and can be achieved by taking small practical and democratic steps.

Nothing in this pamphlet is originally mine. I’ve merely brought together new 3 design principles that have been proposed by many others under different names. Together however they provide a potential comprehensive framework for a radical reorganisation of our current political and economic order. An initial sketch, intended to open up a space to re-imagine collective political action behind a shared political vision.

Our current eco-political system is based on three ground rules. The two basic rules underlying our economic system are absolute ownership rights and linear production models, together they work to perpetuate inequality and environmental inefficiency. The third rule, the separation of the public and private sphere dictates that democracy and public goods can only be provided by the state, leading to immoral markets and overbearing government intervention. This is a call to radically rewrite these rules to set the stage for a new global politics of equality, sustainability and democracy.

* Circular Economics and Temporary Ownership Rights

Ownership rights and by the extension the rule of law and are the foundation of our liberal democratic society and individual freedom. They prevent us from being robbed by neighbouring warlords and corrupt state officials. This is great, but absolute property rights also reinforce structural economic inequality. The ownership of natural resources gives the owning classes the right to effectively tax the rest of the population for their use, indefinitely. Ownership rights shouldn’t be abolished but need to be reformed.

The second rule underlying our modern economic system is that of linear production models. Simply put the owners of natural resources sell them to manufacturers, who sell products to consumers, and the consumers subsequently dispose of it in the public domain. This one-way system of economics incentivizes companies to produce goods that have short life-cycles with little regard for resource efficiency and negative externalities.

The most comprehensive model to counter this is to move to a system of circular economics and temporary ownership or use rights. A system where producers no longer earn an income once by producing and selling a product once, but continuously by leasing them to users whilst retaining ownership and responsibility for disposing of the product after use. In this model companies are incentivized to produce long-lasting resource and energy efficient products that are easily re-usable or recyclable. Consumers instead of absolutely owning a car, washing machines or houses, thus obtain the temporary use-rights of a particular product or service in exchange for paying a monthly fee. A circular economic system will increase resource efficiency and real productivity whilst decreasing the overall impact on the environment.

This model has to be expanded beyond manufacturing to include natural resources and ecosystem services such as land, minerals, fisheries and fresh water. Individuals, households or companies under this model can never obtain absolute ownership of these goods. Instead they rent them for a set period of time from publicly owned natural resource trusts that sell the use rights on the free market. Rental income over these natural resources, a national dividend, can flow into the public purse. A circular economy will also require a more stable monetary system, where public authorities issue non-debt based money and gradually expand the money supply with the real productivity growth of the economy.

* Universal Basic Income and the End of the Welfare State

To balance the narrow interest of private enterprise and income inequality due to absolute ownership of natural capital, the state taxes capital and labour to provide public goods like infrastructure, health care, education, national defence, unemployment and other benefits etc. The negative side-effects of this are obvious, investment and work are dis-incentivized and state monopolies in the afore mentioned sectors create massive in-efficiencies not to mention a lack of user choice.

Together with the linear production model it creates the perverse effect of having to increase so-called economic growth by producing more and more non-sustainable goods to generate enough profit and employment to raise the taxes needed to provide the public goods. This is where social democracy is stuck. More growth generates more negative externalities which requires more public goods and thus taxes. Additional taxes stifle economic activity forcing progressive politicians to paradoxically cut the public goods they promised to provide more of.

What we propose is to divorce the desirable aim of creating public goods and a reasonable level of economic equality from the provision of them by the state. The role of an agile state is not the provision of public goods, but developing ground rules to ensure markets operate in the public interest and provide a basic level of access for every citizen.

The equal access can be provided by legislating price discounts for vulnerable groups (which thus will be indirectly funded by the wealthier users) but more importantly by the provision of a universal basic income for all citizens. A basic income of a level high enough to enable access to basic needs in terms of nutrition, shelter, health-care, travel and education. This instead of providing free or subsidized education, health care, paying out different complicated systems of welfare benefits, pensions, transport infrastructure etc. Initially a basic income would be funded through taxes and in a ideal scenario it will be funded almost entirely by the natural resource dividends described above.

In a system where we all have a level of basic income security, we can do away with most forms of labour regulation. One important obstacle for companies in staying competitive is their inability to hire and fire employees at will. One of the main reasons for labour exploitation or being forced to do mind numbing work for employees is our dependence on a monthly pay check. A universal basic income will do away with both. It will liberate the labour market and entrepreneurialism in ways that will excite neo-liberal economists and Marxists alike.

* Multi-Level Democracy

You might ask, is the market responsible enough to provide us with public goods like health care and education? Which brings me to the third principle. Our modern liberal democratic system rest on the assumption of the separation between the public and private sphere. The public sphere is democratic through a system of electoral democracy and majority rule, usually on a federal, state, regional and municipal level. The private sphere is undemocratic and based on rule by economic interests and consumer choice. Civil society is crushed somewhere in between.

As a result the state has to compensate for the lack of social responsibility of private business and investors by providing strict forms of regulation. Because regulators and legislators are often several steps removed from the daily practice of business they tend to create regulation that is inefficient, cumbersome and costly to business and inhibits its creativity and economic growth. Business as a result will seek to circumvent much of the regulation or seek to change it through lobbying and manipulating the democratic process.

Our democratic notions are severely limited by our centralised top-down conception of democracy; democratic power should be regulated by the principle of subsidiarity, e.g. democratic control should take place there where considerable power is exercised. Hence democratic control should move from the bureaucracies and legislative chambers of state capitals into the board, office and factory rooms of any organisation that provides products and services, public or private. There is no singular formula of what this should look like, but at a very minimum it means that significant stakeholders are part of decision-making in large companies, schools, hospitals etc. A hospital, for example, would have surgeons, general staff, patients and local communities represented. A medium and large size company would have shareholders, employees, local communities and natural resource trusts represented on their boards.

In a system where companies retain responsibility over their products throughout their life-cycle the need for environmental regulation will be significantly less. As already pointed out, in a system of universal basic income, labour regulation can be significantly liberalised as well. If in addition democratic control is excersided on the level where actual power is exercised through proper mechanisms of multi-stakeholder governance, the need for centralised regulation by a central government, although not superfluous will be considerably less. Reducing the need for large national or federal government bureaucracies and intrusion. Again reducing the tax and regulatory burden on the economy and society as a whole.

The other dimension of paring the exercise of power with democratic control is in the international sphere, where currently a massive democratic vacuum exists. Democratic governance of international business and organisations as proposed above will radically improve the situation. Decision making by national governments in international bodies is another domain of democratic deficit. International organisations are at best nominally democratic based on the one state one vote rule. Which equates to giving Luxembourgh the same voting rights as China. International organisation need to be gradually reformed and expanded to reflect population size. Additionally they need to grow beyond being inter-state negotiating bodies to being governed by representatives directly elected by the (world) population.”

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