Again and again, I find that I learn much from the work of Blair Gelbond. The powerful series of
articles he has recently published on the horrific conditions of our prisons
and his hopeful stance about the recognition of
the Oneness of the universe and all human beings, through meditation, both conclude with the urgent need for us to realize how interconnected we are.
This conclusion spurs me to offer again a piece I prepared for the Rio+20 UN
Conference a few years back. The piece is titled "A Declaration of
Economic Interdependence."
Recalling
my own Invitation to
Economists, Physicists, and Ecologists - and Ego-nomists of a few days ago
makes me realize that, for us all to succeed, we all ought to work toward an integration
of economic, ecological, and human interdependence.
A Working Draft
Fully appreciative of the many blessings of the Declaration of Independence it might now be an
appropriate time to draft A DECLARATION OF ECONOMIC
INTERDEPENDENCE.
Whereas the Declaration of (Political) Independence has,
without open discussion, been transformed into a Declaration of Personal
Independence;
Whereas this ideology has given rise to the Age of Entitlements,
an age dominated by the conception that there can ever be rights without
responsibilities;
Whereas the lack of personal and civic responsibility has
generated the conception of Life as One-Against-All
Whereas this emphasis on our own welfare - independent, if
not at the expense, of the welfare of our fellow citizens has created economic
insecurity for everyone, rich and poor alike,
We affirm that our greatest political need is to build a society in which the reality of Economic
Interdependence is fully acknowledged.
In this society, we declare
the fundamental conception of Life is One-With-All
and we trust that the effect will be economic jubilation for all.
In order to build such a society
we are called upon to realize the political ideals of
Liberty, Justice, and Goodwill toward one and all.
In order to build such a society our challenge is to deny
all structures of individual and societal selfishness and
to affirm
THE PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE
THE PRINCIPLES OF
ECONOMIC JUSTICE are enunciated
in A
Bill of Economic Rights and Responsibilities (see below).
The best explanation of
economic interdependence that this writer has found is an article by Leonard E.
Read entitled "I,
Pencil". It is available from The Foundation for Economic
Education, Inc. (www.fee.org).
A longer explanation of
economic interdependence is contained in Carmine Gorga, The Economic
Process: An Instantaneous Non-Newtonian Picture. Lanham,
MD, and Oxford: University Press of America, 2002 and 2010.
A Bill of Economic Rights and Responsibilities
"We need an Economic Bill of Rights."
Martin Luther King, written in 1968 just before his assassination
"We'll never revitalize our market economy till ...
every single American is protected by
an economic bill of rights."
Jerry Brown, "We the People, Take Back America"
"Under a second Bill of Rights a new basis of security and
prosperity can be established for all - regardless of station, rank, or
creed."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Message, January 11, 1944
"At the United Nations, the Pope urged the rich to show
solidarity with the poor. His social teaching has emphasized that this moral
commitment should not be done by dole that creates dependency, but by
empowering the poor to become full participants in economic life."
George Weigel, President, Ethics & Public Policy
Center
Article 1
We all have the right to receive economic justice;
we all have the responsibility to grant economic justice
to others.
We all have the right to peace and to the economic
benefits of law and order;
we all have the responsibility to pay for the
instrumentalities of peace, law and order.
We all have the right of access to natural resources;
we all have the responsibility to pay taxes as
compensation to the rest of the community for the exclusive use of those
resources.
Article 2
We all have the right to peace and to the economic
benefits of law and order;
we all have the responsibility to pay for the
instrumentalities of peace, law and order.
Article 3
We all have the right of access to natural resources;
we all have the responsibility to pay taxes as
compensation to the rest of the community for the exclusive use of those
resources.
Article 4
We all have the right of access to national credit;
we all have the responsibility to repay the loan issued
on the basis of national credit.
Article 4a
All communities with taxing power have a right of access
to national credit for the financing of public works programs;
communities have the responsibility to repay the loan
issued on the basis of national credit.
Article 5
We all have the right to own the fruits of our labor;
we all have the responsibility, if working with and for
others, to offer services commensurate with the value of the reward received in
the form of stocks -- eventually, no longer wages.
Article 6
We all have the right to protect our wealth;
we all have the responsibility to respect other people's
possessions.
Article 7
We all have the right to healthy air, water, and food
supplies;
we all have the responsibility to accept the higher
prices that result from the provision of those qualities.
Article 8
The poor have the right to society's surplus;
the poor have the responsibility to make good use of society's surplus.
Article 9
The government has the right to raise taxes to administer
money, peace, and justice;
the government has the responsibility to administer money, peace, and justice efficiently.
Summary
These three forms of interdependence go hand in hand; one cannot succeed without the other. More. Isolated, one by one they will undermine each other. The three together will reinforce each other, will empower each other.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carmine Gorga – see Wikipedia, Google Scholar, and Gravatar (a Globally Recognized Avatar). He is a Fulbright Scholar, president of The Somist Institute. In 1965, after a summer of intense intellectual struggle with the General Theory, Dr. Gorga changed one equation in Keynes’ model of the economic system and found himself in a completely new intellectual world; this is the world of economic justice (not social justice) that existed before John Locke and Adam Smith. The transition to Concordian economics, greatly assisted by Professors Modigliani and Burstein, can be found in The Economic Process (2002), a book whose third edition has been annotated—again—by JEL in December 2017 (p. 1642). For the fullness of economic justice, the core of Concordian economics, see here and here. For a full understanding of Concordian economics, Gorga has gradually realized, we need to go beyond Individualism and Collectivism, toward Somism (men and women in the social context); from Capitalism and Socialism/Communism we need to go to Concordianism; then we need to pass from Rationalism to Relationalism. See The Relational University of Gloucester, MA.
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