Moral principles require a paradigm shift

Public property rights are part of human rights.

We have a moral duty to ensure that basic human rights are respected. The continued existence of our civilization depends on it.

The boom and bust business cycle is an instability caused by a moral flaw in our civilization.

We saw a financial meltdown in 2008 that was caused by an over-exploitation of a scarce and depletable resource base: confidence in the financial system. Human confidence is a basic resource that the financial system must have in order to function.

When an over-leveraged financial system met a bursting real estate bubble, confidence of lenders eroded and the financial crisis was born.

This is but one example of an inherently unstable human socio-economic system reaching a crisis point. Another example would be any instance of the collapse of a civilization. The rise and fall of civilizations is essentially the same kind of instability that we see in the business cycle of boom and bust. It is related to the over-exploitation of natural resource stocks that can and does occur during the rise of civilization, and the inevitable collapse that occurs when those resource bases are depleted.

We can dampen the extremes of the business cycle and the rising and falling of civilization by respecting public property rights along with private property rights. If we charge a fee to those who take natural resources or put pollution into the air or water, we will have an efficient and fair way to limit humans' impact on the environment to sustainable levels. The fee on taking resources and putting pollution would tend to dampen the environmental excesses of a burgeoning economy and hold economic activity to a sustainable pace.

If we share the fee proceeds with all people equally, we will provide a material security floor below which no person will fall. A guaranteed minimum income based on an equal sharing of natural resource wealth would protect all citizens of the world from abject poverty, and would ensure that spending and producing for basic human needs would continue even during economic downturns.

The most efficient and fair way to control greenhouse gases would be to charge a fee to those who take oil or coal from the ground for sale as a fuel, (and to those who emit other greenhouse gases such as methane), then give the fee proceeds to all people, to each an equal amount.

We need a different paradigm.

We need a society that recognizes public property rights along with private property rights. One where the natural resource wealth of he planet is owned by all equally. We could end extreme poverty in the world and have an efficient and fair way to limit our impact on the environment. We could build a sustainable and just civilization on a moral foundation that recognizes public property rights as an integral part of basic human rights.

John Champagne