The Commons Factor

I recently finished two books by Peter Barnes, Who Owns the Sky, and Capitalism 3.0. I highly recommend that you read them.

Barnes, co-founder of Working Assets, presents a new framwork to Capitalism and how we can move toward a free, just, and sustainable economic system. Instead of continuing the confrontation between Socialism and Capitalism, Barnes proposes a third way that develops a third sector to our economy, the Commons sector.

As an example, instead of allowing people and corporationsto "freely" pollute the sky, Barnes would have Government assign property rights to it. However, rather than give permits to corporations for free (in effect making us pay polluters for the right not to pollute on us), Barnes says each of us should have one equal share of the sky. This Sky Trust would be established by government but would be run by a separate Trusteeship that must operate the Trust for the benefit not only for current owners but for future owners.

There are many kinds of Commons that we all should have a right to our one share.

For more please read Capitalism 3.0 at http://capitalism3.com/

GeoArk

Donald Trump supports gas tax

The other night I saw an interview of Donald Trump by Gretta Van Susteran where Trump suggests that we need to tax gasoline if we want to stimulate the development of alternative fuels and transportation.

So, like Tom Friedman, Donald Trump realizes that we need to use the power of price incentives to move in a new, sustainable direction.

Too bad that Trump didn't suggest that we need to provide an Earth Inheritance Citizens Dividend to help the average Joe the Plumber afford the new, energy conserving cars and technologies.

Amory Lovins suggest a "feebate" system where fuel hogs are given a surcharge at purchase -- say 2,000 dollars -- and this is given as a discount to those who purchase an energy-conserving vehicle. This would be another way to speed up our transition to a Geo-Green economy.
Comments?

Geo-Green Network

The Geo-Green Network is a working concept. The idea is to make the "Green Tax Shift" a household concept that the majority of people can understand and support when they vote.

Tom Friedman in his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded makes the point that changing light bulbs isn't enough. He's right. If half of us reduce our gasoline consumption by 50% by some great effort the Humvee drivers would have fun going into overdrive because our sacrifice lowers demand and, thus, lowers the price for them.

Friedman suggests a price floor for oil. Our Geo-Green Network calls for a "user fee" on barrels of oil that would be recycled into our social security accounts that would include a health savings account and an energy transition account. Only with this "Earth Inheritance Dividend" will the Green Fee on barrels of oil be politically viable.


The time to start is now.

Geo-Greenism

How to make a better world

Our human population continues to grow in numbers and is rapidly increasing its per capita consumption of natural resources.

Most of the natural resources that support our human, animal and plant populations are finite.

When a biological population overshoots its carrying capacity as a result of uncontrolled growth, we inevitably see forces come into play that result in disorder and a drastic decline in the population.
We conclude that the human species may be entering a worldwide political, economic, and environmental crisis that could lead to dictatorship, injustice, and an unsustainable situation for civilization as we know it.

Let us build a Green Shift Network made up of the core value groups promoting economic freedom, fairness, and responsibility to future generations and a sustainable planet Earth. This Geo-Greenism movement calls for government policy that will:

1. Reduce and ultimately remove all taxes on good things such as business activity to promote personal freedom, capital investment and invention;

2. Reduce and ultimately remove all taxes on bad things such as labor to provide social and economic fairness to workers;

3. End all government subsidies to individuals and corporations to provide a level playing field to all;

4. Collect fees on the use of our Earth’s natural resources including fees for tapping into natural resources, charges for government-granted franchises and licenses, and fees equal to the economic rental value of site locations. These user fees will promote the wise use of land and conservation of our Earth’s natural resources;

5. Use these funds collected to pay for essential government services and to provide an equal Earth Inheritance Dividend to all citizens to provide fair access to Earth’s resources to all people on the planet.

This Earth Dividend program will be administered by local, state, national and, where appropriate, international government agencies on behalf of their citizens.

The Green Shift Network proposes that the above policies be gradually, but resolutely, put into place by the year 2020.

for more information see http://www.greentaxshift.net