Centrarian.Com

If you have read About Centrarian.com you know that politics cannot be centered without also centering economics ― which means correcting the economic system so it lives up to the claims of conservatives, namely that it efficiently allocate resources and approximate a merit system. The purpose of this page is to outline what is needed to accomplish this.

Private Property: Prevailing definitions of private property allow individuals to collect, not just merited compensation for their own labor, ideas and contributions to the economy, but unmerited shares of natural resource rents and output produced by people now dead. This needs to be corrected by having a new form of private property which allows individuals to claim their equal share (equal since no one individual has any greater right to a share than any other) of these non-individual sources of income). This would provide a base income for everyone, making the system both more equal and more of a true merit system.

Externalities are side effects whose costs or benefits are not included in decisions because they affect other parties without adequate compensation. The classic example of a negative externality is pollution generated a company affecting the health of people living downwind. An example of a positive externality is the increased selling price nearby home owners receive as a result of having a store or a mall being built nearby. Mechanisms need to be found to “internalize” such externalities so that when economic decisions are made they consider all the effects.

Uncompensated public costs and benefits are externalities that affect the general public rather than, or in addition to, private parties. These include environmental, economic, educational, and social effects of actions. As with externalities that affect private parties, mechanisms need to be found to internalize uncompensated public costs and benefits so that economic decisions are made with all of the effects being properly considered.

The Election Process needs to be changed to provide adequate accountability for office-holders. Mechanisms need to be created so that something close to contractual accountability exists between the public and its representatives.

A separate branch of government needs to be established, charged with collecting the natural resource rents of land, oil, minerals, air and water as well as the left-over wealth of people no longer alive to use it (this will not include wealth clearly co-earned by spouses or others). This branch will be required to distribute all revenue except for a nominal amount needed to cover collection expenses.

Greater cost accountability needs to be established within government and among taxpayers. Instead of all the costs of various programs being aggregated into broad budgets and taxpayers paying their share of the total, the costs of various goods and services provided by government need to be separately priced with either a separate source of funding or a fixed ceiling on funding. To the extent they benefit specific individuals or groups, those private parties should pay the cost. To the extent that programs provide purely public goods or services, liability should be apportioned according to benefit. As much as possible, taxpayers should be given the opportunity to chose among service providers, benefit and cost options including no cost, no service options.

Skewed ideology needs to be centered. Currently it causes endless conflict which wastes precious resources and makes it impossible to reach agreement, let alone continuously improve systems and build on past performance.

Public costs and public needs are not adequately integrated into the economic system. Instead of government creating programs that ineffectively and inefficiently achieve their goals, the economic system should be used to achieve these goals.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all agree on a vision for the future and just begin working together to achieve it - instead of getting stuck in ideological arguments before we begin?

Think, for a moment, about what this nation accomplished after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In less than four years, we managed to transform an economy crippled by the Great Depression and producing few war-related products (soldiers initially trained using broomsticks and trucks to take the place of rifles and tanks) into the most awesome war machine in history. By the end of those four years, this country had produced almost 300,000 planes, more than 70,000 ships, and millions of guns and bombs.

In terms of complexity, that transformation from a peacetime to a wartime economy was at least as complex as most problems we face today. Yet today we have lost confidence in each other and our government to resolve these problems. What is the single most important difference between then and now? We were united then. We are divided today.

The purpose of this website is to provide a basis for us to come together again so that we can solve the significant problems that confront us. How? Part of the answer is hinted at by the name of the site — Centrarian — by centering politics and economics. But centering politics does not mean centering politics in the conventional sense of Triangulation between the two sides as in the Third Way. What it does mean is that the skewed perspectives of the left and the right must be “unskewed” by correcting the faulty assumptions on which they are built. And politics cannot be centered without also centering economics.

Another part of the answer is taking a systems approach to politics. Most bloggers, pundits, interest groups, and politicians advocate particular political policies without taking into account, or trying to change the underlying political, economic and ideological systems. But this only makes matters worse by encouraging the endless conflict between interests. Instead of continuing to argue about whose interests and whose policies need to be advanced, we need to begin a cooperative effort to make our political and economic systems work better for everyone.

Centrarian.Com will attempt to remedy that. Please return February 1, 2007 when the site is complete and the blog begins.