How to Create an

Economic Democracy

A Revolutionary New

Concept of Economics

By Richard J. Wilson J.D.

Copyright 2012  Richard J. Wilson J.D

Table of Contents

Preface

I Our Fading Economic System

II How to Discover a New System

III   Discovering a New System

IV    Self-Governing Labor

V     Organization Technology

VI    Free Access to Resources

VII The Troublesome Adversary

VIII Overcoming the Adversary

Other books by the author available in e-book and paperback:

The Almighty Sprug: Gulliver’s eyewitness account of the quaint economy of Lilliput.

The Ether Dispute: Revisiting Einstein’s argument that space is a physical substance.

The Problem

S. C. Justice Louis D. Brandeis      1856 --1941

“The greatest problem which is before the American people is the problem of reconciling our industrial system with the political democracy in which we live. . .

The civilized world today believes that industrial self-government is impossible, that we must adhere to the system we have known as the monarchical system of master and servant, or as more politely called employer and employee.

It rests with America to prove that, as we have in the political world shown what self-government can do, we are to pursue the same lines in the industrial world.”

Preface

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton

We like to think we live in an era of democracy. But we know we’re just fooling ourselves. We know we still live in an era of oligarchy where one percent of the population controls both our economy and our politics. Like much of the civilized world, we’ve organized our politics as a democracy, and we go through the motions of democracy at every election, but we know we haven’t yet achieved government of the people, by the people, and for the people, because we have an economic oligarchy corrupting both our economy and politics.

The oligarchy is created because our society issues permanent, unlimited and hereditable power in the form of money to be used to govern our economy. And we know from experience in politics that whenever society issues any kind of permanent, unlimited and hereditable power to govern anything, a few clever people will ultimately accumulate the power by whatever means possible to become a hereditary oligarchy.

And we know full well that in the presence of raw, unlimited and hereditary money power, people lose their humanity. We have so many examples of the finest and most intelligent of people becoming obsessed with money power, and we’ve seen them lose whatever morality they may have had. Today a civilized society wouldn’t think of issuing raw, unlimited and hereditary political power, but we haven’t yet adopted that policy to our economy.

And it wouldn’t matter if we switched to socialism or communism, for these ‘isms” also use the monetary system to govern the economy and issue the permanent, unlimited, and hereditable power of money. And they, too, ultimately end with an economic oligarchy ruling the economy and politics. It’s vitally important to recognize that it is the monetary system that creates the oligarchy, and not the variations or ‘isms” of the monetary system.

Our experience is clear. Society cannot create democracy by changing only the political system. If we continue to issue money that grants the bearer permanent, unlimited, and hereditable power to govern our economy, we will still get oligarchy and all the economic and political injustice oligarchy creates. If we want democracy we must decide to eliminate all forms of permanent, unlimited and hereditable power in both politics and economics.

Of course, a modern economy needs a medium of exchange to operate. That’s beyond argument. But with today’s computer technology a medium of exchange doesn’t have to give the bearer permanent, unlimited and hereditable economic power. We could organize an econoscience to design a new medium that grants people only limited economic power and put an end to economic oligarchy, just as we created a political science to design a new political system that grants people limited political power to end political oligarchy.

The reason we haven’t taken steps to change the system and end the economic oligarchy is we, the people, have an addictive love affair with using the raw, unlimited and hereditable power of money. And it’s reasonable to assume, if conditions hadn’t changed, as self-destructive as it may be, society could go on for another thousands of years issuing raw, unlimited and hereditable money power and remain stuck in oligarchy with all the injustice it creates.

BUT CONDITIONS ARE NOW rapidly changing and the change is accelerating. In the last century science began producing robotics, and as these machines grow ever more human like, they are rapidly replacing human beings in the economy. In the not too distant future, if we continue to use the monetary system, robotics will swallow so many jobs that the majority of people in society will find themselves permanently exiled from participating in our economy.

I realize this may sound like the popular story of extraterrestrial beings invading society, but this is not science fiction. This is actual science. The advance of robotics created by people in white coats is unleashing upon society mechanical replacements to do the work in our economy, and, as long as we use the monetary system, because they demand no salary, these mechanical beings could eventually push the majority of us out of work.

And when that critical point is reached the majority of human beings will surely demand a new system of economics that allows everyone to participate in the economy and enjoy the wealth created by both man and machine. And when that happens, to avoid social disaster, society will need to be ready with a well-tested replacement for the monetary system. We may not like the thought, but the advance of robotics is slowly pushing the monetary system into its twilight years.

We can, of course, deny this is happening, or say to ourselves this won’t happen in our lifetime, but it will in the case of the younger generation. Science doesn’t progress linearly. It progresses exponentially, and, if we’re still using the monetary system, sometime in this century people will be competing with machines able to calculate and perform beyond human capability and work for nothing.

But we needn’t despair, for, as we’ll see in this book, if we are willing to set aside our emotional attachment to money and put our faith in modern science, science can lead us to a totally new system of economics where economic power is limited and