The ABC2 Economics model builds on the four avenues through which people participate in society: the Artistry of life, the service of Business, engagement through Citizenry, and the development of Community. Obviously, each avenue reaches greater levels of complexity, and the paths do cross, yet these four activities account for the bulk of human behavior. This allows for a good starting point in understanding where we are, what we have to work with, and where we are going.
In order to create the world we want, we are going to have to think bigger than the world view we’ve accepted over the last several millennia. While our Artistry and Business can easily be accounted for in the Market Economy as buyer and seller, to develop a more balanced economy, we must also realize and appreciate the value the Core Economy contributes toward our Citizenry and Community by investing in the Planetary Economy and making the Gift Economy possible.
Since the word “consumer” overtook “citizen” as the most used way to describe an American in 1957, with me very well be that most Americans have never really considered what it means to be a citizen. Some may say that it means to contribute to the greater whole, unselfishly giving of yourself for your people. As we have been raised as consumers, we are used to thinking in terms of what’s in it for me, whereas realizing ourselves as citizens again will require us to think about what’s in it for us.
This also means that we are going to have to rethink the role of government. although the intention for the American government was to be of, by, and for the people, we can now recognize how it fell short by giving preference to parties. Moving forward, we must find a way 2 empower people 2 create the government they want and need rather than one dictated to them by the monetary powers of corporate parties.
As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people is heresy in the United States. They call that idea communism. And unfortunately, we still have a lot of people in America that are very afraid of communism. More unfortunately, they believe that the only two possible forms of government are capitalism and communism (which many Americans also believe is the same as socialism).
However, moving into the Wisdom Revolution requires the realization that the myopic economic systems of the past are not sufficient for seeing into the future. While arguing over whether or not capital is more important than community may have seemed like a viable part of the conversation for the last generation, this generation and the one that will follow it are recognizing that an economy is much more complex and requires a more participatory form of government.
David Korten says that an economy should fulfill 6 criteria of economic health. They include
- Providing everyone with the opportunity for a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life
- Bringing human consumption into balance with the Earth’s natural systems.
- Avoiding damage to relationships within strong, caring communities.
- Honoring sound and rule-based market principles.
- Supporting an equitable and socially efficient allocation of resources.
- Fulfilling the democratic ideal of one person, one vote citizen sovereignty.
Obviously, there are some people that believe that the government should be as small as possible. Especially with the way that it has grown so unwieldy as the two corporate parties have created more complexity and waste through their endless competition for power, many people want the government as it is to be as minimized as possible. Nevertheless, as we continue to create a more perfect union and regain control of our government through better practices, it can still be utilized to meet our needs instead of contributing to them, as it has in the past.
Currently, in America, our citizenry is largely enacted through the passive participation in trickle down economics. The federal government demands the payment of income and other taxes, and after they decide which party can make the highest gains for corporate interests, they distribute whatever’s left to state and local governments. But what if we were to empower people to make those decisions instead of politicians?
If the money that I give the federal government is going to make its way back to my local government anyway, why shouldn’t I be able to simply pay that directly instead of having to filter it through bureaucracy? Imagine if each of us had the ability to direct energy toward our local communities and governments that actually affect our lives first instead of having to ooze through the bloated federal government?
Personally, I live in Sarasota, Florida. While I understand that some of the taxes I pay to the federal or state government will eventually make their way back to support my city, to make things more efficient, what if I were able to channel funds directly toward supporting my local government and infrastructure instead of having to create more work for the federal and state governments to apportion it out? It certainly makes more sense to me to support the place where I live first and then be able to give less to the federal and state governments because they now have fewer duties.
And of the duties we do request of them,what if we were able to decide what that money went to support?
For instance, currently, the US government recognizes three branches with a number of departments, including the fifteen executive departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General. As it stands, because the United States is a representative democracy, a very, very small number of people decide how much money goes to each department. What if citizens were empowered to decide where their money should be spent?
The ninety members of the First United States Congress represented roughly three million people and actually comprised only .002% of the population. In 2015, the 535 members of Congress made up .00017% of the population of 319 million US citizens. Considering that half of those members are millionaires, it would seem the 5% of actual Americans who can claim to be millionaires, according to Credit Suisse Research‘s study, are getting a bit more representation than the rest of us.
One of the questions we need to ask is, with the advances in technology that we now have, how reliant do we still need to be on representatives? In 1776, representatives were required because a true democracy wasn’t possible. However, times are much different than they were back then.
Just as we can still share music, images, and data without the use of 8-track cassettes, one-hour photo labs, or floppy disks, we can engage as citizens without the use of representatives or parties. We just have to open up to the possibility and recognize where obsolescence is inevitable. While many Americans are still very leery about using online technology for voting, if we really do vote with our dollars, we do have the capability of channelling it to where we think it should go in order to serve our collective needs.
Rather than continuing to enable party politics to dictate the activity of government and its spending, we should be looking at how to empower people with the ability to give their representatives more cohesive marching orders. Citizens should be able to direct the flow of the economy toward what they want to see happen. The role of representatives should eventually be more administrative than legislative.
But the time is coming soon where an engaged citizenry will be empowered to pay for something like universal health care without having to wait for the permission of a political party. As understanding the politics we’ve been using up until now requires one to follow the money, moving into the Wisdom Revolution will require us to take a more active role in guiding its flow.
Perhaps it’s not so much that government needs to be smaller. Perhaps it merely needs to be diversified and engaged.
What if the future of taxation is not supporting any actual governments, but the active investments of citizens into public education, healthcare, research, infrastructure, universal basic income, a fair judicial system, and whatever else is required to give our people the stability we need to create the society we want without the added bulwark if bureaucracy. basically, what if the public option was provided by the citizenry rather than the government? What is, instead of a government of, by, and for the people, we just empowered the people?
Of course, one of the great things about a representative government is that it requires less time, and in an economy that requires people to work so many hours in order to get by, who has any of that to spare?
Fortunately, now that we’re realizing how many jobs are actually non-essential and how many more can be automated, many people will have time to spare.