MUSIC IS GOOD BRAIN FOOD

   With the development of brain imaging in the 1990s, it became possible to actually visualize the brains of musicians and to compare them with those of non-musicians. Using MRI morphometry, Gottfried Schlaug at Harvard and his colleagues made careful comparisons of the sizes of various brain structures. In 1995 they published a paper showing that the corpus callosum, the great commissure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, is enlarged in professional musicians and that a part of the auditory cortex, the planum temporale, has an asymmetric enlargement in musicians with absolute pitch. Schlaug et al went on to show increased volumes of gray matter in motor, auditory, and visuospatial areas of the cortex, as well as in the cerebellum. Anatomists today would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer, or a mathematician---but they could recognize the brain of a professional musician without a moment's hesitation.
   How much, Schlaug wondered, are these differences a reflection of innate predisposition and how much an effect of early training ? One does not, of course, know what distinguishes the brains of musically gifted four-year-olds before they start musical training, but the effects of such training, Schlaug and his colleagues showed, are very great : The anatomical changes they observed with musicians' brains were strongly correlated with the age at which musical training began and with the intensity of practice and rehearsal. 
   Alvaro Pascual-Leone at Harvard has shown how rapidly the brain responds to musical training. Using five-finger piano exercises as a training test, he has demonstrated that the motor cortex can show changes within minutes of practicing such sequences. Measurements of regional blood flow in different parts of the brain, moreover, have shown increased activity in the basal ganglia and the cerebellum, as well as various areas of the cerebral cortex---not only with physical practice, but with mental practice alone.
   There is a wide range of musical talent, but there is much to suggest there is an innate musicality in virtually everyone. This has been shown most clearly by the use of the Suzuki method to train young children, entirely by ear and by imitation, to play the violin. Virtually all hearing children respond to such training. 
   The implication of all this for early education is clear. Although a teaspoon of Mozart may not make a child a better mathematician, there is little doubt that regular exposure to music, and especially active participation in music, may stimulate development of many areas of the brain ---areas which have to work together to listen to or perform music. For the vast majority of students, music can be every bit as important educationally as reading or writing.

Can Civilization Survive Really Existing Capitalism ?

                 CAPITALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT


                      LYING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

   There is a controversy, regularly reported in the media. One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, all of the world's national academies of science, the professional science journals, and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) . They agree that global warming is taking place ; that there is a substantial human component ; that the situation is serious and perhaps dire ; and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.
   The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown---which means that things might be as bad as thought, or might be worse.
   Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics : highly regarded climate scientists who regard the regular reports of the IPCC as much too conservative.  They have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately. But they are scarcely part of the public debate, though very prominent in the scientific literature. 
   The Heartland Institute and ALEC are part of a huge campaign by corporate lobbies to sow seeds of doubt about the near-unanimous consensus of scientists that human activities are having a major impact on global warming with possibly ominous implications. The campaign was openly announced and includes the lobbying organizations of the fossil-- fuel industry, the American Chamber of Commerce(the main business lobby) , and others. The efforts of ALEC and the infamous Koch brothers, are, however, a fraction of what is underway. The initiatives are concealed in complex ways but are sometimes partially revealed,for example in a current report by Suzanne Goldenberg in the London Guardian, which finds that "conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million. . . to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change," helping to "build a vast network of think tanks (thinking tanks ??) and activist groups working to a single purpose : to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing 'wedge issue' for hardcore conservatives." 
   The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on US public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system in an effort to counter the dangerous tendency of the public to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific research.
   At the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in 2013, Governor Bobby Jindal warned the leadership "we must stop being the stupid party. . . We must stop insulting the intelligence of the voters." { Grace Wyler, "Bobby Jindal : The GOP Must Stop Being The Stupid Party," Business Insider, January 25, 2013. } ALEC and its corporate backers, in contrast, want the country to be "the stupid nation" --- and for principled reasons. 
   One of the dark-money organizations of billionaires funding climate- change denial is Donors Trust, which is also a major contributor to efforts to deny voting rights to poor Blacks. That makes sense. African-Americans tend to be Democrats, even social democrats, and might even go so far as to pay attention to science, unlike those properly trained to think critically by "balanced" teaching. 
   The major science journals regularly give a sense of how surreal all of this is. Take Science, the major US scientific weekly. In the January 18, 2013, issue it had three news items side by side . One reported that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the US, continuing a long trend. The second reported a new study by the US Global Change Research Program that provided additional evidence for rapid climate change as the result of human activities and discussed likely severe impacts. The third reported the new appointments to chair the committees on science policy chosen by the House of Representatives, where a minority of voters elected a large majority of Republicans thanks to the shredding of the political system. All three of the new chairs deny that humans contribute to climate change, two deny that it is even taking place, and one is a longtime advocate for the fossil fuel industry. The same issue of the journal has a technical article with new evidence that the irreversible tipping point may be ominously close. 
   Another report in Science from January 2013 underscores the need to ensure that we become the stupid nation. The report provides evidence that even slightly warmer temperatures, less of a rise than is currently anticipated in coming years, could start melting permafrost, which in turn could trigger the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped in ice. Best to keep to "balanced education"---if, that is, we can face the grandchildren whose lives we are busy destroying.

Capitalism : What is it ?

                      REALLY EXISTING CAPITALISM

   The term "capitalism" is vague enough to cover many possibilities. It is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, which receives substantial state intervention, ranging from creative innovation to "too-big-to-fail" government insurance policy for banks, and which is highly monopolized, further limiting market reliance. 
   It's worth bearing in mind the scale of the departures of "really existing capitalism" from official "free-market capitalism." To mention only a few examples, in the past twenty-five years, the share of profits of the two hundred largest enterprises has risen sharply, carrying forward the oligopolistic character of the U.S. economy. This directly undermines markets, avoiding price wars through efforts at often-meaningless product differentiation through massive advertising, which is itself dedicated to undermining markets in the official sense, based on informed consumers making rational choices. Computers and the Internet, along with other basic components of the IT revolution, were largely in the state sector, (subsidy, procurement, and other devices) for decades before they were handed over to private enterprise for adaptation to commercial markets and profit. The government insurance policy that provides big banks with enormous advantages has been roughly estimated by economists and the business press to be on the order of some $40 billion a year. However, a recent study by the International Monetary Fund indicates --- to quote the business press --- that perhaps "the largest US banks aren't really profitable at all," adding that "the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from US taxpayers. This is more evidence to support the judgment of the most respected financial correspondent in the English-speaking world, Martin Wolf of the London Financial Times, that "an out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid." 
   The term "capitalism" is also commonly used for systems in which there are no capitalists : for example, the extensive worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque Country of Spain or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio --- often with conservative support. Some might even use the term "capitalism" to include the industrial democracy advocated by Jogn Dewey, America's leading social philosopher.  He called for workers to be "masters of their own industrial fate," and for all institutions to be under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation, and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain "the shadow cast on society by big business. " 
   The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now, control of government is narrowly concentrated at the top of the income scale, while the large majority "down below" are virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy that diverges sharply from democracy, assuming that by "democracy," we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will. 
   There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is, in principle, compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy ---RECD for short (pronounced "wrecked") ---the question is effectively answered : they are radically incompatible. It seems unlikely that civilizations can survive "really existing capitalism" and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. Could functioning democracy make a difference ? Perhaps.
   Let's focus on the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces, though not the only one : environmental catastrophe.  Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in a 2013 issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The researchers found that "109 countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy. 
   It is not public opinion that drives policy off the international spectrum --- quite the opposite. The public is much closer to the global norm than policy. It is also much more supportive of actions to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus --- and it is not too far off : in the lives of our grandchildren, very likely. As the Daedalus researchers found : 

     Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of the respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit . . . Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind, or sunlight. . . These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.

    The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy. One recent illustration of their concern is the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act being proposed to legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. The ALEC act mandates "balanced" teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms. "Balanced teaching"is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial in order to "balance" mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the "balanced teaching" advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of "creation science" in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states. 
   The ALEC legislation is based on a project of the Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded think tank dedicated to rejecting the scientific consensus on the climate. The Heartland Institute project calls for a "Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms" that aims to teach that there "is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather." Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking --- a fine idea, no doubt, but it's easy to think up far better choices than an issue selected because of its importance for corporate profits. 

   

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --- Episode 68

                                                   AGENDUM FOR CHANGE

       UN INTERNATIONAL INSOLVENCY COURT{UNIIC}

Whereas the World Bank has led low-income countries ever more into the debt bondage that holds their economies and resources hostage to the predators of their global economy, the primary responsibility of the proposed UNIIC will be to help countries free themselves from this burden. A debtor government that determines its debt obligations have reached a critical level and cannot be repaid without impairing the well-being of its citizens would voluntarily initiate the insolvency procedure by presenting its case to the court. After a preliminary assessment the debtor country would be granted a stay on its repayments for a period sufficient to complete the court's review and decision process. In the meantime it would also agree to incur no new debt. 
   An assessment process would determine how much a country owes and is able to pay over time without compromising its ability to perform essential governmental functions, including the delivery of necessary social services. The Court would also review the country's debt portfolio to identify odious debts that were not legitimately contracted---which would include many World Bank and IMF loans --- or were used for purposes that yielded no public benefit---such as the World Bank designed projects that failed to produce projected benefits due to faulty design or negligent oversight. The UNIIC would sanction the repudiation of such odious debts on the basis of international legal precedents. Repudiation of World Bank and IMF loans would force them to call the guarantees from their member countries to cover their own debts, which would in turn build political support to decommission them. 
   A negotiated debt relief plan would provide for the rescheduling, reduction, and cancellation of the remaining debt on terms that would allow the indebted government to continue necessary functions, including the delivery of essential social services. Such plans would ideally take into account the implicit debt owed to the debtor country by creditor countries in the North for wealth previously extracted without proper compensation. Debt relief plans should include a schedule for freeing the country of international debt and putting in place mechanisms henceforth to keep its international accounts in balance. 

      UN INTERNATIONAL FINANCE ORGANIZATION 
                                          { UNIFO } 

Whereas, the International Monetary Fund has forced countries to deregulate the flow of money and goods across their borders and to  bear the consequences of resulting trade imbalances, international indebtedness, exploitation, and financial instability, the proposed UNIFO would work with UN member countries to achieve and maintain balance and stability in international financial relationships, free national and global finance from the distortions of international debt and debt-based money, promote productive domestic investment and domestic ownership of productive resources, and take such actions as necessary at the international level to support nations and localities in creating equitable, productive, sustainable livelihoods for all. Lacking either lending capacity or enforcement powers its functions would be limited to maintaining a central data base on international accounts, flagging problem situations, and facilitating negotiations among trading partners to correct imbalances. The UNIFO would also provide advisory services on request. Among its other functions it would facilitate the negotiation and implementation of international agreements that support joint action by national governments to prevent the use of offshore banks and tax havens for money laundering and tax evasion. 

             UN Organization For Corporate Accountability 
                                               { UNOCA }

   Whereas, the World Trade Organization regulates national and local governments to prohibit them from regulating transnational corporations, trade, and finance in the public interest, the UNOCA will assist governments in establishing sensible and appropriate regulatory regimes to assure the public accountability of international corporations and finance. To this end it will provide information and advisory services, facilitate the negotiation of relevant international agreements, and coordinate actions by national governments to break up concentrations of corporate power (especially in banking, media, and agribusiness), prevent unfair competitive practices, decharter corporations with a history of regulatory violations and repeat convictions for criminal behavior, enable persons harmed by a corporate subsidiary in one country to sue the parent company for damages in another, eliminate corporate subsidies, and prohibit corporations from attempting to influence political processes. To facilitate the process of rolling back international agreements that guarantee the right of countries and localities to : maintain balanced and mutually beneficial trading relationships with other countries ; set rules and standards for businesses---including international corporations ---operating in their jurisdictions ; prohibit the patenting of genetic materials, life forms and processes, and indigenous knowledge ; and access beneficial information and technologies from other countries on reasonable terms. 

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --- Episode 67

                                                 AGENDUM FOR CHANGE
                                               (continued)


                  LOCALIZING THE GLOBAL SYSTEM 

   Currently, global governance functions related to economic, social, and environmental affairs are divided between the United Nations system --- comprised of the United Nations secretariat ; its 
specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization ; and its various development assistance funds such as UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNIFEM ---and the Bretton Woods system ---comprised of The World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization. The Bretton Woods institutions dominate the economic policy arena, yet accept no accountability for the social and environmental consequences of their policies. The under-funded United Nations has virtually no influence over economic policies, but is left with the task of cleaning up the social and environmental messes the flawed policies of the Bretton Woods three leave in their wake. 
   The founders of the United Nations intended that coordination of international economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related affairs, including oversight of the Bretton Woods institutions, would rest with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Although the World Bank, IMF, and WTO are officially designated specialized agencies of the United Nations, they have become far more powerful than the other specialized UN agencies and reject any UN effort to coordinate or oversee their activities. 
 Dividing the governance of the global affairs of one world between two competing governmental systems has not been a workable arrangement. A choice must ultimately be made between the Bretton Woods system and the UN system. The UN system has been only marginally effective --- in part because of under-funding, neglect, and lack of ability to influence the economic policies of the Bretton Woods institutions --- but has by far the broader mandate, is more open and democratic, is generally respectful of national sovereignty, and gives serious attention to human, social, and environmental priorities. The more secretive and undemocratic Bretton Woods institutions have greater professional competence and enforcement power, but generally take a narrowly economistic view of the world, run roughshod over national sovereignty and democratic processes, encourage competition among nations, and consistently place financial and corporate interests ahead of human and planetary interests. 
   Some would argue that the choice should favor the Breton Woods institutions because of their ability to get things done. Given that the things they do most effectively are destructive and that their coercive methods consistently disregard the will and interests of those who bear the consequences this seems a poor choice. The United Nations has been less effective, but its more open and democratic decision processes and its greater responsiveness to the will of the people affected have generally resulted in more consensual agenda aligned with human and planetary interests. Since the underlying goal is to strengthen democracy and give social and environmental goals priority over corporate profits, the more sensible choice is to reaffirm the mandate of the United Nations, invest in building its capacity to fulfill it, and decommission the Bretton Woods institutions. 
   Under its reaffirmed economic mandate the United States would work with member countries to regain control of their economies, establish necessary regulatory regimes, and orient their economies toward domestic priorities. In addition to strengthening the mandates and capacities of existing UN agencies in international economic affairs, three new UN agencies are proposed, each with a role nearly opposite of that of the Bretton Woods institution it will replace. 



                                                   

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close---Episode 66

                               AGENDUM FOR CHANGE 
                                            (continued) 

    EQUITABLE ALLOCATION OF PAID EMPLOYMENT 

Access to opportunities for paid employment should also be allocated as fairly as possible through measures to reduce the work week and assure equal employment opportunity regardless of gender, race, and other extraneous considerations.

Such measures can be phased in over time and adjusted to reflect experience. The idea here is not to provide a prescriptive blueprint but rather to illustrate the kinds of policies that would lead us to healthier societies. Different approaches will surely be appropriate in different settings, and the administration and findings of such initiatives should be undertaken by the smallest and most local governance units as possible. For example, in predominantly agrarian societies with equitable land distribution, a very small guaranteed minimum income might be adequate. The same might be true in stable egalitarian societies in which living costs are low and there are ample employment opportunities for all who wish to work. A guaranteed income is probably most necessary to correct imbalances in societies such as the United States, where living costs are high, there is extreme inequality,and jobs paying a wage adequate to maintain a decent living are scarce. 

If we are to manage our economic spaces in the human interest, we will need accounting tools suited to this purpose. Sixto Roxas, an economist and former international bank executive from the Philippines, explains that conventional national income accounts do not meet this need, because they measure the costs and benefits of economic activity from the standpoint of the firm, not the community. The differences are fundamental. For example, the firm profits by employing the least possible number of workers at the lowest possible wage. The community profits by having its members fully employed at the highest possible wage. The firm may profit by depleting a local forest or mineral resource and then moving elsewhere, while the community is left devastated.
   Roxas and his colleagues are developing community-based accounting systems that assess economic costs and benefits in terms of their consequences for the health of households, communities, and ecosystems. They also record how much of the value generated from local economic activity remains in the community and how much flows out. Thus, if local forests are being clear-cut and the timber and profits are being exported while the community is left with a barren landscape, this shows up as a net loss rather than the net gain recorded by conventional economic accounting. Significant attention is needed to developing and applying such systems as economic management tools. 

                   LOCALIZING THE GLOBAL SYSTEM 

   Transnational corporations have for decades used global institutions and international agreements to circumvent democratic processes, force open national economies, and transfer control over markets, finance, resources, and productive assets to themselves. Any agendum to reclaim economic and political spaces for people must address the need to replace this predatory system of global governance with a system that : 

* Empowers people and institutions at national and local levels to control and manage their economic resources to their own benefit ; 

* Makes it difficult for any locality to externalize its production or consumption costs beyond its borders ; and 

* Encourages cooperation among localities in the search for solutions to shared problems.

These objectives are strongly supported by the application of sound market principles. As we have already seen,to function in the public interest, markets must operate within a framework of enforceable rules that maintain the conditions of socially efficient market allocation. Otherwise productive investment is driven out by predatory speculation, cost internalizing firms are put out of business by cost externalizers, and the market becomes dominated by centrally planned corporate monopolies. It is therefore important for global institutions to support national and local governments in their efforts to implement sound market rules. Normally, such rules will favor local producers that use local resources to meet local needs and will protect local markets and resources from colonization by economic predators. At the same time, the people of a country must have the freedom to decide the extent to which they wish to integrate their national economy with the national economies of other willing partners. Whatever its level of integration, a primary obligation of the individual country to the international system is to keep its exports and imports with the rest of the world roughly in balance. 






   

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --- Episode 65

                                                 AGENDUM FOR CHANGE 
                                               (continued)

                                 GUARANTEED INCOME 

   An idea long popular with both conservative and progressive economists, a guaranteed income merits serious consideration. It involves guaranteeing every person an income adequate to meet his or her basic needs. The amount would be lower for children than for adults but would be unaffected by a person's other income, wealth, work, gender, or marital status. It would replace social security and existing welfare programs. Since earned income would not reduce the guaranteed payment, there would be little disincentive to work for pay, though employers might have to pay more to attract workers to unpleasant, menial tasks. If some choose not to work, this should not be considered a problem in a labor surplus world. 
   Such a scheme would be expensive but could be supported in most high-income countries by reducing military spending, corporate welfare,and existing entitlement programs and increasing taxes on unearned income and luxuries and user fees on pollution, resource extraction, and other activities a sustainable society seeks to discourage. Combined with an adequate program of universal publicly funded health insurance and merit-based public fellowships for higher education, a guaranteed income would greatly increase the personal financial  security afforded by more modest incomes and provide greater scope for those who wish to do unpaid work in the social economy. In low-income countries, agrarian reform and other measures to assure equitable access to productive natural resources for livelihood production might appropriately substitute for a guaranteed income. 

   PROGRESSIVE INCOME AND CONSUMPTION TAXES

Taxes on incomes up to the level required to meet basic needs in a comfortable, satisfying, and responsible way should be eliminated, as should sales or Value-added taxes on basic food, clothing, shelter, health, personal hygiene, educational, and entertainment or recreational expenditures needed to sustain good living. There should, however, be a sharply graduated tax on incomes above the guaranteed minimum---going as high as 90 percent on top income brackets. In addition to a tax of at least 50 percent on estates over a million dollars, inheritance or trust income should be taxed to the receiving individual the same as any other personal income. Appropriate exceptions may be provided for family farms and businesses. 
   There should be a substantial luxury tax on nonessential consumption items that are socially harmful or environmentally wasteful or destructive. Personal charitable contributions, including family foundations, should be fully tax exempt, thus providing a substantial incentive for individuals with excess incomes to support a strong independent sector as a counter to the power of the state and the corporation. Such measures would move us toward more equitable and sustainable societies while maintaining incentives to do socially useful work. 

                                        PAY EQUITY 

    The performance of an effective organization depends on the productive contribution of all its members. It is perfectly reasonable that those who carry more responsibility and bring more to the organization be compensated accordingly. But how much more ? What is a proper ratio between the compensation of the highest and lowest paid worker in an organization ? Two to one ? Ten to one ? A hundred to one ? A thousand to one ? Ratios of well over a thousand to one are common in U.S. corporations, even if we limit the comparison to U.S workers and CEOs. A healthy society must establish a reasonable balance between economic incentive and economic justice. Public policy should provide incentives to keep the ratios within a reasonable limit, say a ratio 
of no more than fifteen to one. If a company considers its lowest paid worker is worth $10,000, then it could pay its CEO $150,000. If it raised the lowest paid worker to $20,000 then the CEO's pay could go up to $300,000. If the top jobs in a corporation or other organization are so difficult or distasteful that qualified applicants cannot be attracted for such a sum, then perhaps the job needs to be restructured. If the job is too demanding because the corporation is simply too big, then perhaps the corporation should be broken up to make it more manageable. Society can easily learn to do without the services of those who require compensation packages in the millions of dollars to motivate them to perform their jobs effectively. 

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close ---Episode 64

                                                          AGENDUM FOR CHANGE

                                                  (continued) 

                              CORPORATE WELFARE

   Welfare reform should give top priority to getting dependent corporations off the welfare rolls. Corporate subsidies range from resource depletion allowances to subsidized grazing fees, export subsidies, and tax abatements. Such subsidies should be systematically identified and eliminated, with the possible exception of those needed to establish and nurture locally owned, community-based enterprises. 

                            INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 

Information is the only resource we have that is nondepletable and can be freely shared without depriving anyone of its use. Every contemporary human invention necessarily builds on the common heritage of human knowledge accumulated over thousands of years and countless generations. This is the information commons of the species. The justifiable purpose of intellectual property right protection is to provide incentives for research and creative contribution, not to create protected information monopolies. Laws relating to intellectual property rights should be reformed to conform to this principle. Such rights should be defined and interpreted narrowly and granted only for the minimum time necessary to allow those who have invested in for-profit research to recover their costs and a reasonable profit. The patenting of life-forms or genetic processes, discoveries funded with public monies, or processes or technologies that give the holder effective monopoly control over a type of research or class of products should be precluded by law. As with any common heritage resource, when there is a conflict between an exclusive private interest and a community interest, the community interest should prevail. 

As business is localized, it will be possible to localize government as well. It is big business that creates the need for big government to control its excesses and clean up its messes. Similarly, it is the interference of big business that renders government ineffective. Here's a good way to describe the dynamic : 

Business assumes the role of guardianship vis-a-vis the ecosystem and fails miserably in the task ; government steps in to try to mitigate the damage ; business tries to sabotage this regulatory process and nimbly sidesteps those regulations that are put on the books; government ups the ante and thereby becomes a hydra-headed bureaucratic monster choking off economic development while squandering money ; business decries "interference in the marketplace" and sets out to redress its grievances by further corrupting the legislative and regulatory process in an attempt to become de facto guardian, if not de jure. 

   The bigger our corporations, the greater their power to externalize costs and the greater the need for big government to protect the public interest and to clean up the consequent social and environmental messes. The more we cut our giant corporations down to human scale, the more we will be able to reduce the size of government. 

   Addressing extreme inequality in the distribution of economic power is also important to decolonizing economic spaces. As our current experience shows, justice and sustainability are virtually impossible to achieve in an unequal world. Extreme inequality enables the economically powerful to colonize the environmental resources of the weak and thus consume beyond their environmental means. This commonly deprives the economically weak of their basic means of livelihood and delinks the economically strong from the environmental consequences of their actions. The excluded poor respond to their resulting insecurity by having many children ---the one thing they can call their own and their prospective source of care in their hour of need. As the rich expand their consumption and the poor produce more children,  the human burden on the planet grows.
   A more just and sustainable society with an equitable distribution of income would limit overconsumption and reduce the incentive to seek security through having large families. Measures toward this end will be discussed next time. 

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE --- Episode 63

                                 AGENDUM FOR CHANGE

                                              (continued)

                  Preferential Treatment For Community Banks

   The U.S. banking system was once made up of unitary or community banks that collected local savings deposits, made loans to local businesses, and financed mortgages to expand local home ownership. Successive changes in banking regulations have allowed the former community banks to be colonized by gigantic money-center banks that channel local deposits into the global money system. If the banking system is to serve local economies, the system of community banks must be restored by requiring money-center banks to divest their branches and by tightening community investment laws to require that a substantial majority of the investment portfolio of any bank covered by federal deposit insurance be invested within its service area and that all its investments meet federally mandated standards. The large, global money-center banks that wish to speculate with their depositors' money in risky investments around the world should be required to obtain deposit insurance from private insurers, with the premiums determined by the risks involved. Federal insurance should be reserved for community banks that serve community needs and play by community rules. 

        RIGOROUS ENFORCEMENT OF ANTITRUST LAWS

   Vigorous legal action should be taken to break up concentrations of corporate power. There should be a legal presumption that any acquisition or merger reduces competition and is contrary to market principles and the public interest. The burden of proving otherwise to skeptical regulators should fall squarely on those presenting such proposals. 

     WORKER AND COMMUNITY BUYOUT OPTIONS 

In most instances,the human interest is best served by patient, rooted capital. To this end, worker and community buyouts of corporate assets should be supported by public policy. For example, before a major corporation is allowed to close a plant or undertake a sale or merger, the affected workers and community should have a legal right of first option to buy the assets on preferential terms. The terms should reflect the workers' years of personal investment of labor in the company and the local community's collective investment in public facilities that have made its local operations possible. In most businesses, there are many investors in addition to the formal shareholders, and this investment should be recognized in the law. Bankruptcy rules should be structured similarly to give employees and communities the option of taking possession, on preferential terms, of the corporation's remaining assets after bankruptcy proceedings. Similarly, when a company is required to divest parts of its operation under antitrust laws, employees or the community or both should have first option to buy the divested units. Rules governing company pension funds might allow their use by employees to purchase voting control of their firm's assets. Government oversight should structure worker and community buyouts so that workers and communities have real control --- in contrast to many Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP) that vest control in management. 

                                       TAX SHIFTING 

    One of the most basic, but often violated, principles of tax policy is that taxes should be assessed against activities that contribute to social and environmental dysfunction. Therefore, tax laws should be revised to reduce taxes on activities that benefit society, such as employment (including employer contributions to social security, health care, and workers' compensation) . The lost revenue would be made up by taxing activities that contribute to social and environmental dysfunction, such as resource extraction, packaging, pollution, imports, corporate lobbying, and advertising.  Such taxes would cascade up through the system to encourage more social and environmentally responsible behavior and discourage the use of harmful products. For example, a carbon emission tax at the source on coal, oil, gas, and nuclear energy would increase end-user prices and encourage conservation and conversion to solar energy sources such as solar heating , wind, hydro, photovoltaic, and biomass. Resulting increases in transportation costs would provide a nondiscriminatory natural tariff to encourage the localization of markets. The added cost of automobile commuting would encourage investment in public transit and and locating closer to one's work. A tax on pollution emissions would encourage pollution control. A tax on the extraction of virgin materials would encourage conversion to less polluting,  less materials-intensive product designs and modes of production and a greater reliance on recycled materials.   Assessing manufacturers an amount sufficient to cover estimated costs to dispose of their product packaging would discourage unnecessary packaging . Import tariffs would encourage economic self-reliance. 

                          ANNUAL PROFIT PAYOUT 

    Instead of taxing corporate profits, corporations should be required to pay out their profits each year to their shareholders . Profits would thus be taxed as shareholder income at the shareholders' normal marginal rate --- much like mutual fund earnings are now taxed. The double taxation of corporate profits ---once to the corporation and once to the shareholder --- would be eliminated, along with the deferral of shareholder taxes and the many distortions that the corporate income tax introduces into corporate decision making. If this were carried out universally, corporations would have no incentive to shift profits around the world to the jurisdiction with the lowest tax rate. Interest payments on debt financing would come directly out of profits rather than out of taxes, thus discouraging the use of debt and encouraging greater reliance on equity financing. Many leveraged buyouts that depend on the tax deductibility of interest to make them profitable would be discouraged. Corporations would be taxed on specific activities that it is in society's interest to limit, such as the use of carbon fuels, resource extraction, and speculative financial transactions. Such taxes would be difficult to avoid. Corporate expansion would also become more difficult--- a step toward keeping markets more competitive --- because a company would not be able to grow simply because management decided to reinvest its profits rather than paying them out to shareholders. If a corporation wanted funds to expand, it would need to raise new money in the financial markets and make its case accordingly. Shareholders could, of course, be given the option of rolling over their dividends into additional stock, much like the current U.S procedure on the taxation of earnings from mutual funds.