Democratic-cooperative-capitalism in place of residual-feudal exclusive property rights increases economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, the printing press and electricity and power brokers know this and used it to restore the war-shattered Germany and Japan. The Asian tigers used it and now China is copying that development plan. Instead of utilizing their knowledge to eliminate poverty, wealthy power brokers chose (through the IMF/World Bank/GATT/NAFTA/WTO/MAI/GATS/FTAA/military colossus) to impose residual-feudal exclusive property rights, the heart of their system of theft, worldwide. All wealth is processed from resources so why are resource-rich countries poor and resource-poor countries rich? The answer: plunder-by trade as learned in the city states of Europe a millennium ago. The secret: first establish exclusive property rights (monopolies) through raiding parties destroying the primitive industries of the countryside. The countryside then had to sell their resources to the city to the processed into products to be sold within the city and back out to the countryside. The military of today’s imperial-centers-of-capital is for the same purpose as those raiding parties 800 years ago, enforcing plunder-by-trade. A modern commons in land, technology, and money (nature’s wealth properly belonging to all) under democratic-cooperative-capitalism eliminates residual-feudal exclusive property rights even as it expands and ensures use-rights, individualism, competition and personal property rights. Forty billion dollars a year will provided clean water and sanitation, maternity and child care, basic health, nutrition and education for all while the money spent on arms annually is $800 billion. The wealth destroyed by war is greater yet and capital destroying capital is the greatest waste of all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR J.W. Smith
With a Ph.D. in political economics, J.W. smith has written broadly and lectured widely at conferences around the world. This is the second edition of his 4th book on the causes and cures of world poverty. J.W. Smith not only takes a different view from most economists his deep research pushes dense and impossible to understand neoliberal economics off the table and replaces it with sensible economics that we can all understand. As he says, “neoliberal economics makes sense only within borders of an empire. As soon as one steps out-side those borders they make no sense at all. How could it? It is designed to lay claim to the wealth of the periphery of empire?†Smith’s 20 years of deep study of economic history builds a new school of thought. Where else do you read how wealth accumulation increases of decreases exponentially with the differential in pay between equally productive labor? That evolving from plunder by raids to plunder by trade became the signature of “civilized†nations? That Adam Smith free trade was specifically designed to entrench this system of laying claim to others wealth? Or that no nation ever developed under that philosophy? The exposure of these realities provide a new foundation upon which to understand the world. That understanding of economic history leads us to smith’s explanation of how Western “democracies†evolved from feudalism and today’s property rights laws retain the essentials of those feudal exclusive rights to nature’s bounty. The concept these monopoly rights which exclude the weak from their rightful share follows naturally. Smith provides the historic foundation to understand how Western “democracies†evolved from feudalism, that property rights still retain feudal exclusive rights to nature’s bounty, and that it is these monopoly rights excluding the weak from their rightful share as the powerful continue the privatization of the commons that impoverishes so many people. Smith looked deeply under the blanket of imposed “frameworks of orientation†protecting the power structure and its stolen wealth and concluded the debris of custom and law are the barriers preventing Western societies from evolving into peaceful and far more productive societies. Smith’s explanation of how the elimination of those monopolies through expanding individual rights and competition through a modern commons increasing economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, writing, and electricity providing all with a quality life working only two to three days per week; all while protecting the earth’s resources and ecosphere, provides a ray of light on what we must do for a peaceful and prosperous world.
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