Let's Prehend
A Manual of Human Ecology and Culture Design

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY, NEP, Easy Transition

The purpose of the New Economic Policy, NEP, is to provide a secure and bountiful life for all the world's people. A healthy human ecology is securely based on a healthy natural ecology, a sustained high living standard and a high technology. These goals are accomplished with a minimum intervention in people's lives, a gentle and gradual shift in life-style and culture, a minimum of anxiety and dislocation of people and communities, a minimum disruption to those shreds of organic culture which have survived thus far the onslaught of modern abstract culture.

The smoothest transition is accomplished through an agency which might be called the Third Government, TG. But before discussing the Third Government, let's consider the First and Second Governments. These are not three formal systems such as the US constitution outlined centuries ago, but rather an objective generalization of how the United States and Global Economy actually operate.

The First Government is the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, federal, state, and local, together with their complex of public relations offices and the great mass media system. This media `mind of society' has raised Government and the News to the forefront of the entertainment business. The First Government is what people `believe in', those foolish enough to believe what they were taught in the schools.

The Second Government is the one that runs things, the financiers and CEOs and top military and civilian operatives who make top management decisions for mankind. It decides: where and how capital will be invested, by whom, and at what rates (through multinational corporations, the World Bank, IMF, Group of Seven, etc.); which political parties and cabals will control which governments (through the CIA and NSA with their international and multinational counterparts); how labor and community groups will be managed (through national and international agencies such as FBI, AID, etc., which aids multinational police.); what military presence or action is needed (through the military, which is increasingly split between the overt and the covert modes - the former presenting the flags, and the latter keeping the world in order); and finally, how all these matters will be presented on the theatrical front: the First Governments and their media.

This Second Government is the world community of top management. It includes the business systems, the corporations, cooperatives, etc., which manage everything. Superficially these people are operating for power and profit, but a psychoanalytical glance will show that the system has a rich culture supported by elaborate mythology and complex rituals. It has the top brains of the world, well able to implement decisions bottom to top, from the smallest plantations, mines, and factories to the fate of mankind and the ecosystem.

There is a terrible impersonality to the First and Second Governments. Those who choose this type of work struggle to improve their attitudes appropriate to the particular professional path, they ICE, p.236, 241. Any behavior beyond the narrow marginal deviation, and the career is lost. Thus, in order to keep to the path, any individual intelligence or integrity is sacrificed to the demands of the system. Simple people may not notice this process (Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle), but intelligent ones must either suffer the agony of value conflict (Adlai Stevenson and George McGovern), fake-out the system in a sociopathic orgy (Richard Nixon and George Bush), or honestly own the inner rage of the warrior (John Sununu and Jean Kirkpatrick). Rarely, a few crumbs of noblesse oblige survive in leaders with intelligence and integrity. (Franklin Roosevelt and Mikhail Gorbachev.) The system flourishes as if it were a living organism in its own right, with its own integrity and personality, while individuals take various roles as they rise and fall.

The Third Government, TG, will be that oligarchy of independent, autonomous agencies which oversee and manage the Second Government, which in turn manages the First Government. Third government can be made up of the oligarchs of the Federal Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, multinational corporation heads, etc., not because these people presently have their hearts in the right place, but because they are competent for the job, at the pinnacle of personal power and at this very moment are looking for something nice to do! Third Government not only keeps cultural evolution stable and secure, it also guides world culture by applying human ecology to the problems of culture design. Constraints by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are no problem, being easily guided in the daily dynamic of political life by the Second Government, which in turn is directed by the Third Government.

The TG would have one minor branch, the Investment Bureau, IB, to protect the investors from precipitous drops in world markets. If any stock drops below some calculated level, IB simply buys shares to prevent further decline, much as the Agriculture Department pegs the price of grain. In the beginning, the funds would be provided by the federal government in the same way other revenues are provided: through accounting manipulation, currency expansion, and borrowing from wealthy people and institutions all over the world. The investment community will be much relieved by this intervention, their ulcers will heal, their children will calm. Elsewhere in the economy, while serious reforms are underway, this IB would gradually and inconspicuously become self-supporting from capital gains and dividends, just like any other investor.

The Third Government would be self-sustaining because, the market, being what it is, the price of the stock bought at ten percent below value would eventually rise, and the IB could then sell at perhaps ten percent above value. This would be a great help in stabilizing the market, and would net the TG about twenty percent on the transaction.

Of course, more stock would be bought than sold, the decision being made not by some power-hungry politician or some money hungry billionaire but by the Elite Service Personnel, ESPs, secure to indulge their noblesse oblige. The stocks held would yield dividends, which would be held in trust for the mass of humanity (as all wealth ultimately is!) by the TG toward the evolution and health of the human and natural ecosystem.

Eventually, perhaps even sooner, large portions of the stock of corporations would be held by TG. Typically five or ten percent of a stock is significant control of a firm, certainly fifty-one percent is. But instead of simply signing the proxies and leaving the decision to the management, the TG is in a position to maintain good communication with all concerned.

The first communication would be to the Human Ecology Commission, HEC, which sets guidelines for maintaining a quality social and cultural as well as economic environment for all humanity. Highest priority goes to the reconstruction of organic social life through rebuilding ecovillages. However, the maintenance and reform of welfare and criminal justice system will be carefully guided while these present systems are gradually superseded by organic communities. The commission would almost never rely upon regulations, and even more rarely on criminal sanctions. Instead, it would internalize the external costs of goods and services by adding an ecotax to prices. Many sources study the specifics, such as NATURAL WEALTH OF NATIONS: HARNESSING THE MARKET FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.[ *NATURAL WEALTH OF NATIONS.. David Malin *Roodman, Norton 98 $13.] Thus the gentle forces of the marketplace would bring about the new utopia with minimum disruption or irritation.[ Paul *Hawkins has developed this in his book, *ECOLOGY OF COMMERCE.]

A subcommittee of HEC would be the Natural Ecology Commission, NEC, whose job is to act as coordinator and clearinghouse for the scientific community toward maintaining the natural ecology. NEC's task includes: decreasing further climate change problems of the atmosphere, protecting the already badly damaged oceans, and preventing the despoiling of land by erosion, desertification, deforestation, open pit mining, etc.. Gradually each firm cleans up its act in coordination with the great restructuring, not only by following these broader directives but, subsidiarily (p.252), by its own initiatives manifesting the new values. From the highest to the lowest levels there is increasing common concern for ecological management. Scientists agree that sustainable luxury for all human beings is not only feasible but easy, with no loss, only gain, in the quality of life. Sustainable luxury is technically easy, but ecopolitically difficult enough to require these new institutions.

These decisions are not made from on high, but by people on every level, down to the most humble worker, peasant, and insurance broker. Each person is welcomed into the action of this great complex Community of Concern. Most basic is the quality circle of a dozen or so in each enterprise, each office, each neighborhood. Representatives from these meet for intermediate, then higher level, finally regional or industry based plenums. Obviously these organizations would overlap, interact, have oversight ombudsmen, and other grievance safeguards.(See LETS PARTY, p.258)

To modern citizens, naive and alienated as they are, this whole process looks like too much work and a lot of dull meetings. Not so. The human animal is resourceful, and a plethora of communications will evolve on every level, with picnics, rituals, celebrations and ceremonies. Sociocultural life will become a gigantic party, with as yet unimagined diversity and richness. All humanity will live in happiness in the giant garden which is Earth.[ See the book *GLOBAL DREAM, International Community and the New World Order by John *Cavanah and Richard *Barnett, Institute of Policy Studies.]

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