Dear Arthur,

I’ve passed through a number of professional and philosophical stages in my life that have led to the perspectives I now hold, true for us all of course. In general, we are caught in a vise between two very legitimate interests that affect each of us, the collective and the individual. Only when both are healthy can the full scope of the common welfare be attained. However, the nature of individual welfare has been distorted in a manner that permits a few thousand individuals to reap the vast majority of “individual benefit.

Neither capitalism nor communism have ever existed. Capitalism requires totally free and open competition and that cannot exist in the face of government favoritism for certain individuals in any manner promoting monopolies, even in areas so little challenged today as “intellectual property”. Intellectual property, in its most lucrative aspects belongs not to those who create it but to investors who had nothing to do with the related labor. Furthermore, the non-use of protected intellectual property is almost always used to distort normal economic forces based on supply-demand theory. Communism with a capital C has little to do with communist theory which rather than authoritarian is anarchistic. You are right that some socialist experiments have failed, but certainly not all. Most failures have been in a authoritarian Communist Party context but successes are illustrated in the current governments deemed most successful in a democratic socialist context, e.g., the Nordic States and Iceland.

I believe that massive improvement over even the most successful current econo-political systems can be attained through monetary reform, i.e., divorcing the process of expansion of the monetary supply from the banking-financial sector, forcing them to turn to depositors for their required capital, thus increasing rates paid for savings, but even more importantly, having the state use its control over monetary creation to pay for the expenses associated with government operations and social welfare. The risk of inflation as a result of real government control over the monetary supply, as was the case in Germany and Italy following the First World War exists only when such function is abused and the risk becomes nil when there are parameters in place tied to gross national product. For example, assume taxes currently consume 35% of gross national product and also, that it cost you 35% of your income to pay taxes. There would be no acquisitive difference to you if instead of paying 35% of your income on taxes you suffered 35% inflation. However, were such a system to be implemented, it would be impossible to cheat on your taxes and you would also save time and money spent and record keeping and preparation of returns so that in all probability, the burden you suffered would be reduced from 35% to perhaps as little as twenty percent, and even then, if rates of growth increased because of the absence of taxation, such levels of growth would further reduce the economic impact suffered by you. For example, assume efficiencies had reduced your rate of government economic burden from 35% to 20% but that the rate of growth were 5%, that would further reduce your economic burden by at least that 5% to 15%. And higher growth would increase it even further. All of the foregoing ignoring any other reforms involving elimination of waste and corruption. Such a change would eliminate any need and justification for public debt and, as indicated, would make taxation anachronistic, other than as required to keep money in circulation (e.g. a tax on money hoarded unproductively). Of course, bankers, financiers would find our gains there losses, just as today, their profits are at our expense.

Consider this additional hypothesis: investment profits and interest payments are really a form of taxation, but rather than government taxation, they involve taxation by private parties based on government guaranteed monopolies, protected through the government’s monopoly on the use of force, and made possible through government subsidized loans to the financial sectors. A brilliant student (students have taught me most of what I know) once commented that it seemed as though the citizenry — Federal Reserve — banking sector — citizen relationship was one analogous to having a house, renting it to someone at a bare minimum rental, then immediately renting it back at a multiple of the rental being received. “Who” he asked “would be stupid enough to do that”. The answer is “us”.

So our “individual” side of the equation is at best horribly dysfunctional.

The same is true of the “collectivist” side. By collectivist we can for purpose of this illustration concentrate on its most criticized aspect, “collective ownership”. That concept has always been distorted by making it seem that it was synonymous with the absence of all individual property. That is not what it calls for as it recognizes the concept of personal property, i.e., property for personal use (e.g., a personal home, vehicles, clothing, furnishings, etc.), but excludes property for collective uses (e.g., roads, utilities, mineral rights, factories, insurance and financial industries, etc.). Socialism has failed in certain areas because of several flavors of corruption. First, that of workers who lacking motivation failed to meet their labor related obligations; secondly, that of administrators and functionaries who skimmed and stole production; and third, from an inability to adequately incentivize innovation. It also failed in some but not all of the states where it was tied to authoritarian forms of government (note that authoritarianism can coexist with democracy while one can have non-participatory forms of government with high degrees of personal liberty). Each of those factors can be resolved through appropriately balanced incentives, both positive and negative.

The foregoing represent collectivist heavy solutions. There are also individualist heavy solutions (libertarian). Those involve lifting the thumb from government scales that now favor some over others, perhaps by eliminating all monopolies, vastly restricting intellectual property protection, and charging for public protection services based on the value of the wealth protected.

The trick is in attaining a balance between the two.

Today, the least represented segment, mainly because it has been deluded by the Clinton — Obama branch of the Democratic party, are those to the left of that party who refer to themselves as progressives and you are right, they are primarily socialists, albeit democratic socialists. Many of our most productive and admired heroes have been democratic socialists, but that association has not been publicized (see this Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism#Notable_self-described_democratic_socialists and more generally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism). I have worked on libertarian causes in the past and am a life member of the Libertarian Party but rejected its economic premises as anachronistic. I also declined a statewide party office in Florida when the party chose to go ahead with an improperly convened election. But I have high regard for the honesty and motivation of most of its members. Those trapped within the GOP by having bought in to lesser evil fears face the same fate as progressives trapped in the Democratic Party through identical tactics.

So, … I am now trying to help generate a real and viable progressive movement. But I realize real movements from diverse perspectives are not only necessary but essential, as long as they honestly represent the interests of their adherents.

My biggest concerns today involve the institutions necessary for participatory government. An honest and diversified press and political movements representing the views and interests of their adherents, things with at least in today’s United States, seem utterly missing, at least to me. So I advocate for the discarding of both major political parties and their replacement by a real multiparty system, a change in our electoral system for one similar to that used in the Irish Republic, and for a change in laws protecting the mainstream media from the consequences of their inappropriate actions, providing First Amendment protection solely to those engaged in real journalism rather than political and economic advocacy.

Hope this explains a bit of where I stand and why. If you ever hit Manizales, one of the world’s treasures, perhaps we can chat. Thank you for your kind words.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia.