Forum Post: New Constitution for USA
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 12:31 a.m. EST by Larry
(3)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I have been doing some writing trying to outline the goals and desires.
Preamble, In the name of the All Peoples , and the American people of the United States of America , who pledged to restore their freedom, enjoy the wealth of their land, live in a society in which every citizen has the right to prosperity, equality and well-being, who are determined to break the restraints which impede their growth and their development, who will stand with their brothers and sisters from all parts of the peoples of the world in the struggle for the restoration of every inch of American land desecrated by imperialism, corporate greed and for the elimination of all obstacles which prevent world unity .
In the name of the American People who believe that peace cannot be achieved without justice and equality, who are conscious of the importance of strengthening the ties which unite them with all the people of the world who are struggling against imperialism and corporate greed; who understand fully that the alliance of reaction and imperialism and corporate greed is responsible for their underdevelopment despite the abundance of their natural resources, and for the corruption which spread through the governmental apparatus; who are conscious of their responsibility in the establishment of a national, democratic, progressive, and unitary government.
In the name of the popular will, expressed on October 20 by the United People of the World and America who overthrew the imperialistic and corporate oligarchy and proclaimed the American Democracy in order to protect and strengthen the people of the world until it attains its objectives of freedom, collectivism, and unity and equality for all.
The present Constitutional Proclamation is made to provide a basis for the organization of the state during the phase of completion of the national and democratic revolution, until a permanent constitution is prepared, defining the objectives of the American Democracy and outlining the future course.
What I did is wrote down core principles of a new society model. These principles is not a declaration of what we want (that then never becomes true), but mechanisms of practical achievement of targets set down in the principles. Existing "declaration" model just does not work - you cannot declare that you want freedom or that you are free and then delegate your power / power over you to a group of people, concept of electoral democracy is a fiction / contradiction in terms. New society model is based on a priciple of direct execution of power or free will. I have these principles in Russian but I shall translate them into english
Hopefully your new constitution adds equality to our current rights. Those things necessary in life are of equal value to everyone.
So what would your constitution say?
[Removed]
The one we have works.... all we need to do is start actually following what it says.
The constitution works well in keeping the status quo in place. It makes it incredibly difficult, near impossible, to change anything in society.
The constitution was written by this country's original 1%. They were comprised of white, male, wealthy slave owners who were explicit in stating that democracy could threaten their privileged status in society.
If you value progress and improvement, the constitution does not work well at all.
[Removed]
The constitution is supposed to prevent people's rights from being taken away. It is essentially an asterisk to "Democracy". All things are up to the majority of people, (but...), which prevents the majority from doing things to oppress the minority.
The constitution gives cover for the minority of wealthy to oppress the majority of poor. Yes, it is a document that enables the minority to oppress the majority.
The constitution is not about rights. People don't even have a right to a job and a fair wage, the 2 most important aspects of society.
So free speech, and prevention of intrusion into our lives by the minority are not rights?
You're right, we don't have a right to a fair wage, that would be whatever wage we can negotiate with the person paying us. We don't have that right, so now everything costs us a fortune here.
The right to free speech was an amendment to the constitution.
And a right to a job and a fair wage is far more important than a right to free speech. Ask a poor person whether they would rather be poor in an American system or wealthy in Chinese system.
In fact your ability to speak is largely determined by how much income you have. Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of one of the largest media empires, has a far, far greater capacity to speak than a poor person. The freedom to speak is just about worthless to someone in poverty.
.
"we don't have a right to a fair wage, that would be whatever wage we can negotiate with the person paying us."
The current system where your pay is based on your bargaining power is cruel and unfair. It allows a very small minority with bargaining power to use their bargaining power to unfairly take more income than they earned and deserve which then leaves the vast majority broke since there is very little income left over to pay them.
This small group of people takes so much of the available income that 97% of all workers are forced to make a below average income and 50% of all Americans are forced to live in or close to poverty.
Since the only economic reason for paying one person more than another is to get people to work hard, the only fair way to allocate income is to limit differences to only what is necessary to get them to do difficult work and give their maximum effort.
Allowing the top 3% to take more than that amount, allowing them to take as much as 50 to 50,000 times more income than everyone else, is unfair and undeserved because 1) they don't work 50 to 50,000 times harder than everyone else, 2) they didn't earn this money from willing consumers in the market, 3) they shouldn't have the power to force the rest of society into poverty or financial struggle, 4) there is no economic justification that requires us to pay them this amount in order for the economy to work well, 5) it makes society undemocratic since it gives them as much as 50 to 50,000 times more political power than everyone else.
Every worker in America in 2012 should be wealthy. Worker productivity in this country is $65 per hour which means if everyone was paid equally, full-time workers would get paid $135,000 per year.
If we allocated income based on hard work, every worker would get paid closer to the $65 per hour they produce. For example, if we determined that paying the top earners 4 times more than the bottom earners was enough incentive to motivate people to work hard, we would be able to pay every worker from $115k to $460k per year. That would make every worker wealthy and put an end to nearly every social problem we have.
According to Jefferson, the right of free speech in inalienable, we are born with it, every person on the planet. The first amendment prevents Congress from limiting it. It gives us nothing.
Oh, it's you again. Mister make everyone wealthy.
I had a question I never got a chance to ask you, you said if anyone made more than $460,000 per year they were cheating everyone else somehow. But if we take money out of the picture, and replace it with goods of value, what if I produce more than $460,000 per year worth of goods? Am I hurting my neighbors somehow by being this productive? Does the government need to seize the goods I have made? And most important, who exactly have I hurt?
Somebody has to take on Mister make everyone poor.
If you and your neighbor work jobs of similar difficulty and you work 80 hours and he only works 40 hours, you would be producing twice as much. So you would be entitled to twice the pay.
You do not hurt your neighbors by being more productive.
The government does not seize any goods unless you were, for example, making goods that are dangerous to others.
Okay, goodie.
So, if I build a machine in my back yard that can produce ten thousand items a minute, without anyone else even knowing it is there, I can then turn around and sell as many of those items as I can for a dollar each if the customers feel they are getting a good deal and we are both happy?
You can sell as much goods and services as you want. And you will get paid according to the pay plan for the hours you work just like every other worker contributing to our economy's production.
JuanFenito was caught drinking from the toilet. He's a troll.
That's amusing, because that is a troll remark to attack someone like that.
the toilet water was pretty good, but I'm not sure it was worth the wait, and your mom had slurped nearly the whole plumbing system dry through the toilet bowl before I had a chance to get even a little bit.
I'm sure the actual trolls are delighted, now the term "troll" is hurled at anyone who even mildly disagrees with you. Can't we stick together and defeat the Repukes in November without self destructing?
So no voluntary and consensual trades between individuals? Aw, man.... I thought for a minute there you were advocating some sort of freedom or something. Blast...
All trades between individuals in the market will be voluntary and consensual. You are free to buy anything you want. And you are free to sell to anyone you want.
Unlike our current system, I advocate a system where everyone has freedom.
Your freedom depends on how much income you have. Since the vast majority of people are broke, the vast majority of people have very, very limited freedom. Only the small percentage of very wealthy at the top have freedom.
If you are interested in freedom, you are fighting for the wrong team.
I see you have pigeonholed me already. What team am I fighting for? Is "the other team" anyone who disagrees with you?
So, if I can trade the items I make in my backyard to anyone I want, for as much as they will voluntarily pay me for them, how will my income be limited to any amount? I work entirely for myself in this scenario, with no one else deciding how much I earn except the people willing to pay me for my goods.
"I have never been to a movie theater. I have eaten at a restaurant only a few times in my life. I decided to forsake these things in order to build my skill set, and now I am rewarded somewhat for doing it."
Poverty is not caused by people going to the movie theater or dining out. It is caused by lack of income.
People have a lack of income because they have a low paying job, not because they blow all their money on movies and restaurants.
And there is no real way to turn the $20 you save from not going to the movies or dining out into an extra $80k in yearly income.
.
"Your system would produce some poverty...Someone asked if you would pay people who simply did not want to work, and you said no."
In today's system, poverty is not a choice. People are poor because they have no other options. They are not poor because they are turning down well paying jobs. They are poor because they can't get a well paying job.
In a system where you were guaranteed a $115k job, you can choose not to work. And you can live a very simple, sparse lifestyle if you wanted. But the very important difference is that it will be by choice.
.
"To say someone cannot be free if they are poor, is ridiculous, honestly"
Since freedom is the ability to act without coercion or restraint, poor people are not free because their ability to act is severely restrained by lack of money.
A poor girl in a so-called free Western country who cannot afford tuition has the same lack of freedom to get an education as a girl growing up in a Taliban-ruled Afghan village where education for girls is banned.
Capitalists who have somehow managed to convince the public that capitalism equals freedom would say that you are free because you have the opportunity to act. So if you are poor, you are free to try to earn more money.
Of course, freedom is not the chance to act; it is the actual ability to act.
Under the capitalist's absurd definition of freedom as the opportunity to act, the girl who lives under the Taliban really is free to get an education because she does have the opportunity to overthrow the Taliban. Even a prisoner is free because he always has the opportunity to escape the prison.
.
"To say that a base salary of $110,000 per year is a right, is the same as saying all the goods that can be purchased for that amount are also rights"
I don't say you have a right to certain goods or a certain income. I say you have a right to a fair income which is the same amount of income as everyone else who is working as hard. Paying someone (like a construction worker) 50,000 times less than someone else who doesn't even work as hard (like a radio broadcaster) is not fair.
What that income actually amounts to, however, depends on how productive the economy is. The $115k I cite is based on the economy in 2010. Obviously the number would be different if it was 50 years ago or 50 years in the future. And obviously the things you can buy would be different 50 years ago.
.
"And what if I am not trading them for currency, but goods instead?"
There is no difference between getting paid in goods or getting paid in money. They are both income.
Today, if you worked for someone and they gave you a $30k car instead of $30k in money and you did not report that $30k car as income, you would be committing tax evasion.
So if the top pay in the plan was $225/hour, you would not be able to pay yourself an income any more than that amount regardless of whether it was in cash or goods.
Even if your company sold $1 billion worth of products, the most you can pay yourself is $225/hour. If you took more income than what the pay plan allows, it would be a crime just like tax evasion is a crime.
This obviously only applies to trading that produces an income. If you spent $1000 on a car and traded that car with someone else for another $1000 car, that kind of trading does not apply since you didn't earn any additional income from the trade. You can do that as many times as you want.
And there is no real way to turn the $20 you save from not going to the movies or dining out into an extra $80k in yearly income
No, not really. But there is a way to take $50 a week in savings from not going to starbucks, packing your own lunch sometimes, not going to the movies and axeing the cable bill, and start an online business after a year with the $2,500+ saved. Welcome to my life.....
Since freedom is the ability to act without coercion or restraint, poor people are not free because their ability to act is severely restrained by lack of money.
a lack of coersion or restraint does not translate to a lack of the means to do something, it translates as the freedom to act without interference from anyone else. Everyone's ability to accomplish the things they desire is affected by their lack of money to do so, because money represents the labor of others. If I want to fly to Europe, I need to pay the people who built the plane, who refined the fuel, et cetera, so I need to commit work somewhere else in the economy to cover this. By not giving me the flight for free, the workers at the airline are in no way limiting my freedom to fly, they are protecting their own freedom to get paid for the work they do.
If someone has trouble finding a significant other, does this mean potential applicants are limiting their freedom to get a mate, by choosing not to associate with them? They are restrained from entering a relationship in the same way a poor individual is restrained from making $110,000 per year. After all, why should some people get boyfriends and others not when they tried just as hard? They don't have a boyfriend for the same reason poor people are not rich, which brings me to my next point:
There is no invisible hand doling out the GDP like cards from a poker deck, nor should there be. To make money, just like making a relationship, you have to convince someone else to give you what you want. In this way, both people benefit, or else the trade would not occur. Economic transactions do not benefit only one person in the transaction, they benefit both parties involved, unless there is coersion or theft. What you are offering is more valuable to me than what I have, so I will trade you what I have for what I want.
A poor girl in a so-called free Western country who cannot afford tuition has the same lack of freedom to get an education as a girl growing up in a Taliban-ruled Afghan village where education for girls is banned.
Aside from the fact that you owe some women in Afghanistan an apology, your points at least were thoughtful and intellectual up until you wrote that.
First of all, the poor in this country have the possibility of getting a scholarship to the best school in the nation. If not, they have a tremendous possibility of getting a scholarship from the community college system, which is still nothing to complain about. And if not, which is a pretty slim chance, it is not at all difficult to work through community college. I have not had a day of formal education in my life, yet I do not feel like anyone owes me anything free and I sure as heck don't think I am owed some sort of rebate for the college and K-12 education I did not take for free.
Second of all, getting stoned for having school books is the same as not getting into Harvard for free?
As I said, no one gave me a penny to get my education, so I merely got it myself online. Say what you wish. It is serving me well.
The rest of your argument about schooling in Afghanistan mostly seemed to revolve around the idea that interference in someone's activities (stoning them for having school books) is the same as not expending your labor in writing, printing, and delivering the books to them for nothing in exchange, because either way, the person does not have the books. Rights and freedoms do not require the input of other people, or else the "freedom" would be taken away if the person did not have the thing to give, or if the thing had never been conceived in the first place.
Furthermore, education has never been so available to the human race. Not to everybody in the world, of course, but people in this country have absolutely nothing say about it. I got an extremely robust education, without a dime from anyone else, all while my parents were pushing the cart for other people. In grade school, I only tested below 90th percentile one year as I recall, and several years I was above 97. I never received a minute of formal education my entire life. I did absolutely nothing that anyone else could not do, as I am not smarter than anyone else in the world. A person with an internet connection has an unprecedented number of free educational choices in this age, and there is no excuse at all not to take them if one is truly interested in advancing their education.
And again, you phrase sentences about receiving money using terminology that indicates that I am being paid by "myself" (my company, which I noted earlier is not a company but my personal transactions), or the government. But that is not true. The people doing the paying in every economic transaction are the only two parties involved. If the products I am selling are not benefiting the person more than the money they are paying me for them, they would not buy them, or they would go to someone else with a lower price. Profit is merely a certificate that I have done someone some good, and provided a product at, generally, the lowest price that it can be provided, or else someone else would be doing so.
[Removed]
Anyone who advocates a system that produces poverty, like our current system, is not a person who advocates for freedom since you are not free if you are poor.
You would get paid according to the same plan as every other worker. If the maximum income was $225 per hour, you would not be able to pay yourself more than that amount regardless of how much surplus income your company generated.
You can trade with as many people as you want and as often as you want. You just cannot get paid any more than $225 per hour for doing it.
Poverty is not caused by people not working hard, it is caused by people not working smart. I have never been to a movie theater. I have eaten at a restaurant only a few times in my life. I decided to forsake these things in order to build my skill set, and now I am rewarded somewhat for doing it.
Your system would produce some poverty. I believe you said you would eliminate welfare programs instead offering people a guaranteed good paying job. Someone asked if you would pay people who simply did not want to work, and you said no.
Freedom is defined as "The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint." To say someone cannot be free if they are poor, is ridiculous, honestly. The American natives were extremely free until the settlers showed up, and most of them had no concept of money in the way we do today. I could live like they did back then, for just about nothing. To say that a base salary of $110,000 per year is a right, is the same as saying all the goods that can be purchased for that amount are also rights. Why did all of the amenities of modern life become rights as soon as they were invented? Would they still be rights had they not been invented?
And I am not speaking of starting a company, I am merely speaking of being free to make things in my back yard and trade them to whomever I wish. And what if I am not trading them for currency, but goods instead?
Would my theoretical salary need to be capped based on the value of the goods I am trading for? And would the goods be confiscated if I trade for more than $225/hour worth of them?
Man, you are one crazy hombre!
Clearly it doesn't work or following it would be easy and natural.
I'm going to kindly ask you, just this once, to stop spewing your Repelicant propaganda.
I'm not going to vote for either of them, neither side represents me, or anyone I know.
You think the Republicans value and follow the constitution?
[Removed]
You are 100% correct.
Larry,
You write that you are "restrained" from growth and development.
But nothing is restraining you from growing or developing!
And you write about corporate greed at a time of recession, when companies getting routinely bashed on this site (most recently Verizon) are actually losing billions of dollars a year...
Some day I am sure psychologists and political scientists will look back at protest movements like this one, and they'll agree that people were looking for a common piñata. Maybe you'd be happier if you would just vote Republican.
Ok, next!
[Removed]