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Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [199]

By Root 2051 0
then it will support it. If not, then the organization must seek another market or go out of business.

There is potential overlap of community and enterprise. Municipal-owned utilities are both community-based and enterprises.

Applying the Principles of Systemic Response to communities and enterprises is largely self-evident: public business should be conducted publicly (transparency), and so on. Participation and thus payments are essentially voluntary and thus there is a "market" even if there are no "customers" in a retail sense.

Feedback from users, customers and those paying the bills (such as property owners paying property taxes to support a school district) is the essential feedback loop.

Monopoly and cartel are the enemies of efficiency, opportunity, transparency and liberty. The solution is all cases is competition from new sources. If a utility is mismanaged, then customers need to opt out and be able to choose a new source. Since the State enforces the vast majority of monopolies, then the State's devolution will open up the possibility of ridding ourselves of monopolies and cartels.

If the municipal trash service is overpriced and provides poor service, then the public should have the opportunity to choose a private trash service. If the State has granted a private trash service a monopoly contract, then the monopoly must be broken.

It is important to understand the feedbacks in both local government and non-local enterprises.

A brief story will help illustrate the key role of local government in countering the concentrated power of Power Elite Capital.

A small community/town has abundant fresh-water resources. A large multinational corporation approaches the town council to purchase the rights to the water. The multi-billion dollar corporation sees the water as a windfall inviting exploitation, and so they present what appears to be a windfall to the small city leadership: new jobs, a new park, stable tax revenues, and so on.

But the small-city government is no match for a global corporation which possesses the great advantage of information asymmetry: the corporate leadership knows their own long-range plans while the city leaders know only what the corporate public-relations team decides to tell them.

Given the legal thickets of water rights and contractual laws, the global corporation can easily construct a complexity fortress that is essentially impenetrable to the inquiries of the small-town leadership.

Presented with what appears to be a windfall, the town leaders agree to the corporation's contract.

Very quickly, information asymmetry flashes its polished teeth: the company decides to renege on various employment and public improvement promises, citing "market conditions" or other excuses. The town residents soon discover that the ceding of their water rights is legally unbreakable but the promised dividends from the global corporation are all rescindable without recourse.

The corporation, of course, has a veritable army of attorneys and consultants to defend its rights, while the township has none.

While I have endlessly pointed out the inevitable implosion of State finances, this does not mean local or even national government is superfluous.

It simply means that the Savior State which has over-reached and sold itself to Power Elites will collapse.

At a fundamental level, the citizenry has feedback into the government/State. Even in despotic dictatorships, the people can arise and overwhelm the dictatorship's army or secret police. Where votes are held, depending on the level of corruption, then citizens may actually be able to eject their political leadership via the ballot box.

As poor and limited as this may be, it is still a powerful feedback loop.

With enterprises, then people have the feedback of opting in (buying the good or service) or opting out (not buying). Their decisions as "consumers" is their feedback.

But concentrated global capital can ignore local consumer feedback.

Thus the townspeople who were essentially swindled out of their town's water rights can boycott

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