The Utopian World Championship

Robley George: SOCIOECONOMIC DEMOCRACY: A Realizable Democratic Socioeconomic Utopia

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Summary

Bucky was right. Utopia or Oblivion? That is the question.

Ah, Utopia! That crucial concept and crucial ambiguity! Is Utopia something that is no place and never will be anywhere? Or is Utopia just around the corner of human consciousness?

Socioeconomic Democracy (SeD) is a theoretical model socioeconomic system wherein there exist both some form of Universal Guaranteed Personal Income (UGI) and some form of Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth (MAW) limit, with both the lower bound on personal material poverty and the upper bound on personal material wealth set and adjusted democratically by all participants of society.

The proposal first presents a brief introduction to Socioeconomic Democracy. Here, the basic structure of the fundamentally just and democratic socioeconomic system is indicated.

The three major aspects of Socioeconomic Democracy, namely, UGI, MAW, and (quantitative) democracy, are then more carefully examined. For the two fundamental socioeconomic parameters, more careful definitions, possible specific forms, and brief histories of the two general concepts are discussed.

The crucial synergetic insight is that the two important societal parameters, UGI and MAW, should be established democratically. This can be accomplished almost trivially by employing perhaps the most basic result of Social Choice theory which shows that the median value of the distribution of personal preferences for an amount of something in question is the "democratically desired" value.

Implications of the fact that different societies might well democratically establish quite different specific systems are explored in depth. The proposal summarizes some of the many theoretical justifications for SeD from many different fields of thought, including anthropology, philosophy, psychology, all the great religions, and the as-yet unheeded United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The important matter of economic incentives created by the democratically set and adjusted society-wide bounds on UGI and MAW are examined in detail and shown to be significantly beneficial to humanity. Numerous practical political approximations to the ideal theoretical model of SeD are also described. The proposal then outlines the important aspects of the implementation process necessary to realize SeD, thus establishing feasibility.

Finally, it is demonstrated that SeD is capable of significantly reducing a wide range of serious interrelated societal problems -- simultaneously.

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There is, in fact, strong economic incentive for those who are pegged at or are near the upper limit on allowable personal wealth to be successful in improving the general welfare. For if the current level of MAW is not producing sufficient improvement in the general welfare, as democratically determined, there is the possibility and indeed the probability that the democratic society might democratically decide to reduce the MAW limit even more in order to enlist even more still-wealthy participants and their extra wealth in the noble task of improving the well-being and welfare of society in general.

Democracy. There is a simple procedure by which each individual participant in a democratic society (or each member of a democratic legislative body) can directly vote his or her particular preference for an amount, magnitude, or quantity of something in question, with the democratically determined, societally or legislatively desired amount unequivocally resulting. As if to emphasize the significance of the discovery, Duncan Black and Economics Nobelist Kenneth Arrow independently and more or less simultaneously established the important mathematical result and procedure a half century ago.

Their now classic social choice contributions have provided the theory which shows that the median value of the participants' (voters') preference distribution is the amount the democratic society as a whole is "for" -- assuming the minimal operational "one participant, one vote; majority rule" decision-making process. Only the median value can command a majority's favor in pair-wise votings with all other amounts. Roughly speaking, this means that the democratically determined amount is such that half the voters want that much or more while the other half want that much or less.

It is by this simple, mathematically correct process that the society-wide lowest tolerable level of personal material poverty and the highest allowable level of personal material wealth can be established and adjusted over time as democratically desired in the democratic society.

Variations of Socioeconomic Democracy

First, observe that if a particular participant in this democratic socioeconomic system were opposed to a societally guaranteed minimum income for all, for any reason, that participant could vote to place the lower limit on UGI at zero. If a majority of participants so voted, it would be the democratically determined desire of that society to have no UGI. Similarly, any participant who would be opposed to a maximum bound on allowable personal wealth, for any reason, could vote to place that upper limit at, say, infinity. If a majority of participants so voted, it would be the democratically determined desire of that society to have no upper bound on net personal wealth. Four basically different possibilities are therefore immediate.

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