What is to be Done?

That's the title of a famous book written by Lenin in 1902, that outlined a shift in revolutionary tactics that led to the Soviet Revolution in 1917, less that 15 years' later. This week's blogs for Monday & Tuesday listed the Good & Bad of Republicans & Democrats. Wednesday decribed the Composition of the Ruling Class. Yesterday I describe the Power Struggle that must take place. And today I provide the ideology that would win this Power Strggle with the Ruling Class.

That ideology is Fraternal Libertarianism, of course. Considering the disasters caused by applications of Libertarianism in recent decades as well as my own proofs of the inherent flaws of Libertarianism, I will rename it Free Fraternalism. Propagation and acceptance of this political economist system as the core of a political party would capture the entire vital center of the American electorate; a solid majority. The other parties would be rendered asunder and left as mere rumps of extremists. The political revolution would be similar to that which occurred before the Civil War, when the Republican party was formed from part of the old Whigs and part of the old Democrats.

Why would a party adopting Free Fraternalism rip off and collect parts of the R's and D's? That easy. Below I largely repeat the "Good" parts of the R's and D's, BUT AS BELIEFS OF FREE FRATERNALISTS.

Beliefs of Free Fraternalists

Free Fraternalists have, or at least sometimes have, an inherent distrust of increasing governmental power and raising taxes.

Fre Fraternalists tend to trust the private sector for solutions and have faith in the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith that private sector evolution will solve all problems over time with economic growth. Thus they have an inherent bias towards economic freedom, supporting free use of private property.

Free Fraternalists tend to favor conservative, slow evolution of social values and reject actions by government to impose social values on free people. Just leave us alone, they would say.

Free Fraternalists tend to favor governmental power in the context of promoting the commercial system, including money and credit.

Free Fraternaists favor a strong military and a strong US to project power over the world to promote freedom; they distrust treaties and both rightwing and leftwing dictators and Communists.

Free Fraternalists oppose using governmental power to increase power of labor unions. For example, they support the current secret union ballot requirement over "card check", which would permit union goons to extort public 'yes' votes from individuals.

Free Fraternalists think much of governmental bureaucracy is a colossal waste of money and creates massive "red tape" that hampers economic development.

Free Fraternalists believe the US is a force of good in the world.

Free Fraternalists have some true empathy for poor and marginalized persons and correctly recognize that much of this is simply bad luck. Luck has huge effects on how jobs, small business and careers turn out.

Free Fraternalists want to even out this inherent volatility of life in the US; to do "something" to more equalize "happiness" across people.

Free Fraternalists are street fighters - they believe strongly that their "party" is correct and will do almost anything to win.

Free Fraternalists want those who are receiving the most benefits of life in the US to pay a larger share of the cost of supporting the US.

More of Free Fraternalism

The core ideology of Free Fraternalism is fraternalism: the top of the wealth distribution helps the bottom. Not equality - simply some help. And this mandate of aid also serves to cap the power of the top, and prevents them from becoming a ruling aristocracy. The two boundary limits provide stability: formation of an oppressed class of the poor is prevented as is the formation of a aristocracy. The great center core of the population of the common men and women is completely free.

One can visualize this as a trimmed mean: professionals and students in statistics know that an average calculated by dropping the top & bottom of the distribution's sample gives a more robust, stable estimate of the mean.

Free Fraternalism gives complete freedom to the huge bulk of the people with boundaries. The top and the bottom of the wealth distributions have boundaries. Not hard walls, but soft walls - cushions: Some wealth of the top is used to help the bottom.

How much wealth of the top 20% would be needed to raise the wealth of the bottom 20% to just the 20 percentile level? Frankly, I'd guess not much. Probably a lot less than current governmental transfer payments. Certainly not enough to come near leveling the top 20% back to the 80th percentile.

That huge center 60% of the people would gain a huge amount of freedom; the unfortunate and unlucky would have a solid safety net; the wealthy could live without worries over eventual confiscation of all their wealth. The great center would live without fear that some bad luck would lead to destitution. Aggregate human happiness would tremendously increase.

Yes, Free Fraternalism is the key for winning the Power struggle with the Ruling Class.

Let's all become Free Fraternalists.

[For more on the theory of Free Fraternalism, aka Fraternal Libertarianism, see my blog posts of April 9, 2010 and January 29, 2010]

Word of the Day

"Tropological" - adjective [$10] from Tropology - noun [$10]
Tropology means the figurative use of words; 2. figurative interpretation esp. of scriptures.
Sentence: View From The Bunker makes frequent use of tropology, particularly in its pejorative names and descriptions of people in the Ruling Class. They sure act like Hogs at the Trough.