Congress may be about to sell large amounts of electromagnetic spectrum — through which cellphone, radio, and TV signals are transmitted — to private corporations. This could bring in tens of billions of dollars, but selling spectrum is a terrible idea.
Since selling could bring in so much money, the spectrum is obviously valuable. It is a natural resource — not produced by human effort.
Like all natural resources, the spectrum is therefore inherently owned by the public — every man, woman, and child subject to our government's jurisdiction — and should be administered for the benefit of that public.
We need to remember that ownership by the public is not ownership by the government.
Like the individuals subject to its jurisdiction, government did not create this spectrum and, therefore, does not own it. It, therefore, cannot legitimately sell it, since no one has the right to sell what they do not own.
Purchasers of such property should be aware that the seller has no right to sell it and that a future government might quite properly claw it back. This is a classic case of caveat emptor, buyer beware.
Still, there is no sense in allowing valuable natural resources to lie fallow. Modern societies need the spectrum to transmit radio and TV programs and carry messages between cellphones and cell towers.
There is a better way to authorize use of specific parts of the spectrum.
Government-as-trustee for the public could rent out temporary spectrum rights to the highest bidders. The money, since the spectrum belongs to the public and not to the government, must not go into the government treasury to be used for governmental expenses.
Instead, the money should go into a trust fund managed by the government. It must then be distributed as a periodic social dividend in exactly equal amounts to every member of the public.
Like today's Alaskan oil dividend, every man, woman, and child subject to the federal government's jurisdiction would receive this equal social dividend perhaps yearly, perhaps monthly.
Other income people receive — from wages, bank interest, stock dividends, pensions, etc. — would remain unequal. But when we add an equal social dividend to this unequal income, total economic inequality would be reduced.
Government-as-trustee has a fiduciary duty to benefit not just members of the current public, but also future members of the public. It, therefore, should not sell the public's property, because over time, the value of that property may increase.
There is no reason why that increased value should benefit those who bought it when it was worth less rather than benefiting the public.
Government-as-trustee for the public is my refinement of ideas put forward by Henry George (1839-1887), an American economist and philosopher.
George was best known for proposing that a "single tax" on land could replace all other taxes. He defined "land" very broadly as "all natural materials, forces, and opportunities" not created by human labor.
His dubious assumption was that the rents produced by these natural resources would always exactly equal what government should be spending. But instead of financing government, it seemed to me that the proceeds should be distributed equally to all individuals, using other taxes to finance government.
Conveniently, my "periodic table" of human associations — the main result of my lifetime research — indicated that government-as-trustee for the public was a possible form of association. This was shortly before the Alaskan oil dividend became the first actual example of that type of association.
There was an interesting precedent for this. Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) published a periodic table of the chemical elements in 1869, and his diagram contained several locations where no known elements existed.
Like government-as-trustee for the public, those elements were later discovered.
Mendeleev's periodic table set off dramatic progress in chemistry. Will my periodic table of associations ignite similar progress in political science?
If so, government's role as a trustee for the public might be one of its most important contributions.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse's Reports — More Here.
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