HOMESTEAD: Kurland/Turnbull November 20th Debate

[Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>]

Dear Economics of Ownership Group

As foreshadowed in an archived message dated July 30th from Norm Kurland, 
Norm organized a public debate between us both in Washington D.C. on 
Monday, November 20th.  I could not organize my schedule to be in 
Washington earlier to have the debate during a CESJ conference held on 
Saturday November 18th attended by Robert Ashford and Norman Bailey.  Both 
of these men were unable to attend the debate on the Monday.

I would like to publicly congratulate Norman Kurland and Dawn  Brohawn for 
a very well organized and fairly conducted event.  Up to 80 people attended 
the four hour event recorded by two video cameras and numerous still 
photos.  Details of how the event was organized are set out below in the 
message to me from Norm dated November 13th.  I have pasted in the flyer 
prepared by Norm to advertise the event at the end of his message.

Norm won the toss of the coin to decide who should start and then invited 
me to decide who should go first as I had indicated that I preferred to go 
second.  This was agreed to by Norm.  On at least three occasions I did not 
fully use my allotted time to make my responses and so this provided Norm 
with additional time to present his case.  Norm reported that he was 
pleased with the debate and I can record that I was also well pleased with 
the outcome.

A number of contributors to this discussion list who I had not met before 
were in attendance.  These included Michael D. Greaney who was the official 
time keeper and Richard Stutsman.  A surprise was the presence of "World 
Citizen" Garry Davis who had flown his plane down from Vermont to attend 
the event.  Garry has published over 20 of my articles in his World Citizen 
News with one opposing article from Norm.  Garry published a number of my 
articles on the web which can be found through the google.com search 
engine.  As a result of these articles Garry modified the proposal by 
Buckminister Fuller to create "energy money" by describing them as 
"Kilowatt hour" dollars as set out in my contributions to the TOES book on 
'Building Sustainable Communities'.  Garry produced samples of this type of 
currency note at the debate which he had used to part pay me for my articles!

The reason why this is worth mentioning is that a member of the audience 
wanted to know how such locally created currencies were relevant to 
spreading ownership and how they were they relevant to my proposals to 
change the nature of ownership including the ownership of money.  I pointed 
out that decentralized banking and currencies achieved the Kurland/Kelso 
objective of democratising the access to credit and so the financing of 
productive self-financing assets.  In this way local currencies provided an 
alternative to requiring a central bank to discount ESOP notes.  The issue 
of Kilo-watt hour notes to acquire government created fiat money provided a 
way to democratically finance power production from renewable energy 
sources such as wind farms and solar power stations.  Investors would 
redeem the notes to pay for their energy consumption and this would also 
allow the customers to become the residual claimants/ owners of the power 
station.  If the notes were not used to pay for energy consumed they would 
loose their value to follow my proposal for property ownership that "if you 
do not use it you loose it".

One challenging question from Professor Anthony Cook in front of the mainly 
black audience was how could the proposals for democratising ownership 
provide adequate compensation for deprivation of the black community in the 
USA.  My response was by recognizing customers as deferred owners/residual 
claimants as no productive wealth could be created without consumers and 
the black community was over-represented in the community in this role.

Professors James Gray who was also on the panel of expert discussants 
expressed the wish that the debate could be shared with his first year 
students to introduce them to the concept of ownership.  Norm had 
advertised the debate with the question: "Does Economic Justice Require 
Changes in Traditional Rights of Private Property?"  I pointed out that 
traditional ethnic communities like those found in Australia, Africa, India 
and North America had no concept of property rights as they viewed the land 
as owning them.  ie they were ownees rather than owners.  I then quoted 
chapter five of Hernando de Soto's book on "The mystery of capitalism" 
which described how settlers in North America in the 17th and 18th century 
obtained property rights under common law on the principle that those 
designated with ownership under colonial English civil law lost their 
rights to ownership if they did not use/settle the property.  ie "if you do 
not use it you loose it" represented a "traditional" North American method 
for recognizing property rights which then became embedded in modern 
indigenous civil law with the homestead acts.

It was my sense that many members of the audience found it difficult to 
distinguish any significant differences between Norm and myself as we both 
shared the same objective.  This objective was so radical for the audience 
that the details of how the objective might be achieved faded into 
insignificance. They used hyperbole to describe the issues as 
"historic".  I had to make a determined effort to highlight our 
differences.  The fact that Norm described binary economics as distinctive 
and a wholistic systemic approach did not seem to me to be "either 
necessary or useful" in explaining to the audience how his approach was 
different to mine.  I think the audience accepted my inclusive stakeholder 
approach with the use of decentralized banking to democratise credit, to be 
just as wholistic and systemic as the proposals put forward by Norm!

Norm was critical of my proposal to use tax incentives to change ownership 
because taxes where not voluntary.  However, the audience noted Norm's 
inconsistency of relying on inheritance taxes to reduce wealth 
concentration through public sector transfers while my approach relied on 
private sector transfers.

Norm may well have a different view on the outcome we both agreed that it 
was a good and useful discussion.

Regards

Shann


X-From_: root  Mon Nov 13 09:12:35 2000
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 17:04:00 -0500
From: "Norman G. Kurland" <thirdway@cesj.org>
Reply-To: thirdway@cesj.org
Organization: Center for Economic and Social Justice
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en]C-CCK-MCD compaq  (Win98; U)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: sturnbull@optusnet.com.au
Subject: Re: Flyer for November 20th Debate

Dear Shann,

I think we would both agree that ownership should not be forever.  Where 
there is a difference is whether government should get involved in 
terminating or shortening the duration of ownership rights.  And
whether the rules of private property should be changed in order to achieve 
the democratization of productive enterprises.  The flyers will be posted 
early next week.  I'm not sure that we won't be spoiling
their appearance if we add more than the title we agreed on.  But please 
give me your feedback.

As you already know Rev. Walter Fauntroy will be the moderator.  He will 
have 5 minutes each at the start and end of the session.  Each of us will 
have 30 minutes each to make our case, with the first one
decided by a flip of a coin.  Then in the same order, each of us will have 
10 minutes of rebuttal, so that one of us will have the opening advantage 
and the other the final rebuttal.

After a short break, we will resume with 30 minutes of questions (with 
equal time for both of us to respond to each question) from three 
sophisticated panelists (Georgetown law professor Anthony Cook, UDC
law professor James Gray, and Dr. Maurice Iwu from Nigeria).  Professor 
Cook is a Yale law graduate, teaches jusisprudence and civil rights law, 
completed two fellowships at Harvard, authored a book on race
and the law in America, and was honored by the ABA as "one of the 21 young 
lawyers to lead America in the 21st century."  Professor Gray, a graduate 
of Harvard law school, teaches property law at UDC, and
Dr. Iwu is a major player in the democratization movement in Nigeria.

This will be followed by 30 minutes of questions from the audience, with 
each of us given two minutes to address each question.

Please give me your reactions to these suggestions for the debate 
process.  And are there any specific rules you think would be appropriate 
for the debate?

You can reach me at home by calling my office phone at 703-243-5155, which 
is relayed to my home phone at 703-528-5986.

Looking forward to seeing you next Monday.

Regards,

Norm


sturnbull@optusnet.com.au wrote:

 > Dear Norm
 >
 > One thing that was missing from your flyer was to highlight our 
differences so people could be aware what the debate is about.  That is: 
Should ownership be ever?
 >
 > I have lost my organiser with your home phone number.  Could you send 
this by return e-mail so when I arrive in Washington on Sunday afternoon on 
November 19th I can contact you to confirm arrangements.
 >
 > Regards
 >
 > Shann
 >
 > >>Date:    Fri, 03 Nov 2000 19:10:52 -0500
 > >>From:    Norman G. Kurland <thirdway@cesj.org>
 > >>To:      Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>
 > >>CC:
 > >>Subject: Flyer for November 20th Debate
 > >>
 > Dear Shann,
 >
 > Attached is the flyer and biographical descriptions for our upcoming
 > debate scheduled for Monday, November 20th from 2:00-5:00 p.m. (This
 > file is being sent to you in MS Word for Windows, version 6 format.)
 >
 > Please let me know if you want to make any modifications.  If you do, I
 > would appreciate it if you could get them to me as soon as possible, at
 > least within the next 72 hours, so we can get notices printed and posted
 > around the university.
 >
 > I greatly look forward to seeing you, and to a friendly but challenging
 > debate.
 >
 > Best regards,
 > Norm
 >
 > _________________________________________________
 > The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb
 > http://www.thatweb.com


                   Graduate Student Government Association

                  Of the University of the District of Columbia

               And the Center For Economic and Social Justice



                                    Cordially Invite

                           Faculty, Staff and Students

                                          To

                                   A Debate on

                 "Democratizing the Wealth of Nations:

                Does Economic Justice Require Changes

                  in Traditional Rights of Private Property?"


                                   Between


Norman G. Kurland, J.D.                Shann Turnbull, M.B.A.
(University of Chicago Law School)        (Harvard University Business School)
President and Co-Founder of the   Founder and Past President of the
Center for Economic and Social Justice    Australian Employee Ownership 
Association



                   Monday, November 20, 2000
                            2:00  5:00 PM

4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Building 38, 2nd Floor, Student Lounge
Washington, D.C.  20008



For information, call:

Darrell Williams at 202-832-9747
or
Dawn Brohawn at 703-243-5155
BACKGROUND ON SPEAKERS

Norman G. Kurland, J.D.
(Univ. of Chicago Law School)
President and Co-Founder of the Center for Economic and Social Justice

Mr. Kurland is recognized internationally as a pioneer and innovator in the 
field of expanded capital ownership.  The Washington Counsel of the late 
lawyer-economist, ownership philosopher and ESOP inventor Louis Kelso for 
eleven years, Mr. Kurland is the architect of initial U.S. laws on employee 
stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and has implemented expanded ownership models 
around the world.  He has authored numerous articles, including "The 
Capital Homestead Act" and "Capital Homesteading for D.C. Citizens," as 
well as several articles in Curing World Poverty: The New Role of 
Property.  He has developed several expanded ownership advances, including 
"Value-Based Management" (VBM) and the "community investment corporation" 
(CIC). He has advocated reform of Federal Reserve policy as described in 
his paper, "The Federal Reserve Discount Window," published in the Journal 
of Employee Ownership Law and Finance.  Mr. Kurland served as Deputy 
Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice 
(1985-86) and was the former Director of Planning for the Citizens Crusade 
Against Poverty (1965-68).


Shann Turnbull, M.B.A.
(Harvard University Business School)
Founder and Past President of the Australian Employee Ownership Association

A long-time advocate of democratic forms of ownership, Mr. Turnbull has 
helped promote employee ownership legislation in Australia and other 
countries.  Mr. Turnbull is author of Democratizing the Wealth of Nations 
(1975) and  Parliamentary Papers on The Economic Development of Aboriginal 
Communities in the Northern Territory (1977-78); and is co-author of 
Building Sustainable Communities (1989).  He has won overseas awards for 
his proposals for economic reform and has been invited to present them to 
the State Commission for Reform of the Economic System in Beijing and to 
the Central Research Institute for National Economy in Prague.  He has 
published numerous articles on corporate governance, ownership transfer 
corporations, and central banking reform.  In 1975 he pioneered the 
teaching of company directors and the study of corporate governance as a 
founding author of The Company Directors Course.  He has organized several 
mergers and acquisitions, has been Chairman of three listed corporations, 
and has created and/or managed a number of enterprises.