Re: HOMESTEAD: Kurland/Turnbull November 20th Debate

["Keith Wilde" <kwilde@magi.com>]

Shann,

I received this message, addressed to Economics of Ownership Group, because
I am on the HOMESTEAD list to which it was sent.  How about sending a copy
to the addressee as well!?

Keith Wilde
Ottawa, Canada
kwilde@magi.com
613 990-8125
613 747-6847
-----Original Message-----
From: Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>
To: homestead@cog.kent.edu <homestead@cog.kent.edu>
Cc: Ivan Hernandez <Msrahidh@fs1.ec.man.ac.uk>
Date: Friday, November 24, 2000 10:20 PM
Subject: HOMESTEAD: Kurland/Turnbull November 20th Debate


>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
>