Re: HOMESTEAD: New ideas and balloting

[Deborah Groban Olson <dgo@esoplaw.com>]

Dear Thomas:

        Thank you for your thoughtful reply to the Homestead summary. I have 
run out of time to make significant changes in the Summary that will add any 
length. If you have corrections to the existing copy, I can try to  get them 
in.  As an alternative, I would be happy to put additional information in the 
long version of the Homestead paper, if I have it by Monday April 23. If that 
deadline does not work, feel free to write a short piece that we can use as a 
separate handout at the May 6-8 conference. Those packets will be created 
during the week of May 1-4. 

        One outcome of the May 6-8 meeting will be a balloting process allowing 
all COG participants to evaluate all proposals on their likelihood to solve 
problems and their likelihood of implementation. We hope to use this process to 
help create additional, more highly focused discussion groups around specific 
proposals. We are trying to create groups of like-minded folks who want to work 
together to develop implementation strategies for ideas they think are worth 
the effort. So, even if the USOP idea does not make it into the HOmestead 
summary or paper, you will be able to post it for further discussion in 
Homestead and for balloting. We are still working on the logistics of the 
balloting process, so don't ask me for specifics yet. We don't have the time to 
deal with it until after the May conference.
Deb
At 08:21 PM 4/19/01 -1000, you wrote:

>Deb,
>
>I think this is a very concise, yet quite comprehensive summary of the
>currently most viable alternatives (at least relative to those I mention
>below) discussed by COG so far.    The main alternatives I think are not
>included are the various and perhaps somewhat more grandiose proposals
>submitted to Stuart Speiser's USOP (Universal Stock Ownership Plan) essay
>contests in the 1980s.   (BTW, Terry Mollner's "trusteeship trust" proposal
>was included in the books of essays published by Speiser and was distinct
>from most of the others in its non-governmental "bottom-up" approach).
>
>I remember mentioning the USOP essays early on in COG discussions, but I
>don't think these were ever thoroughly discussed because I think they were
>perceived as too difficult to implement or too socialistic and/or because
>none of the Speiser contestants was participating in COG discussions.
>Even though the USOP proposals may not be politically feasible at present,
>I think they are no less so than Norm Kurland's Capital Homesteading
>proposal, which is equally far-reaching in scope, and which you do mention
>in your summary.   Your summary also leaves out existing ideas for free
>market socialism proposed by various scholars working more in the tradition
>of Oskar Lange rather than Louis Kelso.
>
>Even though I think the Kelsonian and other alternatives you mention are
>relatively more feasible in the current political climate, I think existing
>USOP and market socialist proposals might enrich the COG Homestead
>discussion or at least deserve mention in your summary (if only because
>they might make COG's Homestead proposals seem more feasible and desirable
>by comparison).   On the other hand, introducing these lines of thought
>might just create another unproductive distraction (or taint COG's primary
>proposals), and discussion by COG of proposals for free market socialism
>might get no further than discussion of USOPs for the same reasons.
>
>So bearing in mind your and COG's time and resource constraints, I think
>the following addition to your summary would be useful even if you are not
>inclined to include any of my other suggestions above.    A brief
>description of Clinton's Universal Savings Account (USA) proposal--which I
>believe is not the same as that proposed by Michael Sherraden--and/or other
>existing proposals for partially privatizing Social Security by investing
>in the stock market might deserve a mention to show readers unfamiliar with
>any of these ideas that, by comparison, what COG proposes isn't really that
>far beyond the realm of possibility and might address possible SocSec
>shortfalls, as well as the problem of concentrated wealth, more
>effectively.
>
>Mahalo and Aloha!