PART II

TYPES OF RIGHTS

“Be heard or be herded”

Shifra Miller

THE INDIVIDUAL - EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS

"Life in our case," says Sherrington, "is always and has always been individual. That is related to the mode of its generation. There is here no question of 'universal' because any attempt at definition of life must start out with the concept 'individual', otherwise it would not be life. In a sense we are still one-celled and microscopic." If the "cloners" prevail, this fact might fall.

Our aim should be to set the stage upon which this individual can act out her role with the greatest possible latitude for unique expression and meaningfulness while allowing for the similar actions of her fellow humans. Such a setting calls for many things. It calls for freedom to think, speak, create, worship and otherwise act out one's unique destiny and it calls for restraints that will halt infringement against same and reduce destructive friction between individuals.

These elements are indeed necessary if we are to develop to its highest pitch that unique characteristic with which nature has endowed us, that which Sherrington terms "mind."

These individual rights can be summed up, I think, with the following statement: Each individual has the exclusive right to the use of his/her own faculties, both physical and mental, so long as the exercise of this right does not critically infringe upon or limit the equal right of others, the living and the yet unborn. This statement would encompass our historic rights of speech, religion, privacy, association, assembly and travel, while conversely protecting against enslavement, murder, rape, torture and spurious imprisonment. Forced migration, as well as forced labor, are infringements upon an individual’s exclusive rights and are equally degrading.

This statement is not just a warmed over golden rule, but a concise pronouncement upon which all individual rights can be weighed. The thought is not new; it is indeed the basis of all historic pronouncements on human rights. The key word is "infringement." We are not here concerned with personal perversity or moral outrage, i.e., infringements of others' sensibilities, but upon the actual limitation, abuse, or curtailment of others' equal rights through the exercise of one's own rights. Thus suicide or substance abuse are by themselves private matters of no concern to others. It is when these acts lead to other overt acts such as contributing to the delinquency of others, acts of violence against others, or otherwise endangering the lives of others, that infringement occurs. When the drinker becomes an alcoholic or the dope user a habitual addict they become dependent on others or may harm others. It is the resultant act with which we are concerned.

This does not mean to infer that direct personal threats, coercion, harassment or libelous acts are not critical infringements. They are. Intimidation of a specific ethnic, racial, political, religious or sexual group are infringements. Conversely, nudity, mysticism and witchcraft may not fit the majority mores but by themselves they do not necessarily constitute an infringement of others' rights. Nor does this statement attempt to define those rights of the individual which would shield him or her from the sometimes arbitrary powers of the state, or allow them participation in its activities. Civil rights and responsibilities will be discussed later.

The corporate executive or hired expert who through misuse or abuse of his authority robs the public or his own shareholders or, worse yet, is responsible for the maiming, poisoning or death of his employees or the general public, must not be allowed to hide behind the corporate seal and the sacred laws which protect it, but must be made to stand justice as an individual. Punitive damages are no punishment for criminal acts. Nor can government officials who promulgate or carry out policies of a slave state hide behind its unjust laws or the commands of their superiors. Corporations and governments are not individuals but those who make decisions for them are and they must assume responsibilities.

The use of technology has modified many aspects of the human condition. To wit, technology has provided a more "sophisticated" level of violence directed at our fellow human beings: guns, knives, chemicals, atomic bombs, etc. Freedom of speech is compromised through privatization of the broadcast spectrum. Freedom of motion is circumscribed by one's financial means: bicycle, car, boat, airplane - i.e., by one's ability to pay for the technology. I will discuss these issues later under "use rights." Ownership requires the right to certain controls which limit freedom of expression. Conversely, owners who provide public services have obligations to protect the rights of those they employ. These too will be discussed under use rights.

Laws guaranteeing the right to worship freely, speak freely and act freely are today well understood in the developed countries, if not universally practiced. Minority or majority persecution, whether religious, sexual, or racial, is still very much with us and, like slavery, must be stamped out. The right to speak and act freely is restricted by the state at that point where thought or act diverge from what the state considers to be its best interests. The U.S. restricts travel to Cuba and formerly to China by private citizens. Such travel it says is against the "national interest." Communist Poland imprisoned a 70-year old poet who dared to criticize the local administration.^[1] Such criticism, said the authorities, "tends to defame the state."

While it is impossible to legislate against private bigotry so long as it remains private, public bigotry and prejudice does infringe on individuals rights and must be ended. Wherever public use, access, cultural advantage, etc. are at issue bigotry should end. School facilities, government civil service hiring practices, public facilities use, etc. must be on an equal rights basis. Nor should any government persecute or otherwise treat practiced religions, under their jurisdiction, unequally.

While the concept of individual rights has spread to most underdeveloped countries so also has western gunboat diplomacy and economic exploitation. The latter has often been aided and abetted by indigenous collaborators. Thus minimum human rights have not been won by many in poor countries and, if or when they do appear, they are often ruthlessly put down by local majorities, oligarchies and dictators. Western powers have seldom offered help to those being trampled unless, or by chance, these events somehow threatened western business. More often Western interests have opted to deal with the existing power structures in the further exploitation of those already in need.

In many underdeveloped countries individual rights violations are also perpetrated by tribal, ethnic, religious, political and racial groups against one another. The most prevalent seem to be those committed by one ethnic or tribal group against another; Sinhalese against Tamils, Turks against Kurds, Tutsi against Huti, Indonesians against Timorese, etc. In other instances, like South Africa, the violations were racial. In Iran, where Shiite Moslems dominate the government, religious persecution heads the list. In China persecution of political dissenters has been the primary abuse. And finally, the most obvious and the one factor which is apart of all the others, those with economic and/or military power have violated the rights of those without either.

Violations are not often subtle. Imprisonment, torture and murder head the list followed by economic strangulation and forced migration. Trials by kangaroo courts or executive order are typical. Hired guns and "death squads" mete out informal justice and religious inquisitions hold forth. Mass starvation and outright genocide complete the list of government-sponsored, or acquiesced to, violations of individual rights. The world is hardly a safe place for human rights Anno Domini 1998.

THE FAMILY - MUTUAL RIGHTS

By itself this statement of individual rights is, of course, incomplete. The individual does not exist for or by himself alone. He is conceived, fed and tutored by others. Couples procreate, feed and tutor others. Children care for their aging parents. These intimate and organic acts, necessary for the continuity and survival of the species, are the individual's most intimate link with the world beyond. These acts define and constitute the family. The process of maturing and aging qualifies the word "individual" as used in my first statement. The infant, the child, the adolescent, the handicapped and the senile cannot qualify as complete individuals; they are dependents demanding varying degrees of care. Their needs cannot be overlooked or left to willy-nilly fate for they are as much a part of life as the healthy mature adult. This responsibility of caring for young and old is essential. Whitehead's generalization about reproduction of the species must here be coupled with Sherrington's thoughts on the individual – the right to reproduce must be coupled with a family's responsibility to provide love, sustenance and to develop understanding in their offspring and to care for their sick and elderly.

Care of young and old, as it relates to modern man and his highly specialized environment, is being shared by an ever increasing group of experts and institutions. This responsibility, shared co-operatively, is nothing more than the reciprocal responsibility of all adults for the preservation and continuity of the species. In most primitive societies these responsibilities are shared by clan or tribe with the immediate parents predominating only in very early stages of child rearing. Today these rights and responsibilities, although mutual and exclusive at inception, become inclusive and multilateral as womb gives way to world. We can no longer, as individuals, families or clans, perform all the multitudinous functions required to care for our young and old and our sick and disabled, but we can and must do so by social contract. This is a responsibility we must collectively shoulder for the right to procreate.

One major problem which faces us today is our inability to control our own numbers. Having evolved a technological capability for survival over our natural enemies through the development of environmental controls, food production, and medical science we are now faced with both actual (local) and probable (global) overpopulation. If indeed we agree that the continued escalation of population endangers our present world passenger population then the excess production of babies is an infringement on the rights of those already here and those to come. John Stuart Mill, as early as 1859, had this to say on the subject:

"The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility, to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being."

This is a somewhat harsh judgment in which the parents are made responsible for predicting the future, the child's and theirs, but it gets to the heart of the issue which is the welfare of those who will inherit the future.

The resolution of population growth with its potential for infringement is related to consumption and in particular to the present inequitable distribution of goods and services both locally (within nation states) and globally (between nation states). The real question is, what population levels, given an equitable distribution of goods and services, can earth sustain without endangering its biosphere and the multitude of species which share it with man? It should also be noted that even with an agreed upon carrying capacity and a more equitable distribution of goods and services we would still have to control consumption. With the developed countries current propensity for conspicuous consumption we would soon overwhelm the environment. Each of these elements are variables - population, production/consumption, environment - but there is a limit beyond which the environment can no longer support one or both of the first two factors without itself collapsing. There is also, short of this limit, some probable optimum state wherein all the elements can co-exist in reasonable harmony.

Howard T. Odum, co-founder, with his brother Eugene, of The Modern Science of Ecology, in his book on the energetics of ecology entitled, Environment, Power and Society, is perhaps more blunt about the question of population/consumption:

"The biggest cancer of them all is the human population itself. Somehow removed from its normal control network by modern medicine, and many other drastic operations using fossil fuel, some of the human populations have gone into competitive exclusions consuming resources, setting up sub-competitions in their cultures and races, and generally draining the greater body of the world towards collapse. How do we restore the controls and cut off the fuel supplies to the runaway components? What right have oil companies to open Alaskan oil?"

The question of a woman's right to abort may become moot if life quality or species survival dictate reducing the planet's passenger population. "Right-to-lifers" might then be forced to look at the big picture and equate individual survival vs. humanity's chances for survival. Abortion is indeed a poor answer for birth control but, failing others, it may prove necessary. Condemning a child to a short and brutal life is no better answer.

These family rights and responsibilities can be summarized as follows: Men and women have a mutual right to mate and to procreate. They have a right and a responsibility to rear, nurture, protect and educate their offspring and to care for their disabled, sick and aged. Extended families, blood related or not, have a right to share each others lives. Same gender couples also have this right. All have a right to adopt children or others in need. These rights and responsibilities hold true so long as their exercise does not infringe on the exclusive, mutual, use or shared rights of others. Corollary: communities, regions and nations may by default or democratic process agree to assume some of the mutual responsibilities and therefore take responsibility for eliminating infringements thereof. Corollary: those who genetically or otherwise modify the eggs or sperm of others, with or without the authorization of their owners, assume partial or total responsibility for their creations. Those who by contract use the eggs or sperm of third parties assume total responsibility for the result.^[2]

The question of abortion, considered from the point of view of infringement on the rights of others, can be viewed in many ways. Looked at from the point of view of the Right to Life lobby it expressly refers to the rights of the yet unborn, the fetus. But the statement also refers to future generations, and it implies a responsibility on the part of both parents not to infringe on their rights.

Under individual rights each person has exclusive rights to the use of his or her own physical body. This would fall clearly on the side of women's "right of choice." Not quite. Conception involves two. Responsibility for infringement here is a question for both parents. It is a mutual right and responsibility. The parents, then, must weigh their responsibility to their own creation and their responsibility to society and the future of all children. In the past, with little or no information on the latter subject available, this was not a concern. Today information is available and some nations, taking heed, have already taken steps to control births through economic incentives to parents and by making birth control technology available. Given a documented population explosion and the reality of a finite planet, both those who demand right to life and those who demand the exclusive right to decide may be infringing on the rights of others.

In our own society, restrained by religious taboos, puritanical guilt and Victorian moral constraints we, today's adults, have not had the wisdom to tell our offspring about sex. This, coupled with the media's irresponsible pandering, has promoted an equally irresponsible reaction. Consumer's children seek instant gratification with little grasp of the potential consequences of their acts. Disease, unwanted children, emotional trauma result. We have the information to help correct this situation but we have been too confused to dispense it. When we gain the courage to demystify sex, commercial porn will lose its impact and women will finally be liberated as male gratification symbols. Erotic dialogue will then have reached a new stage of enlightenment: men and women as complementary and different but also equal. No longer will our young be misled into belief that women are possessions, to be brutalized, stalked or murdered if they refuse male domination.

There are further complications which enter into this discussion relating to individual and/or family rights. There are predators, abusers and molesters who prey on children and young adults; whose only drive is sexual gratification. There are irresponsible adults who knowingly pass on their own debilitating, deadly diseases or addictions to their partners and offspring. And there are rapists whose mental aberrations result in birth, death and anguish to their victims and to all those close to the victims. All of these nefarious acts require societal punishment or, if possible, treatment for the offender. They also require, if the victims survive, much physical and psychological restoration.

There is one further family consideration which requires serious discussion: genetic defects present in adults which scientists have discovered and which predict potential health problems for any progeny. Where these flaws are serious they may threaten the resources of parents, and indirectly the survival of their children. They also, by default, lead to community or state responsibilities. Under these circumstances the state could require parent(s) sterilization. Here the state must take precedence over family prerogatives. Nor will family insurance work.

Beyond these are questions regarding the new medical technologies. They will obviously have great impact on birthing and dying, on the family and society. Recent medical technologies have expanded propagating possibilities. Genetic engineering will complicate the ethical issues well into the new millennium. While some of the new technologies tend to obscure parental responsibility, from the aspect of mutual rights and responsibilities, the basic fact remains – those who supply and/or fertilize the primary requirements (eggs and sperm) should be the responsible parties. Others, by legal contract, may assume these responsibilities today. Whether these contracts stand up in all cases is yet to be seen.

A wide variety of family and consensual sexual relationships are possible under this statement of "mutual rights." What is demanded is that any two partners who by their mutual act bring a child into the world and thereby modify the environment, shall be responsible for the well being and education of said child until he or she is capable of self-survival. It also mandates that children, in turn, be responsible for their parents. Whether or not parents/children choose, by social contract, to delegate all or part of this responsibility to others in no way lessens their mutual and equal responsibilities. Nor does this statement guarantee the right to procreate sans limitation. At such times, when infringement is evident, limits must be established.

The responsibility of parents to educate their children is understood to be a necessity for effective participation in the society. But the extent and quality of this education in most societies is not always equal. This educational disparity between haves and have-nots breeds hate and robs society of future adult talent. Nor is it fair to the child when, instead of being educated, he or she is indoctrinated by parents, church, commercial interests or the state. Student rebellions and student dropouts alike attest to the shortcomings of many of our educational institutions, to the mesmerizing affects of the audio-visual medium and to the acquisitive preoccupations of their elders. It becomes increasingly critical that all youth understand today's world and at the same time painfully evident that most do not. This failure is indeed an infringement of youth's right to know for which we, as the parent community, must shoulder blame, and for which they, our children, will pay sooner or later. Children's rights are adult responsibilities, and by necessity the government’s also.

It is critical for democracy that our children understand our history, our laws and the functioning of our government. They will not learn these in faith based schools nor in trade schools. They will be confused as to whether to obey U.S. laws, God’s laws or Business laws. Here then is an example where government intervention is required.

Far worse than the revolt of our middle class young in the Sixties was the Seventies revolt in our African-American communities. The first was sparked by the Vietnam War and the refusal of our educated young to participate. It was a moral challenge to authority by the sons and daughters of the establishment, and the establishment listened. The racial revolt was one born out of desperation. Those revolting saw no way out. They did not challenge anything or anyone but their own mirror images and the local police. They were killing each other and no one in the establishment was really listening - or cared. We were witnessing racial fratricide. This was and still remains a tragic failure of mutual responsibility.

The abandonment of children in today's huge, impersonal society, their indifferent treatment in the courts, their neglect in detention and other custodial institutions, and their physical and mental abuse, further attests to our profound disregard for their well-being and thus a failure of responsibility both collectively and privately.

In addition, our ability to prolong life and save lives through technological know-how has created a large elderly population unknown to all historic cultures. It has also created a growing population with disabilities. Senior citizens and disabled persons demand their rights as fellow humans. Like youth, most demand participation rather than forced idleness. Discrimination by the healthy dominant age group in society should be eliminated to allow partial or muted participation based on capacity, not age or disability. These people have the right to be integrated into the mainstream of life. Their contributions should not be lost.

Most of the industrialized countries are today cognizant of and are attempting to deal with special population concerns: children, the disabled and the elderly. They are also belatedly giving women equal status in marriage as well as civil rights. Unfortunately this is not true of some societies or extremist groups where historical and cultural attitudes or religious doctrines prescribe large families and second-class citizenship for women and children. These ingrained mindsets rob both of full participation in the society, denying adequate education, medical attention and sufficient food, while also placing an unbearable stress on the local environment.

Beyond these problems faced by the young and by women in mostly economically poor countries there are some still more insidious. In Shandung, China, a single province, 14,000 women and 8,200 children were reported kidnapped in 1991. These kidnappings are a part of a slave trade wherein those kidnapped are sold as prostitutes, wives and laborers. In Bangkok, kidnapped children were found working in sweatshops; prisoners by day and night. Uli Schmetzer, in a series of articles for the Chicago Tribune, states:

"The sweatshops of Asia are dark and windowless rooms, clogged with cigarette smoke and dust. On dirt floors covered with garbage and scraps of materials, an estimated 40 million children younger than age 15 toil 8 to 14 hours a day..... They are beaten, abused, exploited without mercy."

In the Philippines the author discovered similar activity. Here poor parents were renting out their children by the year to work on a trawler as tankless divers to flush fish out of their coral hideouts. "The boys on the 'Catalina' slept in large poultry cages stacked one above the other on the deck. Five died in one year - two in the water, perhaps after being trapped in the net or attacked by sharks." In Rio de Janiero, abandoned children live on city streets by day and in underground sewers by night; the latter to avoid being jailed or murdered by police. They survive as pimps, as drug dealers and scavengers. But most don't survive.

ENVIRONMENTAL USE RIGHTS - EQUAL ACCESS

"We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity

belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which

we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Aldo Leopold

Beyond the relationship of one individual to others and the biologic relationships of parents and children, we must now introduce the element of environment without which these preceding relationships are still only paper abstractions. The human race is an outgrowth of and a part of the world in which it must live. Freedom of speech and freedom of motion are meaningless unless there is something to talk through or something to move on. Man must breathe the air, stand on the ground, utilize the sun's energy, etc. This external world is an evolved and evolving complex of natural and manmade phenomena through which each generation of men/women pass enhancing or detracting from the whole. Transient man demands the right to use transient nature.

Man's right to the use of his environment extends from speech and dance (momentary use of space and time) to those enduring objects of his creation like books and bridges. Although the philosopher and the poet use less from the real world by way of material things, they require the greatest contact with it. Others, whose job it is to feed, clothe and house the world's population, require greater increments of space-time-matter-energy for the realization of their no less noble ends. Even the artist, confined to canvas, or the sculptor with his stone, does not operate in a vacuum. If men and women are to realize themselves it is imperative that they have access to the world around them. Henry George puts it more eloquently:

"What constitutes the rightful basis of property? What is it that enables a man justly to say of a thing, 'It is mine'? From what springs the sentiment which acknowledges his exclusive right as against all the world? Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to himself, to the use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his exertions? Is it not this individual right, which springs from and is testified to by the natural facts of individual organization - the fact that each particular pair of hands obey a particular brain and are related to a particular stomach; the fact that each man is a definite, coherent, independent whole - which alone justifies individual ownership? As a man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in concrete form belongs to him...."

Conversely, those individuals or groups who restrict or infringe upon the use rights of others, not through reasonable competition, but through monopoly, misuse, or abuse, must be restrained. The depletion of soil through poor farming practices, the extinction of a species of fish or fowl through uncontrolled fishing and hunting habits, the pollution of air and soil through atomic testing, and the exhaustion of water supplies through contamination and mismanagement are but a few examples of infringement. It is not important what the reasons may be, at least for this discussion. The fact is that each and every one of these acts affects the present and the future of the species and is therefore an obvious infringement.

To George's observations in 1879 which clearly define what is due labor and what is due society, I want to add ecologist Howard Odum's observations in 1971:

"Basic too many of the legal battles underway and developing in defense of the environment is a long ignored support system - the human right to a safe life-support system. There can be no more fundamental right to an individual than his opportunity to breathe, drink water, eat and move about with safety. Long taken for granted, these rights are not free but are paid for daily by the metabolic works of the life-support system processing the wastes and by-products. The water and mineral cycles, the complex of complicated organisms that process varied chemicals, and the panorama of ecological subsystems that organize and manage the earth surface are not the property of individuals, but are part of the essential basic right, the life support system. A fundamental flaw in the legal systems allowed owners of land to assume special rights to the public life support means."^*

Henry George and Thomas Paine proclaimed work as man's only and just claim to ownership and proclaimed all land common property. Odum qualifies property by noting that it is not some static passive thing which we can fence in or enslave, either individually or collectively, but a dynamic, evolving habitat full of many living species. Odum lets it be known that we can never own these complex interacting and mutually sustaining ecological cycles and processes of which we are but one small element. The best we can hope for is to understand them sufficiently so that we can live in harmony with them. Use them we must, but wisely for in misusing them we will harm ourselves.

What of the politics of use rights? Both the individual and the state are short lived. Man as a species, thus far, has proved more durable. Private property and state control have proved equally shaky techniques for securing equitable use rights; the individual or the corporation, operating in the realm of private property, rarely concerns himself or itself with questions of race survival while the state is prone to squander its own resources and exploit the resources of those unfortunates beyond its sovereign borders in order to realize its temporal and exclusive ends. The privatization of land and industry versus the nationalization of same has been at the heart of political debate and government policy for the last hundred years. The flaws of both approaches are now becoming manifest.

Many social philosophers including Plato, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have questioned man's right to subdivide land and create perpetual ownership. They have seen land as "social," as belonging to the community. In practice, on the contrary, land has been subdivided in direct relation to power. Henry George's proposal for a just solution was to suggest taxing away the social value of land. Marx's ideas were much more direct, i.e., take the land away. To take something away from somebody who has acquired it with force requires a counter force; thus the Communists' revolution as applied has substituted the state for the bourgeoisie.

Land, of course, is but one facet of the question of ownership. Nor are the means of production the only other facet. Evolutionary socialists and most contemporary economic philosophers in the political democracies have been happy to tinker with the inherited socioeconomic systems "regulating" the economy. They have developed numerous economic devices to pump prime a sluggish economy, throttle an overheated economy, and slow down a runaway economy. They do not suggest abandoning ownership but seek to limit and put controls on it. Some have chosen to nationalize certain key industries such as railroads, utilities and coal mining.

Those who sought to reform yesterday's revolutions sought an equitable share of the expanding goods and services made possible through new technologies. Their main thrust was against those who possessed land, machinery and/or capital. In feudal times the privilege of ownership, acquired by kings and nobles through the use of force, by the church through superstition and force, or by the burghers through legalized possession, was denied to the peasant, the Jew and the gypsy. From the first questionings of divine privilege, through Magna Carta to the Union Movement, and from the violent confrontations against private ownership by Jacobeans to present Communist ideology, this thrust towards an equitable society has remained intact. Today's welfare state, that vast centralized bureaucracy, structured to modulate our expanding economy for the general good, is the latest stage of this selfsame drive towards an equitable distribution of 19th century wealth.

We should also not forget that until recently part of our own (U.S.) population and a greater part other nation states' populations have been termed and treated as property. Slavery, which officially died in the U.S at the end of the Civil War and continued as de facto economic slavery until recently, still exists in more primitive forms. Women in particular have been treated as property and given varying degrees of inferior status throughout the globe. What once was looked upon as the rightful spoils of war still prevail as a vestigial tail; rape, pillage and enslavement still exist but often in more refined form.

Today's technological revolutions have turned yesterday's concept of wealth and property into anachronisms. Likewise, gauging success by the gross national product or one's ability to wage war represents a narrow view of the world and its ability to sustain such foolishness. True wealth today must be measured in terms of human understanding. Our ability to reach the moon and planets, to eliminate poverty, to sustain a quality environment; these and all other major endeavors of our time rest on intellect, man's one unique ability. Possession has given us the sanction, or "right," to plunder our environment and ourselves, to make war, and to ignore yesterday's lessons and tomorrow's citizens for today's gratification.

Entire human use patterns are being studied to determine how they modify the environment and infringe on both users and non-users alike. Margins of safety are, and will continue to be, established as yardsticks of desirability and survival. The ecological results of mass production, mass marketing, and wide distribution can, as we now know (witness the belated response in our own country to the pesticide D.D.T.), be devastating. The automobile must be studied with the highway, the parking station, the oil refinery, and finally the junkyard. Analyzing the costs of protecting the public against the products of gasoline combustion, the wastes from refining oil and the losses of valuable non-renewable and non-recyclable materials, coupled with the cost of maintaining national highway systems, parking facilities and police patrols might easily make even a redesigned new automotive system too expensive for a majority of the public, thus ushering in a more efficient public transport era. Today's subsidies to the auto industry might then give way to a more rational utilization of the technology and an end to urban smog. The same can also be said for a whole era of building wherein we squandered energy and material as if there was an endless supply sans ill effects.

A synergetic/ecological concept of "use" should replace these static concepts of ownership. The farmer requires use of organic topsoil. He is entrusted with its maintenance and improvement for a limited period. He is likewise entrusted with a nexus of plant and animal life, requiring, no less, sun and rain, earthworm and bee. The airline requires use of certain air lanes and landing terminals. A broadcasting company requires the use of a specific broadcasting channel. The mining company requires the right to extract certain minerals from the earth. The builder requires a site. Each of the foregoing services demands use rights to an increment of our space-time-matter-energy world. The problem is to define these "use rights" in terms of a compatible environment sans critical infringement.

All productive activity, as here-to-for noted, should be conceived in terms of services requiring the "use of" but not "ownership of" some segment of our inherited man-modified environment. The cattleman breeds and feeds an ongoing stock of domesticated animals. He requires grazing lands and breeders. The professor gathers, orders and disseminates information. Urban planners attempt to regulate (for the common good) our inherited, functioning and changing urban environment of buildings, utilities, communication networks and transportation arteries. Each requires access to resources and information. Service uses may overlap, interconnect, be mutually supportive, etc., and yet need not infringe on one another.

"Use" must be qualified in geographic terms. Fire control is usually a local matter, zoning a metropolitan problem, watersheds a regional question, highways both a local and national problem and jet transportation both a national and international problem. Each requires a particular framework of law.

"Use" must be qualified by time. Flight patterns, shipping lanes and broadcasting channels require legal as well as logistic structuring. Land use for construction demands realistic time-lease laws.

"Use" should be qualified in terms of energy conversion and entropy. Mining demands international inventory and conservation controls. Forestry and farming demand laws aimed at the restoration and preservation of forests and farmlands.

The concept of "use" ought to be broad enough to encompass the protection of all of our great natural resources which are critical for the well-being of the planet: wetlands, marshes, aquifers, forests, prairies, tundra, rivers, mountains, lakes, seas, oceans and the atmosphere. Restoration of our national parks, lakes and rivers, and international use laws protecting the oceans and the atmosphere against all kinds of abuses, must be addressed.

All use modifies nature but today's technology often does so more drastically than those of past cultures. While yesterday's mill race modified a local stream, today's dams modify vast regional networks of rivers and the surrounding environment. We can no longer just assume that any dam is beneficial to man and that it does not, therefore, infringe upon his rights. Each new modification of the environment should be judged on its perceived ecological effect, not on its short run political and economic merits. "We are discovering that it is easier to invent things than to know what to do with them, or even to predict what they will do to us down the road," says Donald Johanson, an anthropologist and discoverer of Lucy, one of our earliest known ancestors.

Chernobyl and Bhopal are but two tragic examples of the adverse impact modern technology has had on man and his environment, but modern warfare is perhaps the most extreme example of man's capacity to despoil his world and to put himself on the endangered species list. Jonathan Schell, discussing nuclear war in his now famous book, The Fate of the Earth, portrays a potential and grizzly end to civilization and has this to say about our governments as they prepare for this Armageddon:

"Since Aristotle, it has often been said that the two basic aims of political association are, first, to assure the survival of members of society (that is, to protect life) and, second, to give them a chance to fulfill themselves as social beings (that is, to enable them to lead a noble or a good life). The threat of self-extermination annuls both of these objectives, and leaves the politics of our day in a ludicrous position of failing even to aim at the basic goals that have traditionally justified its existence."

Even without Schell's chilling description of a society preparing for Armageddon, all modern wars are the antithesis of services and they are deadly for both man and his environment.

One current example may help to justify Schell's logic. In a recent article for the Chicago Sun-Times, Rudy Abramson discusses the clean-up problems facing our government as a result of four decades of Cold War weapons production:

"The clean-up of massive radioactivity pollution at the United States nuclear weapons laboratories may take much longer than the 30 years projected by the energy department and some sites may never be restored sufficiently to permit public access, according to a congressional study to be released today. Unofficial estimates of the eventual cost of the clean-up and environmental restoration run to as much as 200 billion. The chief problems include permanent disposal of millions of gallons of liquid wastes in temporary storage tanks at Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, S.C., and the clean-up of plutonium at Fernald, Ohio, and dangerous wastes dumped in the ground at the Idaho national engineering laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee."^[3]

Finally, whether we choose to cooperatively or privately assert our right to use nature should not be based on political dogma but upon the nature of the service. The artist and the philosopher may do well to operate as individuals. Flood control and disaster insurance, e.g., need to be co-operative adventures. The extreme costs of space exploration have forced individual nations to pool their resources and may soon establish one international body for this work. Whatever, the law must seek to protect and provide latitude for each individual whose unique contribution can constantly revitalize society's struggle toward a better world. It must build into the structure of mass undertakings or private enterprises, all the necessary safeguards and freedoms which will assure success.

INFORMATION USE RIGHTS

Before ending this discussion of "use rights" it is important to discuss the right of access to information. Our accumulated and accumulating information concerning earth goes back several billions of years, while that concerning humans goes back 10,000-plus years. We are continually expanding our understanding of the universe (both macro and micro), with the help of ever more sophisticated technologies, going far beyond the limits of our natural senses. We are part of the "Information Age," wherein the sheer quantity of information is growing at exponential rates and wherein, instead of storing information on stone tablets or paper scrolls, we fit vast amounts into increasingly smaller electronic artifacts for quick recall. We have extended our written words, spoken words and bodies to reach around the world via books, movies, telephone, radio, fax, TV, satellites and computer networks.

Rather than our direct experience or interaction with the physical world, much information today is our indirect symbolic and abstracted interpretations of these experiences conveyed to others through the senses. It is on this base of abstracted indirect experience that we are inundating and hopefully educating one another concerning all manner of phenomena. There remains, of course, information acquired through direct experience: apprenticeship, on-the-job training, scientific research, etc. We are also endowed with and learn from an ever-growing wealth of historic artifacts, inherited customs and institutions, and a natural but human-modified environment. This ever growing wealth of information is our collective cultural heritage to which we, in turn, add our input; the whole becoming a common resource which needs to be made available for all to use.

Today the right of access to information is perhaps more important than that of direct access to material resources, for mere access to these resources alone will not guarantee success and may, at worst, be disastrous. Most critical is that through the free flow of information we can continue to learn and debate how to get along with our fellow homo sapiens and with our environment.

Access to universities, to museums, to libraries, to government business, to newspapers and magazines, and to the ubiquitous electronic globe-circling media should be available to all and not, as in the past, only to the king's court, the priesthood, or some elite class. Dictators, oligarchies and religious fanatics still control power in many states and are able to distort, withhold and suppress information as they see fit. In other countries, class structures based on race still prevail. And in still others, like India, a caste system persists. In these cases the ruling class, or caste, tends to monopolize and control the free flow of information. Nor are the political parties in democratic states innocent of withholding or distorting information which may hurt their power base.

The middle class has achieved its position through access to information that is by education and specialization thus making itself useful to those controlling money and or resources. It has been more difficult, however, for some to reach this level of success: access to skills, jobs, and retraining have often been restricted or denied for reasons of race, sex, age, religion, or money. This aborted right to information has helped to generate the outcasts, those excluded. Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist, talked of "structural unemployment" in the U.S. as a great loss of talent and energy. He was referring to our neglect of the unemployed to the extent that they become unemployable. He was arguing for retraining as a national policy.

In a free market economy money buys information, or as some economists put it, "money is information." Access to education and thus to jobs, political office, travel, health care, ergo to information, requires having adequate money. In both developed and underdeveloped countries control or ownership of resources (for production and/or for destruction) has allowed for the accelerated accumulation of money and power by some while excluding others, which in turn has led to the restricting of information. This process is also fueled, in part, by what some economists call our "debt money system" wherein the creation of money to finance both government and private business, with its attendant interest, devalues the creation of real wealth. Here is how economist Thomas Greco, Jr., explains it:

"The usury/debt money system creates several dysfunctions and difficulties. First, it is an engine which forces inappropriate growth. The global ecological crisis is primarily the result of the debt-money system. The fact that money (which is created out of thin air) bears an interest burden, applies pressure to the global economy to grow at a rate equivalent to the interest rate. More and more real wealth must be created upon which to base the necessary expansion of money supply."

The process through which U.S. debt-money is created is explained in much detail by Jacques S. Jaikaran in an excellent book entitled Debt Virus. Others have also expounded on the subject. For myself, however, this has proved to be one of the more lucid explanations. I will pass along only a brief outline here:

"Wherever government expenditures are greater than tax revenues, the government borrows money for its operations. It is simply not true that the government creates the money it needs for its expenditures. Assume the Treasury receives permission from the Congress to borrow $1 billion for this (A) highway project. The Treasury issues bonds totaling $1 billion. Note that these bonds represent debt, so interest must be paid on them. The Treasury Bonds are then taken to the Federal Reserve. The fed buys the bonds by increasing the Treasury's checking account at the Federal Reserve by $1 billion. This is only a bookkeeping entry. No cash changes hands. With the stroke of a pen, the Federal Reserve created $1 billion of checkbook money in the Treasury's checking account. Ultimately, American taxpayers are obligated to repay this debt with interest."

If the "Fed" and the U.S. Government were one and the same this debt would be fictitious. They are not. The "Fed" is in part our private banking system.^[4] It is this private part which in carrying out policy, creates debt-burdened currency.

The second part of this story concerns the creation of debt-money by commercial banks:

"The mechanism used by which commercial banks to create money is called ‘fractional reserve deposit expansion.' In layman's terms, each time a bank makes a loan, it is creating new money. Banks, using this expansion process, create check-book money many times in excess of actual cash they have on deposit in their vaults. They enter this created money on their books as demand deposits. Assume a storekeeper wants to expand his business. He goes to the bank to secure a loan. It does not hand over one thousand bills worth $10 each. Instead, the bank makes a bookkeeping entry that increases the storekeeper's checking account by $10,000. There is no transfer of funds from one account at the bank into the storekeeper's account. The bank actually creates new money by making the $10,000 loan. In addition, the bank expects the storekeeper to repay the loan with interest on the money it created by a bookkeeping entry."

Contrary to public opinion banks do not use depositor's monies to make loans. Depositor's monies become part of each commercial bank's reserve which determines the extent of its loaning capacity. This is regulated by the "Fed" and may vary as widely as 5 to 10 times a bank's reserves. Concludes Jaikaran:

"Banking is the only business where all the inventory, like the money borrowed by the storekeeper, is created as it is needed at no cost and essentially without labor. There are no purchases made and no effort expended other than that made by the employee who entered the new numbers - (merchandise) The Checkbook Money."

The first and most obvious disservice is the confiscation of huge sums of money by the levying of compound interest on created (unearned and unowned) money. Secondly, as a result of this process, the cost of this interest is necessarily built into almost all businesses, raising prices while concurrently providing productive services with a lesser share of the pie. There is a further disservice, as Jaikaran points out. There is insufficient money in circulation to pay back principle and interest because only the principle has been created and therefore further borrowing, bankruptcies and recessions all lead to the consolidation of money in the hands of those performing the initial disservices. Finally, this unearned increment (as Thomas Greco points out) applies pressure on natural resources in order to feed those who receive it.

While most government debt borrowing is for legitimate services, several are not. Many of these represent lax regulations and other corporate subsidies. Here are but a few prime examples which have added to the inflationary flames: the U.S. Federal Government's recent bailout of big banks, big industries and savings and loans, and funding of a toxic clean-up "super-fund." All represent a massive devaluation of real services to pay for the disservices of a few fostered by lax regulatory action and or government socialization of private enterprise, e.g., insured deposits. These costs are then amplified by the debt-money system.

Government indirect creation of debt money, or the use of tax money, for the purpose of subsidizing private industry and transnational corporations represents another tremendous transfer of public wealth to private industries and their stockholders. Here is a condensation of Buckminster Fuller's analysis of this process from his book Critical Path:

"If we take the billions of dollars given in the 1930's to the great U.S.A. defense industries' corporations by the new deal's reconstruction finance corporation. If we take the hidden tax deduction subsidies to do research, development and advertising given to all these companies in pre-1942 dollars between 1933 and 1980. If we take the $100 billion in foreign aid that paid for the overseas establishment of the great corporations. If we take the $155 billion of atomic know-how and development taken over by the oil companies and we take the number of fine ounces of gold bullion taken out of America exclusively by the capitalist world's banking system and we take a reasonably low estimate of the unknown billions of dollars taken out of the U.S.A. by the CIA exclusively on the behalf of international capitalism without the knowledge or authority of the people of the U.S. of America's Quasi-Democracy and if we multiply the sum of the foregoing figures by twenty-five, which is the amount to which our present U.S.A. dollars have been depreciated between the time of the appropriations and January 1, 1980 we come to a figure in the magnitude of $6 trillion that has been legally transferred from the U.S.A. People's National Capital account over to the capital account of the stockholders of the 1000 largest, transnational, exclusively American-Flag-Flying Corporations."

I cannot resist inserting one additional observation concerning the abuse of money abetted by banking deregulation, this by James Taylor in his book titled, Circus of Ambition: The Culture of Wealth and Power in the Eighties. When the Reagan administration eased controls on mergers and acquisitions in the early 80's, corporate raiders and investment bankers took over with zeal and ingenuity, says Taylor:

"With trading techniques so arcane they seemed positively metaphysical unconnected to manufacturing, to production, to anything concrete or real (they) created, through acts of pure abstraction, nothing but money itself."

Here a combination of low reserve requirements and lax regulations allowed investment banks to create money for Wall Street speculators and manipulators sans the performance of any real service. This is not merely an isolated phenomena but the mindset of those who live daily in an investment world where real resources have been eliminated from all calculations regarding the earning of money and only show up in the spending of it.

Equal access to information (including money) means abolition of the welfare state. It may well be that most subsidies begin with an honest need: to assist defense industries in times of war, to assist farmers in times of natural disaster (or manmade ones), to stimulate productive industries in times of depression. The problem arises when the receiving parties become addicted to this public support. Money then begins to circulate between the involved participants. Recipient industries feed their elected officials who in turn pass legislation to continue feeding the bureaucracies who in turn feed the industries. This closed circle, like an invading disease, continues to grow at the expense of the general public. Tendency for the disease to increase as all participants come to depend on its non-productive monies. As the disease becomes chronic, eliminating it becomes ever more difficult. Dependant industries supply their politicians with more and more contributions to assure their (the politicians) election. The politicians in turn make sure the bureaucracies grow and that ample subsidies continue to flow back to their respective supporting industries. Whether these non-productive flows of money go to bankers as interest on created money, to industry, politicians and bureaucracies in form of subsidies, to speculators abusing the public trust or to outright theft in it's many forms, they represent lost energy and resources. Reversing this chronic disease will free people, money and natural resources for truly productive activities. Is it possible to do? I don't know but I predict the patient will not survive unless we do, and justice demands that we try.

Is the same argument true for people receiving welfare? Today the term "welfare" implies support for the poor. It also implies, to some, that those who have not been given equal opportunity to fully participate in productive work are indeed disadvantaged. Many also have been pre-empted by mechanization/automation, by immigrant labor and by potential job-producing capital relocating elsewhere. They represent either a resource or a liability to society. Currently we have chosen the latter. It is a dead end breeding apathy and violence. It is also a big cost in money and wasted lives. It has spawned its own bloated bureaucracy of welfare agencies, social workers, drug programs and prisons.

If onto these observations we include the following facts - a growing global population with an increasing consumer demand for services and technologies for production, consumption and destruction which are all energy intensive and which bear an interest burden, it is not difficult to comprehend how the value of real services becomes distorted and devalued compared to the value accrued through the ownership and control of money and resources. Census figures of October 18, 1989, reported in the Chicago Tribune highlight these observations:

"Census figures...showed that per capita income reached its highest level in the nation's history last year, but some analysts pointed to more disturbing news in the report: the income gap between rich and poor and rich and middle class is now at its widest since the end of World War II."

An even more germane report appeared in the Chicago Tribune on January 11, 1991:

"The first systematic examinations of wealth, reflecting not just one year's income but the lifetime accumulation of property and other assets. The Census Bureau said that for the most affluent fifth of all households, wealth rose 14 percent from 1984 to 1988, after adjusting for inflation. For other households, wealth was not significantly different in 1984 and 1988, the Bureau said. White households typically have 10 times as much wealth as black households, the Census Bureau reported. While the medium income of whites is roughly twice that of blacks, the disparity in wealth is much greater, partly because wealth reflects decades of differences in earnings, investment and inheritance of property."

In a letter to the Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Thomas D. Lynch, President of the American Society for Public Administration, comments as follows on federal deficit spending:

"One important consequence of an increasing deficit-inspired debt is a national de facto policy of transferring the nation's wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich and from the young to the old. Charles A. Bowsher, U.S. Comptroller General, noted that servicing the national debt is the largest transfer of American wealth in U.S. history. At a time when the middle class is shrinking and baby boomers are growing older, this added economic reality vitiates the intent of our progressive income tax."

These realities say much about long standing minority discrimination. In a society where money, more than ideological control, is the source of power, access to information is not withheld or distorted so much as it is made expensive and thus restricted to those who have money.

And who are the ultimate losers? An editorial in the Chicago Tribune by Patrick E. Burns, former special assistant to the White House budget director, has a few unkind things to say about government incurred debt which carries more weight than my own:

"Apart from the basic harm deficit spending inflicts by pushing up interest rates, the level of net interest payments not only as a percentage of the federal budget but also as a percentage of GNP has risen steadily in recent years. This contradicts those who argue that the size of the budget deficit isn't so bad relative to gross national product. As the share of the budget must suffer; we are wasting a ton of money on debt service that could be better spent elsewhere. Yet perhaps more important is the question of the morality of deficit spending. Where do our parents and grandparents get the right to incur huge sums of debt, only to pass the burden of repayment on to us?"

The U.S. national debt is $5,413,146,000,000 according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, dated January 12, 1998, and accumulating even as the government achieved a balanced budget in 1997. This quantifies to date the transfer of unearned income from poor to rich and from this generation to the next, but we can only guess at the amount of ecological damage this accumulating debt is causing.

In an information age we, as a global society, require complete and unrestricted access to information so that we, individually and collectively, will not just survive or muddle through but will make a success of the human race. Any formulation of rights and responsibilities which overlooks or fails to justly resolve these questions of "equitable use" will in turn abrogate men's and women's other rights.

These rights and responsibilities may be stated in fairly simple terms, though the mechanics for realization are formidable. All individuals have an equal right to the use of their mutual life-sustaining physical and informational/cultural worlds, so long as the exercise of this right does not infringe upon or limit the equal use rights of others, or infringe upon the exclusive and mutual rights of others. Conversely, all individuals share an equal responsibility to protect, maintain and enhance their shared worlds for themselves, their progeny and for all other living things. And this corollary #1: any individual or group of freely associating individuals shall have the right to provide and/or receive specialized services including conversions utilizing a limited share of available resources, so long as these services do not infringe or otherwise frustrate the "equal use right." These services alone constitute property, and they are transient. Therefore the extent, content and otherwise nature of these services shall be qualified and controlled by the current, collective wisdom of communities, regions and countries wherein the services occur, and in consort with a world organization and a comprehensive universal bill of rights. The biosphere and geosphere constitute a commons whose stability is critical to all living things but whose stewardship must fall to those humans who are but transient occupiers for a short time. This is true because they alone have acquired the capability to interfere with dynamics of the commons. It is therefore their responsibility to leave them as well or better than they found it. There are surely much simpler ways to say all this. For now it will have to do. Let me try to explain the why of it. Those of us who presently share the life-sustaining habitat we call earth have in common that need. We collectively or separately must not destroy it or privatize it. Destroying it we destroy ourselves. Privatizing it we destroy many for a few. But we have no right proclaimed or spirit-given to any right unless we ourselves take responsibility to protect and enhance it, and not just for today or for ourselves.

The corollary speaks to receiving or providing services. It proclaims that everyone has the option of providing and/or receiving services. It states that no individual or group may have a monopoly of a given resource and that the community, region or country has a right and responsibility to regulate these services utilizing the best information currently available. It does not preclude the right of government to provide services, for government ostensibly represents a group of freely associating individuals. It also speaks to the nature of international trade where services have become boundary-less. While labor and management are often in opposition on issues, their mutual goal is to provide good services; they are “freely associating individuals”. Thus labor has every right to organize and bargain, management every reason to negotiate and government the need to establish equitable guidelines.

We do not "create" or "produce" things from nature, we convert various elements from it for our needs or we discover how to use nature's own dynamics and resources to our advantage. We provide services for one another. We may choose to do this collectively through our government or privately through free associations of individuals, groups or businesses. We abhor a monopoly because it eliminates competition and because it discourages creativity. In a word, it is not responsive to the whole community. We therefore limit all services and their access to resources. We also define services so that they do not infringe on every individual's use rights; we make them subservient to the control of all the people. This then places both the right and the responsibility on everyone. Is there a conflict of ownership here? No, no one owns the biosphere but everyone has rights and responsibilities related to its usage such that its dynamics are not impaired. Particular individuals provide or receive particular services. They are paid to provide or they pay to receive these services. For such period as services are held and not exchanged they are owned. Ownership is the embodiment of information and labor. Tools, and other artifacts, so long as they are usable, are property, their disposal or recyclability are responsibilities of ownership. Copyrights and patents are property for prescribed periods becoming public beyond these periods. Ownership is a verb.

Where non-renewable resources such as fuels, become depleted, society must find alternatives or switch to renewables. If either types are destructive to the environment like fossil fuels, use rights may be violated.

The full extent of all use rights and responsibilities must soon be enlarged to include all countries. This is true because the ramifications of local acts often resonate worldwide. I will discuss this facet of equal use rights further on.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Anatole France

A current comment on U.S. security laws after September 11, 2001 attack.

“Life has become simpler! They’ve boiled the bill of rights down to just one : you have the right to remain silent.”

Steve Bhaerman

^[1] True in 1970 at the time of my first paper. Iran's religious zealots had condemned author Salman Rushdie to death because they decreed his writings were heretical to Islam and U.S. anti-abortion zealots kill or maim health care workers whose acts they deem morally wrong.

^[2] The potential for cloning humans would be a mutual rights disaster and an evolutionary one also, however, cell research to correct genetic flaws is very important.

^[3] Nor is there the political will to expedite this clean-up.

^[4]The Fed is a mixed entity. The government part is comprised of a Board of Directors (experts from the banking industry) who with the Fed Chairman set monetary policy, plus 12 representatives from Federal Reserve Banks (the private sector) who carry out policy.