Moving wealth from the top of the economic pyramid to incentivize better family planning and sustainable families is the best way to do the most good
The crises we face today, from the climate to massive economic inequality, did not magically appear. They are the product of a scam in the middle of the Twentieth Century, in which world leaders in government and business embraced poor family planning and population growth over promoting parental readiness, sustainable families, and investing more in kids. Instead that money, through a process of isolating families and encouraging growth, went to the top of the wealth pyramid. Those who acted stole resources that should have gone into future generations, by externalizing the costs that human rights and democracy would have required them to internalize. They didn’t even interpret the relevant rights in ways that would protect future generations equally.
Today many are fighting to change this, get the wealth back, and use it to most effectively reverse the crises we face. We can separate those people from the politicians, fake charities and others protecting the wealth bubble at the top – and hurting our kids – with a simple language test.
For any policy claim being made, urge the person making it to account for the relative self-determination (or what we often think of as freedom) of the people who will be involved – long-term – in the policy. How do they account for how the people will be empowered by the conditions in which they are born, how they will be ensured equal opportunities in life without their economic birth position of riches or poverty carrying forward, how will they be assured influential voices in their democracy, and provided the freedom of nature. In other words, force them to explain how we can be coming from a just place without ensuring every child a #fairstart in life? (Hint: We can’t)
It’s not about counting people, it’s about making people count. The borders of just and inclusive nations are not lines on a map; they are comprised of people who trust one another, and engage in consensual and inclusive governance.
For example, if environmentalists claim to be protecting a river, force them to account for the way population growth will drive the climate crisis in ways that will degrade the river and increase demands for its use. Many environmental and animal protection groups raised millions to protect natural spaces that they knew would be destroyed by population growth, growth they were helping promote – furthering the Anthropocene. If child protection advocates claim to be investing more in kids with tax policy for example, as them why they permit children to be born into poverty in the first place, rather than incentivizing better – and even equitable – family planning. If groups claim to promoting democracy, ask them to account for how poor family planning and population growth is diluting our individual roles to the point of meaningless, and degrading the civil qualities of the people around us. But the first norm has to be to simply to create normative people, which can best be visualized as a functional constitutional convention of principles – free people – not representatives, and not with the expectation that the norms will require coercion or incentives because they are not truly reflective of the people involved.
Our world is the way it is because we never held those claiming to promote values to actually account for the truth: People are the most important factor in all policy, and people don’t fall from the sky. If officials or groups do not prioritize giving all kids a #fairstart in life, they are part of the problem, not constituting us as free and equal people (and hence preconstitutional or “precons”) and protecting the bubble of wealth at the top of the pyramid in ways that will hurt our kids.
We are at a fork. The choice is clear. Let’s take what our kids deserve and build truly consensual governance. Now, how?
To constitute ourselves as free people means to limit and decentralize the power people have over one another, and we do that by promoting a simple discourse in which intending parents agree to planning caring, and sustainable families in exchange for their future children’s entitlement to #fairstart funding and incentives taken from the top of the wealth pyramid. That’s a true, or physical, social contract, which is inclusive of the majority of persons – those who will live in the future. It reflects the alleviation of power differentials, the sort rich have over poor, parents have over children, and we all have over our natural ecologies. That is what it means to be sufficiently other-regarding, or empathetic, to constitute ourselves as free people.
We can take the wealth at the top of the wealth pyramid – as matter of the first human right, one that overrides government processes and property rights – and use it to bend the arc of the future to create greater welfare, equity, meaningful democracy, and nature. Or we can leave it at the top and have a future with greater inequity, less nature, and bloated democracies that don’ work. We can become free people, and defeat the precons. The wealth bubble at the top is big enough to bend the arc, and incentivize, the future we deserve. Let’s move that wealth forward.
Take Action
Moving wealth from the top of the economic pyramid to incentivize better family planning and equitable families is the best way to do the most good
- Help us build the discourse of constituting, and of freedom. If someone puts property over people, they are part of the problem. Contact us at ashley@fairstartmovement.org to learn more, and support the Unite America campaign by urging Congress to act.
- Urge the UN to interpret the relevant human rights, including the right to have children, to protect all generations equally.
- Support a federal executive order – the Tell the Truth order – that would require the disclosure of corporations and nonprofits role in the scam described above, so that we can hold people accountable.
- Promote constitutional amendments, in your state, that would ensure all children an ecosocial #fairstart in life as the first and overriding human right.
