I was too anxious to get my own specific questions on the table for the author to address. Let me now try to make amends. Steve Kurtz was skeptical, but willing to explore the idea more deeply. He therefore alerted Don Roper to the nature of Jeff Gates' book , and Roper elected to make it the subject of a CSF Seminar, if the author were willing to participate. The key proposition as I see it is that all of the problems to which the Club of Rome called attention are exacerbated, some perhaps even caused, by the presumption that the issue of income distribution is a problem primarily of employment.
Jobs are the answer, from every shade of politics.
This approach encourages rapid resource depletion, docile laborers, low valuation of common property, mistreatment of women and other minorities, etc. Participants who have expressed themselves thus far seem to hold views consistent with this assessment. Widespread ownership of shares in the collective wealth would reduce the near-bondage conditions which induce people to participate in further degradation of themselves, the commonwealth and the biosphere. The idea and the institutions which articulate and maintain the rights to individual property are among the most important and productive creations of human ingenuity. I include in this the invention of money and all of its subsequent refinements in monetary and financial technique.