Fred Harrison - #Wearerent Book 1: Capitalism, Cannibalism and Why We Must Outlaw Free Riding

Humans evolved by working to create a unique flow of energy Rent which they pooled in their bodies and minds to foster their aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities. Rent is the living tissue of our humanity, from which emerged the Social Galaxy. When Rent is privatised, the Social Galaxy begins to collapse. To save humanity we must reclaim Rent.

Dr Mason Gaffney

(1923-2020)

Professor of Economics, University of California

Sir Kenneth Jupp, MC

(19172004)

Judge in the English High Court

Dr George Miller

(1941-2007)

Professor of Epidemiology

#We Are Rent

Book 1

Capitalism, Cannibalism and why we must outlaw Free Riding

W E no longer have a choice. Humanity has arrived at a crossroads. At stake is our species. To survive we must move beyond the dual between capitalism and socialism. To relaunch onto the evolutionary path into the future we must learn from the hard-won lessons of the past.

Feudalism was spawned by the collapse of the classical civilisations. Socialism was spawned by the breakdown of capitalism. Neither feudalism nor socialism would have been incubated but for the exhaustion of the pre-existing social formations. Populations were parked into these stop-gap arrangements while awaiting the recovery of cultural evolution.

In 2020, as nations were decimated by a killer virus from China, people appealed for no return to business-as-usual. That desire was expressed by David Malpass, the President of the World Bank Group: Countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-Covid.

It is not possible to deliver change on the basis of the ideas that prevail among the academics and politicians who shape public opinions and policies. No practical vision exists with which to chart a course out of the dead-end arrangements into which all nations are locked. That is why we need to formulate the fundamental principles on which societies may be redesigned. Despite a very narrow window of opportunity within which to initiate action, there is hope.

The precondition for a radical redesign of society, however, is an understanding of what it means to be human. To navigate the empirical evidence that spans two million years, I provide, a comprehensive theory of human evolution. This equips us to apply the principles that would lay the foundations for a social paradigm fit for the 21st century.

Our starting point is an appraisal of what it took for one branch of the primate species to evolve into humanity. Based on that knowledge, I contend that people would be liberated to decide how best to reconfigure their communities. The politics of how this could be achieved is the subject of Book 2. If agreement on those foundation principles can be extended to encompass the global community of nations, a new epoch in the evolution of our species would be initiated (Book 3). For the first time in history, Homo sapiens armed with its own evolutionary blueprint would be united to forge a future within the terms of peace and prosperity for everyone. This will only happen if we stop trying to patch up the mortal flaws in western capitalism and eastern socialism. Only then can we meaningfully ask: what may society look like after Covid-19?

Deviation from the evolutionary blueprint caused the collapse of earlier civilisations. To avoid that fate befalling western civilisation, we need to understand the role played by the unique source of energy which animated the evolution of our species. That energy is what the classical economists called economic rent . I shall denote this stream of resources as Rent.

When the flue pandemic struck in 1918, killing tens of millions of people worldwide, the socialist model was still lurking in the shadows of peoples minds, waiting to be tried and tested. It was tried. It failed the test. That option is no longer credible ().

Box 1 Post-socialist China

At the 99th anniversary congress, in July 2020, Chinese Communist Party President-for-Life Xi Jinping claimed that their success at combating the coronavirus pandemic fully demonstrated the clear superiority of Communist Party leadership and our socialist system. That was the fiction that sought to rationalise a brutal authoritarian regime. It

employed concentration camps to re-educate (i.e., brainwash) millions of Muslim Uighurs into conforming to the party line;

repressed Hong Kong citizens who dared to contemplate the possibility of an alternative politics to fulfil their aspirations; and

intensified military threats against Taiwan in a bid to complete Maos war against the first republic (formed in 1911), which sought a future based on the evolutionary model which is the subject of this book.

To sustain itself, an alien culture must coerce the collective consciousness of the people. The Communist Partys method is illustrated in Hong Kongs education system. Textbooks are being revised censured to remove awkward facts embodied in the liberal studies curriculum.* This is a mind-bending project that may be studied in real time. There is no future for humanity in the social model enforced by Beijing with the aid of military might.

* Nicolle Liu and Joe Leahy (2020), Beijing targets Hong Kong schools in ideological clampdown, Financial Times , October 10.

This time is different. The Covid-19 pandemic convinced people of the need to reconstitute their working arrangements. Something novel had to be innovated.

But we cannot afford to devote time to dead-end experiments. Defensive strategies against the existential crises are required. Those strategies must be consistent with the structural reforms that need to be implemented if we are to forestall the social, environmental and demographic threats that are converging on a single point in time.

That a qualitative departure from present arrangements is necessary is attested to by the fact that governments are incapable of learning the lessons from social catastrophes of even the recent past, like the 2008 financial crisis. Governments and their distinguished and well-meaning professors continue to frame the post-pandemic prospects in terms derived from within capitalism. If their analytical models prevail, the outcome will be a catastrophic breakdown that no-one intends, but which is prescribed by the logic of the culture that dominates our lives. That assertion will be met with incredulity! That is why nations need to embark on a listen-and-learn conversation in which everyone may participate. Democratic consent is needed to support realistic policy options. The context for a radical reappraisal of current arrangements is needed . My contribution takes the form of three indictments.

Indictment I

Politicians who administer democratic governments wilfully cause the deaths of citizens every year. The deaths are on a pandemic scale, the consequence of an intrinsic feature of government revenue systems. The outcomes are intentional.

Taxes as championed by politicians burden peoples lives to the point where many of them become the excess deaths for which no-one is held accountable. This tragedy is avoidable. The benign fiscal alternative has been tried, tested, and authoritatively endorsed as the correct way to fund public services. There is no practical or moral reason for not reforming revenue systems so that everyone may be free to live full lives. And yet, politicians wilfully continue to use deadly financial tools for which they are not held responsible.