The Fourth Option: Citizen Shares

The Fourth Option:

Citizen Shares

by

Bob Blain, Ph.D.

Sociologist

Copyright © 2013 by Bob Blain

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978 130 145 1463

The Fourth Option proposes that we begin to establish a debt-free and interest-free base money supply to replace our debt and interest based money supply with one that encourages all of us to share the work and share the wealth that our work produces.

As you will read in this little book, many of our greatest leaders have advocated government issued money. It financed the War of Independence that gave birth to the United States of America and it financed the Civil War that saved the Union. It can save us again now when it is clearer every day that the other three options, tax, spend and cut, are dealing with the leaves and branches of the debt problem rather than getting to its roots.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Citizen Shares

Chapter 2 Sovereignty

Chapter 3 The First Congress on Wall Street

Chapter 4 The Fourth Option

Chapter 5 Benjamin Franklin for Sovereignty

Chapter 6 Gail E. Makinen against Sovereignty

Chapter 7 Thomas Jefferson for Sovereignty

Chapter 8 James Madison for Sovereignty

Chapter 9 Abraham Lincoln for Sovereignty

Chapter 10 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison for Sovereignty

Chapter 11 The Guernsey Experience

Chapter 12 Sovereignty in New Zealand

Chapter 13 John Hotson for Sovereignty

Chapter 14 Mr. Edward Mrkvicka, Jr. for Sovereignty

Chapter 15 Sociologist Bob Blain for Sovereignty

Chapter 16 Royce Olson for Sovereignty

Chapter 17 The Levy Institute for Sovereignty

Chapter 18 William F. Hixson for Sovereignty

Chapter 19 Charley Reese for Sovereignty

Chapter 20 Steve Temple and Joseph Guzzetta for Sovereignty

Chapter 21 Theodore R. Thoren and Richard F. Warner for Sovereignty

Chapter 22 Anomalies of Political Democracy

Chapter 23 Personal Sovereignty

Chapter 24 Adoption

References

About Bob Blain

Other Books by Bob

Acknowledgements

All the people named in this book, those from our past and those who helped solicit support from all the officials who endorsed the Sovereignty petition to Congress, made this book possible. Thank you. The most significant person, of course, is Ken Bohnsack, who conceived the project and who named the present effort the Fourth Option.

Back to TOC

Chapter 1 Citizen Shares

One Citizen Share, put into circulation by government, is worth the product of an hour of work that citizens use to buy and sell goods and services.

Imagine an island abundant with natural resources and a population of 100 newly arrived adults. They have all the skills necessary to convert the natural resources of the island into all the goods they will need to have a good life. They agree to operate by one over-arching general principle; to share the necessary work and to share the products of that work. The only thing they do not have is money. They ask themselves, What can we do to ensure that we do indeed share the work and share the wealth that our work produces?

They decide to create their own money as a medium of communication by which they will share the work and share the wealth. They know from the diverse experiences they had in their countries of origin that they do not need gold or any other commodity to back their money. They know that it is their productive labor and the goods and services that their labor produces that will give value to their money.

They also know that the one measure of work that they all share in common is work time, which they can easily measure by the visible hands of the wristwatches they brought with them. They decide that the standard of a fair wage for productive work is an hour of money for an hour of work. They understand that each of them will be able to negotiate among themselves any deviations from that standard wage based on the particular circumstances of each different kind of work that they will be doing on the island.

They have made two of the four decisions necessary for them to share the work and share the wealth. They have decided: 1) To understand money as a medium of communication, and 2) To denominate their money in Hours representing work time. They have two more decisions to make to start their economy. They must decide: 3) How to put the money into circulation and 4) How much money to put into circulation.

They decide to put their new money into circulation by authorizing an equal amount of money for each of them. They want the money to remind them each time they use it, that they own the money supply as citizens of their new island community. They decide to call their money Citizen Shares. Just as stockholders of a corporation receive shares equal to their contribution to the money capital of the corporation, each of the 100 adults as citizens are the real capital of their community, so they will be allocated equal Citizen Shares.

They elect three accountants to be their bankers. The bankers open a Citizen Share account of an equal number of Hours for each of the 100 adults on the island, including themselves. Their job will now be to record withdrawals and deposits for each account.

No one knows how many Citizen Shares will be needed for their economy to function at an optimum level, so they decide to start with 100 Hours of Citizen Shares allotted to each person in their respective accounts.

To summarize, they issue 100 Hours of Citizen Shares to every adult. They will withdraw from their accounts to pay people who provide them with goods or services; they will deposit into their accounts what they are paid to provide goods or services. Using their Citizen Shares in this way, these 100 founders intend that their society will grow prosperous and happy with everyone sharing the work and sharing the wealth that their work produces.

This hypothetical scenario expresses the essence of The Fourth Option. The other three options that we use today are tax, spend, and cut. In this little book, you will learn why we have not used the Fourth Option and how our current money and debt problems have been the inescapable consequences of that omission.

Because we cannot start with an entirely new money supply as in the island scenario, we will propose allocating Citizen Shares per registered voter at federal, state, township, city, school district and personal levels so that they can be used to address critical needs at these various levels.

We will also use dollars as we use them today with one important improvement; we will define the value of dollar Citizen Shares per hour of skilled labor.

A citizen owned properly defined money supply is the essence and sine qua non of national and personal sovereignty.

Back to TOC

-----------

Chapter 2 Sovereignty

Let me issue and control the money supply of a nation and I care not who makes it laws. Mayer Amschel Rothschild 1790

The United States is not a sovereign nation. It is a pseudo-sovereign one. It has the appearance of sovereignty without its substance. The United States lost its sovereignty at almost the moment of its birth. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress had the power to issue paper money, referred to as emit bills.

Article IX: ... The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority ... to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted.

Notice the provision that Congress report every six months to the States how much money it borrowed or emitted. This provision indicates that they were aware, while the United States needed a money supply, that it was important to avoid issuing too much money. There was also the safeguard against over issue that the Continental Congress could not borrow or emit bills unless agreed to by at least nine of the 13 States.

The British also understood the importance of the paper money supply, so they flooded the States with counterfeit Continentals to wipe out its value. They succeeded, giving rise to the expression not worth a Continental, but not until after the Continentals had carried the Nation through six years of the Revolution, to within just 5 months of its successful conclusion (Zarlenga, 2002:380-382).

The Federal Convention Crushes Government Paper Money

When delegates met in 1787, their expressed purpose was to amend the Articles of Confederation, but the result was a new national government with the power to tax without the power to issue paper money. On Monday, August 6, 1787, Mr. Rutledge of the committee of detail delivered the next to last draft of the Constitution. Its Article VII, Section 1, defining the powers of the Legislature, included the power To borrow money, and emit bills on the credit of the United States (Hunt and Scott, 1970:341). (See also, The American Iceberg, 2012, which shows the exponential growth in public and private debt over the entire history of the United States and traces it to the decision at the Federal Convention to deny Congress sovereignty over the most important instrument of modern government, the money supply.)

On August 16, 1787, delegates to the Federal Convention debated the power to emit bills. Here is the debate as recorded by James Madison (ibid. 413-414).

"Mr. Governeur Morris moved to strike out 'and emit bills on the credit of the U. States' saying 'If the united states had credit such bills would be unnecessary: if they had not, unjust and useless.'

"Mr. Butler 2nd the motion.

"Mr. Madison, will it not be sufficient to prohibit the making them a tender? This will remove the temptation to emit them with unjust views. And promissory notes in that shape may in some emergencies be best.

"Mr. Governeur Morris. Striking out the words will leave room still for notes of a responsible minister which will do all the good without the mischief. The Monied interest will oppose the plan of Government, if paper emissions