Coalition for Capital Homesteading

Own or be Owned ... Every Citizen an Owner!

Core Principles of the Coalition for Capital Homesteading

All people are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, of which they cannot, by any law or compact, deprive or divest themselves or future generations. Such rights include the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property in income-producing wealth, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

In the social order, dignity and empowerment begins with the human person, not any institution. Social justice places upon each person a responsibility to work with others to perfect the social order to support the dignity and empowerment of every person.

There are two equally legitimate ways to produce wealth and be entitled to the incomes produced: (1) through the contribution of one's labor (all forms of human input) and (2) through the contribution of one's capital (all non-human inputs)

There are three essential principles of economic justice necessary for every person to be economically independent and for economic democracy to exist and be sustained:

-- Participative Justice (input principle): Every person must have equal opportunity to contribute their human labor and their capital in the production of economic goods and services. Equal access to capital ownership requires equal access to the institutional means to acquire capital financed through the future earnings of the capital itself.
-- Distributive Justice (out-take principle): Private property in one’s labor and capital entitles the owner to the full income stream of, and full share of control over, what his or her labor and capital has produced. The relative value of those contributions is most objectively determined in a free and open market, where capital ownership is broadly distributed and the institutional means and opportunity to acquire private property is universally accessible.
-- Social Justice (feedback and corrective principle): To limit greed and monopolies, no person may use his or her property in any way as to deprive others of their right to acquire and own property, or damage the property of others, or harm the general welfare. When either the principle of participation or principle of distribution fails to operate, or is prevented from operating, the principle of harmony requires that people organize through acts of social justice to transform their social institutions to restore justice in both participation and distribution.

There are four pillars of a just free market economy:

-- Limited economic power of the state, whose duty is to police abuses, enforce contracts, prevent monopolies, and lift barriers to equal participation;
-- Restoration of the full rights of private property, especially in corporate equity;
-- Free, open and anti-monopolistic markets for determining just prices, just wages and just profits; and
-- Universal and equal access to the means of acquiring capital ownership, as a fundamental human right.

In attesting to these principles, I join with others in the Coalition for Capital Homesteading to promote a just social order for every citizen, and a free, open and sustainable market economy in which every person can participate fully as a worker and as an owner. To establish these principles in law, we call for the enactment by 2012 of the Capital Homestead Act, whose monetary, tax and ownership components are described in the attached Summary and “Declaration of Monetary Justice.”