[world-vedic] Ch.2 1of4

[Guest guest]

I feel like the proverbial boy who said the king wears no cloths. He spoke in

the court of the high and mighty of his day. All the court knew of his

nakedness, but would not speak for fear of king and peers. I feel like that

boy. I simply point out what is already seen by all. Tobacco’s medical cost

are subsidized by the American tax-payer. Everyone knows it. Government is

paralyzed to stop it. No surprise there. The best action would be for

tobacco, like all corporations, to take FULL responsibility for the cost of

their products social economic harm. This very system of compensation is

already common to our courts and public policy. Again, a familiar idea to

all. My details are almost incidental to what is already common knowledge.

Yet, these ideas too often go unspoken. I remain just a boy in this court of

America’s academic experts and political leaders. My qualifications are

hardly more then my village education from Vrindavan, India. Yet, like our

proverbial boy, this maybe my best qualification of all.

 

As for the foot-notes, they’ll be researched after the book is completed.

This chapter was written from 4 paragraphs edited out from chapter 1. I’ve

now decided to replace that entire chapter with this new one. Such is the way

of writing. It’s for reasons like this that footnotes will come later. 80% of

the stats are taken directly from the LA Times. Many will therefore find most

of this already familiar. This is a work in progress. This book will continue

to change as it unfolds and receives new input - input such as yours.

Raghunatha Anudasa

 

The Vedic Cultural Association

213/ 969-4727 PO Box 1467 Culver City CA 90232

Email: Anudasa

 

 

Chapter 2

 

ROOPA: Economic Democracy

 

 

 

 

A New Political Platform

Greater the Vice, Greater the Price

 

ROOPA: Responsibility Of One’s Products & Actions. The premise of ROOPA is

that every activity produces an economic outcome. ROOPA holds that "good

deeds" offer profitable economic returns. Conversely, "bad" or vice (like

smoking), creates expensive economic liabilities. ROOPA translates this

principle into a social economic system. Vice will always prove expensive.

Charging the high price tag of a vice represents the natural regulation of

its activity.

 

Democracy is governance of the people, by the people. ROOPA is the next step.

ROOPA is governance of ones’ self. ROOPA is self-regulation of ones own

activities through NATURAL price restraints. The price represents the real

cost of their activities. Here lies the idea behind the free-market economy,

but without today’s public and environmental ill-effects. This circumvents

the need for further outside government interference. In short, the price tag

combines justice, morality and government legislation into an all-purpose,

easy-to-use formula for public policy.

 

* * *

 

ROOPA: Not a Moral Quest, But Economic One

 

Politics. We’ve heard it a thousand times. What does it mean - literally?

Politics, like economics, is the process by which limited resources are

distributed. Some go by the traditions of old: "might makes right." Others

offer us "the free market system." We present ROOPA. ROOPA stands for

economic "Responsibility Of One’s Products & Actions." ROOPA is the simple

system of returning the economic burdens of society over to those responsible

for them. ROOPA completes this process by also rewarding one a share of their

economic contributions.

 

The costs of our economic burdens happen to come from activities generally

considered to be vices - like smoking and drinking. This is solely an

interesting observation - not the focus of this essay. ROOPA is not a moral

quest, but an economic one. It simply plays out that activities generally

considered a vice, prove costly to society. Those things generally viewed as

virtuous, are economically rewarding. ROOPA simply notes this intriguing

correlation. In doing so, however, ROOPA removes morality from the subjective

realm of religious zealots and places it the realm of science and verifiable

numbers. We are all weary of religious extremist and their brand of moral

authority. ROOPA replaces such relative morality with an objective,

measurable science.

 

Those things that cause social economic damage are a "bad" thing. At least we

can say they are bad to the economic well being of society. It just so

happens that they also coincide with activities generally considered to be

vices. Such correlation’s, however, are a secondary concern. ROOPA’s primary

objective is that one covers their cost to society whether they be caused of

vice or virtue. There is, however, one important advantage if ROOPA’s

calculations prove correct. The primary functions of church and state will

have been replaced. If vice always proves to be an economic liability to

society, then simply paying those cost re-constitutes the very role

government legislation and religious imperatives were attempting to

accomplish in the first place.

Paying the high price tag of vice serves as:

1) the deterrent,

2) the penalty and

3) the social compensation - all in one.

 

4 things will be accomplished. We will have

1) created a scientific measuring post for morality.

2) uncovered an all-purpose social template for deciding most public policy

concerns.

3) harnessed a newly discovered economic dynamic with an easy to follow

formula for fashioning tax & monetary policies.

4) created a truly universal system of "Justice for All."

 

ROOPA is the of marriage of our moral and economic sciences. By this system,

identifying good and bad, vice and virtue, is as simple as tallying the long

term economic out come of an activity. ROOPA creates a formula for

constituting moral and economic policies. This replaces the need for further

tampering by government or church.

 

This system will standardize most areas of public policy. Government’s

purpose is to up-hold the constitution - the well being of the people. This

is primarily handled by determining how much each segment of society pays

through fines and taxes or receives in benefits. ROOPA streamlines these

policy considerations into one simple issue: How much does each activity cost

or contribute to society? The culpable pay the cost for those activities that

prove expensive to society. Benefactors are rewarded a share of their

contributions that prove profitable to society. This is ROOPA’s simple

formula for legislating public policy. In this chapter, we show the

advantages of returning cost to those responsible and how this is naturally

accomplished by ROOPA.

 

ROOPA: Common In Courts, Business & Public Policy

 

ROOPA’s first advantage is that it requires little or no legislation to

implement. It’s already widely practice. It’s used in courts the world over

or found as a center piece in much of our US public policy. In court, it

often takes the form of lawsuits. They include compensating a victim’s

immediate expenses, to covering intangibles like lost time and wages or

trauma and suffering. Then we have punitive damages awarded over and above

these cost. Punitive damages serve as punishment to the guilty. Lawsuits are

nothing less then a monetary compensation for the estimated cost of the

victims damages. Welcome to ROOPA. The only difference: the precision with

which ROOPA tally’s the cost, compensates the victim and streamlines this

into a truly universal system of "justice for all."

 

We find wild disparities in today’s legal system. In one case, a women

received nearly $3 million for burns from a hot coffee she spilled on

herself. The jurors reason: to "send a message to McDonalds" to cool the

coffee - punitive damages. This was true of jurors in two judgements against

the tobacco industry. A smoker in the first case was awarded $50 million

while in the second, the smoker was awarded $70 million. Then we have the

other extreme - far too little. This is more common. In this one case, the

courts offered each women a mere $10,000 for their cancer-causing silicone

breast implants. The jury felt the company could ill-afford a more worthy

settlement without going broke. In each of these cases, the settlements were

non-representative of the cost of the victims damages.

 

Public policy is also increasingly being built upon this ROOPA principle. We

have California Gov. Wilson’s legislation that would confiscate a dealers

assets against the economic damages caused by drugs. In Washington, New

Orleans and now California, the community is suing manufacturers for all gun

related carnage. On the international scene, we have the Free-Trade

Agreement. It decrees full government compensation for policies that may

eliminate an industry. The Canadian government had legislated that tobacco

products be generically packaged without the slick color and designs that

otherwise attract a kids attention. Tobacco companies said this was paramount

to destroying its advertising/ packaging industry. They would have to be

compensated for its loses. The Canadian’s promptly dropped the case.

 

There was a similar law here in the US that Republicans were pushing in the

mid 90’s. It demands property owners full compensation for financial loses

caused by government regulations. This overturned dozens of environmental

regulations for millions of acres of land. Similar standards are being

applied to other areas of commerce. One of the biggest cases to date is the

nearly one billion dollars, $909 million, awarded to Glendale Savings. This

was for damages caused by the government’s tax-status change in assessing

"defunct" assets. It may cost the US government as much as $50 billion to

settle with all S&L’s. "Companies in the energy business and in

tele-communications have been watching the Glendale case closely, and they

too may pursue suits claming damages because of government regulatory

actions." (LA Times 4/10/99) Business may have unleashed the "genie in the

bottle" by stepping up its demands for this kind of government compensation.

ROOPA can now ride upon these precedents to press for these same rights on

behalf of the common man from both government as well as business.

 

Companies are even taking up this ROOPA principle as part of everyday

business practice. Insurance companies charge higher premiums to cigarette

smokers, sports utility owners and younger drivers. And there are others.

 

All of these cases are much like today’s other economic and public policies.

They are only a sloppy imitation of this ROOPA principle. To begin, they are

almost entirely arbitrary. Their approach is at best sporadic in nature,

disjointed as a policy and generally clumsily instituted when followed. ROOPA

redresses this by articulating this principle into a uniformed, standard

procedure. In doing so, it has happened upon a fair, effective and scientific

system of justice that translates beautifully into a formal economic policy.

 

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