Saturday, June 10, 2017

Fixing the Air Traffic Control System for real with Public Trust

I support the notion of detaching the Management of our National Airlanes from the FAA's regulatory Role. However, privatizing the system would be a gross mistake.

Monopolist and Oligarchic Thinking leads to Tyranny

Trump's proposal to privatize the Air Traffic Control System reflects 19th century Oligarchic thinking. It is inspired by the way the Russians carved up their industry into monopolies and created a "managed democracy" run by Oligarchs after the Berlin Wall Collapsed. Moving Air Traffic Control to a private, for profit corporation, is a really bad idea. It is so close to the right idea it might sell. Unfortunately it is more a bullet point than a plan!

The FAA should be managed:

  1. For the Whole people concerned
  2. Using Republican Principles of Stakeholder representation
    • Elected Boards with purse, regulatory and legislative roles
    • Management Boards appointed by stakeholder governors with executive, management and oversight authority
    • Use of Civil Courts for coercive power beyond local order
  3. Should be subdivided with branch authorities constituted same structure but with subdivision stakeholders.*
  4. (* Note should be subdivided recursively down to local structures)

  5. National System overseen by Congress and Executive Branch.

Public Authorities Managed for the Whole People Concerned

A semi private public authority for managing FAA operations does make sense. And it should have sufficient power and authority to be self sustaining. That part of Trump's authority is valid. Each Airport should be run as a member organization of a National System. They should be run on non-profit principles. Functions such as ticketing, Gate management, emergency response and security, Air Traffic Control, etc... should be managed by such an authority. This would save airlines money. It would make airports more efficient. But it would only benefit the country if these governing entities are run under democratic and republican principles. The reasons why should be obvious. But I'll list them.

  • Monopolies are run for private Separate Advantage. They tend to create oligarchy and private Separate Advantage which is Lockean Tyranny.[See Definitions]
  • For profit business is great, but public utilities need to be stable not highly profitable to a select few.
  • A private business is run without regard for employees, stakeholders or consumers. A public good like a shopping center, hospital or airport must be run for the public good.
  • A vital system like our traffic lanes must be run for the safety and security of the whole people.
  • Both need to be run as integrated with our defense and homeland security systems, so they cannot be entirely private operations.

General Principles on Managing Monopolies

Statement of Principles:

  • There is no reason we have to trade off national investments and vital services to our people for short term gains against an artificial deficit.
  • There is no need to trade off political antiquated bureaucratic control of our infrastructure against turning that over to monopolists.
  • We need not accept monopolies and privateering as the only way to fund public projects. We need not accept the dominance of private bankers over our industry.
  • We need not accept those monopolies we have as being the personal property of those entrusted with governing them.
  • They must be run in the interest of the "whole people concerned."
  • Privateering is a con where financiers take straw, spin invisible cloth, take real money, and then pretend that they are lending to the Government.
  • This is a false trade. The Federal Government should provide an Infrastructure Bank to finance these projects based on the assets created and future revenue both from fees and taxes.
  • That Infrastructure bank should have access to the Federal Reserve note creation power. States should have interest free loans for necessary projects.
  • We should tax back unearned gains from access to financial assets and inherited or unearned privilege. We should not allow monopolies to be created in the first place.

Lockean Tyranny

I'm sharing this image for reference on why oligarchy is bad.

I have a lot to say on the subject. But I wanted to hold this post to key points. Some of the arguments here reflect unfinished writings under the subject "Against Austerity." I'm still working on some posts on that subject but I share the views of people with more authority than me. So further readings on this are from some of my sources. We need to make all our infrastructure spending these kinds of Public systems with representative structures embedded. We need to resist private monopoly and oligarchy. They are tyranny.

The other thing is that, while it is a good idea to send money to states, counties, municipalities and local authorities, in general, the Federal Government controls our money supply and regulates commerce nationally, and so forcing local government to fund infrastructure investment and sustainment without a means of injecting money locally, robs localities of funds. Benjamin Franklin wrote about this in the 1720s and nothing has changed since except that we now have accounting money as well as paper money.

Further Reading

Trump's non specific proposal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/08/trump-keeps-pretending-his-infrastructure-plan-is-real-its-not/

Fortunately there is still time to put the proposal into a form that ought to be acceptable to both Democratic Republicans and GOP Republicans.

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/09/532078366/trumps-infrastructure-plan-still-could-use-more-planning
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/337049-white-house-shows-how-trumps-1t-infrastructure-plan-will-be-divided-up

Note; "Public Private partnerships" often mean oligarchy.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/06/07/trumps-infrastructure-public-private-partnership-000454
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/opinions/air-traffic-control-abend-opinion/index.html
Related Discussions
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/tory-economics-versus-benjamin-franklin.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-more-effective-democratic.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/08/definitions-related-to-democratic.html
http://againstausterity.org/program/education-and-housing
https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html
http://againstausterity.org/fed
L Wrandal Wray
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_778.pdf

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